Interviews
Interviews
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“I Wanted to Have a World I Could Paint in Broad Strokes”: Director Alexandre Rockwell on Creating the Full-of-Life Family Drama, Sweet Thing
Three children are left on their own in Sweet Thing, an evocative coming-of-age drama written and directed by Alexandre Rockwell. Returning from his previous feature, Little Feet, are Rockwell’s children Lana (playing Billie) and Nico. Joining them is newcomer Jabari Watkins as the kids’ neighbor Malik; Will Patton as their alcoholic father Adam; and Karyn Parsons (Rockwell’s wife) as their largely absent mother Eve. Shot over one summer in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Sweet Thing travels through a bleak world of poverty and despair, depicted with surprising empathy by Rockwell and through the cinematography of Lasse Tolbøll. The writer/director’s script strings […]
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“Resisting the Power of the White Gaze”: CJ Hunt on his Tribeca-Premiering Confederate Monuments Doc, The Neutral Ground
CJ Hunt is a NYC-based comedian and filmmaker, and currently a field producer on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. But back in 2015 Hunt was still a resident of New Orleans, having spent nearly a decade teaching in its school (and after-school) system, assisting in its public defender’s office — and yes, pursuing his passion for comedy at night. So when Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced he’d be asking the city council to remove four monuments to the losing side in the Civil War, the stand-up/educator immediately thought to call his good friend (producer Darcy McKinnon, a “25 New Face” […]
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“By Reconnecting Us to Our Humanity, I Believe Nostalgia Could Be the Very Thing That Saves Us”: Jenni Olson on Receiving the 35th Special Teddy Award
Filmmaker, curator, author and LGBT film historian Jenni Olson will be receiving the 35th special Teddy Award at the 71st Berlinale on Friday, June 18. An award dedicated to outstanding work in queer filmmaking that improves the social and political condition of the LGBT community, Olson will be joining past recipients such as Tilda Swinton and Cheryl Dunye in holding the honor. Known for her stylistically unique 16 millimeter films depicting urban landscapes with voiceover essays, Olson is responsible for The Blue Diary, which premiered at the Berlinale in 1998, and whose The Joy of Life (2005), and The Royal Road […]
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“An Overt Anti-Patriarchal, Anti-Assimilationist Gesture Within the Framework of ‘Queer Refusal'”: Angelo Madsen Minax on His Tribeca-premiering North By Current
One of the most thrillingly radical aspects of Angelo Madsen Minax’s astonishing North By Current, which premiered at the Berlinale and now makes it North American debut at Tribeca, is the film’s centering of absence, of its maker’s firm belief in the idea that “a viewer is not entitled to every piece of information.” Minax began shooting North By Current upon his return home to rural Michigan after the death of his niece, a toddler whose passing put Minax’s emotionally fragile sister and her formerly incarcerated husband in the crosshairs of Children’s Protective Services (which in turn led to law […]
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“… the Convergence of Many Different Narratives Clashing All at Once”: Dan Chen on his Tribeca-Debuting High School and College Admissions Doc, Accepted
Filmmaker Dan Chen planned to make an inspiring doc about a group of high-achieving students attending a most unconventional school in rural Louisiana, one that had a 100 percent college acceptance rate and sent its BIPOC kids to the likes of Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Well, so much for best laid plans. Unfortunately, right in the midst of production, the Ivy League dreams of Alicia, Adia, Isaac and Cathy, along with the rest of their classmates who were already under immense pressure from the unrelenting boot camp tactics of the school’s founder Mike Landry, morphed into a slow-motion nightmare. Even […]
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“I’m Drawn to Spaces Where the Paradoxes of Everyday Life are Made Apparent”: Jessica Kingdon on her Tribeca-Premiering Ascension
An all-female factory floor that manufactures made-to-order sex dolls (which seems every bit as titillating as crafting car parts). A workshop featuring a social media entrepreneur who rhapsodizes about the “fan economy.” (Why be a regular boss when you can be a “star boss”?) An instructor in a class on business etiquette quizzing the Stepford Wives-creepy assemblage on how many teeth should be displayed when smiling at a client. (The correct answer? The “upper eight teeth.”) A dinner conversation in which the wealthy discuss the pros and cons of vacationing in Xinjiang. These are just a few of the unnerving glimpses […]
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“My Cutting Process is Very Old School”: Editor Myron Kerstein on In the Heights
The smash hit that launched creator and leading man Lin-Manuel Miranda into the Broadway stratosphere, In the Heights was less an overnight sensation than a constantly developing passion project. Early iterations of the musical, about a group of residents in Washington Heights who are more family than neighbors, originated at Wesleyan University and Off-Broadway before subsequently making the move to the Richard Rodgers Theatre and winning the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. Highlighting the intricacies, passions, and dreams of Dominican culture (as well as the inner struggles and homesickness of immigrants and first-generation New Yorkers), the show was praised […]
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“If You’re Not Scared of an Old Short End, Then You Can Have It”: DP Annika Summerson on Censor
In the early 1980s, as Britain took a rightward turn that mirrored America’s own shift, the country’s bastions of righteousness took aim at the nascent videocassette market. Before home video releases were placed under the purview of the British Board of Film Classification, the job of protecting Britons from gory practical effects fell to the Director of Public Prosecutions. That office ultimately compiled a list of 72 films it believed were in violation of the country’s Obscene Publications Act. Films on the list became known as “video nasties.” Cinematographer Annika Summerson has seen her fair share of them. That’s largely […]
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500 Extras on a Hot Summer Day: DP Alice Brooks on In the Heights
On Broadway, In the Heights won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical, in 2008. With music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and book by Quiara Alegría Hudes, the story unfolds in Manhattan’s Washington Heights during a heatwave that results in a blackout. Shot largely on location in 2019, the screen version of In the Heights stars Anthony Ramos, Corey Hawkins, Leslie Grace, Melissa Barrera and Olga Merediz. Directed by Jon M. Chu, the adaptation features several large-scale production numbers with up to 600 extras. Each song brought a different set of problems for cinematographer Alice Brooks to solve. Brooks worked […]
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“Can Jupiter Use his Powers and Wisdom to… Rectify Racial Injustice and Inequality?”: Ram Devineni and Yusef Komunyakaa on their Tribeca-Premiering AR Comic Book Jupiter Invincible
Jupiter Invincible, the latest augmented reality comic book from Ram Devineni and his NY-based Rattapallax media house, marks a bit of a departure for the doc filmmaker and technologist. Best known in the AR world for his comic book series Priya’s Shakti — starring India’s first female superhero and rape survivor (and UN Women-designated “gender equality champion”) — Devineni now travels both back to these shores and back in time, all the way to pre-Civil War Maryland. And he brings along an impressive trio of collaborators. Our superhero of this tale, the titular Jupiter, is the invention of the Pulitzer […]
