Interviews
Interviews
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Five Questions with Bully Director Lee Hirsch
Far more insidious than strep or the flu, Lee Hirsch’s Bully investigates a different sort of contagion infiltrating classrooms across the country. Centering on the South and Midwest — Georgia, Iowa, Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma — Hirsch and his crew peer into the lives of families and children that are dismantled and uprooted by relentless acts of bullying. While most surrender to the cyclical ostracizing, downplaying the shame before their parents and superiors, others seek solace in suicidal measures. Following its premiere at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, Bully shocked and educated audiences with its frank portrayal of the ramifications […]
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Five Questions with I Send You This Place Directors Peter Ohs and Andrea Sisson
The debut film from husband and wife team Peter Ohs and Andrea Sisson (also known collectively as Lauren Edward, a composite of their middle names), I Send You This Place is a very unconventional documentary which tackles themes of mental health, creativity and the natural world through the prism of the couple’s trip to Iceland. Gorgeously shot and made with genuine invention by Ohs and Sisson — whose backgrounds in science and design bring a fresh approach to their interpretation of the non-fiction form — I Send You This Place establishes the pair as directors with a bright future. Filmmaker spoke to the […]
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Five Questions with Would You Rather Director David Guy Levy
David Guy Levy’s Would You Rather takes the cruel purity that lies under the surface of children’s games and takes it to the extreme. Gone are schoolyard pranks, naive sadism and the ability to “chicken out.” In their place are deadly stakes, earnest schadenfreude and no escape. Citing Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Jonathan Lynn’s Clue and Agatha Christie as influences, Levy dove into the project with gusto. And armed with a host that would match the childish glee of the game’s inspiration (genre icon Jeffrey Combs), the director succeeded in crafting a memorable and poignant twist on a familiar pastime. Filmmaker […]
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Talking Legends with Terence Stamp
The 2013 edition of the Palm Springs International Film Festival was filled with glitzy events and screenings, including a Talking Pictures sidebar featuring movies followed by conversations with noteworthy actors like Alan Cumming (discussing Any Day Now) and Naomi Watts (for The Impossible). But it was the closing night gala for Paul Andrew Williams’ Unfinished Song, starring Vanessa Redgrave as a cancer-stricken septuagenarian in an old folks choir, that really grabbed my attention. Actually, it wasn’t the film (which I haven’t seen) so much as the possibility of interviewing the actor playing Redgrave’s character’s devoted husband that made me stand […]
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Matt Boyd on A Rubberband is an Unlikely Instrument (+ Exclusive Teaser)
In the quickly gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint during the mid-aughts, Walter Baker — a collector of sound, a street musician, a man of many talents and eccentricities — lives with his wife Andrea, a poet, and their adolescent son Sidney. Baker spends his days rummaging through barren lots and decaying Greenpoint docks recording sound, or lurking in the subway, using an extra large rubber band to make unearthly yet remarkably compelling quasi-music. Baker’s skills on the rubber band improve throughout Matt Boyd’s singularly self-possessed, unforgettable doc-narrative hybrid A Rubberband is an Unlikely Instrument, while his home life becomes more […]
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Director Cate Shortland on Lore
In telling the story of Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), a 14-year-old daughter of Nazi parents who travels across a devastated Germany in 1945, Cate Shortland’s Lore, adapted from Rachel Seiffert’s novel The Dark Room, plays with fire. As the director acknowledges, it could easily be misread as a statement that (Gentile) Germans were also victims of World War II. Instead, the film suggests what it’s like to fall from great privilege. Without fully understanding what it means to be a Nazi and what responsibility for evil her parents hold, Lore goes from being rich and well cared for to being treated […]
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Five Questions with Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder Director Christopher Felver
Lawrence Ferlinghetti makes a brief appearance in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz — an appearance Christopher Felver wanted to include in his new documentary about the poet and First Amendment hero. But when Felver realized he couldn’t get the footage for what he felt was a reasonable price, he didn’t see it as a make or break moment. After all, as someone who’s been training his camera on Ferlinghetti for 30 years, Felver had plenty of raw material. Assembled from footage shot as far back as the 1980s, Felver’s Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder opens February 8 at the Quad Cinema […]
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Five Questions with Celeste & Jesse Forever Writer/Actress Rashida Jones
You’re most likely to know Rashida Jones as part of the great cast of the award-winning TV series Parks and Recreation (though she says she’s often recognized for her small role in Freaks & Geeks), but Jones is more than just a talented performer. She’s a dynamic and versatile artist alternating between acting and writing (not just for the screen either!), and in the case of last year’s Celeste & Jesse Forever, both. Her first screenwriting credit has acquired a lot of notice, and we were able to pick her brain a little in the midst of her success, which […]
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Animating the Inanimate: Interview with Charlie Collier
At 20 years of age, Charlie Collier of Zapamation may be a young filmmaker, but he’s already got almost eight years of stop-motion experience behind him. A self-taught animator, he says he was able to get into this partly because of the flexibility he gained from being homeschooled; he was able to incorporate animation into the curriculum. When he finished high school he decided to try his luck as a full-time freelancer. He hopes to attend film school some time in the future when he has built up “a little bit of a portfolio.” Collier has already created animations for clients […]
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“Tough Little Stories”: Director Walter Hill at 92Y Tribeca
Tuesday night at 92Y Tribeca in downtown Manhattan, critics Nick Pinkerton and Nicolas Rapold presented Walter Hill’s 1981 Southern Comfort and the man himself afterwards. “I’m very pleased that you’re looking at this movie 30 years later,” Hill first said when sitting down for a 57-minute Q&A. “You’ve made an old man happy. The movie, when it came out, got mostly bad reviews and did absolutely no business. Did better in Europe and Asia.” “Did better in Europe and Asia” is a common lament for American director prophets without honor in their own country. Hill’s not precisely one of those […]
