Interviews
Interviews
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“Handwashing is Not Exactly Cinematic”: Carlo Mirabella-Davis on Swallow
While release dates are often determined months in advance for a slew of reasons solely related to a film’s individual success, it’s striking to see how some can be placed in indirect conversation with one another. I recently revisited Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s debut feature Swallow just a few days after taking in Leigh Whannell’s feminist blockbuster adaptation of The Invisible Man. Both are about women in emotionally abusive relationships that have grown increasingly difficult to break free from. To complicate matters, each are pregnant with their lover’s child, and that the pregnancy is carried out to term is of utmost importance to […]
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The Violence of Power Relations: Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles on Bacurau
Bacurau is the name of an angry night bird that exists in many different parts of Brazil, but that is only called bacurau in the Brazilian Northeast. Bacurau, the latest film by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles—which gets a US release this weekend—uses the motif of the night bird to tell the story of a small village in the Brazilian Northeast that is facing imminent erasure, targeted by international hunting tourists that have teamed up with domestic predators. The film reprocesses motifs from Hollywood genre movies and Italian westerns in the landscape of the sertão, the drylands of formal […]
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Tusk: Jessica Sarah Rinland on Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another
When we enter a museum and engage with its objects, we might not think about the people responsible for making those experiences available to us. Behind the public walls of the museum, conservators, preservationists and historians work tirelessly to restore and preserve the artefacts that we as visitors ponder over. These undertakings are celebrated, explored and reflected upon in Argentine-British artist Jessica Sarah Rinland’s latest film, Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another. It’s an investigation that amplifies the tactile qualities of the many processes involved in repairing objects, fabricating copies and ensuring their long-term saving as historical records, presenting actions […]
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“There’s Really No Plan for This Film at All”: Tsai Ming-Liang on Days
Speaking to Tsai Ming-liang is itself like a Tsai scene. On the day of my interview with the Taiwanese director, the whole of Potsdamer Platz—the main hub for the Berlinale—feels emptied out of its inhabitants. His new film Days has premiered in the competition late into the festival, after the industry presence has largely packed up and flown out. By this point, the grand space of the Berlinale Palast in midday is like a shopping mall in a zombie movie, abandoned to a splintered cadre of bodies shuffling under an eternity’s worth of exhaustion and weariness. The revolving lights in […]
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Day for Night for Day for Night: DP Christopher Blauvelt on First Cow
Kelly Reichardt describes her films as being “open.” She does not necessarily mean they are open to your interpretation. She means they are open or not to your engagement. First Cow co-star Orion Lee compared it to public speaking: If you yell at your audience they have no choice but to listen; if you project your voice midway to them they do, which is possibly more effective. In First Cow, Reichardt relays, delicately, the antics of a clumsy cook, Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro), and his friend King Lu (Lee). Cookie finds Lu squat-naked in brush eluding vengeance from a gang […]
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“Criminals and Police Officers are One Family”: Diao Yinan on The Wild Goose Lake
Writer and director Diao Yinan’s follow-up to the award-winning Black Coal, Thin Ice is The Wild Goose Lake, a film noir set in a southern China of humid tenements and steamy resorts. (Although the film’s location is left unnamed, Yinan shot in Wuhan, ground zero for COVID-19, to make use of the lakes in the area.) Yinan based his script on memories, such as the train station that opens the movie, and photographs, like a black-and-white “swim companion” lounging on a boat — imaged he uses to explore genre characters and situations. Double-crossed on a job, crook Zhou Zenong (Hu […]
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“The Directors I Work With Prefer a Natural Approach”: DP Diego García at Rotterdam 2020
Because of the nature of the business, a cinematographer often has a more eclectic body of work than an actor or a director, and it is not unusual to see their work span continents. Even by these standards, however, Diego García’s filmography is quite impressive: His last four credits are Carlos Reygadas’s Our Time, Gabriel Mascaro’s Divine Love, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Too Old to Die Young, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s short film Nimic—four films produced in four different countries by directors with four different mother tongues. It isn’t surprising, then, to hear that García is particularly attentive to a director’s body of […]
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Special Effects Coordinator Jeremy Hays on The Call of the Wild, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood’s Flamethrower and Working with Jackie Chan
General audiences most likely recognize special effects coordinator and technician Jeremy Hays from his memorable moment in Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, where he informs Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Rick Dalton, that they can’t cool the heat on his flamethrower because, well, it’s a flamethrower. Hays is a veteran who has worked in practical and special effects for over 25 years, frequently employing his skills on big-budget comedies. Last year, he contributed to some of the biggest films of the year: Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Dolemite Is My Name and Booksmart. Most recently, Hays was the special effects […]
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“The Concept Stemmed from Loneliness…”: Writer, Director and Star James Sweeney on his Romantic Comedy, Straight Up
Harkening back to Golden Age romantic comedies while placing its young characters in of-the-moment relationship scenarios, Straight Up, the feature debut of director, writer and actor James Sweeney, opens in theaters today from Strand Releasing. Sweeney plays Todd, a gay man and software developer questioning his sexuality who falls romantically (and perhaps just platonically) with an aspiring actress played by Katie Findlay. Shot in eye-popping colors within a 4:3 frame, and with sharp dialogue delivered rat-a-tat-tat, Straight Up, which premiered at last year’s Frameline Film Festival, subverts the tensions traditionally found in romantic comedies in service to a more inclusive […]
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“I Had Gunfight Westerns in Mind With the Structure”: Writer/Director John Sayles on the Criterion Rerelease of Matewan
When John Sayles wrote and directed Matewan in 1987, he was already a hero to those of us following American independent film, both for his witty, energetic genre screenplays (Piranha, The Howling, Battle Beyond the Stars) and for his self-financed directorial efforts (Return of the Secaucus Seven, Lianna, The Brother From Another Planet). His movies as writer-director, which also included a detour into studio filmmaking with the exquisite coming of age drama Baby It’s You, were major inspirations for an entire generation of aspiring filmmakers, because they gave us a high standard of excellence to reach for yet also seemed […]
