Interviews
Interviews
-
“Stereotypes Help People Delegitimize Other People and Ideas They Want to Distance Themselves From”: Michael Premo on Homegrown
While the eruption of violence at the US Capitol on January 6th left most Americans dazed and confused — and too many journalists and talking heads scrambling to dissect the psyche of the rioters as if they were extraterrestrial beings and not our actual next-door neighbors — multimedia artist Michael Premo had been listening and filming throughout the summer of 2020 with open ears and eyes all along. His Venice-debuting Homegrown follows three diverse (yes, diverse) Trump-supporting “patriots”: an excited young father-to-be (to a biracial child) in New Jersey, an Air Force vet and rightwing organizer in “liberal” NYC, and […]
-
“This World Is Hell for Women”: Magnus von Horn on The Girl with the Needle
Caroline (Vic Carmen Sonne), a young factory worker living in abject poverty, serves as our window into the perilous post-war landscape of Copenhagen circa 1919 in The Girl with the Needle. Her dire situation is compounded by her social position as a working class woman, particularly since her husband, Peter (Besir Zeciri), has been out of the picture since he signed up to fight in the Great War (despite the country’s broader policy of neutrality). After she becomes pregnant by her wealthy boss, Jorgen (Joachim Fjelstrup), Caroline anticipates a new life of abundance and relative privilege. Of course, this inter-caste […]
-
“I Love Corrugated Cardboard”: David Lowery on Directing An Almost Christmas Story
Director David Lowery admits he loves Christmas (he was born the day after), and that’s part of the reason why he embarked on his latest project: An Almost Christmas Story, a CG animated short for Disney from producer Alfonso Cuarón, who conceived the film with writer Jack Thorne. Set during the holiday season, An Almost Christmas Story sees a young owl named Moon who unexpectedly taken from his family when she accidentally catches a ride in the Christmas tree destined for Rockefeller Center. At that famed location, Moon encounters a young girl named Luna, who is also lost and searching […]
-
“The Abortion Ban May Be Protecting the Unborn, But It’s Killing Our Women”: Antoinette Jadaone on Sunshine
Around sixteen years ago, the late great Filipino film critic Alexis Tioseco saw Antoinette Jadaone’s student short films ‘plano (2005) and Saling Pusa (2006) and began championing her work. In the words of critic Oggs Cruz, Tioseco thought Jadaone was “the person that is most qualified to give Filipino mainstream filmmaking that much-needed burst of novel inspiration,” given that her “shorts are all tightly packaged confections that marry the popular appeal of mainstream escapist entertainment and the unique wit of more adventurous fare.” Two years after Tioseco’s death, Jadaone made her feature debut—a love letter to and critique of Filipino […]
-
“I Thought Maybe Directors Have This Magical Thing Where They Can Judge a Performance”: DP Rodrigo Prieto on his Directorial Debut, Pedro Páramo
Based on the novel by Juan Rulfo, a key work in Mexican literature, Rodrigo Prieto’s Pedro Páramo follows several characters across decades as they search for answers to their lives. The story unfolds in arid villages and lush haciendas, against a backdrop of feudal aristocracy and a powerful Catholic church. First seen at a crossroads in a desolate landscape, Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta) sets out to keep a promise to reconnect with his estranged father Pedro Páramo (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). In his journey Juan encounters others who have dealt with his father: criminals, priests, the deaf and blind, and above all, […]
-
“I Became Obsessed with the Idea that All Great Art Contains the Life Force of the Artist…”: Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed on A Photographic Memory
Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s photographer mother Sheila Turner Seed died when she was just 18 months old, before specific memories could take hold — an absence that structures doc producer-turned-director Seed’s True/False, Hot Docs and DOC NYC-playing A Photographic Memory, which I caught at the Woodstock Film Festival. From the outset, the documentary is an archive-based biographical detective movie of sorts, following Seed over the years in which she learns about her mother by reconstructing the biography of her professional life. This work includes not only her own photography but a 1970s interview series, Images of Man, she produced with […]
-
“You Can’t Tell the Story of America Without a Theft”: Malcolm Washington on The Piano Lesson
Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson—the fourth chronological entry in playwright August Wilson’s ten-play Century Cycle—is both a family drama and a ghost story. The titular musical instrument sits in the living room of Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson), who lives in Pittsburgh’s Hill District with his adult niece Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith). As the story opens, Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) have arrived at the Charles House from Mississippi, looking to sell a truckload of watermelons they’ve brought from their home state. Once inside […]
-
“The Film Is Not About AI, Not About Werner Herzog, and Never Aimed To Embrace AI Technology”: Piotr Winiewicz on His IDFA Opening Night Doc About a Hero
Piotr Winiewicz’s About a Hero is as mindbogglingly complex as its eye-catching logline is simple: “A murder mystery – unwittingly starring Werner Herzog.” More precisely, the Polish filmmaker’s doc is actually an adaptation of a script in which the aforementioned cinematic maverick travels to the fictional Getunkirchenburg to investigate the strange death of a local factory worker named Dorem Clery. Even stranger, that screenplay was written by “Kaspar” (as in Kaspar Hauser), an AI trained on the Herzog oeuvre. With a look inspired by the work of German photographer Thomas Demand, the film, shot mostly across northern Germany, also features […]
-
“I Grow as I Make a Film”: Nanfu Wang on Her HBO Documentary, Night Is Not Eternal
It’s a bit surprising to think that when I last interviewed Nanfu Wang it was for her six-part HBO docuseries Mind Over Murder, which revisited an infamous case of justice gone haywire in a small town in Nebraska back in the 1980s. Which, in terms of subject matter, is a far cry from this year’s followup (also for HBO). Night Is Not Eternal is a deep character study, a format the acclaimed director has long embraced, that charts the rise of Rosa Maria Paya, daughter of Oswaldo Paya, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize-nominated activist assassinated by the Cuban government in 2012. […]
-
“If No One Documents It, It Basically Doesn’t Exist”: Emily Mkrtichian on Her DOC NYC-Screening Feature Debut There Was, There Was Not
When she first started filming in the Republic of Artsakh—a small “breakaway” state where most residents were ethnically Armenian, but lived under the control of Azerbaijan—Emily Mkrtichian was planning to portray the pivotal roles local women play 30 years after experiencing a violent war. But her project was thrust in a completely different direction when the small sovereign state became besieged by sudden conflict once again. Taking its title from the opening line of most Armenian fairy tales, Mkrtichian’s feature debut is fascinated with the preservation of a place that no longer exists. For the first half of the film, […]
