Interviews
Interviews
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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 […]
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Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on The Illumination Experience and the Keys to the City
In the second part of this interview with cinematographer Shane Hurlbut, we cover his upcoming “Illumination Experience Educational Tour“; why he’s undertaken this project, and the format and objective of the classes. Hurlbut also reveals what he calls “the keys to the city”: how he conducts lighting tests with actors before production starts. Filmmaker: How did the “The Illumination Experience” come about? Hurlbut: Five years ago I started on this mission of sharing. I felt like mentoring was dead in this business. I wanted to educate and inspire, and use the passion for what I love to do to energize and […]
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Cinematographer Shane Hurlbut on Camera Tests and the Joy of Older Lenses
I first saw cinematographer Shane Hurlbut speaking at a trade show held in New York City in 2010 hosted by Canon. Hurlbut had just finished shooting Act of Valor, shot predominately using the Canon 5D Mark II, and he burst on stage with enough energy to power the building. At the time I wrote that he was “loud, in your face, cracking jokes while dashing about the stage,” but it was also clear he had a passion both for the gear and for sharing information. Since then Hurlbut has lensed the pictures Deadfall, Need for Speed, and the currently in […]
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Five Questions with Before We Go Director Chris Evans
Making his directorial debut with a nighttime two-hander, Before We Go, actor Chris Evans has gravitated to dramatic material far removed from the effects-driven world saving of his Captain America movies. Starring alongside Alice Eve, Evans puts his own spin on the “one night” film, a sub-genre that has been explored over the years in pictures ranging from Before Sunrise to Into the Night to In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Here, Evans tells us what he tried to do differently and what’s unique about Gotham at night. Before We Go premieres this week at the Toronto International Film Festival. […]
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Five Questions for The Editor Writer/Directors Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks
With the recent Berberian Sound Studio and now The Editor, we’re in a bit of a giallo revival. Or, more accurately, the gory, gloriously art decorated Italian horror thrillers of the 1970s have inspired a new generation to pay homage in the form of their own meta-commentaries. Interestingly, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio and this year’s Toronto-premiering The Editor both feature post-production crew as their protagonists. In Berberian Sound Studio, it was a foley artist; in The Editor, Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks’ horror comedy, our hero is a once-vaunted picture editor who, following an accident, now must wield his […]
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Five Questions for Merchants of Doubt Director Robert Kenner
It’s hard to think of a documentary that was more effective in getting viewers to at least think about altering their behavior than Robert Kenner’s Food, Inc. If you walked out and didn’t change your grocery-shopping habits or scan a food label, then you must have fallen asleep during the movie. But Kenner’s follow-up, Merchants of Doubt, would seem to face a challenge in the “call to action” department. Here, Kenner deals with climate change, an urgent issue that requires not simply single actions but massive social and economic change to conquer. Climate change, however, is the film’s broad focus. […]
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Five Questions for Still Alice Writer/Directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland
In Still Alice, based on Lisa Genova’s novel, Julianne Moore plays a Columbia University linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, a diagnosis that threatens to erode her relationship with her family as well as the city she has long called her home. With a supporting cast including Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart and Kate Bosworth, Still Alice promises a realistic depiction of the disease by one of America’s finest actresses, and it’s a return to character-based human dramas by the directorial duo of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, whose films include The Last of Robin Hood, the Sundance Grand Prize-winning Quinceañera […]
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Five Questions for Adult Beginners Director Ross Katz
Five years after transitioning from producer to director with the HBO veteran drama, Taking Chances, Ross Katz returns to the director’s chair with a comedy about going home. Nick Kroll plays a young entrepreneur whose product launch has flamed out, who has burned through his investors’ dough, and who has lost his girlfriend. He returns home to work as a nanny for his sister’s young child in what is described as a movie about beginning again. Adult Beginners world premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday, September 8. Filmmaker: After having written and produced your directorial debut, you’re […]
