Interviews
Interviews
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“Totally Smooth Productions Are a Myth”: James Ross on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Don’t Blink
The creepy premise of Don’t Blink may be parsed by its title alone, but this still doesn’t make one prepared for the unyielding scares conjured by writer-director James Ross. Completed with the aid of his MFA cohort at Florida State University, Ross’ film takes place during the witching hour in an otherwise quaint suburban enclave. Travis (Samuel Isaiah Hunter) is eager to spend the night with his date Reese (Tamara French) at her spacious pad. The only demand the beautiful woman makes is that Travis must take a pill to ensure that he sleeps through the night. Though he agrees, […]
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“One of the Most Delicate Challenges I’ve Faced as a Filmmaker”: Kevin Haefelin on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner The Fuse
In The Fuse, an elderly sanitation worker named Cassius (non-professional actor Jorge Gabino) decides to quietly shuffle himself off of this mortal coil. Written and directed by Kevin Haefelin as part of his MFA studies at Columbia University, the narrative may not provide direct context for Cassius’ fatal decision, but it certainly does make it difficult for him to complete his morbid task. When a fuse blows out and makes electrocution an unviable option, Cassius traverses his Bronx neighborhood looking for a quick-fix to get his plan back on track. Black comedy abounds, pointing to the universe’s general indifference to […]
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Following the Currents: Jia Zhangke and Zhao Tao on Caught by the Tides
With Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides sneak previewing in New York via Sideshow/Janus Films, we are unlocking our Spring, 2025 cover story, an interview with the director as well as lead Zhao Tao covering their collaboration on this film as well as across their filmographies. On May 4, 5 and 6, Jia will be doing Q&As at New York’s IFC Center and Film at Lincoln Center. Caught by the Tides opens May 9. — Editor Few major auteurs have successfully used footage from their previous films to create an entirely new one on equal footing with their greatest works, […]
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“One of our Biggest Challenges Was Painting the Pool”: Isaac Gale on Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted
Isaac Gale and Ryan Olson’s Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted is a gonzo doc that perfectly reflects its trio of carpe diem stars — fun-loving musicians who reside in a bachelor pad in the hedonistic San Fernando Valley (aka the capital of porn). That Swamp Dogg, Guitar Shorty and Moogstar also happen to be in the AARP demographic (two of the three octogenarians) only adds to the unconventionality of it all. As does the filmmakers’s choice to forego the usual biopic route, which they clearly could have taken. The titular star, born with the far more staid name Jerry […]
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“The Film Asserts a Clear Political Analysis of Zionism, and Simultaneously Does So While Asserting That No Human Beings are Villains”: Tatyana Tenenbaum on Everything You Have Is Yours
Tatyana Tenenbaum’s Everything You Have Is Yours centers on NYC-based choreographer Hadar Ahuvia, specifically her coming to terms, through her chosen art form, with the colonialism and cultural appropriation that birthed the Israeli folk dances she was raised on in Hawaii (by way of Israel/Palestine) and which she still deeply loves. It’s a maddening conundrum that likewise could be applied to the Jewish state itself. As Ahuvia reflects towards the end of the intriguing doc, “Palestinians’ lives are at risk. And Israelis’ lives are at risk because Palestinians’ lives are at risk.” And while much of the film is focused […]
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“Radiation Became a Presence—Almost Like a Mythical Force”: Zhanana Kurmasheva on We Live Here
“Some places on Earth carry a weight that is almost impossible to put into words” is how Zhanana Kurmasheva puts it in her director’s statement for We Live Here, which world-premiered at CPH:DOX and next screens in the World Showcase section at Hot Docs. Fortunately, Kurmasheva has a way with images that allows her to artistically convey both the gravity and eerie specificity of the Semipalatinsk Test Site. Set in the breathtaking Kazakh steppe, it’s an otherworldly place where the Soviets spent over four decades — until 1991 when Kazakhstan gained its independence — conducting a whopping 456 nuclear tests; […]
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“False Histories. Corny Music Biopic”: Alex Ross Perry on Pavements
“I always was hoping that it was music for the future. I mean, I think everyone who’s not that successful in their time tries to think that,” says Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus early on in Pavements, a new hybrid music documentary about the band. The group was certainly successful during their heyday in the ’90s, at least in indie rock terms—a perfect discography that drew near-universal critical acclaim, multiple tours including major international festivals and a hit on MTV—but their stature and popularity has only grown since they broke up in 1999. Beginning in 2002, Matador Records slowly re-released every […]
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“What’s Remarkable To Me About the Story of the American Public Library is How Much of It Cuts Across Political Lines”: Lucie Faulknor and Dawn Logsdon on Free for All: Inside the Public Library
Nearly 12 years in the making, Lucie Faulknor and Dawn Logsdon’s Free for All: Inside the Public Library is a heartfelt journey into the history of an institution that went from a radical idea (the “Free Library Movement”), to an entity taken for granted, to a present-day site of ginned up controversy. It’s also a contemporary cross-country celebration of the (overwhelmingly female) librarians then and now who fought, and continue to fight, for the right to knowledge for all. A few weeks before the doc’s April 29th debut on PBS’s Independent Lens, Filmmaker reached out to the co-directors, both lifelong […]
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“An Invitation to Connect More Deeply with Our Environment, Ourselves, and Our Collective Power”: Sasha Wortzel on Her Hot Docs-Premiering River of Grass
“Nature will always win in the end,” notes Native American environmental activist Betty Osceola, one of several intriguing characters, human and not, that star in River of Grass, Sasha Wortzel’s highly personal love letter to a region both she and the Miccosukee tribal member call home. In fact, Osceola, a fiery grandmother, has dedicated her entire life to protecting her family — the Everglades itself. (Another thoughtful protagonist, a Miccosukee environmentalist and poet, likewise refers to his tropical surroundings as relatives, adding that “Chosen family is a survival strategy.”) As the strong-willed Osceola sees it, the question is really, “Do […]
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“We Literally Burned Our Actual Set”: Writer-Director Ryan Coogler and Producers Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian on Sinners
Even before its smashing opening weekend theatrical success, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s first original directorial outing since his 2013 indie hit Fruitvale Station, was knocking loud on the box office doors. Early reviews praised the film’s unique genre-bending vision, weaving vampire lore and Irish songs into a 1932-set horror-musical dramatic thriller about identical Black twin brothers leaving behind their Chicago gangster lives to return to their sharecropper roots in the Mississippi Delta and start their own juke joint—that is, before the vampires come a-seducing. Before that, Smoke and Stack, twins played by Michael B. Jordan in a bravura dual performance, throw […]
