Interviews
Interviews
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Interview with Captivated: The Trials Of Pamela Smart Editor Keiko Deguchi
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Deguchi: I worked with Jeremiah Zagar, the director of this film before – on his first feature length documentary film called “In A Dream”. Even before I worked with him, by looking at a few scenes he put together, I could tell he was an extremely talented filmmaker. Not only that he is a delight to work with! We became good friends since and when he asked me to edit this film, I was thrilled. I would’ve dropped everything to work with him. Filmmaker: Do you think a male director might have […]
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Interview with Laggies Director Lynn Shelton
Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Shelton: Laggies is the first film I’ve directed that I didn’t also write; the script just really spoke to me. The way that the story unfolds is unexpected but believable, and all the humor comes from a character-based place. Andrea Seigel is a fantastic writer. She’s so facile with creating dialog that feels smart but also breezy. Filmmaker: How much of your crew was female? Was hiring women a consideration for you? Shelton: My considerations when hiring crew are: a) competence, and b) relationship (i.e. “is this going to be a […]
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Five Questions with Obvious Child Director Gillian Robespierre
For her debut feature, director Gillian Robespierre has done the somewhat unlikely and crafted a warm, winning, genuinely funny romantic comedy that, oh yeah, is centered around an abortion. The story of Donna (the always charming Jenny Slate), a young comedian who, after a bad breakup and an alcohol-fueled one-night stand, finds herself pregnant, Obvious Child offers a refreshingly frank, true-to-life portrait of a woman dealing with an impending abortion. But the film is a lot more than just a comedy built around a hot-button issue – it’s an earnest, lived-in, and warm rom-com about navigating one’s aimless 20s, and […]
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Five Questions with Hellion Director Kat Candler
Austin, TX-based filmmaker Kat Candler is no stranger to the Sundance Film Festival. In fact, this is her third straight year with a film at the festival. But unlike ‘12 and ’13 (during which she brought the acclaimed shorts Hellion and Black Metal, respectively), Candler will premiere her first feature since 2006, an expansion of her previous Hellion short. The story of 13-year-old Jacob (newcomer Josh Wiggins), a young man torn between an absent father (Aaron Paul) and the Aunt (Juliette Lewis) who has taken him in, Hellion premieres today in US Dramatic Competition. Filmmaker: The Hellion short was built […]
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Hirokazu Kore-eda on Crafting Shots and Scouting Locations for Like Father, Like Son
Hirokazu Kore-eda is a wanderer. The Japanese director, 51, has been known to disappear on set, leaving his cast and crew wondering where their maestro’s ventured off to. For instance, while making his 2008 masterpiece, Still Walking, Kore-eda vanished for a spell, only to discover the flowering trees that became an invaluable motif in the film. The director’s exploratory nature, which one might partly attribute to his background as a documentarian, has proven crucial in the poetic meticulousness of his exteriors. However, his visual instincts are hardly outdoor-exclusive, and his keenness for selecting ideal settings and compositions is just as […]
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“Trusting the Subject as a Collaborator:” Jillian Schlesinger on Maidentrip
You may have heard of Laura Dekker, the Dutch wunderkind who announced at the ripe old age of 13 that she planned to sail around the world, by herself. Despite initial intervention attempts by her home government, Ms. Dekker set off from Gibraltar in August of 2010, in her 38-footer by the name of “Guppy,” and arrived in Sint Maarten 16 months later, fully intact. Much like her subject, Jillian Schlesinger did not go the safe route in her first full-length voyage as a filmmaker. A project four years in the making, with no opportunities for reshoots or reenactments, Schlesinger’s […]
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Producing Shorts into Features: Three Producers and Their Films at Sundance
Curious about the physical process of turning a short into a feature, Filmmaker magazine interviewed the producers of three separate films about their experiences. Each film was originally a short that previously premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is now a feature making its World Premiere in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section. Last year director Damien Chazelle’s short won the Jury Prize at Sundance. This year, his feature of the same name, Whiplash, is the festival’s Opening Night feature. Transformed from an intense 15-minute short into a 105-minute full-length film, Whiplash maintained the same producing team but had to […]
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Kate Logan Discusses Religion in Documentary and Kidnapped for Christ
Making a documentary about religion can be a tightrope walk. While there is frequently much to criticize within religious communities and cultures, the trick is investigating these issues without belittling the subjects’ beliefs; when done poorly, films like Bill Maher’s Religulous come off as nothing more than ill-informed and ridiculous themselves. Now Kate Logan, a Los Angeles-based documentary filmmaker with an evangelical background herself, is entering that arena with her first feature, Kidnapped for Christ, which plays at Slamdance this week. The film joins others like last year’s God Loves Uganda and 2010’s Sons of Perdition in looking closely at […]
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Blood Money: Tze Chun on Cold Comes the Night
The sophomore effort from Tze Chun (Children of Invention), thriller Cold Comes the Night, uses invigorated noir conventions to evoke the betrayed modern social compact in a dreary, post-industrial strip of upstate New York. Chloe (Alice Eve), a poor widow and single mother, manages a fleabag motel, the type that charges prostitutes and johns by the hour. Social Services is on Chloe’s case for providing such a rotten environment for her eight-year-old daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker), giving her two weeks to straighten out their circumstances before they intervene. Then things get worse — a Slavic drug runner named Topo (Breaking Bad‘s Bryan […]
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Kevin Pearce and Lucy Walker Talk The Crash Reel
I’ve been to many documentary screenings, and even to some attended by the films’ subjects. But seeing The Crash Reel with its subject, Kevin Pearce, present was one of the most riveting movie screening experiences I’ve ever had. If you haven’t read about or seen the movie, The Crash Reel follows champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce through a debilitating accident, his recovery and then his slow coming to grips with the fact that he can’t go back to competitive snowboarding. On the face of it, this may sound unappealing, but The Crash Reel is no 60 Minutes bedside weepy. Instead, it […]
