Directors
Interviews - Directors
-
Five Questions with Breakfast With Curtis Director Laura Colella
The following interview first appeared on the Filmmaker website in June 2012 to coincide with the world premiere of Breakfast with Curtis at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Laura Colella’s movie goes on theatrical release through BOND360/Abramorama from today. 25 New Faces alum Laura Colella’s Breakfast with Curtis unfolds at its own pace, not unlike the leisurely chats it spends so much time documenting. Colella, who wrote, directed, and acted in the film, used her own home as a shooting location and cast her real-life neighbors and housemates in prominent roles. Centered around a bookseller named Syd (Theo Green) who enlists […]
-
Director Ryan Lightbourn shoots Sleepwalkers with the RED Scarlet and a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
Ryan Lightbourn grew up in the Bahamas, but went to business school in the U.S. Becoming interested in music, Lightbourn transferred to Full Sail University after graduating. He wanted to become a music producer, but after playing with Final Cut Pro he started making “goofy little short films and music videos with my friends.” Switching to the film program he quickly decided that he could learn more by going out and actually shooting things than by going to class, so he dropped out and bought some gear. He continued shooting music videos, but always wanted to make films, and in […]
-
riot, girl: Sini Anderson on The Punk Singer
For many, Kathleen Hanna — frontwoman for the bands Bikini Kill and later Le Tigre — was the defining protopunk, feminist icon of the Clinton and W. eras. A centrifugal force whose career spans the entire era in which the genre folks used to call Alternative Rock grew and waned in popularity, this riot grrrl mysteriously left the public eye in the mid aughts without any explanation. In The Punk Singer directed by Sini Anderson, a friend of Ms. Hanna’s, and produced by the music video auteur and CB4 director Tamra Davis, she reemerges from the shadows of semi-retirement. The film […]
-
Michel Gondry on Old-School Animation, His Trademark Whimsy, and Plumbing the Mind of Noam Chomsky for Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
Two highly unique minds converge in Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, the latest from whimsical visionary Michel Gondry, who aptly subtitles his film, “An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky.” In the works for four years, this self-explanatory project from the artist behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, and a veritable library of music videos is a charming and markedly low-tech doc that literally illustrates the insights of Chomsky, one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Ever-fascinated by the depths of the human brain, and ever-faithful in dressing his films with cartoon-like touches, […]
-
“It Found Its Way to Me Exclusively Because of the Title”: Alexander Payne on Nebraska
If Bob Nelson’s screenplay had been called Iowa, Alexander Payne would have never made Nebraska. “It found its way exclusively to me, because of the title,” said the Omaha-born director before a recent sold-out audience at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. Indeed, Nebraska could be mistaken for one of Payne’s scripts, since it shares common story elements with The Descendants, Sideways and About Schmidt: a man hits the road to find himself accompanied by a buddy, uncovers painful yet funny revelations about his past, and arrives at peace with his imperfect life. “Who am I really?” asks his heroes. In Nebraska, Bruce Dern […]
-
Filmmaker Grace Lee and Activist Grace Lee Boggs on American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
“I feel so sorry for people who are not living in Detroit,” says activist icon Grace Lee Boggs, as she stands before a dilapidated cityscape in the opening sequence of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. A Marxist and lifelong Hegel disciple, the Chinese-American Lee Boggs gained notoriety in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, alongside her husband Jimmy Boggs, in the mid-20th Century. Today, she is still ardently devoted to her adopted hometown of more than half a century, galvanizing the local communities in her effort to revive the industrial wasteland that has become of Detroit. […]
-
Comic Striptease: Joel Allen Schroeder on Dear Mr. Watterson
In Dear Mr. Watterson, fellow comic-strip artists, eerily adoring fans and apparently serious comic-strip critics pay tribute to Bill Watterson, an enigmatic man whose sly, dexterous mind and remarkably precise hand are responsible for “Calvin and Hobbes,” a brilliant, widely-read syndicated newspaper strip that haunted the pages of America’s most hallowed dailies from the early 1980s through the mid-to-late ’90s. The film, Joel Allen Schroeder’s first, attempts to earnestly and without irony portray the ostensibly profound impact the “Calvin and Hobbes” strip has had on the lives of peculiar subset of American youth. In an era in which the form truly reached a […]
-
All in the Family: Shawney Cohen on The Manor
The following interview was initially published at the time of the film’s world premiere at Hot Docs 2013. This week, The Manor plays as part of DOC NYC. The titular subject referred to in Shawney Cohen’s debut feature has nothing to do with ladies and lords, but with the Cohen family business – a combo strip club/motel in a small Canadian town. And The Manor has nothing to do with in the ins and outs of the sex industry, so to speak, but with the inner workings of the Cohen family, which includes Shawney’s 400-pound father (who bought the place when […]
-
Five Questions with The Great Beauty Director Paolo Sorrentino
The interview below first ran as part of Filmmaker‘s coverage of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, where The Great Beauty had its world premiere. It is released today through Janus Films. Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, The Great Beauty, premiered in competition in Cannes this year, wowing fans with its over-the-top depiction of modern Rome. Seen through the sad eyes of an aging journalist, Jep Gambardella (Toni Servillo), the film uncovers a series of unsettling scenes where everyone in Rome aims to be an actor on his or her own stage. And Jep is at the center of it all, a man who squandered his […]
-
Five Questions with Sunlight Jr. Director Laurie Collyer
The following interview was originally published in May 2013 to coincide with the world premiere of the film at the Tribeca Film Festival. Sunlight Jr.goes on release theatrically today through Gravitas Ventures. While the lives of the working class are not the stuff Hollywood dreams are made of, they are at the heart of Laurie Collyer’s new film, Sunlight Jr. Starring Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon as a couple dealing with an unexpected pregnancy while trying to survive on minimum wage jobs, Sunlight Jr. premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend where it is sure to stir up a conversation about what it means […]
