Interviews
Interviews
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“We’re Doing All the President’s Men, and Then We’re Doing The Parallax View“: Michael Cuesta on Kill the Messenger
Although it is a ’90s-set story dealing with an ‘80s political cover-up, Michael Cuesta’s Kill the Messenger, the true story of journalist Gary Webb, couldn’t be more of the moment. When filmmaker Laura Poitras is documenting the work of a new breed of crusading journalists, it’s enlightening to revisit the work of a writer like Webb and to remember the opposition he faced from not only the U.S. government but his fellow scribes in the mainstream press. In Kill the Messenger, Jeremy Renner delivers a quietly gripping turn as the San Jose Mercury News reporter who comes across information revealing […]
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“I Did Not Get Slapped in the Face”: Damien Chazelle on Whiplash
Whiplash, an equally exhilarating and frightening foray into the cutthroat world of music conservatories, explores the sadomasochistic relationship between ambitious jazz drummer Andrew (Miles Teller) and his ferocious pedagogue Fletcher (J.K. Simmons). Writer-director Damien Chazelle put together his first feature, Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, while an undergraduate at Harvard in 2008. It received theatrical distribution in 2010. The now 29-year-old has Whiplash in theaters, Grand Piano (which he wrote) on VOD, and La La Land in pre-production. When I spoke to Chazelle he appeared elated to be in San Francisco, but also fatigued by the endless interviews […]
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“Set Up like Drama, Shot like Documentary”: 20,000 Days on Earth Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard
The Guardian recently republished a 1988 profile of Nick Cave in which the infuriated musician veered over the course of days from open, insightful and analytical to infuriatedly seething “I have to spend hours talking to fucking idiots like you who have no kind of notion about anything” and throwing a boot at his interlocutor. As with Richard Hell — who over decades went from alarming Lester Bangs for his nihilistic abandon to writing poetry reviews for The New York Times — Cave is a former self-destructive dark messiah turned elder statesman, a respected screenwriter and still recording/touring musician who’s […]
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Transmedia is Still So Young: Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta on Last Hijack Interactive
Access is always an issue with documentary, creating unique challenges in war zones or similar areas where filmmakers would be in physical danger or simply cannot go. The documentary Last Hijack, produced by Submarine Channel and directed by Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta, doesn’t just deal with these issues but makes them one of the film’s greatest strengths. In documenting piracy in Somalia, the filmmakers turned to techniques like animation — Pallotta produced both Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly — to show what could not be filmed, and then went one step further by creating an interactive documentary to accompany the traditional linear film. […]
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Down in the Boondocs: The NYFF’s Go-To Films (I)
The expansive New York Film Festival is no longer the greatest-hits affair of three decades back when it was built around 20-25 titles, a majority of which were what had been on display at the previous Cannes. The arrangement was a gift and a curse: manageable, for both journalists and completists, but limited. I remember what a production it was when the fest dared to add a lowbrow Hong Kong movie by one Jackie Chan. Now there are lots and lots of strands, which cover a variety of genres and niche audiences — followers of the avant-garde and new technologies, […]
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Creatures and Class Politics: Travis Knight, Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable on The Boxtrolls
The latest animated feature from Laika, the Portland-based studio that delivered Coraline and ParaNorman, is a surprisingly idiosyncratic blend of children’s adventure and political satire. Based on Alan Snow’s novel, Here Be Monsters, Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable’s The Boxtrolls is set in the steampunk-inspired British town of Cheesebridge, a ruthlessly classist society where, you guessed it, cheese is the unifying luxury good. The boxtrolls — little creatures who live in cardboard boxes — are the literal lower class. (They live underground.) The story kicks into gear as a human boy, Eggs, raised by the boxtrolls ventures above ground, meets […]
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Lessons from the Cutting Edge Tour
I spent a half-day at Adam Epstein’s “The Cutting Edge Post-Production Tour” last week. Epstein, who is the editor for the Saturday Night Live Film Unit, has spent the past month and a half traveling the country presenting on how to be a better editor. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t stay the whole day. Unfortunately for you, the tour ended this week, so you’ve missed it too. If you can come away from an event like this with an actual tip or technique that you start using and with one piece of inspiration to improve how you work, that actually […]
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Risking It All: Helly Luv, Kurdistan’s Pop Star and Mardan Actress
“Right now, the Kurdish freedom fighters — the peshmerga — are protecting the whole world.” Middle Eastern politics start to sound different when explained by pop sensation Helly Luv. Nicknamed the “Lion Girl” in her native Kurdistan, Luv is known for her outspoken politics, fierce dance moves, daring fashion sense, and love of animals —especially her jungle cat co-star in the music video for her incendiary independence anthem, “Risk It All.” Released in March, the song turned Luv into a voice for Kurdish freedom; by June, it had been viewed by millions and Luv was performing at Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday celebration. Years of […]
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Film as Sushi: :: kogonada on Chris Marker, Criterion and the Art of the Film Essay
As part of our screening of short films by the 2014 25 New Faces at the IFC Center tonight will be two works by :: kogonada, the somewhat mysterious, Nashville-based film essayist whose works have scored hundreds of thousands of views on Vimeo and other platforms. Whether he’s assessing hand gestures in the work of Robert Bresson, one-point perspective in the films of Stanley Kubrick or pinpointing the salient characteristics of neorealism, :: kogonada brings a precision, delicacy and poetry to film studies. At the IFC Center tonight he’ll be screening his essay on narrative in the work of Steven […]
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Five Questions for In the Morning Writer/Director Nefertite Nguvu
Nefertite Nguvu, whose works include two well-received shorts and a ten-part web series on female emcees, The Road to U.N.I.T.Y., makes her dramatic feature debut with In the Morning, premiering tonight at the Urbanworld Film Festival. “In The Morning,” the film’s website describes, “is about love and transitions. It examines the complexities of love from the perspective of three women in the midst of some hard won self-transformation. It’s a mood piece that weaves together three stories about personal growth and the power of choice and action.” Below, we ask Nguvu about films set in one day, Brooklyn and working […]
