Interviews
Interviews
-
“I Have a Problem with that Whole Narrative of Coming from Someplace Bad and Getting Out of It”: Micah Magee on Her Debut Feature, Petting Zoo
Favorably compared by Variety to fellow Texas filmmakers Terrence Malick and Rick Linklater, San Antonio-raised Micah Magee has been based in Europe for over a decade. But despite having made several shorts there, when it came time to direct her first feature her heart returned to the Lone Star state. Petting Zoo, shot in San Antonio and cast primarily with locals with little acting experience, is a deeply felt coming-of-age story that captures what its like to be young in Texas as perhaps no film has before. Based on Magee’s own experiences of teenage pregnancy, Petting Zoo follows Layla (in […]
-
Five Questions for American Fable Writer/Director Anne Hamilton
The below interview was originally published during SXSW 2016, when debuting filmmaker Anne Hamilton premiered her ’80s-set, gothic thriller, American Fable, which melds del Toro-esque fantasy with a critique of Reagan-era economic policy. The film opens today in New York at the IFC Center. World premiering in the Visions section of SXSW is American Fable, the debut film from 2014 AFI Directing Workshop for Women graduate Anne Hamilton. Before beginning her career in film by working on the set of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Hamilton studied law and philosophy, and, as she relates below, she applied aspects of […]
-
“I’ve Always Been Cautious of Measuring Success”: Kazik Radwanski on How Heavy This Hammer
After premiering on home soil at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Kazik Radwanski’s second feature film, How Heavy This Hammer, screened at the Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim. A New York premiere, as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual winter First Look series, wouldn’t surface until a year later where, in anticipation of its Gotham debut, it was deemed by the Village Voice as “striking, clear-eyed, and very, very funny” and “justly celebrated as one of the best Canadian films in years.” A microbudget film about an overweight Canadian father saddled with a combative attitude and love for computer games (well, one […]
-
5 Questions for Lovesong Writer/Director So Yong Kim
A 25 New Face from 2006, So Yong Kim’s Lovesong premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016 and opens today in New York from Strand Releasing. The below interview was originally published during the film’s Sundance premiere. While continuing to make subtle, emotional, character-based stories, So Yong Kim’s cinema has been one of change and evolution. Her debut feature, 2006’s In Between Days, spent several days surveying the burgeoning first love of two Korean teenagers living in Toronto. Largely filmed in Korean, and shot on a micro budget with non actors, the film landed Kim on our 25 New […]
-
Trust Fund Kids in Hollywood: Mike Ott on California Dreams
In Mike Ott’s California Dreams (which I reviewed here), five aspiring actors are shown giving auditions and later acting out scenes in a film-within-the-film. Although this nested film is supposed to be a fiction, and also looks like one thanks to the gorgeous work of cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, the script is drawn – or appears to be drawn – directly from the actors’ biographies. One of the fascinating aspects of California Dreams is that Ott never allows you to know for certain how much is real and how much is fabricated. It was therefore a pleasure to be able to […]
-
Witness Project: DP Ben Gaskell on Shooting with Lomo Anamorphic Lenses
Ben Gaskell is a freelance cinematographer and DP for Witness Project, a series of short documentaries about oppression. For a recent episode on Anastasia Lin, Miss World Canada 2015, Gaskell shot on the Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K using old Lomo anamorphic lenses. Filmmaker: How did you get involved with this project? Gaskell: The director was an editor on a documentary that I worked on and he knew that I had a knack for bringing an artistic flare to the documentary genre. We chatted about the series and ended up finding a common language, and he was really interested in the […]
-
Using Interviews and Animation to Bring the Sniper Documentary Tower to Life
The documentary Tower recounts the day in 1966 that a sniper on the University of Texas Tower killed 14 people and wounded dozens more. The film includes archival footage, interviews with those who were present and animated recreations of the event. In this interview, director/producer Keith Maitland and DP Sarah Wilson talk about the making of the film which receives its broadcast premiere on PBS on Tuesday, February 14th. Filmmaker: How did you become filmmakers? Maitland: I started off in narrative filmmaking, working on other people’s movies, and right around the time I met Sarah — we’ve been together 13 years […]
-
“The Bike is Going to Hit the Camera!” Chad Stahelski on John Wick: Chapter 2, Stair Falls and Other Stunts
“How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?” moans John McClane in Die Hard 2. It’s the question at the heart of every high concept action movie sequel. Failing to adequately answer it is how McClane’s New York everyman cop ends up in Moscow, or why half of Bryan Mills’ family gets kidnapped in the Taken series. Following up John Wick poses a similar conundrum – how do you motivate a retired hitman whose bloody swath of revenge is initiated by the death of his wife and the murder of a cuddly puppy? Do you have his […]
-
“Drops of Jupiter,” Cancer and Blockbuster Video: Chris Kelly on Other People
In the opening shot of Other People, a family gathers around the body of its matriarch seconds after she’s passed from cancer. This moment of grief – accompanied by no score, just sobbing — is punctured when the phone rings and a well wisher leaves a message that is interrupted when the caller pauses to place an order at Del Taco. It’s an appropriate introduction to the film – which is sometimes sad, sometimes funny, but always raw, truthful, and uncannily specific. That specificity comes from writer/director Chris Kelly’s own experiences during his mother’s final months, during which Kelly — […]
-
“Television Has Been Good in That It’s Paid the Bills”: Ernest Dickerson on Double Play, The Wire and Spike Lee
Ernest Dickerson’s new film Double Play, an adaptation of the acclaimed Dutch-language Caribbean textbook standard by Curacaoan author Frank Martinus Arion, received its world premiere at the Rotterdam Film Festival. The novel uses a game of dominoes as a framework to look at the unrest on the Caribbean island during the tumultuous transition from Dutch colonial rule to independence. The film adaptation stars Lennie James, Colin Salmon and Louis Gossett Jr. as men with different personalities but an all too similar interest in women. Director Dickerson rose to fame for his glorious cinematography. He will forever be associated with Spike Lee, with whom he began […]
