Directors
Interviews - Directors
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Director Darren Lynn Bousman on Repo! The Genetic Opera
Back in 2004, director Darren Lynn Bousman was taking his violent horror script The Desperate to a number of studios, only to be told it was too grisly for mainstream viewers. Enter Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell, who loved The Desperate and immediately contacted Bousman about reworking the script into a sequel to their Saw franchise. This began a partnership that saw Bousman direct three successful Saw films in a row. Taking a break from the infamous horror series, Bousman returns with a long gestating labor of love: Repo! The Genetic Opera, a futuristic horror musical based on […]
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Ancestral Roots
New York-based film critic Godfrey Cheshire was attending a Christmas gathering with his family in North Carolina when he received some surprising news from his cousin Charlie. Midway Plantation, the ancestral home of their extended family since the 1840s, was to be transplanted to a new location. In the name of progress, the city of Raleigh was expanding a highway and strip malls. If the plantation house and its surrounding buildings were not moved, the deterioration of the surrounding environment would be so drastic, future generations would not want to live there. Charlie’s decision sparked controversy within the family, with […]
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A Step Into the Mainstream
Canada’s Patricia Rozema has had an eclectic career, spanning films as diverse as her 1987 debut Cannes feature, I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing to her Yo Yo Ma feature, Six Gestures: Suite No. 6 for Unaccompanied Cello to her 1999 Jane Austen adaptation, Mansfield Park. The themes and approaches of these films — Rozema’s concentration on adult eroticism, feminism, religious skepticism, and social revolution — would not seem to be the kind of interests which would speak to the upright members of the American Girl enterprise, protectorate of the indomitable Kit Kittredge and her wholesome doll sisters. Yet, the sweetly […]
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Moral Burdens
Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a fierce, generous melodrama of boundaries and passions, of blood and yearning, the second of a trilogy about émigré culture patterned after Fassbinder’s “BRD Trilogy” (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, Veronika Voss) of post World War II German history. His fiery prior feature, Head-On, is the “love” component, with Edge comprising “death” (with “evil” on the way). Comparisons can be drawn to other work by the late German director, especially with his inclusion of Fassbinder stalwart Hanna Schygulla in a major, moving role. Akin seems to have found his métier […]
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Five Questions with Carny Director Alison Murray
Throughout her career, Alison Murray has excelled in the filmic exploration of subculture. Her films, both docs and a narrative feature, burrow deep inside groups situated outside of mainstream culture and capture not only their social dynamics but also the very human stories contained within them. Her first doc, Train on the Brain, looked at the teenage culture of “train jumpers.” Her feature Mouth to Mouth starred Ellen Page in a story of a teenager who runs away and joins a European youth cult. And now her latest, Carny, which premieres this week at Hot Docs, finds Murray on the […]
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Jeff Nichols, Shotgun Stories
The North Carolina School of the Arts film program has, during its relatively short existence, produced a wealth of cinematic talent. Prominent alums includes writer-directors David Gordon Green, Craig Zobel, Michael Tully, Aaron Katz, Jody Hill and Nate Meyer, actors Danny McBride and Paul Schneider (who is also a writer-director), DPs Tim Orr and Adam Stone — and to that list one must now add another notable talent, Jeff Nichols. A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Nichols graduated from the school in 2001 and has to date written and directed six short films in addition to working on Gary Hawkins’ […]
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Carnal Knowledge
Over the course of eight feature films, Olivier Assayas has built a solid international reputation as a director of stylish, naturalistic thrillers and social dramas that team with sensuality. Assayas is a boundlessly resourceful director and in his most recent film, Boarding Gate, a lower key, appealingly absurd riff on the same erotic, globalization-era techno thriller he first brought us in 2002’s explosive Demonlover, the fifty-two year old French filmmaker uses his signature loose, montage-y style to tell what is essentially a lurid and oblique crime story, full of people with secrets and double agendas, whose longings to fulfill the […]
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A Child’s Journey
Though her short-film and documentary projects have a clearly articulated social conscience, director Patricia Riggen says she prefers to make moving films that tell a story with “big emotions.” Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Riggen began writing scripts for television after a stint in the world of newspaper journalism, and eventually became vice chairman of short-film production at the Mexican Film Institute. In 1998, she moved to New York City and attended Columbia University’s MFA program in film studies, focusing on screenwriting and directing. While still a student, she made La Milpa, a 27-minute narrative short set during the Mexican Revolution, […]
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“A Lot of People Settle for the Vanilla”: George A. Romero on Diary Of The Dead
With the passing yesterday of legendary horror auteur George Romero, we’re reposting Nick Dawson’s 2008 interview with the director on the release of the penultimate chapter of his zombie series, Diary of the Dead. R.I.P. George Romero. No matter how you look at it, George A. Romero will always be remembered as the godfather of the zombie movie. Born in 1940 in New York City, Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the early 60s and stayed in Pittsburgh to set up a commercial production company. In 1968, he segued into features with his seminal debut, Night of the Living Dead, […]
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The Mountain and the Music
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Beaufort co-writer-director Joseph Cedar for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. Beaufort is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. This was a particularly exceptional year for Israeli cinema. Dror Shaul’s Sweet Mud won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance; Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret’s Jellyfish took away two prizes, including the coveted Caméra d’Or, at Cannes; and Eytan Fox’s The Bubble played to great acclaim […]
