Interviews
Interviews
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“We Viewed Simply Telling a Young Black Love Story as a Radical Act”: Five Questions for Premature Director Rashaad Ernesto Green
“Possessor of a sneaky sort of charm that hides his utter tenaciousness, Rashaad Ernesto Green, a promising directorial talent from the Bronx, makes movies that get under your skin with what, upon reflection, seems like relative ease.” That’s Brandon Harris from Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2010 writing about writer/director Green in the months before the premiere of his debut feature, Gun Hill Road. That Sundance 2011 pic — a tough and empathetic drama about an ex-con grappling with his son’s transition — more than attested to all the promise we spotted in Green’s early shorts, one of which, 2008’s […]
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DP Patrick Sheehan on Always in Season, Shooting B-Roll in Darkness and Operating While Hidden
For her feature debut, Jacqueline Olive examines the death of Lennon Lacy, a black 17-year-old who was found hanging from a swing set in his North Carolina home town. Though his death was quickly ruled a suicide by the authorities, his mother, Claudia, was understandably suspicious, given America’s long, far from resolved history of racialized violence. Nashville-based DP Patrick Sheehan was brought onto the project after shooting had began, staying until the end of production. Via email, Sheehan discussed matching the look of his footage with what already existed, taking visual inspiration from Errol Morris and lighting B-roll despite generally […]
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“I Have a Naive Conviction That Images Serve a Potentially Positive Purpose”: Beniamino Barrese on The Disappearance of My Mother
Not many filmmakers have a mom who’s an iconic model from the ’60s, photographed by the likes of Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, a muse to Warhol and Dali. Far fewer have one that kept that past hidden. Indeed, it wasn’t until director/cinematographer Beniamino Barrese made a youthful discovery — a stash of portfolios containing Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar covers tucked away inside a locked wardrobe — that he got an inkling that Benedetta Barzini was more than just the radical, outspoken, intellectual mother he’d been filming since he got his first camera at seven. And with The Disappearance of […]
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“I Was Watching Midcentury Hollywood Biblical Epics, Anti-Communist Propaganda Films, and 1970s B-Movies about Devil Worshippers”: Penny Lane on Hail Satan?
“Blasphemy is not free speech” reads a protest banner on the Little Rock statehouse lawn in a scene from Hail Satan?, the latest from Sundance vet Penny Lane (Our Nixon, Nuts!). The sign is emblematic of the ludicrous (and too often unchallenged) falsehoods that The Satanic Temple — fighting to place an elaborate statue of goat-headed god Baphomet alongside a local legislator’s equally ostentatious Ten Commandments monument — is up against. Luckily Lane, never one to shy away from provocative subjects, is right there on the ground, providing an intimate look into the group’s wild rise. By seamlessly alternating interviews […]
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Back to One, Episode 42: Imogen Poots
If you didn’t know Imogen Poots was British, it is understandable. Few young actors transform so chameleon-like, role-to-role, applying accents so skillfully. I was first wowed by her in Peter Bogdanovich’s She’s Funny That Way and then I actually didn’t even know it was her in Green Room until I saw the credits. She floored me again in Frank and Lola opposite Michael Shannon, in an entirely different kind of role. Now she plays a drifter with questionable parenting skills, who steers into escalating trouble in Mobile Homes, and by the end of the movie her performance wrecked me. In […]
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Shadows Under Strain: DP Lol Crawley and the Cipher of Vox Lux
When it comes time to “punish” the image of a film, say with filtration, grease (generously applied to the front of the lens), or underexposure, cinematographers regress from their dear and safe technical jargon and assume the barbarous dialect of medieval executioners. They don’t just underexpose their picture to see how it reacts under strain, they “suffocate” it, “break” it, and “destroy” it — sometimes in spite of itself. The digital image is nary embraced and mostly worked against, its sterile lines deliberately corroded and beaten to a duller moosh. Cinematographer Lol Crawley BSC (Ballast, 45 Years) tortures the film […]
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“This Was Like Designing for Six Different Leads and Six Different Backgrounds”: Costume Designer Mary Zophres on The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Joel and Ethan Coen have been making films for over 30 years now and, since the mid-1990s, costume designer Mary Zophres has been a key part of creating their distinct aesthetic worlds. Working consistently with the fraternal directing team, Zophres has provided some iconic looks, among them the puffy jackets of Fargo (1996), The Dude’s sweater and bathrobe in The Big Lebowski (1997), and the prison garb of O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), to name just a few. The designer’s resume also includes the delightfully quirky and punkish costumes of Ghost World (2001), which have inspired countless young women, […]
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“There is a Misconception that Cutting Action is not an Intellectual Endeavor”: Debbie Berman on Editing Black Panther
Of the 250 top-grossing films in 2017, women comprised only 16% of all editors. That makes Debbie Berman, co-editor of Black Panther, a glowing exception. And not only has Berman had a successful career spanning work in her homeland of South Africa, Canada and now LA, she’s made a name for herself in the Marvel sphere. Last year, she co-edited Spider-Man: Homecoming, this year, the ground-breaking Black Panther alongside Michael Shawver (Fruitvale Station) and has the Brie Larson-led Captain Marvel out this year. Filmmaker had a chance to ask Berman some questions about her impressive career and her knack for […]
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Back to One, Episode 41: First Reformed‘s Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke’s “staying power” is grounded in hard work. He survived being the poster child of Generation X (Reality Bites), and thrived as Richard Linklater’s go-to actor (The Before Trilogy, Boyhood) and always returns to the true home of the actor–the theater (he’s currently starring in True West on Broadway). Now he has delivered one of the most critically acclaimed performances of the year in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. He generously shares the wisdom and knowledge he’s acquired over the years as an actor, and is extremely eloquent when doing so. In this episode, he talks about the importance of […]
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“Lights are Your Friends, but Sometimes They Don’t Need to Come Around to the Party”: Cinematographer Robbie Ryan on Shooting Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite
In Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite, two determined women — Rachel Weisz’s refined but ruthless Duchess of Marlborough and Emma Stone’s desperate and cunning chambermaid Abigail — vie for the titular preferential position alongside the ill and melancholy Queen Anne. Anyone expecting a beautifully mounted but stuffy 18th century period piece has not seen a Yorgos Lanthimos movie. Employing the same absurdist sense of humor as Lanthimos’s The Lobster, The Favourite also imposes the director’s preferred set of aesthetic restrictions — namely, wide angle lenses and shooting almost entirely with available light. Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan (American Honey, Fish Tank), who […]
