Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Writer/director John Ridley Talks about his Hendrix Pic, All is By My Side
With so many overstuffed biographical dramas barreling from cradle to grave, the creative possibilities of the intimate biopic, one focused on a formative and often little known period in a subject’s life, are often neglected by writers and directors. Thankfully, though, that’s the approach taken by screenwriter and second-time director John Ridley to one of the most iconic and fan-obsessed-over cultural figures of the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix. Starring André Benjamin (Outkast’s André 3000) as the iconic singer and guitarist, All Is By My Side focuses on a year or so in Hendrix’s life and how a song written for […]
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Five Questions with The Armstrong Lie Director Alex Gibney
Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, is not only the most prolific figure within American documentary but also always seems to tackle solely the most complex, fascinating subjects. In recent years, he has put his focus on jailed lobbyist and con artist Jack Abramoff, disgraced politician Eliot Spitzer, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, Tea Party funders the Koch brothers, and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. To this list can be now added fallen sports hero Lance Armstrong, the cancer survivor turned seven-time Tour de France winner who, after years of rumors, […]
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Five Questions with Beneath the Harvest Sky Directors Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly
Filmmaking team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly first made their mark on the U.S. independent scene in 2009 with the documentary The Way We Get By, a heartwarming festival favorite about a trio of senior citizens who have spent years greeting U.S. troops returning from combat as they arrive at Bangor International Airport in Bangor, Maine. Four years on, the pair are once again telling a story set in Maine, but this time it’s a bleak, fictional narrative. Beneath the Harvest Sky, a 2013 IFP Narrative Lab project, tells the story of two teenage best friends whose paths in life are sharply diverging: […]
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Five Questions with The Dog Directors Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren
The real-life incident of a man robbing a bank to fund his lover’s sex-change operation was immortalized in Sidney Lumet’s 1975 classic Dog Day Afternoon, with Al Pacino winning an Oscar nod for his fine performance as Sonny Wortzik. However the true story of John Wojtowicz — the man on whom Wortzik was based — remains all but unknown. The remarkable tale of that robbery and of Wojtowicz’s life after he emerged from prison is chronicled in Allison Berg & Frank Keraudren’s documentary The Dog, which the pair shot over the course of over a decade, starting in 2002. It has its […]
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“25 New Face” Rodrigo Reyes on Purgatorio (+ Trailer Premiere)
There’s no lack of films and TV shows focusing on Mexican-American relationships mediated by the border, their focus most commonly on the never-ending drug wars. On TV, The Bridge and Breaking Bad criss-cross between the two countries, mapping out mayhem and violence, as do recent documentaries like 2010’s El Sicario, Room 164, 2011’s El Velador and this year’s Narco Cultura. 2013 “25 New Face” Rodrigo Reyes’ Purgatorio is a different kind of border movie, beginning with footage of rural Mexico as the director urges us, in voiceover, to “try to imagine what the world was like, many, many years ago. Try to […]
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Five Questions with I Am Breathing Directors Morag McKinnon and Emma Davie
A documentary that navigates the profound nature of a fatal diagnosis, I Am Breathing is full of spirit when it could just as easily rest on real life pathos. Neil Platt, a 34 year old diagnosed with motor neuron disease and now living out his final few months, is forced into new perspectives to combat his physical paralysis, speeding up his own understanding of the world to offer to his young son. The film does the opposite of dragging along morbidly — it elevates the viewer with Neil’s lightheartedness even as he moves towards an all-too-certain end. Filmmaker spoke with […]
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Gabriel Gomez & Julien Melendez on Robert Black and Possessed
Twenty years ago I spent a week with a Boy Scout troop riding a horse through the canyons of Moab in southeast Utah, feeling like young Indiana Jones in the opening sequence of The Last Crusade. Still, the red rocks, the brush, and the steep cliff walls created an ambiance unlike anywhere else, even the better-known national parks in the area like Arches and Zion and Bryce Canyon. While I was riding around half naively admiring the views, cutting edge musicians like Robert Black, a bassist and founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars, were discovering Moab’s acoustic […]
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A Woman Under the Influence: Hannah Fidell on A Teacher
Hannah Fidell’s slow-burn character study A Teacher relies on a taut and unsettling performance by Lindsay Burdge in the title role to crawl deep under the skin of the viewer. Diana, a youthful and fetching as a high school teacher, is one of the year’s most fascinating indie film characters; a remote and somewhat coy woman who is nonetheless caught up in a forbidden sexual dalliance with a male student, one which grows from a delicate crush into a dangerous and foreboding full-blown obsession with alarming velocity. That we’re at turns sympathetic to, fascinated and repulsed by Diana is a testament to Burdge’s […]
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Independent Film: Hobby or Career? Kentucker Audley on the Eternal Question
Independent filmmaking: hobby or career? It is a question that has been on more than a few lips for years now. Though digital platforms have greatly democratized the distribution process, filmmakers are still reaping minimal financial returns on their work. Should the aspiring independent filmmaker pursue her passion wholeheartedly, or should she be pragmatic from the get go, making films as a hobby alongside a more lucrative career? Filmmaker spoke with Kentucker Audley, filmmaker, actor and proprietor of NoBudge, about the professional concerns of the modern moviemaker, and the benefits of having yet another passion project to keep you busy. […]
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All The King’s Men: Penny Lane on Our Nixon
In Our Nixon, director Penny Lane explores the Nixon administration by juxtaposing secret White House discussions from the infamous Nixon tapes with incredibly intimate Super 8 footage taken by avid amateur cineastes H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Ehrlichmann and Dwight Chapin. The fact that these men also happened to be the chief of staff, special advisor and assistant to our much maligned 37th President is one thing; that they were also three of Nixon’s closest aides and the key conspirators jailed during the aftermath of the Watergate scandal is another entirely. Despite what Ben Stein might say, Our Nixon has little to no polemical […]
