SXSW
-
Five Questions with Our Nixon Director Penny Lane and Co-Producer Brian L. Frye
While it’s widely known that Richard Nixon was an obsessive self-documenter, what is less well known is that three of his top aides – H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin – were as well. Mad for Super 8, the three men obsessively documented their everyday lives as they toiled away, unaware that their idealistic zeal for a corrupt administration would land them in prison. Directed by Penny Lane and co-produced by Brian Frye, Our Nixon is an all archive documentary that uses this footage to create a complex portrait of one of the most notorious administrations in the […]
-
Five Questions with Touba Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Touba was seven years in the making: five of shooting, two of post-production. It grew out of her second documentary — 2008’s Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love — which followed the legendary Senegalese musician before and after 2004’s Egypt album, whose religious themes raised the ire of the country’s religious argument. Her newest film began life on vibrantly grainy 16mm, following an annual Senegal trek undertaken by hundreds to the city of Touba to visit the home of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride Brotherhood. Like her last film, Vasarhelyi’s newest focuses on Islam […]
-
Five Questions with The Bounceback Director Bryan Poyser
Bryan Poyser has been a fixture of Austin’s film scene for a decade, even as it’s remained in flux. As a director, he made his feature debut with 2004’s Dear Pillow, in which a teen struggling with sex gets mentored by a fiftysomething ex-porn director. 2010’s follow-up Lovers Of Hate (half shot in Austin) was a perversely comic sexual rondelay in which a demented ex skulks in the mansion where his former partner and her new lover are taking a vacation, spying on both while trying to keep his presence a secret. Poyser’s third feature, The Bounceback, is his first […]
-
Five Questions with euphonia Director Danny Madden
When the filmmaking collective Ornana (led by director Danny Madden) was chosen for Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” last summer, it was their charming and inventive animated short about a robot elephant, (notes on) biology, that first attracted our attention and admiration. However, it was group’s radically different follow-up project, euphonia (then still in rough cut), which assured us of Madden and co.’s genius. The 50-odd minute live-action film, which was first planned as a short, tells the tale of a high schooler (Will Madden, Danny’s younger brother) who buys a digital sound recorder and becomes increasingly fixated with capturing the sounds around […]
-
DISPOSABLE MEMORIES FROM SXSW
I pack quickly the night before leaving for SXSW. Not only do I forget to bring business cards, I don’t even pack my digital camera. I pop into a CVS once I’ve landed in Austin and pick up a two-pack of disposable cameras. I’m surprised they still sell them. My five day jaunt across SXSW is a flurry of rain, movies, tacos, friends, panels, and long lines. I watch Purple Rain on VHS. I watch V/H/S in a movie theater. I’m asked by multiple people if I’ve heard what this year’s Tiny Furniture is. I hear a big-four agent tell […]
-
Five Questions with Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Director Drew Denicola and Producer Danielle McCarthy
If you recognize the name Big Star, chances are you’re already a fan. Considered by many grandfathers of indie-rock, the band formed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1971. A precarious time for music, Big Star released their first two albums (the dual pop masterpieces #1 Record and Radio City) just as the major labels were riding the post-60s hangover away from creative ingenuity and towards corporate rock excess. Beleaguered and disheartened by their lack of mainstream success, Big Star went on to release one more album, the frustrated and nihilistic chronicle of artistic disintegration Third / Sister Lovers. Co-founder Chris Bell […]
-
MORGAN SPURLOCK’S MUSTACHE
Our friends at the National Film Society hit SXSW this week and nabbed this interview with director Morgan Spurlock. Discussion topics include mustaches, Ryan Gosling, Das Racist and more. (And if you think these guys at the National Film Society are a bit silly here, just remember one thing: they’re now PBS hosts!)
-
Ten Tips on Shooting Low-Budget Movies from SXSW
At SXSW a panel titled “The Great Cinematography Shootout” gathered a group of directors and cinematographers to discuss independent film lensing in an age of proliferating formats and lower-cost, high-quality cameras, like the Canon 5D. The directors of photography were Jody Lee Lipes (Girls, Tiny Furniture, and also the director of Opus Jazz), James Laxton (Medicine for Melancholy, Leave Me Like You Found Me), Clay Lifford (Gayby, and also the director of such films as Wuss and Earthling), PJ Raval (Trouble the Water, Sunset Stories, and also the director of Trinidad); and filmmaker, editor and d.p. David Lowery (Pioneer, and, […]
-
“GIMME THE LOOT,” “BEWARE OF MR. BAKER” WIN TOP PRIZES AT SXSW
Gimme the Loot (pictured), Adam Leon’s entirely winning story of two young graffiti artists discovering their own relationship as they seek to tag Shea Stadium (er… Citi Field), picked up the top Narrative Jury Prize at tonight’s SXSW awards ceremony. The Documentary Jury prize went to Beware of Mr. Baker, Jay Bulger’s portrait of famed rock drummer Ginger Baker. The jury gave Special Recognitions for three outstanding performances in dramatic features: Jamie Chung’s starring role in Eden; Nico Stone’s in Booster; and Besedka Johnson’s debut in Starlet. The 85-year-old Johnson, who plays a bitter widower forming an unlikely friendship with […]
-
Five Questions with Leave Me Like You Found Me Director Adele Romanski
Producer Adele Romanski has built quite a filmography in a very short time. Last year, she opened David Robert Mitchell’s nostalgia-laced sleeper-hit Myth of the American Sleepover. And less than two months ago, she made a splash at Sundance with Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (which sold to LD Entertainment). Throw in a stint as a Sundance Producer’s Lab Fellow, plus several projects in development (including Mitchell’s Sleepover followup Ella Walks the Beach and Adam Bowers’ We’re A Wasteland) and it should become obvious that Romanski has been, to say the least, busy. So when did she find time to direct […]
