SXSW Features
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Five Questions with Medora Directors Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart
Andrew Cohn and Davy Rothbart have been friends since childhood, when they used to shoot hoops together in their hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then, Rothbart has become a contributor to This American Life and an acclaimed writer of short fiction and personal essays, and also had his (Manti Te’o-esque) tale of a phone romance with someone who turned out to be a guy adapted into the 2009 film Easier with Practice. Rothbart and Cohn collaborated a few years ago on FOUND: People Find Stuff. Now It’s a Show, the off-Broadway show based on the magazine Rothbart started. Now they […]
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Five Questions with Elena Director Petra Costa
In the astounding and lyrical Elena, Petra Costa charts the journey of her charismatic, troubled older sister from their youth in Brazil to their year abroad in New York, where Elena is consumed by her pursuit of an acting career. Juggling found footage, voiceovers, interviews, and visual metaphors with effortless aplomb, Elena maintains the utmost intimacy despite the far-reaching chronology and geography of its subject. Elena is a love letter to her lost soul of a sister, and Costa’s gaze is as honest in its examination as its reverence. In fitting fashion, Costa recorded her responses to Filmmaker’s questions, with […]
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Five Questions with 12 O’Clock Boys Director Lotfy Nathan
Sometimes a story is too compelling not to tell, and that certainly was the case when first-time filmmaker Lotfy Nathan came across the 12 O’Clock Boys — a dirt bike street gang which terrorizes the police, who are forbidden to chase them — while a student in Baltimore. Immersing himself in the world of the riders, Nathan found a protagonist for his documentary in the precocious Pug, a 13-year-old self-professed “man” whose dearest dream is to become a member of the gang. Part coming-of-age movie, part gripping, real-life action film, Nathan’s debut — which went through the IFP Documentary Labs […]
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Five Questions with Some Girl(s) Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and Producer Patty West
In the battle of the sexes, there has been perhaps no more controversial warrior than the playwright, screenwriter and director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men). Since the mid-90s, LaBute has made a name for himself by writing movies that are truly, madly, deeply cynical. Adapted by LaBute from his own stage play and directed by Party Girl helmer Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Some Girl(s) stars Adam Brody as a soon-to-be-married writer who takes a cross-country trip to revisit ghosts of girlfriends past. With an all-star cast and a no-holds-barred script, it’s sure to leave people arguing in the lobby […]
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Five Questions with These Birds Walk Directors Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq
Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq are among a handful of directors selected for Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” in 2012 who are taking their debut features to this year’s SXSW Film Festival (alongside Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye’s Our Nixon, Ornana’s euphonia and Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher). Mullick and Tariq’s These Birds Walk, an alumni of the IFP Documentary Labs, is a moving and lyrical portrait of a home for young runaway boys and street children in Karachi, Pakistan, run by the humanitarian Abdul Sattar Edhi and his Edhi Foundation. The beautifully shot film (lensed by Mullick, a former photographer) was picked up by Oscilloscope prior to its […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
