Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Nenad Cicin-Sain on The Time Being
In Nenad Cicin-Sain’s moody debut feature, The Time Being, Frank Langella plays Warner, a wealthy art patron who after buying a painting at an art gallery hires the financially strapped artist behind the work (Wes Bentley) to do odd, artistically tinged jobs for him. Daniel, a dedicated painter who’s dour work isn’t exactly flying off the walls, struggles to support his family — to the increasing annoyance of his wife Olivia (Ahna O’Reilly). He is drawn to the reclusive and mysterious millionaire as a potential new benefactor, but when Warner’s assignments for Daniel become increasingly bizarre surveillance excursions, Daniel senses that he may […]
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The POV Conversation: Stephen Maing and Lixin Fan on the Importance of Unpredictability
Last year, to celebrate POV’s 25th anniversary, Filmmaker organized a series of conversations between documentary directors whose work had been featured on the PBS non-fiction showcase. This year, we continue this series with a fascinating discussion between Stephen Maing — whose debut feature on Chinese citizen bloggers, High Tech, Low Life, is currently streaming for free on the POV website — with Lixin Fan, the Chinese filmmaker whose Last Train Home, an intimate portrait of a fractured family of migrant workers in China, won him great acclaim in 2009. In the third of this five-part discussion, the two filmmakers discuss how unforeseeable circumstances have contributed to their documentary films. […]
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The POV Conversation: Stephen Maing and Lixin Fan on Discovering Documentary Filmmaking
Last year, to celebrate POV’s 25th anniversary, Filmmaker organized a series of conversations between documentary directors whose work had been featured on the PBS non-fiction showcase. This year, we continue this series with a fascinating discussion between Stephen Maing – whose debut feature on Chinese citizen bloggers, High Tech, Low Life, is streaming for free on the POV website from today – and Lixin Fan, the Chinese filmmaker whose Last Train Home, an intimate portrait of a fractured family of migrant workers in China, won him great acclaim in 2009. In the second of this five-part discussion, the two discuss […]
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Five Questions with Man from Reno Director Dave Boyle
Since his 2006 debut, director and multi-hyphenate Dave Boyle has arguably carved out the most unique niche in independent film. That film, Big Dreams Little Tokyo, and his subsequent pictures White on Rice (2009), Surrogate Valentine (2011), and Daylight Savings (2012) have featured a mix of Japanese and Japanese-American characters in polyglot films that combine quirky comedy with high-strung drama. The latter two films added a semi-documentary element as musician Goh Nakamura plays a fictionalized version of himself. Now with Man from Reno Boyle retains several of his signature traits but moves in the new direction of a thriller. The film […]
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The POV Conversation: Stephen Maing and Lixin Fan on Growing Up with Film
Last year, to celebrate POV’s 25th anniversary, Filmmaker organized a series of conversations between documentary directors whose work had been featured on the PBS non-fiction showcase. This year, we continue this series with a fascinating discussion between Stephen Maing – whose debut feature on Chinese citizen bloggers, High Tech, Low Life, airs tonight on POV – with Lixin Fan, the Chinese filmmaker whose Last Train Home, an intimate portrait of a fractured family of migrant workers in China, won him great acclaim in 2009. In the first of this five-part discussion, the two discuss their early cinematic experiences. High Tech, […]
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Bangkok Dangerous: Nicolas Winding Refn on Only God Forgives
A superviolent and supremely strange Bangkok nocturne, Only God Forgives is Nicolas Winding Refn’s follow-up to his Cannes award-winning pop culture sensation Drive. This film, sure to be nowhere near as popular, is a distinctly less accessible affair. One senses that the filmmaker, a born contrarian, takes a certain pleasure in this. In both Thai and English, it meditates on a white man who trains child fighters and runs a family-operated drug ring with his brother. When said brother is dispatched via some brutal south Asian justice involving really sharp swords (after he is found to have rapped and killed […]
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Five Questions with The Punk Syndrome Directors Jukka Kärkkäinen and Jani-Petteri Passi
It’s not very punk to admit this, but out of all the films I’ve seen this year, the one that has activated my tearducts most often is The Punk Syndrome, directed by Jukka Kärkkäinen and Jani-Petteri Passi. The documentary details the rise of Finnish punk band Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät (Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day), which has four members: Pertti, Kari, Toni, and Sami, all of whom are mentally handicapped. As we witness the band members grapple both with the pressures of rising fame and the pressures of the everyday condition, this spare documentary gathers an undeniable emotional power. The directors, relative […]
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Jessica Oreck on her new Web Series, This Working Man
Less than three months since she premiered her documentary, Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys, at the Tribeca Film Festival, Jessica Oreck is both on the road and back with new work. This Working Man is a web project combining video portraiture, travel, and crowdsourced curation. From the project’s website: This Working Man is a series of short portraits of men at work. It is about practiced motion, kinetic movement, bodies, and forms. It is about a particular type of man: exceedingly capable, strong, confident, and diligent. The project is a search for humble masculinity and an unapologetic admittance of […]
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Medium Specific: An Interview with Computer Chess Director Andrew Bujalski
Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess is the most daring feature film of the year. A bewildering and baffling trip back in time (to circa 1980), the movies follows a group of four-eyed super-nerds engaged in a unique chess tournament – in which their carefully designed computer programs face off against each other. Shot on 43-year-old video equipment (the Sony AVC3260, one of the earliest consumer cameras), the movie looks like a lost artifact from another era — with soupy black-and-white images that take on a ghostly pallor. If Bujalski is known for his lo-fi minimalist human comedies Funny Ha Ha, Mutual […]
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Ryan Coogler Talks with Ava DuVernay about Fruitvale Station
A year ago next week Filmmaker audiences met for the first time writer/director Ryan Coogler, as we featured him in our 2012 “25 New Faces” list. Here’s my profile: Ryan Coogler remembers the first moment it occurred to him to become a film director. Having grown up in Oakland, Coogler was on a football scholarship to Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., where he had to take a creative writing class. The assignment was to write about a personal experience, and Coogler wrote about the time his father almost bled to death in his arms. He handed it in, and […]
