Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Five Questions with F To 7th Creator Ingrid Jungermann
Ingrid Jungermann was selected by Filmmaker as part of this year’s crop of “25 New Faces of Independent Film” along with her comedic cohort from The Slope, Desiree Akhavan. After chronicling the relationship between two “superficial, homophobic lesbians” in The Slope, Jungermann is striking out on her own with a new web series, F to 7th — currently in the final stages of its fundraising campaign on Kickstarter — in which the same “Ingrid” character reappears, now looking for her place in the world. Filmmaker briefly chatted with Jungermann about her upcoming show, going solo and lessons learned from The Slope. Filmmaker: Tell us about F to […]
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Director Matthew Lillard on Fat Kid Rules the World
Matthew Lillard has been in the movie business for a long time, racking up a sizable resume as an actor in films from SLC Punk and Scream to The Descendants and Trouble with the Curve, but with this , year’s Fat Kid Rules the World, Lillard makes his directorial debut. Fat Kid Rules the World tells the story of Troy Billings, a lonely, overweight teen, and Marcus, the magnetic-yet-troubled local musician/high school dropout as they fight to save each other from their inner demons (depression/attempted suicide and drug addiciton respectively). After a serendipitous offer out of the blue and feeling […]
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“I Need to Feel When I Make a Film That I’m Not the Same Person Who Made the One Before”: Director Leos Carax on Holy Motors
“The social web can’t exist until you are your real self online,” said Sheryl Sandberg on Charlie Rose last year. “I have to be ‘me’, and you have to be ‘Charlie Rose,’” the Facebook COO told the talk show host. “It’s me” — that single line appearing late in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors unexpectedly devastated me at the film’s Cannes premiere, and perhaps its memory is what’s causing me to recall Sandberg’s statement, which is certainly in line with similar comments by her boss, Mark Zuckerberg. In an age in which online platforms offer the possibility for anyone to craft for themselves a variety […]
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Ry Russo-Young, Nobody Walks
In Nobody Walks, Ry Russo-Young’s third feature film, which she co-wrote with Lena Dunham, Martine (Olivia Thirlby), is a young artist from New York who comes to stay in the pool house of a Los Angeles therapist and sound designer (Rosemarie DeWitt and John Krasinski) to finish the sound mix on her film. Her presence alters the warm, supportive environment of this supposedly open-minded household. There are permanent repercussions for the whole family, and most crucially for Martine. It’s a smart, sexy, and unresolved film about the struggles a young woman can find in trying to express herself sexually and […]
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Five Questions with The Flat Director Arnon Goldfinger
When the maternal grandmother of Arnon Goldfinger dies, the documentary filmmaker is confronted with the lifetime of furniture, gloves and books she left behind in the Tel Aviv apartment she shared with his grandfather. After he begins to document the long process of cleaning out and distributing the items among family members, an unexpected possession rises to the top: a newspaper article which hints at family ties to the Nazis. The Flat (which opens on Friday through Sundance Selects) follows Goldfinger’s initial question of how the article came to be in the apartment, and how it connects to his grandparents […]
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Interview with Gayby Director Jonathan Lisecki
Gayby might be the first feature from writer/director Jonathan Lisecki, but its ace comic timing and deft depiction of physical humor suggest a seasoned comedic maestro. Expanded from a short that Lisecki shopped around the festival circuit in 2010 (it debuted at Slamdance and went on to hit more than 100 venues), the film is easily one of the year’s funniest, much thanks to its maker’s classic instincts for drumming up laughs. A veteran of independent theater, Lisecki couples a sharp, knowing wit with a mature sense of benevolence, yielding a well-rounded comedy for a demographic that desperately needs it. […]
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Five Questions with Excuse Me for Living Director Ric Klass
Ric Klass was a teacher. A student. A financier. A consultant. An entrepreneur. A writer. Not necessarily in that order. Now, he’s a director, who, for his second feature, returned to the annals and decided to adapt his novel Excuse Me For Living for the screen. With an ensemble featuring the likes of Christopher Lloyd and Jerry Stiller, the black comedy follows a trust-funded, pill-popping megalomaniac as he wades through treatment, his psychologist, his dysfunctional parents, his paramours, and the group therapy sessions he’s been snookered into managing. Klass speaks about his career transitions, craft, and Excuse Me For […]
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Daniel Raim on Something’s Gonna Live
The Man on Lincoln’s Nose (2000), Daniel Raim’s short documentary about legendary production designer Robert Boyle (North by Northwest, The Birds), was nominated for an Oscar; Boyle himself received an honorary Oscar in 2008 at the age of 98. Over the course of several years, Raim continued to film Boyle in candid interviews and conversations with his production design colleagues (Henry Bumstead, Albert Nozaki, Harold Michelson) and cinematographers Haskell Wexler and Conrad Hall, and produced an equally engaging follow-up feature, Something’s Gonna Live (2010). The film is a warm and contemplative portrait of the aging Boyle and his friends as […]
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Five Questions with Damsels in Distress Director Whit Stillman
Thirteen years is a long time for any voice to stay silent, let alone one as distinctive and intrinsic to the American independent scene as Whit Stillman’s. Yet well over a decade has gone by since The Last Days of Disco – the final part in Stillman’s self-described “Doomed-Bourgeouis-in-Love” trilogy and his last feature film outing. But this past spring, audiences were reintroduced to Stillman’s idiosyncratic wit with Damsels in Distress (out now on DVD and VOD), a whimsical, literate, and classically hilarious college-set comedy. Starring Greta Gerwig as Violet, the leader of a clique of women at the fictional Seven […]
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Dreams from a Petrified Head Director Dan Ouellette
Dan Ouellette has had a long career in the New York independent film community, starting with his work as a production designer for Hal Hartley in 1990 with Trust and then, in 1992, with Simple Men. He’s also an accomplished visual artist (examples of which can be seen at his Neurotica Divine site) and has directed stylish music videos for the bands Android Lust and The Birthday Massacre. Dan is also, full disclosure, an old friend who I’ve also worked with professionally many times. (Films he’s production designed that Robin O’Hara and I produced include What Happened Was…, Saving Face, […]
