Interviews
Interviews
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“The Comedy of Man Begins Like This”: On and with Terry Zwigoff
The aspiring artist seeking an inspiring avatar in the corpus of Terry Zwigoff has set themselves up, to put it mildly, for a fair bit of consternation. It’s not that, to invoke his Daniel Clowes adaptation Art School Confidential (2006), the “narcotic moment of creative bliss” is totally impossible—Crumb (1994), his documentary about the eponymous underground cartoonist, is littered with such moments rendered with the commonplace flick of a pen, even if bliss is comparatively rare—only Zwigoff’s cadre of enfants terribles, male pathetics, and fringe art-makers wryly observe how a collapsing capitalism and an ever-accelerating corporatism have come to define […]
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“I Find the Truth of the Scene in the Moment”: Fatih Akın on Amrum
Fatih Akın had reservations going into Amrum, a soulfully classical coming-of-age tale set on the eponymous German island in the waning days of WWII. The story was by and about Akın’s friend and frequent collaborator Hark Bohm, a veteran of the German New Wave alongside Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Initially, Akın was only set to produce, but when Bohm fell ill and asked Akın to take over directing duties, the Turkish German filmmaker behind deeply personal films like Head-On and In the Fade had to find a way into Bohm’s personal recollections of life during wartime. (Bohm ultimately passed away in […]
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Northern Exposure: Chandler Levack and Sophy Romvari Chat Mile End Kicks and Blue Heron
Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks and Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron make time travel feel possible. Levack retreats into the beer-drenched, laissez-faire vibe of Montreal’s indie rock scene circa 2011; Romvari reflects on her Hungarian immigrant family’s domestic struggles on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s. In Mile End Kicks (Sumerian Pictures), 23-year-old Grace (Barbie Ferreira) is an avatar for Levack, a music critic at a Toronto alt-weekly who leaves her bro-dominated publication for a creative summer in Montreal. She’s supposed to write a short book for the 33 ⅓ series about Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Instead, Grace loses herself […]
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Magic Mirror: Guy Maddin Interviews Caroline Golum on Revelations of Divine Love
Revelations of Divine Love, filmmaker Caroline Golum’s 14th century-set chamber piece, recounts the legacy of Julian of Norwich through impressively homespun props, costumes, and miniatures. After a mid-life bout of illness, Norwich (Tessa Strain) was rapt with feverish visions that depicted the crucifixion of Christ. After three long days, she awoke with a newfound devotion to the Catholic church. Julian vowed to spend the rest of her life entombed in a single room, where she could commit herself to the Lord and her book, Revelations of Divine Love, often regarded as the first English-language text written by a woman. Ahead […]
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“Decontextualized Little Clips of Violence”: Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei on Faces of Death
When Faces of Death was released almost fifty years ago, the idea of being “extremely online” was a distant glimmer, probably somewhere in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. If you had a predilection for the grotesque or a passing fascination with that which should not be seen, darkened theaters or pulpy true crime rags were the only source. The idea of seeing “real” human death, bodies dismembered, viscera strewn all over the street, was all taboo, but a softening one as we emerged from the Vietnam War. The horrific imagery from those senseless massacres awakened something in the general public. It certainly […]
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Let’s Play: Genki Kawamura and Jirô Nagae on a New Kind of Video Game Cinema
At first glance, film producer and novelist Genki Kawamura would not appear an obvious fit to helm a big-screen adaptation of an indie video game. Best known for producing major titles such as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster and Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, Kawamura made his directorial debut in 2022 with A Hundred Flowers, a muted and focused dementia drama. “There was one sequence in that film that was well-received in how it showed how the world looks from that perspective,” reflects Kawamura. “I was hoping to expand on that, so I searched for some kind of elevated horror project to do […]
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“The Scorpion Doesn’t Die”: Japanese Actress Meiko Kaji on Her 60-Year Career
Starting in the 1970s, Meiko Kaji tore through the Japanese film industry, delivering iconic performances that resonate to this day. Few performers commanded the screen with her authority. Kaji played delinquents, gang bosses, daughters sold into slavery, unrepentant killers—characters far outside societal norms. Through them all she was an implacable force, seeking vengeance and delivering retribution in a world of corrupt, perverse men. For the next 60 years, Kaji battled for her place in cinema, switching studios, working freelance, collaborating with novice directors, working in television and pop music when necessary. Kaji visited New York for the first time in […]
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“What Solidarity Really Looks Like”: Yael Bridge on Who Moves America
When the UPS Teamsters—the largest bargaining unit in the country at 340,000 strong—were negotiating their 2023 contract, it became increasingly clear that management wasn’t looking to ameliorate legitimate workplace woes. Drivers were delivering packages in deadly heat with no air conditioning; part-time employees, the majority of UPS’ workforce, experience massive turnover rates; and, as is true across the country, wages aren’t rising at the same rate as the cost of living. So when director Yael Bridge and a collective of labor-oriented filmmakers got wind that the Teamsters’ newly-elected president, Sean O’Brien, was advocating for a strike if UPS leadership refused […]
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Steven Soderbergh on Making The Christophers With Michaela Coel and Ian McKellen
Twisty as a Hitchcock movie but not a thriller, Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers is a two-hander for two great actors. Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler, a serious painter with a side gig as an art forger. Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, an art world star in the 1960s and ’70s who hasn’t made any work of note in decades. Julian’s children, who hate him, concoct a scheme in which Lori is smuggled into Julian’s dilapidated five-story house as a temporary assistant. She is tasked with finding “The Christophers,” a series of portraits that Julian began in his prime but never finished. If […]
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“I Wanted to Turn Splash on Its Head”: Tyler Cornack on Mermaid
If you search the phrase “Florida Man,” you’ll get a different result every day. A few days ago, it was “Florida man arrested after human remains discovered in suitcase.” Today, “Florida man charged with DUI after crashing e-bike into tricycle.” Mermaid, the latest from Florida-bred filmmaker Tyler Cornack—who also made Butt Boy (2019), his surreal, cavity-searching debut—explores the myth of this cryptid-like civilian. The film follows Doug (Johnny Pemberton), a lonely drug addict who plans to commit suicide. But just as he’s about to end his life, he discovers something in the water near his beachside home: an injured mermaid. […]
