Directors
Interviews - Directors
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“The Only Film in the Canon Which had a Black, Gay Man as its Lead”: Director Stephen Winter on Jason and Shirley
“Free love? That’s the only love I can afford!” Stephen Winter’s Jason and Shirley is no mere behind-the-scenes reenactment of the circumstances that would add up to Shirley Clarke’s seminal 1967 Portrait of Jason, but rather a full-bore interrogation of what Clarke’s documentary cost its participants during shooting. To those ends, the film’s rendition of gay hustler Jason Holliday (portrayed here by Jack Waters) is remarkable: it sketches out Jason’s dreams and nightmares in brazenly emotional flights of inward fancy, made all the more jarring by Waters’ unflinching, body-pressurized performance. As Clarke, writer Sarah Schulman gives off an uncanny with-it […]
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“You Can’t Turn Around Without Bumping into a Zombie Movie”: Joe Dante on Burying the Ex
With Burying the Ex (opening theatrically and on VOD June 19), one of the greatest directors of the past forty years returns to the style that made him famous while also striking out in immensely entertaining new directions. Joe Dante’s first film, the Roger Corman-financed Hollywood Boulevard (co-directed with Allan Arkush), established him as a singular satirical voice; like many of the films that would follow (The Howling, Gremlins and Gremlins 2, Matinee, etc.), it was both a celebration of and a sly commentary on American pop culture, with a delirious wit and energy masking an underlying seriousness. Over the […]
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Being Gentrified, Insomnia and Documentary Time: David Shapiro on His LAFF-Premiering, Missing People
In 2011 a friend said to me, “We are going to work on the movie later.” I smiled and nodded in response, knowing she would eke out more information at her own pace given her extreme privacy and love of intrigue. Little did I know that this friend, Martina Batan, was to be the subject of a feature film by David Shapiro, whose critically acclaimed directorial debut Keep the River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale was released nearly 15 years ago. Missing People parallels the life of Batan, a NYC gallery director, with that of an outsider artist […]
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Cannes 2015: Five Questions for Mediterranea Director Jonas Carpignano
Few films at Cannes were as reonant as Mediterranea, the first feature from director Jonas Carpignano. The film follows Ayiva (Koudous Seihon) and Abas (Alassane Sy), two men from Burkina Faso who board a migrant boat toward Italy via Tunisia and Libya. Their boat capsizes, and they are among the lucky that make it ashore. When they finally arrive to Rosarno in Southern Italy, instead of finding a land of promised opportunities, they discover only a hostile society and blatant labor exploitation. Mediterranea is expanded from Carpignano’s short film A Chjana, based on the 2010 Rosarno race riots that shook Italy. Another character who […]
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Not “Making Bad Movies with State Money”: Roy Andersson on A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
I used to dismiss the films of Roy Andersson for their coldness and repetition; a mistake. While the Swedish filmmaker’s camera hangs at an ever-stiffer remove, each scene he shoots is suffused with minute power dynamics, rendering the players — aimlessly shuffling to and fro, outfitted in sepulchral pancake makeup — both tragically pathetic and pathetically hilarious. A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Contemplating Existence, the 73-year-old auteur’s latest, caps Andersson’s so-called “human existence trilogy” with a surprising rumination on repressed cultural memory stitched within the director’s signature vistas of human cruelty. Andersson has been perfecting this droll, widescreen aesthetic […]
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Feminist Pornographer Jennifer Lyon Bell on Silver Shoes, PinkLabel.tv, and the Holy F*ck Film Festival
I’ve known Amsterdam-based, San Francisco-bred, Jennifer Lyon Bell ever since we met over half a decade ago at Brooklyn’s much beloved Monkey Town — back when a DIY, Williamsburg performance space could afford to host a Sunday brunch for CineKink Film Festival award winners. (Bell’s Matinée took the Best Narrative Short prize, while Un Piede di Roman Polanski, an homage to Roman Polanski’s foot fetish I co-directed with Roxanne Kapista, nabbed Best Experimental Short.) Since then Bell’s films have been both banned (Matinée from the Melbourne Underground Film Festival by the Australian Film Commission in 2009) and celebrated, most recently […]
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“I Fantasized About Being a Glamorous Drug Addict”: Director Adam Baran on His Twin Peaks-centric Documentary Northwest Passage
In the late ’80s, a troubled gay kid named Travis Blue stumbled upon a film production in his sleepy hometown of North Bend, Washington. Fascinated, Blue watched as they transformed a local restaurant into a place called the Double R Diner. The production was for a television series titled Northwest Passage, later renamed Twin Peaks. When it aired in 1990, David Lynch’s cult masterpiece became for Travis not simply an obsession, but a world he wanted to literally inhabit. Taking Laura Palmer as real life role model, Blue spent the next decade lost in various underworlds and struggling with his own […]
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Biggest Challenge, Best Lesson: I Believe in Unicorns Director Leah Meyerhoff
Filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff is perhaps as well known for her film collective, Film Fatales, as for her first feature film, I Believe in Unicorns, which premiered at Sundance in 2014. Filmmaker did an extensive profile of the Film Fatales last year, and as gender parity in the film industry moves to the forefront of industry news, the Fatales has seen a dramatic increase in its members and activities that has kept Meyerhoff busy. Meanwhile, she prepares for the debut of Unicorns at the IFC Center on May 29th. The film will screen theatrically in New York, Los Angeles and San […]
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Five Questions for Love Comes Later Director and La Semaine de la Critique Selectee, Sonejuhi Sinha
To premiere at La Semaine de la Critique is a singular achievement in itself. For one thing, it comes with the boasting rights of having triumphed through a discerning selection process, one that whittles over 1,700 submissions down to a lineup of merely 20 films. For another, as the competition running parallel to the Cannes Film Festival since 1962, La Semaine’s commitment to showcasing and nurturing new global talent through a combination of selectivity and exceptional personal attention has established it as one of the most valued platforms of exposure for budding filmmakers. But for New York-based editor-turned-writer/director Sonejuhi Sinha, […]
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Cannes 2015: Five Questions for Carol Director Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes reteams with Cate Blanchett, after 2007’s I’m Not There, for his latest Palme d’Or contender Carol. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s semi-autobiographical novel The Price of Salt, Rooney Mara plays shopgirl Therese, who falls in love with the older, married Carol (Blanchett) in the ’50s. The two embark on a road trip, which culminates in Carol’s husband blackmailing her with the liaison to prevent her from having custody over their daughter. Edward Lachman’s cinematography is rich in period detail. And two masters at their craft bring the challenging characters to life, ending the film in a final wordless scene […]
