DP Alex Lehmann leaps to the director’s chair with Asperger’s Are Us, a documentary about an unusual comedy troupe. With one of its members soon leaving Boston to study abroad, the improv group consisting of four young men on the spectrum prepares for what may be its final performance. Executive produced by the Duplass brothers, the documentary was quickly purchased by Netflix for worldwide distribution. Ahead of Asperger’s Are Us‘s premiere at SXSW, Lehmann discussed acting as his own DP, scrounging for enough cameras to film the climax and following the story. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What […]

In his follow-up to Manson Family Vacation, director Linas Phillips turns his attention to the troubled relationship between Todd (Timm Sharp) and his sex-obsessed, developmentally delayed older brother Shonzi (Phillips). A Duplass brothers production with Melanie Lynskey as Todd’s girlfriend, the film premiered this weekend at SXSW. Before, DP Nathan M. Miller spoke about using The Doors (not the movie!) as a reference point, working with a small crew and integrating VHS into the production. 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 […]

Ashley Douglas (Andre Royo) gets out of jail eager to start over, but nothing goes as planned; his girlfriend is now his ex, he’s living with his mother, and it’s hard to find work. Josh Locy’s feature debut Hunter Gatherer (we interviewed the director here) was shot by Jon Aguirresarobe, whose attentive eye brings south Los Angeles neighborhoods to life. Prior to the film’s SXSW premiere, Aguirresarobe discussed the difficulties of production on a tight schedule, shooting dissolves on Super 16mm and attempting to emulate Fuji film stock. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors […]

Placing the viewer amidst the everyday workings of a goat farm in southern Oregon, Christopher LaMarca’s Boone represents a daring exercise in direct cinema filmmaking. Originally a photojournalist interested in environmental causes, LaMarca found the setting of the farm to be an ideal location for one of his two feature filmmaking debuts (The Pearl, which he co-directed, premiered recently at True/False). Boone immerses the viewer in the fields, barns and homes of the farm’s human and animal inhabitants. As discussed below, LaMarca spent much more time on the farm than originally planned, finding it necessary to fully immerse himself in the day-to-day experience of the strenuous grind. With […]

As part of the Atlanta-based film collective Fake Wood Wallpaper, Adam Pinney has accumulated credits as an actor, editor, cinematographer, camera operator, grip, producer and director on projects such as Joe Swanberg’s 24 Exposures and Alex Orr’s A Is for Alex. With his latest project, The Arbalest, which has its world premiere tonight in the narrative feature competition at SXSW, Pinney makes his feature debut as a writer-director with a distinct visual aesthetic. The Arbalest, which was selected for the 2015 IFP Narrative Lab, tells the story of Foster Kalt (Mike Brune), a famous and reclusive toy inventor, who reflects on his lifelong obsession with Sylvia Frank […]

Jesse Moss’ documentaries often take on heavy material, and his last film — 2014’s The Overnighters — was no exception. The experience of profiling pastor Jay Reinke — a North Dakota minister whose decision to open up his congregation to homeless laborers seeking oil field work placed him at odds with his flock — took a heavy toll on Moss. His new documentary The Bandit is a completely different kind of movie, an archival-based profile of Burt Reynolds and his good friend Hal Needham. Moss examines their complicated relationship through the making of 1977’s Needham-directed Smokey and the Bandit, a film still in regular circulation […]

An incident so horrific it could only be attributed to an otherworldly paranormal presence, the stabbing of a twelve-year-old girl by two of her friends in Waukesha, Wisconsin made national headlines in the spring of 2014. Lured into the woods, stabbed nineteen times and left for dead, the girl survived and her two assailants, also twelve years of age, were quickly apprehended. Claiming that they were carrying out the deadly attack in honor of the Slenderman, a fictional murderer whose mystique had been bolstered by rabid internet lore and perverse fascination, the girls’ reprehensible act was a unique case of the […]

Audiences are slowly growing accustomed to watching films on their phones — and even watching movies shot on phones — but what about projects made explicitly for phones? Today at Convergence at SXSW, in a session entitled “Cinematic Apocalypse: Storytelling for Smartphones,” audiences will get a sneak preview of the first segment of Jongsma + O’Neill‘s interactive documentary, EXIT: A Mobile Guide to the Post Apocalypse, which was designed to be experienced on a phone. Along with POV and Submarine Channel, Kel O’Neill, one half of the married award-winning Dutch-American filmmaking team of Jongsma + O’Neill, will present the first chapter of the project, A Kid-Friendly Apocalypse. This segment focuses on a Portland, Oregon-based […]

In November, 2014, Dan Schoenbrun threw down a provocative artistic challenge on Kickstarter. The former IFP-staffer, sometime Filmmaker writer, and current Film Partnerships lead at the crowdfunding platform conceived of an anthology film that would charge a stellar group of up-and-coming directors with adapting each other’s nocturnal visions. Each director would write down a dream and give it to Schoenbrun, who’d then assign it to another director. As you’ll read below, the pairings wound up being more natural and forced, with the intent being not a VHS-style horror anthology but rather a more diverse film unlocking all the meanings dreams, […]

Back in 2005, young filmmaker Linas Phillips paid homage to a cinematic hero by recording a cross-country pedestrian journey in Walking to Werner — the “Werner” being, of course, Werner Herzog. At the time, he told Filmmaker, “I remember Werner saying if there is a big decision in your life, it should be done on foot.” Over a decade later, Phillips’ career has ambled through a number of interesting digressions, including acting in Manson Family Vacation and this latest, a narrative feature about the strange relationship between two brothers, one mentally challenged. It’s premiering at SXSW, and below Phillips updates […]