Interviews
Interviews
-
Director Catherine Breillat on Sleeping Beauty
For many adults, The Sleeping Beauty, whether in Charles Perrault’s original telling or the Brothers Grimm’s, is the quintessential fairy tale. It has spawned countless retellings in the form of animated films, ballets, and children’s book adaptations. Now, iconoclastic director Catherine Breillat tackles the tale but on her own terms. For Breillat, The Sleeping Beauty is a doorway into the world of childhood fantasy in general as her young princess, cursed to die on her 16th birthday, travels through time and space, going on a series of adventures that underscore the fearlessness of a child’s imagination — and the adult […]
-
Project Nim: An Interview with Director James Marsh
James Marsh first became a household name in the States after winning the 2009 Oscar for Best Documentary for his film Man on Wire, a “heist” picture about the French tightrope walker, Philippe Petit, who traversed a line between the twin towers in 1974. That film’s use of genre, its stylistic flair, and its fusion of fiction and documentary elements can be witnessed as early as Marsh’s 1999 film Wisconsin Death Trip, about the tragedies that befell a small town of Wisconsin at the turn of the 20th century. Marsh stays true to form in his latest documentary Project Nim […]
-
Director Robert Persons on General Orders No. 9
Much can be made of duration. The long stretches of time presaging the releases of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut or, more recently, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, lent each film a preordained measure of value. Yet, those films were helmed by directors with celebrated careers and reputations for being perfectionists. So it comes as an anomaly that General Orders No. 9, premiering at the reRun Gastropub Theater on June 24th, took first-time filmmaker Robert Persons 11 years to make. General Orders No. 9 is a person-less documentary about Georgia’s ongoing process of urbanization. A synthesis of voiceover, music, […]
-
Director Zach Clark on Vacation!
I first met Zach Clark last October when his excitingly subversive, sex-scene-less SXSW hit Modern Love Is Automatic opened Pornfilmfestival Berlin (where my own short The Story of Ramb O had its premiere). Since we barely had the chance to chat in the buzzing, jam-packed Moviemento hub, I was thrilled when I heard recently that Clark’s follow-up Vacation! (pictured above) was already on the festival circuit and would be playing theatrically at Brooklyn’s own reRun Gastropub Theater in May. Finally I had an excuse to find out what makes this offbeat yet seemingly well-adjusted director of a feature about a […]
-
FilmNation’s Glen Basner at Cannes
For the three-year-old FilmNation, the 2011 Cannes Film Festival is a big deal. That’s not just because the company’s market slate is substantial, containing projects by Terrence Malick, John Hillcoat and, as executive producer, James Cameron, but because the young New York-based sales and production company has, for the first time, two films in the festival. The company is repping both Pedro Almodovar’s latest Competition title, The Skin I Live In (pictured above), as well as American indie Jeff Nichol’s Sundance hit, Take Shelter, screening in the Critics Week section. FilmNation was launched by international sales veteran Glen Basner just […]
-
Out in the Neighborhood: Dee Rees on Her Directorial Debut, Pariah
Dee Rees’s debut feature, Pariah, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this month with a free screening and Q&A hosted by the Academy Museum. Rees, who first appeared in Filmmaker when she was selected for our 2008 25 New Faces, was interviewed upon the film’s release by Brandon Harris. That interview, originally dated November 18, 2011, is reposted below. The free screening of Pariah is viewable until May 20. — Editor With Pariah, a buoyant tale of a young, middle-class New York lesbian’s tough coming-of-age amid the class and cultural proxy battles that simmer within black America, lauded newcomer Dee Rees […]
-
Zenith Creator Vladan Nikolic
As Vladan Nikolic’s Zenith continues its slow roll-out — finishing its U.S. screenings while premiering on Amazon and iTunes — I thought I’d post on the blog this piece on the film that originally ran in slightly different form in our Winter, 2011 issue. “What is Zenith?” was the question posed on About Top Secret and other conspiracy-related websites last Spring. Paranoid-minded posters jumped in and followed a breadcrumb-trail of online clues relating to everything from the Bavarian Illuminati and fluoridated drinking water to biochemistry and the New World Order. They clicked through a maze of 50 other websites (priestoftruth.com, […]
-
Director Alex Gibney on Catching Hell
Few documentary filmmakers’ careers are as fascinating to follow as that of Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), and that’s not just because of the consistent quality of his films, but because of the astonishing rate at which he produces them. In the midst of three other projects — an untitled Wikileaks documentary in pre-production; The Road Back, about Lance Armstrong, in post-production; and the newly completed Magic Bus, about Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters — Gibney was at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival with his sports documentary Catching Hell, which […]
-
A Conversation with Milyoni’s David Raycroft, Part Two
In this part two of a two-part interview with David Raycroft, co-founder and Vice-President of Product and Operations of Milyoni, the company responsible for streaming Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight and Harry Potter titles through Facebook, Raycroft talks about the company’s Video on Demand streaming solution. Also check out part 1 he talks about their iFanStore, which allows the easy set up of a storefront on Facebook that integrates with your own fan page. Filmmaker: How has the Warner Brothers Dark Knight experiment been going? How would Milyoni measure the success of that project? How would Warner Brothers? Raycroft: We […]
-
Milyoni’s David Raycroft on the Facebook iFanstore
After reading that Warner Bros was streaming The Dark Knight and soon thereafter the Harry Potter films though Facebook, I immediately thought it was a genius move. More information is shared on Facebook, and this would be a great way to close the window between discovery and consumption. In addition, on Facebook distributors and filmmakers are provided very meaningful analytics — and then, of course, there’s the monetization aspect. In Part One of this two-part email interview I talk to David Raycroft, co-founder and Vice-President of Product and Operations of Milyoni, the company that made this all happen. He talks […]
