Interviews
Interviews
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“It Came Out of Me Almost Fully Born”: Writer/Director Lena Dunham on Her New Feature, Sharp Stick
It’s been 13 years since Lena Dunham emerged: first with 2009’s web series, Delusional Downtown Divas and the feature Creative Nonfiction, then, a year later, with breakthrough Tiny Furniture, an intensely personal, incredibly low-budget film that follows a recent college grad named Aura (Dunham) struggling to find her place in her hometown of New York City post-Oberlin. Supported by a cast of Dunham’s real-life friends and family, Tiny Furniture was a critical success that directly sprouted the quintessential Girls, the HBO series that depicts millennial mania, malaise and, at times, loathsome mediocrity. Five years after Girls’s final season, Dunham’s work is less focused on self-reflection […]
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“We Did Not Have an Interior to Shoot for Eight-and-a-Half Episodes”: DP Christina Alexandra Voros on Her Emmy-Nominated 1883 Work
“The landscape is its own character,” says 1883 cinematographer Christina Alexandra Voros. It’s not an unusual declaration for an epic outdoor adventure, until Voros adds, “And that character was the biggest diva on the show.” A prequel to Paramount+’s popular Yellowstone series, 1883 subjected its crew to both a stifling Texas summer and a frigid Montana winter to trace the Dutton clan’s westward journey via wagon train. “It was punishing,” said Voros. “It was either raining, windy or just plain freezing, or it was 500 background people in downtown Ft. Worth sweltering under the August sun in wool clothing.” Braving […]
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“Over-Coverge is the Enemy of Style”: DP Jules O’Loughlin on The Old Man and Ms. Marvel
In Disney’s Ms. Marvel, a teen in an exuberantly colored Jersey City discovers super powers after slipping a magical bangle on her wrist. In FX’s The Old Man, a septuagenarian dusts off a long-dormant aptitude for violence when his former life as a CIA operative catches up with him. In the overlapping Venn diagram of these seemingly disparate shows, you’ll find cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin. The Australian DP shot two episodes of each series, which also share critical flashbacks set on different continents than their main story, as well as shoots that were greatly affected by COVID. With both shows now […]
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Back to One, Episode 213: Angourie Rice
She’s only 21, but Australian actor Angourie Rice has earned respect in Hollywood for stacking up diverse roles in The Nice Guys, The Beguiled, Jasper Jones, Mare of Easttown, not to mention a few Spider-Man movies. Now she has her first starring role in Honor Society for Paramount+. She talks about how it helped her to be able to relate so much to her character in that film, and why talking directly to the camera was oddly easy. We chat about her podcast, The Community Library, which is a celebration of literature and storytelling of all kinds. This leads to […]
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When A Wide Shot is 12 Inches from the Lens: DPs Bianca Cline and Eric Adkins on Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
There’s a saying that a movie is made three times: once when it’s written, once when it’s shot and once when it’s edited. To create the new A24 release Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, that maxim had to expand to accommodate an additional creative cycle. Marcel, the story of a chatty one-inch tall seashell searching for his family, was in essence shot twice. First, cinematographer Bianca Cline captured the live-action components, leaving a Marcel-sized space in the compositions. Months later, armed with copious notes to match lighting, lensing, focus, etc., stop motion director of photography Eric Adkins brought Marcel […]
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“There Are Only So Many Ways to Light a Kitchen with a Low Ceiling”: Ellie Foumbi and DP Tinx Chan on Our Father, The Devil
The past haunts Marie, a chef in a retirement home in the small French village of Luchon. An exile from violence in Africa, she has closed herself off to all but a handful of friends. Then, a new arrival forces Marie to confront a world she has tried to forget. Written and directed by Ellie Foumbi, Our Father, The Devil was shot on a 20-day schedule. It was developed in part through Venice’s Biennale College Cinema. The film screened at the Venice Film Festival and recently at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it won the Best Narrative Feature Audience Award. […]
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“Our Plan for Financial Security is, We’ll Become Famous Hollywood Filmmakers”: Silas Howard and Harry Dodge on By Hook or by Crook
Silas Howard and Harry Dodge, the intrepid duo that wrote, directed and starred in By Hook or by Crook, still possess a collaborative spark that has outlived their ability to make art together. After their groundbreaking, ultra low-budget queer film premiered at Sundance 20 years ago, Howard immediately enrolled in film school at UCLA; Dodge, on the other hand, found the festival landscape far too overwhelming for his taste and decided to focus on sculpture, video art and writing. While they both followed their respective paths after By Hook or by Crook, they remain very close friends and respected colleagues. […]
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“The Story of the Borderlands Is Not Singular”: Cathy Lee Crane on Drawing the Line
Filmmaker last interviewed veteran multimedia artist Cathy Lee Crane about her first feature-length narrative film The Manhattan Front, which combined staged performances and archival footage from the National Archives in DC to present the strange but true entanglement of a WWI German saboteur with the progressive labor movement of activist Elisabeth Gurley Flynn. While Crane’s latest selection of works likewise resurrects buried US history, they tread territory even further back in time, all the way down to the border, and are currently being shown a continent away. Throughout the month of July, the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin will be showcasing several projects […]
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Eruptions: Fire of Love Director Sara Dosa Interviewed by Director and Author Sandi Tan
“I couldn’t love someone who doesn’t share that love at the top of a volcano,” says French volcanologist Katia Krafft early in Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love, a film that’s both a spectacular, eye-searing documentary about the history and science of volcanoes and achingly existential romance. Katia, a geochemist, and partner Maurice Krafft, a geologist, met, fell in love and—“disappointed in humanity” —turned away from the tumult of the 1960s to find a life on the outskirts of the primordial, amidst drifting ash and near-psychedelic lava pools. “We contemplate lying at the edge of the abyss,” Katia says. Like today’s […]
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“If the Truth is Completely Elusive, I’m Happy to Live in Uncertainty”: Antonio Campos and Sofia Subercaseaux on the HBO Max Original Series, The Staircase
On their very first date in 2013, Antonio Campos pitched The Staircase to Sofía Subercaseaux. It would be years before the now married team officially began work on the project. In the interim, their collaborations have included Christine (Sundance 2016), written and directed by Campos and edited by Subercaseaux, and Piercing (Sundance 2018), produced by Campos and edited by Subercaseaux. Campos became known for his acclaimed independent work with production company Borderline Films (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Simon Killer, James White). After directing episodes of The Punisher and The Sinner (the latter of which he also executive produced), he makes […]
