Dating’s complicated arc during the pandemic has been lovingly captured in Pacho Velez’s documentary Searchers. Whether on Grindr, Tinder, or any other app, the question “what are you looking for?” varies from person to person amid the chaos of mid-COVID New York City. Editor Hannah Buck addresses the challenge of introducing the director as a subject of the film and the value of mediated experiences. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Buck: In 2019 I was the consulting […]

In the era of surveillance, what does it mean to be on camera? Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere investigates the nature of objectivity, physics, and policing from a scientific and sociological perspective, questioning much the way an essay might. DP Corey Hughes shares what he brought to the film from his experience with music videos and the physicality of image capturing devices. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hughes: I met Theo in Baltimore in 2017. At that […]

Camilla Nielsson’s President tells the tumultuous story of Zimbabwe’s 2018 general election, the first since the country attained independence that Robert Mugabe was not a candidate. It is in many ways a follow-up to Nielsson’s 2014 film Democrats. Editor Jeppe Bødskov discusses his ongoing collaboration with Nielssoni. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Bødskov: I worked with Camilla Nielsson on her previous documentary Democrats. So, I knew her already. I know quite a lot about Zimbabwe and about […]

How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? My film was shot just before the pandemic (wrapped March 1 2020—what luck!), which is a fact that the few people who have seen it so far sometimes find hard to believe. The movie is quite concerned with isolation. It is about characters who never leave the house, whose main form of social connection happens through screens, who exist in a virtual realm that is sort of real and sort of unreal. While writing […]

Kate Tsang’s debut film Marvelous and the Black Hole follows thirteen-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech), who struggles with delinquency shortly after the death of her mother. After meeting Margot (Rhea Perlman), a magician dead set on taking Sammy as her assistant, Sammy reluctantly begins a friendship with her and learns to heal through the expressive art of sleight of hand. DP Nanu Segal explains how they captured the intimacy of a teenage girl’s internal and external worlds and the “meeting of the minds” between Kate Tsang’s script and her own visual approach. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]

Camilla Nielsson’s President tells the tumultuous story of Zimbabwe’s 2018 general election, the first since the country attained independence that Robert Mugabe was not a candidate. It is in many ways a follow-up to Nielsson’s 2014 film Democrats. DP Henrik Bohn Ipsen discusses the film’s difficult and ephemeral subject matter, and the synergy between his camerawork and Nielsson’s direction. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Ipsen: I had worked with director Camilla Nielsson on her previous film Democrats, […]

How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? By the start of 2020 we had completed filming and had already started editing. Together with the editor Chris Wright, we were shaping a new world where nothing would be stable, nothing and no one could be trusted, where trees could move. We were half way through editing in Berlin, building this surrealistic world, an unreal world, when the pandemic struck. And suddenly, it was as if we were living in our film or our […]

How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? We dodged the COVID bullet during production, as we had shot everything before 2020. However, we were halfway through post when everything hit. The majority of our post team lives in Texas, but I live up in Northern California. I needed to get down there to oversee finishing, and flying in a metal tube recirculating airborne viruses for several hours wasn’t going to work. In order to keep things safe and comfortable for the team […]

How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? Marvelous and The Black Hole is about trying to find light in dark times. My producer and I were in the middle of rushing to finish post for a festival deadline when everything shut down in March. Working on this joyful film during a national crisis and pandemic was a continuing lesson to be patient with myself, keep going, and to really celebrate each win. I hope it brings the audience some hope during difficult times. (Check […]

Deftly merging animation and documentary, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee tells the true story of a gay Afghan refugee living in Copenhagen since being granted asylum. Art director Jess Nicholls shares how they protected their subject, Amin’s (a pseudonym), identity through the unbounded use of animation, and how to tell a true story through unique mediums. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Nicholls: Just to clarify, I’m not a cinematographer but an art director as Flee is an animated […]