Issues
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All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: Ricky D’Ambrose Speaks with James Gray about Armageddon Time
Armageddon Time returns the American writer and director James Gray to his childhood—or at least to a version of it. While its treatment of grade-school-age protagonist Paul Graff (Michael Banks Repeta) and his dealings with the world of grown-ups in and around his home in 1980s Queens, New York, might not be, strictly speaking, autobiographical (Gray has been careful to distinguish between personal and autobiographical filmmaking), Armageddon Time draws upon the filmmaker’s childhood to fashion a story of a boy’s moral and aesthetic education that seems at once thoroughly lived-in and unsentimental. For nearly two hours, we watch as young […]
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Metrograph Tribute to the Brothers Young Recalls Heroic Era in Indie Filmmaking
Since the passing in January of Irwin Young, chief mensch at New York’s fabled DuArt Film Lab, there has been an outpouring of tributes and reminiscences, including a packed memorial at Lincoln Center in May. But no tribute has been more on point than “The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irwin Young,” the Metrograph’s recent 24-film series dedicated to Irwin, the lab’s owner, and older brother, director Robert M. “Bob” Young, for the epic contributions they jointly made to the American indie film scene from the 1960s through the 1990s. For the big screen is precisely where the Young […]
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Severance and Sub-Creation
In what would have been called in an earlier period of TV development “the pilot” of Apple TV+’s series Severance, Mark (Adam Scott) attends a dinner party populated by the most obnoxious people in any possible world—members of the professional class chattering about various online thinkpieces. Amidst their debates, the attendees learn of Mark’s high-concept job at Lumon Industries, where only employees who have had their work and non-work selves surgically divided—employees who have no knowledge of their work lives when they’re at home and vice versa—may labor on the company’s secretive “severed floor.” Immediately, he is questioned about the […]
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Battles Won and Lost
In 2015, Tom Secker’s website SpyCulture.com published 1,669 pages of documents from the US Marine Corps Entertainment Liaison Office obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Spanning 2008 to 2015, these internal reports from a variety of entertainment projects covering requests for support from the Marines have become freshly relevant with the success of Top Gun: Maverick and renewed scrutiny of American military involvement with film productions. Below, a selection of highlights. ** NOTICE: This report contains information on the development and progress of TV programs, feature films, and other entertainment-oriented media projects. This information is shared with the Marine […]
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Still Looking: Gail Segal and Sheril Antonio’s Dramatic Effects with a Movie Camera
In their new book, Dramatic Effects with a Movie Camera, Gail Segal, a poet, filmmaker and associate arts professor, and Sheril Antonio, an associate arts professor in the department of art and public policy, both at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, describe a form of shot-by-shot film analysis that can teach filmmakers the nuances of cinematic storytelling. Recently published by Bloomsbury Publishing, the richly illustrated book is based on an NYU graduate filmmaking course taught more than two decades ago by Segal. “This class was an investigation of film technique,” Segal explains, “with the goal of applying […]
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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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Editor’s Letter
In my recent online interview with Olivier Assayas about his HBO series, Irma Vep, we talked about a certain anxiety around the subject of television—its usurpation of critical and audience interest from cinema, as well as the kind of career imperative young filmmakers today feel about directing for the small screen. So much work is there that most young directors I know feel like they have to try and land series gigs, if for nothing more than to keep a roof over their heads as features take longer and longer to set up. One argument in favor of TV that […]
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Strategic Reassessments: Arthouse Distributors and the Theatrical-vs.-Streaming Debate
Less than a year ago, it seemed like the sky was falling for independent films being released in theaters. Netflix’s stock was hitting record highs, the core demographic of older metropolitan moviegoers were staying home, and the entertainment complex was pivoting to the new normal of their subscription streaming overlords. Their dominance may ultimately prevail, but a more delicate and intricately linked dance between theatrical and streaming appears to be the future of releasing films. As an insider notes, “I think it’s swinging back towards theatrical, even though the end-goal is still about making the streaming stand out.” To name […]
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Read Only Memory: Joanne McNeil on Chris Marker’s Immemory Project
“I’ll find you,” Chris Marker told Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. The first time they met—New Year’s Day, 1999, at the Café de Flore in Paris—they had no idea what he looked like until he beckoned to them. There weren’t photos of him anywhere; he’d send illustrations of his cat, Guillaume-en-Égypte, if anyone asked for a picture. Krukowski and Yang wished to collaborate on an English language edition of the director’s CD-ROM project, Immemory. He could be difficult to reach but liked musicians and made time for the duo—formerly of Galaxie 500—who have performed as Damon & Naomi since 1991. […]
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I Saw That at Cannes!
My producer and friend Rebecca Lamond had decided a few months ago to make her first trip to Cannes, primarily for business meetings to pitch our next feature film. I’d also never been, and initially I didn’t see the point of joining her given the cost of flights and everything else. But when changed circumstances meant I was going to be in France in May and Rebecca said she had a sofa I could sleep on, it seemed logical to go. After all, there are other reasons to go to Cannes: the films, obviously, and the people that make, program […]
