Features
-
Act Break: Director Denis Villeneuve Talks His “Jaw-Droppingly Weird” Enemy
In his newest film Enemy, French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve immediately springs on us an omnipotent sense of dread. The chiaroscuro-tinged opening — a dynamo dream sequence in a film that feels like one long, unending hallucination — takes us inside an invitation-only sex club, populated by hard-looking, well-dressed men, one of whom is Jake Gyllenhaal. What are they watching? Scantily clad women doing seemingly erotic things that involve tarantulas. Bear with me. Soon we meet a pregnant blonde (Sarah Gadon) who’s waiting at home for her husband. Is it Gyllenhaal whom she’s waiting for? The next time he’s glimpsed, he […]
-
I Am A Camera
About halfway through the documentary Tim’s Vermeer, the San Antonio-based inventor Tim Jenison is granted a private viewing of Johannes Vermeer’s “The Music Lesson” at its private exhibition site, Buckingham Palace. The Queen had originally denied Jenison’s request, but after a certain amount of cajoling she relented — although cameras weren’t allowed and Jenison’s collaborators, director Teller and producer Penn, of the anarchic stage magic duo Penn & Teller, were asked to stay behind. Jenison spends one half hour with the painting — the Vermeer work he’s been diligently replicating in his Texas studio — and emerges shaken. As Teller […]
-
Observe & Report: Godfrey Reggio, Jon Kane and Trish Govoni on “the Perfected Image” of Visitors
Alternately lulling and urgent, otherworldly and deeply intimate, visionary filmmaker Godfrey Reggio’s Visitors is a film like no other. With its 74 shots — most feature films have hundreds if not thousands — and exquisite black-and-white imagery, it is, as Reggio says, “the odd one in” in today’s multiplex environment. And even with its Philip Glass score — mournful, haunting and one of the composer’s best — it still feels radically different than Reggio and Glass’s previous collaborations, the poetic films comprising the “Qatsi Trilogy.” No less visually seductive than those works, the non-narrative Visitors uses its images — which […]
-
Mumbai Masala
The way Ritesh Batra tells it, he used to be not very good at his job. The Indian-born writer/director had studied in the U.S. as an undergrad and ended up working at the financial consulting firm Deloitte, but though he “had a business background of sorts, I was a terrible, terrible consultant,” Batra says. “They call it ‘sitting on the bench,’ when you’re a bad consultant and they don’t want to send you to clients. I quit because I didn’t want to do something I was bad at all my life.” Batra, born and raised in India, had always wanted […]
-
The Happiest Place on Earth
The memories of our childhood are owned, their copyrights controlled by giant multinational corporations. Whereas the fantasy figures of the 20th century hail from centuries-old sources — the Brothers Grimm, Greek and Norse mythology — their contemporary incarnations, found on T-shirts, lunchboxes, mugs, iPhones and in video games, constitute precious intellectual treasure, their value diligently upheld by World Trade Organization rulings. Or, to phrase things a bit differently: If you’re an independent filmmaker, make sure your lead actor isn’t wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt you haven’t cleared! Despite the forces aligned against pop culture-deploying media artists in our mash-up, remix […]
-
History, Continued
Documentaries are supposed to shine a light on the world, but some tackle subjects that are more pressing and timely than others. Over the course of her career, Egyptian-American director Jehane Noujaim has created films that are prescient to the extreme. Her 2001 debut, Startup.com, co-directed with Chris Hegedus, chronicled the genesis of the govWorks website just as the dotcom bubble burst. Noujaim’s 2004 follow-up, Control Room, focused on the way the ongoing Iraq War was being presented by news channels, particularly the Arabic news network Al Jazeera. Both films had their world premieres at the Sundance Film Festival, using […]
-
A Speck in the Ocean
At sea — we have all felt it, paradoxically unmoored even in our hyper-connected age. In only two pictures, that sense of disconnection, emotional confusion and fear is the metier of New York-based writer/director J.C. Chandor. His 2011 debut film, Margin Call, was a tightly focused drama about Wall Street traders fighting for their financial lives amidst the economic meltdown. Unfolding over 24 hours, Margin Call is a talky and claustrophobic movie plumbing the specific ethical quandaries of our current political moment. Assuredly directed and extremely well-acted, it would seem to have set Chandor up to make any number of […]
-
Hot to the Touch: Abdellatif Kechiche on Blue is the Warmest Color
When Adèle eats spaghetti, it’s a sensual affair. The camera studies every move of her mouth, every lick of her fingers and knife. Her eyes are saucers. Her full lips pout. Unlike the slurpy absurdity of noodle-eating in Juzo Itami’s Tampopo, in Blue is the Warmest Color, spaghetti is no laughing matter; it’s a matter of love. And, since it’s directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, it’s also a matter of class: Adèle’s comfort food indexes a working-class background that cannot be left behind. “That is a theme that one could say is central across all my films,” Kechiche said to me […]
-
Voices From the Street
A first feature by Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq (chosen for Filmmaker’s 2012 25 New Faces of Independent Film), These Birds Walk is an observational documentary following the hopes of a young Karachi runaway named Omar. The boy, no more than 10-years-old, escapes his rural village and, as the film begins, is ready to run away from his city youth home. Omar is befriended by Asad, a young ambulance driver who works near the orphanage, which is maintained by one of Pakistan’s great philanthropists, elderly Abdul Sattar Edhi. Two questions resound through Omar’s days, through ups and downs: Where is […]
-
25 New Faces of Independent Film 2013
Click here to see Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2013.
