Interviews
Interviews
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Christian Petzold on Barbara
With Barbara, German auteur Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) delivers one of 2012’s better character studies, a tense and sparing Cold War-era drama about a female doctor (Petzold muse Nina Hoss) who’s relegated to a hospital near the Baltic Sea after trying to leave the German Democratic Republic. It’s 1980, and the movie effortlessly conveys the period in all its stark unease. Honored at the 62nd Berlinale and serving as Germany’s official Foreign-Language entry for the 85th Academy Awards, Barbara sees its eponymous heroine grapple with the restraints of politics and her own fears in a manner as mysterious as it […]
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Five Questions with Aquí y Allá Director Antonio Méndez Esparza
Aquí y Allá (“Here and There”) is a film about home and separation; of returning to where you left and trying to reintegrate with a life that has, for all intents and purposes, gone on without you. Dreams and opportunities; responsibility and consequence; hope and fear–these are all central not only to the film, but to the day-to-day life of every human being around the world. As such, Aquí y Allá exceeds the admittedly weighty (and very touching) premise of Mexican emigration to the U.S.–and all the tensions and the void that can come of it–to strike a relatable chord regardless of […]
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Second-Time Director: Craig Johnson and The Skeleton Twins
This is the second in a series of articles about the path towards a director’s second film. Read part one, with Tze Chun, here. It was in the middle of prepping for The Skeleton Twins that Craig Johnson realized something was missing. “That sickening feeling in my stomach that I had the first time around in prep,” Johnson said with a laugh. “I’m so much more at peace this time. Craig Johnson, 36, is currently in production on his second movie. It’s a project that contains a dream comedic cast (Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Ty Burrell) It’s a project that […]
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Five Questions with The Bad Intentions Director Rosario Garcia-Montero
Cayetana de los Heros, the eight-year-old protagonist of The Bad Intentions, is precociously preoccupied with death. She idolizes her nation’s independence heroes, imagining the many exotic ways in which they have been executed for their valor. “Massacre, massacre,” she whispers into the ears of her sleeping cousin. Beautifully shot in steely gray and blue hues that look cold to the touch, The Bad Intentions moves away from the conventional pastel-hued whimsy often used to depict childhood. Death — the fear and the fact of it — quietly pervades the entire film. Cayetana’s divorced parents mean well but have too many […]
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Amy Berg on West of Memphis
Amy Berg’s West of Memphis lays out an overwhelmingly strong case for the innocence of the men known as the West Memphis Three. Charged with the 1993 killings of three boys in Arkansas, Jason Baldwin, Damien Echols and Jessie Misskelley Jr. each spent 18 years in prison. Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley were released in August 2011, but they were forced, under an arcane statute, to accept responsibility for the murders. Now in their mid- and late 30s, Baldwin, Echols and Misskelley are technically still culpable, but Berg’s rigorous, science-based inquiry, should dispel any lingering notion that they were involved in […]
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Five Questions with Trashed Director Candida Brady
If you were to view the documentary Trashed without audio, the visuals alone would leave a strong impression: Our globe, as captured by the camera’s sweeping gaze, is loaded with staggering amounts of waste. Household rubbish, rotting animals, matted paper and plastic form mountains many yards high, towering ominously over oceans and towns. Steam drifts from the mounds, like great animals giving off heat. According to Trashed, we throw away 200 billion plastic bottles and 58 billion disposable cups every year — figures we’ve likely heard before, but easily forget for lack of visual perspective. Candida Brady’s film provides just […]
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Michael Connors, Allegiance
An intelligently written and genuinely felt Iraq War drama, Allegiance is perhaps the first film about the way the conflict shaped the lives of those who prepare to go to battle that has been written, produced, directed and mostly financed by veterans themselves. The directorial debut of Michael Connors, the picture has an unforced verisimilitude few films about military life can match. Allegiance portrays an insular community with its own moral logic, in this case an American military regiment of New York National Guardsmen being called up to active duty in Iraq on the eve of the Sadr City/Fallujah nightmare of 2004. What […]
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Director Tony Pemberton Talks Russia, Film and Devo
I first got to know Tony Pemberton when his production company Go East Productions co-produced my documentary The Mark of Cain. Tony was living in Moscow at the time and I could not have navigated Russia without him. He directed his own Film Beyond The Ocean (2000) in Russia and he knew the ins and outs of filmmaking there. No matter how insane my requests were, he never considered anything impossible. Pemberton is currently in Germany shooting his feature film Buddha’s Little Finger. He is in Berlin, which is standing in for Moscow in the ’90s. Additionally, Pemberton is in […]
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Director Nancy Buirski on The Loving Story
In the documentary The Loving Story, Richard and Mildred Loving say very little, preferring to lean in close, exchange meaningful glances, and drape an arm around the other. Hardly exhibitionist, the two seem unlikely candidates as powerful, public symbols of the fight for marriage and racial equality during the Civil Rights era. Mildred, of African American and Native American descent, met Richard, a white neighbor, in a small Virginia community where, as he says, “there’s a few white and there’s a few color” who “mixed together” without trouble. The couple married in Washington, DC in 1958 and returned to Virginia. […]
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Second-Time Director: Tze Chun and Cold Comes the Night
At Filmmaker we continuously cover the struggles of first-time directors to make their debut pictures. But the second film comes with its own set of unique challenges, issues that will be explored in this five-part series by Kishori Rajan. Below is the first installment, chronicling Filmmaker 25 New Face Tze Chun’s move from the microbudget character drama Children of Invention to a thriller with stars like Bryan Cranston. Look for further articles in the weeks ahead. — SM The late producer Laura Ziskin once remarked that movies “aren’t made, but forced into existence,” an expression never more apt than when […]
