Interviews
Interviews
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“There are No Restrictions, Except For Pornographic Material:” Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld on High Maintenance
High Maintenance, the widely reputed, gold standard of web series, began as an experiment of sorts between Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld. When interviewed for our 2013 25 New Faces issue, the pair expressed the foremost need to “get out all these weird stories that have happened over the years.” Now Vimeo’s first venture into original programming, the husband and wife team are pushing the envelope in a whole new way. With episodes nearing a 20-minute runtime and tonal highs and lows as accomplished as any feature film, High Maintenance challenges the very serial format it calls home. As of today, all three episodes from […]
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The Reagan Years Producer Sierra Pettengill on the Textures of Archival Footage, the Value of Community and Pitching at CPH:FORUM
In the decade after graduating magna cum laude from Boston University, Sierra Pettengill hasn’t wasted much time carving a niche for herself in competitive New York City as an award-winning producer. Originally from nearby Nassau County, she has utilized her wide-ranging interests, innate curiosity, whip-smart instincts and indefatigable work ethic to establish herself rather quickly in an increasingly tough marketplace. She was exposed early on in her career to the PBS model as an associate producer for American Experience’s Walt Whitman (an Emmy Award nominee in 2008), and Triangle Fire, a Peabody Award recipient in 2009. She would partner again […]
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Kickstarting the Joan Didion Documentary We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
One of the most high-profile projects to take advantage of Kickstarter’s support system, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live turns its lens onto Joan Didion. President Barack Obama referred to her as “one of the most celebrated American writers of her generation” when presenting her with the 2012 National Humanities Medal, adding “I’m surprised she hasn’t already gotten this award.” It’s equally surprising that no documentary has yet been made about the essayist, journalist, novelist and screenwriter. That changed when her nephew made the pitch. Actor, director and producer Griffin Dunne is related to Didion through his father Dominick, whose younger brother John Gregory was married […]
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“You Might as Well be Selling Drugs”: Robert Greene on Actress
“I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal,” I wrote after seeing the film at True/False this year. The quick takeaway: This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. Sliding from seemingly straightforward self-presentation to ambiguously unfeigned snapshots of daily life, director and subject collude, not so much valorizing her attempts to jumpstart her career and finances (“I have to make a […]
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Shouting Loudly through Social Issue Documentary: Orlando von Einsiedel on Virunga
The most notable moment of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival arguably occurred over 6,000 miles away from downtown Manhattan in the Virunga National Park, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Two days before Orlando von Einsiedel premiered his film Virunga — a stunning documentary about the park and rangers’ attempts to protect its wildlife from poachers, civil war, and a billion-dollar oil company — park director Emmanuel de Merode was ambushed and shot while driving alone in his car. He survived the ordeal and has returned to work, but the moment highlighted the issues the film explores, primarily environmental […]
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“Always Have a Low-Budget Back-Up Plan”: Whit Stillman in Wroclaw
Long regarded as one of the more singular, idiosyncratic voices in American independent cinema, Whit Stillman made his debut in 1990 with Metropolitan, the Oscar-nominated comedy of manners. Further dialogue-heavy comedies set among the urban haute bourgeoisie followed (1994’s Barcelona, 1998’s The Last Days of Disco), but it took another 13 years for Stillman to release a fourth film: 2011’s peppy Damsels In Distress. Yet with the pilot of a new Amazon series — Paris-set The Cosmopolitans —recently released to strong reviews, and an adaptation of Jane Austen’s short novel Lady Susan in the cards, it seems like Stillman is truly back in business. At the recent 5th annual American Film Festival […]
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Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth on Gone Girl, Digital and Working with David Fincher
Gone Girl marks d.p. Jeff Cronenweth’s fourth feature film collaboration with David Fincher, a stretch that began with Fight Club in 1999 and has continued through The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (He also worked 2nd and 3rd unit on Se7en and The Game.) It’s a partnership that has transitioned the pair to digital cinematography, with Cronenweth creating cool, precisely visualized environments for stories plumbing the complexities of life in our globalized, media-saturated information age. To speak with Cronenweth, we asked Jamie Stuart, whose short films have frequently appeared on this site, and who has interviewed […]
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At the Illumination Experience Tour with Shane Hurlbut
Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut has been touring the country with The Illumination Experience. This day-long workshop primarily covers lighting: how to get the best results, basic and advanced setups, and even how to do lighting on a budget. But the class also covers a lot of other material for the working cinematographer, everything from the advantages of different cameras and lenses to the correct way to hand off a C-Stand. The class begins with a demonstration of Hurlbut’s “Pirate Death Ship,” three lights attached to a dolly on a 360 degree rail system. With an actress sitting in the middle, the […]
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Five Questions for St. Vincent Writer/Director Ted Melfi
With his debut feature, St. Vincent, Ted Melfi may seem like one of those out-of-nowhere independent sensations that pops on the scene a few times a year. But as he explains in the interview below, he has actually been behind the camera for years — shooting all styles of commercials and music videos — and has been producing independent films for even longer. (And, as he further explains, all those out-of-nowhere people — they didn’t come from nowhere either.) For St. Vincent, Melfi drew on his own family experiences — and star Bill Murray’s unique mixture of irreverence and poignancy […]
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“Nothing is Simple, Nothing is Easy”: Two Shots Fired Director Martín Rejtman
Its title threatens a sudden loud blast, but Two Shots Fired wrongfoots viewers when its first sound isn’t from a gun but the jolting bass in a club where young Mariano (Rafael Federman) is dancing. He leaves, goes home, mows the lawn, finds a gun in the shed and fires twice — once at his head, once at his stomach, an action taken with the same blankfaced lack of passion as all the ones preceding it. “It was an impulse,” he non-explains. “It was very hot.” Mother Susana (Susana Pampin) removes all knives and other potential implements of self-harm from the house and has Mariano move in with […]
