Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Chris Kenneally on Side by Side
Over the past few decades, film’s iron-clad grip on the motion industry has gradually been chipped away by emerging digital technology. Yet it hasn’t necessarily been a smooth transition. Traditional celluloid film has gone largely unchanged as a medium for a century and has been the canvas for works from Casablanca and Apocalypse Now to this summer’s blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises. As the saying goes: old habits die hard. In this case, for good reason, a film produces a picture quality, texture, and dynamic range unparalleled by digital. But digital technology has continued to make leaps and bounds in […]
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Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Chicken with Plums
Chicken with Plums focuses on a deeply sensitive Iranian musician named Nasser Ali (Mathieu Amalric), and the film, from writer-directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, makes clear from the start that viewers shouldn’t be expecting anything like a storybook ending. Having watched helplessly as his violin is smashed before his eyes, Nasser decides he’s had it with this life. And so into bed he climbs, determined to die, lest he face another year with Faranguisse (Maria de Medeiros), the wife he’s never loved. As the days go by, his mind wanders from the past to the present, and to the […]
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Richard Trank, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl
Studiously researched, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodore Herzl reveals the life that informed Austro-Hungarian journalist-playwright Theodor Herzl’s creation of the Zionist Movement, which ultimately led to the founding of the state of Israel. Directed by Richard Trank, the film uses Herzl’s diaries and photographs, correspondence and drama, as well as a limited but effective pool of other historical artifacts to recreate the dynamic world of central European Jewry that Herzl sprang from, while explaining the rapid development of his politic cause in a way that will resonate with both laymen and history buffs alike. Narrated by Ben […]
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Director Aurora Guerrero on Mosquita Y Mari
Though Aurora Guerrero made Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list in 2006, the director behind this year’s Sundance-premiering, award-winning Mosquita y Mari – which most recently took both Outstanding First U.S. Dramatic Feature Film, as well as Outstanding Actress in a U.S. Dramatic Feature Film for its lead Fenessa Pineda, at Outfest – was a welcome new face to me when I caught the film earlier this year. A tale of two Chicanas coming of age in working-class L.A., Guerrero’s feature debut is breathtaking in its understatement, less your typical “queer flick” than a continuation of the […]
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Mikkel Norgaard, Klown
Long considered one of the funniest shows in Scandinavia, the television series Klown features Danish comedians Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam playing Curb Your Enthusiasm-style variations on themselves, getting into hysterically awkward encounters with friends and strangers, loved ones and frenemies, including other Danish celebrities such as actress Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, The Boss of It All) and Jørgen Leth (the co-director, with Lars von Trier, of The Five Obstructions). Running for six seasons, it propelled the comic duo to the heights of Danish celebrity and mainstream popularity. Now there is a film version of Klown directed by Mikkel Nørgaard, who conceived and directed much of […]
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Storm Song: Beasts of the Southern Wild and Tchoupitoulas
After the recent BAMcinemaFest screening that marked the first time Benh Zeitlin’s magical-realist Beasts of the Southern Wild screened alongside Bill and Turner Ross’s immersive New Orleans documentary Tchoupitoulas—both South Louisiana-shot pictures produced by members of the film collective Court 13—there were two celebrations on either side of BAM. At the beautiful dive-bar Frank’s, the Ross brothers and various doc and indie film bros were watching the NBA championships with loud exuberance and strong opinions. There was a rumor that there was a dance party across the street at the Fox Searchlight-hosted party for Beasts, which was flowing with delicious […]
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The Work is the Reward: Chris Eyre on Hide Away
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 15 years since filmmaker Chris Eyre burst onto the indie scene with 1998’s Smoke Signals, based on a short story by fellow Native American Sherman Alexie, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Native Canadian Gary Farmer (probably best known for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man). Since then the Portland homeboy has seamlessly shifted from the big screen, to PBS fare, to franchise TV and back again, most recently with Hide Away, an existential drama featuring Josh Lucas and James Cromwell. Earlier this year, Chris was tapped for an entirely different gig, chairing the […]
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Five Questions with Tiger Tail in Blue Director Frank V. Ross
Right now on Kentucker Audley’s No Budge website, it’s Frank V. Ross week. If that name elicits a blank response, it’s not an uncommon reaction. Though Chicago-based Ross is one of the original class of mumblecore directors, he never received the attention that was given to so many of his DIY peers, such as Andrew Bujalski, the Duplass brothers or Joe Swanberg (a fellow Chicagoan with whom Ross has collaborated numerous times). Nevertheless, his recent films Present Company (2008) and Audrey the Trainwreck (2010) have gained him a number of champions within the indie community, and those two films have […]
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Benoit Jacquot, Farewell, My Queen
The court intrigue that animates Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen — set during the final days of Marie Antoinette’s reign — could be the stuff of so many costume dramas. To his great credit, however, the 65-year-old Parisian director, best known on this side of the pond for his 1995 hotel chamber drama A Single Girl, offers an elliptical, accumulative account of the events, keeping them tightly focused on the experience of the Queen’s private reader Sidonie (Léa Seydoux) as the storm clouds of revolution gather from outside the corridors of Versailles and the regime’s demise very quickly becomes inevitable, even […]
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Writer/Director Martin Donovan on Collaborator
Martin Donovan is destined to be forever remembered for his remarkable actor-director partnership with Hal Hartley during indie film’s halcyon days of the early to mid 1990s. In era-defining movies such as Trust, Simple Men and Amateur, Donovan was Hartley’s on-screen simulacrum, a smart, softly spoken man who was simultaneously familiar and enigmatic. While Hartley’s work is sadly not nearly as popular or present as it once was, it’s fitting that Donovan has made his debut feature as a writer and director with Collaborator, a knowing and witty cinematic chamber piece that feels nostalgic for the more culturally sophisticated times […]
