Interviews
Interviews
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Alex Karpovsky on Red Flag and Rubberneck
While probably best known as belligerent barista Ray on the HBO show Girls (and also for his role as a lousy houseguest in Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture), Alex Karpovsky started out and continues to be a prolific indie film director who makes diverse styles of micro-budget films. His fourth and fifth films, the stylistically contrasting Rubberneck and Red Flag, are being released by Tribeca Film and screen at Film Society of Lincoln Center from February 22. In Rubberneck, Karpovsky plays a scientist obsessed with a former fling, and in the road trip comedy Red Flag he plays a filmmaker named Alex Karpovsky who is […]
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Ruba Nadda on Inescapable
In Canadian writer/director Ruba Nadda’s elegant and oddly topical thriller Inescapable, Adib Abdul-Kareem (Alexander Siddig) is a computer operations manager at a Toronto bank who fled Syria some 30 years ago. Married to a Canadian with whom he’s fathered two pretty teenage girls, he’s kept his checkered past a secret from his family the whole time, but after the disappearance of the older of his two daughters (Jay Anstey) during a clandestine visit to Syria in order to find out where her father is from, Adib heads to Damascus despite the possibility of repercussions for long ago sins. With combative ex-flame […]
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Karaoke Girl’s Visra Vichit-Vadakan and Sandi Sissel
Receiving its world premiere in the 2013 Rotterdam Film Festival’s Tiger Awards Competition, San Francisco-based Visra Vichit-Vadakan’s Karaoke Girl is an evocative character study of a Bangkok working girl, a singer in a nighttime karaoke bar for whom memories of her rural past and dreams of romantic fulfillment form a pulsing lifeline away from an emotionally depleting world. A hybrid documentary/fiction film, Karaoke Girl stars newcomer Sa Sittijun as a character largely based on herself. The documentary sections of the film follow her back to her real hometown, and feature interviews with her real family, while the “fiction” sequences are […]
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Five Questions with Big Words Writer/Director Neil Drumming
Big Words is the feature debut of writer/director Neil Drumming, former editor and music reviewer at Entertainment Weekly.The film follows the disparate storylines of James, John and Malik–three 30-something black men that used to constitute the hip-hop group D.L.P. (“Down Low Poets”). The triad has had little contact over the decade-plus since they split and each of them struggles with their sense of identity and regrets, struggling to look forward on the otherwise wildly hopeful night of Barack Obama’s inaugural election in 2008. Over the course of Big Words, we gradually learn piece-by-piece what drives James, John and Malik, what […]
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Gael García Bernal on the Oscar-Nominated No
Ever since the start of the Aughts, when he broke through in memorable dramas like Amores Perros and Y Tu Mamá También, Gael García Bernal has grown to become one of the most compelling actors of his generation, an international star who attracts a great bevy of gifted filmmakers. He’s played muse to Pedro Almodóvar, starred as Che Guevara for Walter Salles, and explored the subconscious with Michel Gondry. In addition to developing his own projects (like The Invisibles, a recent immigration-themed collection of documentary shorts; Sundance 2013 success Who Is Dayani Cristal?, a doc he appears in and co-produced; […]
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Lydia Antonini and Josh Feldman on Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn
At the beginning of the year, Filmmaker’s Scott Macaulay pointed out again — like many others have as well — that features are no longer the default format-of-choice for indie filmmakers. And as forms like the web series mature, we’re seeing more of the kinks getting worked out and more filmmakers and others finding innovative ways to release and promote new work. Take Netflix’s high-profile series House of Cards, which was just released all at once instead of in spaced-out (i.e. weekly) increments; we’ve yet to see the show’s long tail, but its initial viewer data (that is, its engagement […]
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Sam Neave, Almost in Love
Director Sam Neave and his producer/star Marjan Neshat are both Iranian-born, but the films they tend to make together — including 2003’s Sundance entry Cry Funny Happy and their terrific new two shot high-wire act Almost in Love — focus on the romantic travails of upper-middle-class Westerners in ways that are as funny as they are earnest. Their newest film, despite its intentionally schematic, downright arty structural contrivance, is a surprisingly rich meditation on friendship, the difficulty of settling down and the importance of being earnest. Performed in humorous and melancholy shades by an odd assortment of performers, most notably Ms. Neshat, Gary Wilmes, Alan Cumming and Alex Karpovsky — who […]
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They Should Be Grateful: An Interview with Abbas Kiarostami
There is a reassuring softness to the touch of Abbas Kiarostami’s films. At a moment in which so many of cinema’s reigning masters exhibit a violently firm command of their work (Von Trier, Haneke), Kiarostami seems happily inclined to set his viewers free through the gauzy mazes of nuance that make up his cinema, encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. That’s not to say that Kiarostami’s hand isn’t as exacting as that of his perpetual Cannes competitors, but rather, that Kiarostami’s careful grip manifests itself in a carefully light touch. That light touch can be frustrating to those […]
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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 […]
