Interviews
Interviews
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“I Would Often Capture the Same Shots on 16mm and Digital”: DP Connor Smith on The Exiles
In 1989, filmmaker Christine Choy was hired to shoot interview footage of dissidents from the Tiananmen Square protests, but she never had the chance to show anyone involved the footage. More than thirty years later, Choy embarks on transcontinental travel to show leaders of the movement that footage, and first-time filmmakers Ben Klein and Violet Columbus and cinematographer Connor Smith were present to capture the journey. Below, Smith discusses finding the shooting style right for the film and what it’s like to capture another filmmaker with his camera. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of […]
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“Do Younger Israelis Care at All About This History?”: Alon Schwarz on His Sundance-Debuting Doc Tantura
Alon Schwarz’s Tantura takes its title from a particular Palestinian village that was depopulated – by any means necessary, including through a still-contested massacre of civilians – during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence (aka “Al Nakba,” the Catastrophe, if you hail from the occupied side). Yet the doc is less a history lesson than a deep-dive investigation into the stories a nation chooses to tell about itself. Schwarz’s (Aida’s Secrets) own story began when he got access to over 100 hours of shockingly candid audiotaped interviews that the (government and academia-silenced) researcher Teddy Katz conducted decades ago with former soldiers […]
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“The Rhythm of Nature Many Times Conflicts With the Rhythm of an Independent Production”: DP Alfonso Herrera Salcedo on A Love Song
A Love Song depicts the reconnection and the romance of childhood sweethearts, decades removed from their last meeting. Both widowed now, they use the meeting to reflect on life, love, and loss. It all takes place in an American West that is neither rugged like the films of yesteryear nor depleted like more more recent revisionist takes, but quiet and expansive. Cinematographer Herrera Salcedo explains why 16mm was the right format to capture both characters and the landscapes and how he used the camera to bring the characters to life. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the […]
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“At the Root of This Rivalry Is a Historical Conflict Between Mexican Nationals and Mexican-Americans”: Editor Luis Alvarez y Alvarez on La Guerra Civil
Julio César Chávez and Oscar de la Hoya were once two of the biggest names in boxing, and their 1996 bout dubbed “Ultimate Glory” was a flashpoint for the divide between Mexican-Americans and Mexican nationals. Mixing archival footage with interviews of the boxers themselves, <i>La Guerra Civil</i> examines the bout, the rivalry and its cultural dimension. Editor Luis Alvarez y Alvarez discusses his memories of the fight and how the filmmakers were able to recapture and illuminate one of the defining sports moments of the 1990s. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? […]
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“We Wanted to Target an Audience Not Necessarily Interested in the Royal Family”: Editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira on The Princess
From the beginning, director Ed Perkins knew he wanted to tell Princess Diana’s story without any retrospective interviews and instead rely purely on archival material. That’s a rich archive, consisting of thousands of hours of footage, meaning the editors would need to choose among countless potential approaches or narrative threads. Below, editors Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira discuss what drew them to the film and how they managed to whittle thousands of hours of footage into a 104-minute feature film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]
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“I Came Out of This Process With a Refreshed Perspective on Mortality”: Editors Erin Casper & Jocelyne Chaput on Fire of Love
Two of the best known volcanologists, Katia and Maurice Krafft—are arguably as well known for having died in an expedition on Japan’s Mount Unzen, but Fire of Love, a documentary by Sara Dosa that makes use of the footage shot by the couple, turns away from the easy tragic narrative to instead shine a light on the love they shared for their work as well as for each other. Editors Erin Casper and Jocelyne Chaput explain how they put together a film from footage that was often difficult to parse and why they took inspiration from the French New Wave. […]
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After the Curtain: The Tragedy of Macbeth Production Designer Stefan Dechant
Shot by director of photography Bruno Delbonnel in stark black and white using the Academy aspect ratio, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is an impressively lean (105 minutes total runtime) and stylized take. A reserved Denzel Washington stars in the title role alongside Coen’s wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, reprising a performance she gave for the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2016. In his first film without his brother Ethan, Coen eschews halfhearted attempts to “open up the text,” instead choosing to embrace its theatricality by filming the entire production on Warner Brothers’s soundstages in Burbank, California before and, […]
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On the Journey: The Power of the Dog Producer Tanya Seghatchian
As a young woman, Tanya Seghatchian remembers laughing, crying and suffocating through Jane Campion’s early work, a cinematic compass she had internalized by the time she began her first job for the BBC—researching a two-part TV documentary about John Ford, pioneer of the American western. Over the years, Seghatchian’s trajectory expanded across genres and scales, from coproducing the first two Harry Potter films and executive producing more than 20 episodes of The Crown to producing Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love and Cold War, the latter of which was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Foreign Language Film, in […]
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Particular Fabrics: Belfast Costume Designer Charlotte Walter
Belfast offers a poignant look at a working class childhood in an era of increasing political tumult. Set in 1969, during the early days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, writer/director Kenneth Branagh’s deeply personal film is shot in black and white and centers on a family doing its best to get by. The protagonist, Buddy (played by Jude Hill in his debut feature role) is a charming 9-year-old Branagh surrogate with a toothy smile and rough-and-tumble costumes of collared shirts, shorts, and high socks. The ’60s has long been one of the most frequently referenced decades in fashion, and while […]
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Western Promises: The Power of the Dog Composer Jonny Greenwood
Wailing French horns, recorded in the vastness of an Oxford cathedral; the mechanized sputtering of a player piano; the anxious propulsion of an ascending and descending cello, defamiliarized by being plucked like a banjo—these are some of the seemingly counterintuitive approaches composer Jonny Greenwood took to scoring Jane Campion’s brooding and suspenseful Western, The Power of the Dog. But just as Campion’s film, set in the early 20th century, tacks away from genre signifiers to tell an unexpectedly intimate tale of fraternal rivalry and stifled desire, so too does Greenwood’s score subvert the expectations of a “big sky” Western soundtrack […]
