Interviews
Interviews
-
From 2nd Unit to Second Shoot: DP Pierce Derks on In a Violent Nature
Abel Ferrara has said, “In movie making, money is no excuse. It doesn’t cost anything to set up a cool looking shot.” In a Violent Nature is the embodiment of that credo. A deconstruction of the slasher genre, the movie tells a familiar story from an unfamiliar point of view as the camera stays with its undead killer Johnny (adorned in a vintage fireman’s mask and armed with a pair of logging hooks) as he traipses through the forest from victim to victim. The film poses the question, as director Chris Nash puts it, “What if Gus Van Sant directed a […]
-
“I Was a Teenage Theater Nerd”: Rachel Wolther on Her Tribeca-Premiering Feature Debut The French Italian
The New York City nightmare of giving up a rent-stabilized apartment inspires (literal) dramatic vengeance in The French Italian, writer-director Rachel Wolther’s feature debut. Long-term couple Doug (Aristotle Athari) and Valerie (Catherine Cohen) live in a gorgeous brownstone on the Upper West Side—that is, until they’ve had it with their raucous downstairs neighbors oscillating between screaming matches and belching off-key karaoke renditions of “La Bamba.” They move out after obsessively peeping and eavesdropping on their newfound enemies; their hatred drives them to Rye, New York, where they take over Doug’s parent’s house while they’re in Boca. Now forced to shuttle […]
-
“Most of the Film is Done in 120 Beats Per Minute, But Some of It Is At 140 BPM”: Tom Tykwer on Run Lola Run
With Run Lola Run‘s 25th anniversary release this weekend in a new 4K restoration, we are reposting our Spring, 1999 cover interview with director Tom Tykwer. Among the last year’s festival staples, the most exhilarating may have been Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. The self-taught 34-year-old Berliner’s third feature is a clock-driven, lighter-than-air romantic-action-comedy-thriller floating atop a percolating electronica score. The film plays out three potential narratives of what dangers and distractions the streets of Berlin hold just before noon for Lola (Franka Potente) and Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), two effortlessly cool, suddenly in trouble twentysomething lovers. Manni loses 100,000 marks […]
-
“I’m Not Into Embracing the Digital Look”: DP Ben Fordesman on Love Lies Bleeding
After setting her directorial debut Saint Maud in a fading English seaside town, London-born filmmaker Rose Glass turns her gaze toward the American southwest for the neo-noir follow-up Love Lies Bleeding. Set in 1989 and shot in New Mexico by Maud cinematographer Ben Fordesman, the film follows the violent repercussions when a nomadic bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) falls for a small-town gym manager (Kristen Stewart) with a family full of criminals (including gun-running dad Ed Harris). With the A24 movie out today on VOD, Blu-ray and UHD following its theatrical run, Fordesman spoke to Filmmaker about emulating film on digital, pick-ups […]
-
Hard Drives Full of Abandoned Projects: Chris Wilcha on Flipside
With Chris Wilcha’s recommended documentary Flipside opening today — including at NYC’s IFC Center — from Oscilloscope, we’re reposting Vikram Murthri’s deep dive interview below. — Editor In his first feature, The Target Shoots First, Chris Wilcha documented his tenure at Columbia House, the mail-order music service whose ads famously promised “12 CDs for a penny.” Then a recent NYU philosophy graduate, Wilcha landed the job partly due to his familiarity with “alternative culture,” a burgeoning new market at the time (Nirvana’s In Utero was soon to be released), and brought a sardonic Gen X sensibility to chronicling his time […]
-
“Understanding Taiwan on Its Own Terms”: Vanessa Hope on Invisible Nation
With Vanessa Hope’s recommended documentary Invisible Nation opening today in theaters, including NYC’s Quad Cinema, where Hope and producer Ted Hope will be doing Q&A’s tonight and tomorrow, we’re reposting Lauren Wissot’s interview with the director published last Fall. — Editor Though producer-director Vanessa Hope has spent her career zeroing in on China—from producing Wang Quanan’s The Story Of Ermei and Chantal Akerman’s Tombee De Nuit Sur Shanghai to directing her own short China In Three Words and feature-length debut All Eyes and Ears—Hope’s followup feature is nonetheless a bit of a surprise. An intimate portrait of Taiwan’s first female […]
-
“I Was Much More Influenced by Andrea Arnold’s Work or That of the Safdie Brothers”: Boris Lojkine on His Cannes Jury Prize-Winning The Story of Souleymane
The Story of Souleymane follows an undocumented delivery worker as he prepares for an asylum application interview while pedaling through the Paris streets. But belying the innocuous title and unassuming premise, this latest narrative feature from veteran filmmaker Boris Lojkine is actually a fast-paced thriller. And also a logistical feat as Lojkine’s lens races to keep up with his less than honest protagonist (played by dazzling newcomer Abou Sangare, an immigrant from Guinea who, unlike his titular character, is a mechanic by trade) as he literally cycles through a Kafkaesque EU system in which even the most mundane move might […]
-
“In Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, the Women are Voicing Out Their Deepest Feelings and Thoughts, But Here in Sauna Day the Focus is On the Unsaid”: Anna Hints and Tushar Prakash on their Cannes-Debuting short Sauna Day
When I last interviewed Estonian filmmaker Anna Hints it was to discuss her Sundance 2023-premiering Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which would go on to win the World Cinema Documentary Competition Directing Award. (It also nabbed Best Documentary at the 36th European Film Awards on its way to becoming Estonia’s entry for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars.) The film offers quite a unique peek into a UNESCO-designated tradition that for centuries has allowed women like those the director (and contemporary artist and experimental folk musician) respectfully lenses to bond, heal and reveal in a safe space of smoke and sweat. And […]
-
Renny Harlin on The Strangers: Chapter 1, China and Don Siegel
Renny Harlin is closing in on 40 years in the movie business and still committed to his craft. He has worked all over the world on films at the top and bottom of the box office charts, but still gets a twinkle in his eye when discussing how a score can tweak the tension of a scene. He dreamed of being a Hollywood action movie director since childhood, and is best known for his bombastic 1990s blockbusters like Die Hard 2 (1990) and Cliffhanger (1993). But after Hollywood ejected him for younger models, he maintained a furious productivity elsewhere, working […]
-
“Obviously, We Couldn’t Get Three Sandworms for That Day”: DP Greig Fraser on Dune: Part Two
Dune: Part Two picks up directly following the events of its predecessor, with young Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) taken in by the Fremen after being marooned in the desert of Arrakis. However, cinematographer Greig Fraser was not content to merely continue where he left off. After winning an Oscar for the first film, Fraser shuffled his tool bag by adding the Alexa 65, an assortment of colorful new glass and an infrared sequence set in a gladiator arena on Giedi Prime. It’s not surprising considering Fraser’s history of experimentation, which includes pioneering virtual production work on The Mandalorian and reintroducing […]
