Interviews
Interviews
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“The Story Is Not about the Actual Shooting”: DP Patrick Scola on Police Brutality Drama Monsters and Men
One of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2015, Reinaldo Marcus Green makes his feature debut as a writer/director with Monsters and Men. The film tells the story of a police shooting and its aftermath in the community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Green hired cinematographer Patrick Scola (Southside with You) to shoot the film, which screens in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Scola spoke with Filmmaker about how he sought to blend both “naturalism” and “heightened reality” in the film’s visual approach. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your […]
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DP Matías Mesa on Shooting Sundance Drama The Queen of Fear
The directorial debut of Argentine actress Valeria Bertuccelli, The Queen of Fear holds its world premiere at Sundance 2018 as part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition. The film was co-directed by Fabiana Tiscornia and stars Bertuccelli as an actress set to open a one-woman show. Matías Mesa, the film’s cinematographer, has DP’d a number of Spanish-language shorts and features in addition to his camera operator work on Okja, Triple 9 and The Road. Below, Mesa speaks with Filmmaker about lighting a blackout sequence and the visual influences on The Queen of Fear. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of […]
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DP Kirsten Johnson on Filming the Kronos Quartet Documentary A Thousand Thoughts
Kirsten Johnson was among the most in-demand documentary DPs even before her much-celebrated 2016 film Cameraperson. Johnson has shot more than 50 films for such directors as Laura Poitras, Alex Gibney and Kirby Dick. Her latest film, A Thousand Thoughts, is a doc on the Kronos Quartet from directors Sam Green and Joe Bini. The film will be presented at Sundance as a “live documentary” with Green narrating live and the Quartet conducting the score in person. Before its premiere, Johnson spoke with Filmmaker about finding innovative ways to film a concert and how a shot from Cameraperson wound up in A […]
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“You Cannot be Objective When You’re Making a Film about the Peace Process between Israel and Palestine”: Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan on The Oslo Diaries
Receiving its world premiere at Sundance,The Oslo Diaries is the latest from Israeli filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, who last came to Park City with 2015’s Censored Voices, an exploration of Israel’s 1967 Six-Day War through long-buried audiotape interviews with its on-the-ground soldiers. A similar reexamination of history, The Oslo Diaries combines unseen-until-now archival footage with the personal diaries of, and present-day interviews with, the handful of participants in the top secret, backchannel — and ultimately doomed — peacemaking process that took place in Norway in the early ’90s. Filmmaker spoke with the two directors prior to Sundance about […]
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“The Bisbee Deportation Doesn’t Matter Unless it Relates to our Real Lives Today”: Robert Greene on Bisbee ’17
Sundance vet Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress) returns to Park City this year with a film quite unlike his previous features, at least in subject matter if not approach. For Bisbee ’17 Greene turns his trademark technique of fusing fiction and nonfiction elements on the story of a sordid anniversary, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, in which 1,200 immigrant miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, shipped out of the copper town on cattle cars and left to die in the desert. Through staged recreations developed and performed by local residents — including an actor whose mom was deported to […]
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“I Am Not There to Call Attention to My Lighting:” DP Tom Hurwitz on Shooting Studio 54
Veteran cinematographer Tom Hurwitz has shot more than 100 documentary features and TV series since 1974, when he helped shoot The Grateful Dead, a concert film of the eponymous band live in San Francisco. Hurwitz has worked on such seminal series as Nova, Frontline and American Masters, while his feature doc work includes Wild Man Blues, The Queen of Versailles and last year’s Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. Having worked on Valentino: The Last Emperor in 2008, Hurwitz again teams up with director Matt Tyrnauer for Studio 54, a doc on the legendary New York nightclub. Studio 54 makes its debut […]
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DP Zak Mulligan on Shooting Sundance Drama We the Animals on Super 16mm
Cinematographer Zak Mulligan has worked on roughly 30 shorts, features, documentaries and TV series over the past decade. Mulligan served as DP on We the Animals, which premieres at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival as part of the NEXT lineup. The film marks the first narrative feature from Jeremiah Zagar, a documentary filmmaker whose 2008 In a Dream was shortlisted for an Academy Award and whose 2014 Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart screened in competition at Sundance. Below, Mulligan speaks with Filmmaker about blending digital and 16mm footage, stretching the number of shoot days and twisting his ankle on the set […]
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Zoë White on Filming Christina Choe’s Feature Debut NANCY Starring Andrea Riseborough
Zoë White has DP’d more than 30 features and shorts since 2004, including Stephen Cone’s Princess Cyd and Onur Tukel’s Catfight. Her latest work, NANCY, marks the feature debut of Christina Choe, a writer/director whose shorts have screened at Telluride and SXSW. NANCY tells the story of a struggling writer (Andrea Riseborough) who tells elaborate lies on the Internet to compensate for her creative failures. The film co-stars Steve Buscemi, Ann Dowd and John Leguizamo. Below, White discusses how she and Choe arrived at the film’s visual design. NANCY screens in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
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Mark Burnett and Nick Emerson on Editing Aubrey Plaza Comedy An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
Writer/director Jim Hosking premiered his short Renegades at Sundance in 2010 and returned to the festival in 2016 with his debut feature The Greasy Strangler. His second feature, An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn, premieres in the NEXT program at Sundance 2018. Luff Lin unites Hosking with a cast of comedy luminaries: Aubrey Plaza, Jemaine Clement and Craig Robinson, among others. The film was edited by Mark Burnett, who also edited Greasy Strangler, and Nick Emerson (Lady Macbeth, Starred Up). Filmmaker spoke with the film’s editing team about the film’s tricky tone, which teeters between absurdist and romantic comedy, ahead of Luff Linn‘s premiere […]
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“The Big Cameras Get Stopped in Security”: Alexandria Bombach on Shooting and Directing On Her Shoulders
Documentary filmmaker Alexandria Bombach released her debut feature, Frame by Frame, in 2015 to major acclaim on the festival circuit. The film screened at more than 30 festivals, including SWSX, Hot Docs, AFI Docs and the Camden International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary Feature. Bombach debuts her second feature, On Her Shoulders, in the U.S. Documentary Competition lineup at Sundance 2018. Below she discusses acting as her own cinematographer, the influence of Errol Morris’ Interrotron and filming in the “impossible heat” of a refugee camp in Athens. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
