SXSW Features
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Five Questions with Welcome to the Machine Director Avi Zev Weider
The process of making your first documentary – overseeing all of the moving parts, researching and scheduling interviews, shaping raw footage into a compelling, complete whole – this is undeniably a daunting process. Now imagine doing the same while caring for newborn triplets. When filmmaker Avi Zev Weider and his wife turned to in-vitro fertilization after having trouble conceiving, they never expected triplets. But this is indeed what they got – three underweight infants who spent the first several months of their lives in the hospital’s high-tech neo-natal intensive care unit. Weider was already fascinated with the topic of humankind’s […]
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Five Questions with Beware of Mr. Baker Director Jay Bulger
Early in Beware of Mr. Baker, director Jay Bulger admits that he was initially shocked to discover that his subject, legendary rock and roll drummer Ginger Baker, was still alive. With a resume that includes stints with Cream, Blind Faith, and Public Image Ltd, and a reputation for drug-addled excess, Baker seems both a relic of a bygone era and a likely candidate for ‘rock and roll casualty’ status. And yet Bulger does track Baker down, finding him living the life of an ex-pat in South Africa. Baker has grown from a difficult, curmudgeon of a youth into an even […]
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5 Questions with Fat Kid Rules the World Director Matthew Lillard
For many of us children of the 90s, Matthew Lillard occupies a special place in our pop-culture hearts. He’s the emblem of a particular film movement, woven nostalgically into us like Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson were for those who came of age a decade earlier. He’s the star of Hackers, She’s All That, SLC Punk – the killer in Scream! And his reasoned, career-rejuvenating turn last year in Alexander Payne’s The Descendents reestablished him as a unique on-screen presence. So it’s interesting to find Lillard moving behind the camera at this juncture in his career. But somehow, Lillard’s first […]
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Five Questions with Pavilion Director Tim Sutton
Filmmaker has written about Pavilion before, whether to praise its beautiful website or to highlight an interesting merchandising strategy that director Tim Sutton discussed at last year’s IFP Narrative Labs. But what of the film itself – a meditative, ethereal blend of documentary and narrative, united around the theme of youth in transition. Indeed, Pavilion, which premieres tonight in SXSW’s Emerging Visions section, should speak for itself. The film almost feels like a National Geographic or Planet Earth-style glimpse into the secret lives of teenagers; into those quiet, unseen moments so difficult to capture – or for many of us […]
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Five Questions with Electrick Children Director Rebecca Thomas
Working from an uber-quotable central question – “pregnant from rock and roll?”- Electrick Children follows Rachel (Julia Garner), a young woman growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon household that eschews all forms of modern technology. When, after her fifteenth birthday, Rachel accidentally hears a cassette tape with rock music on it, and subsequently discovers that she’s immaculately pregnant, she puts two and two together and answers the question above with a resounding yes. The debut feature from director Rebecca Thomas, Electrick Children follows Rachel to Las Vegas, where she searches for the singer on the tape (who she assumes must […]
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Five Questions with Pilgrim Song Director Martha Stephens
A winding, ephemeral jaunt through the Appalachian backwoods, Pilgrim Song is so well-executed and carefully made that it almost appears effortless. The film follows James, a recently unemployed music teacher who decides to spend his first days of unemployment questing down Kentucky’s Sheltowee Trace Trail. Through a series of vignettes, director Martha Stephens gets at the psychological roots for James’ trek, roots which have as much to do with a desire to escape as with loftier transcendental ideals. In the film’s latter half, as James forms an unexpected bond with a single father he meets along the trail, Pilgrim Song […]
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FRANCINE AT THE BERLINALE
We made it to Berlin and back in one piece. Melanie and I were at the Berlinale for the world premiere of Francine, our first narrative feature starring Melissa Leo. We couldn’t have possibly predicted the response to the film, which has been overwhelmingly positive. Francine showed in the festival’s Forum section, and sold out all four of its screenings before we even premiered. Melissa made the trip out to Berlin, and we were fortunate enough to have had several lively and very engaged Q&A sessions. Seeing the film together for the first time with an audience, especially after a […]
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Five Questions with The Imposter Director Bart Layton
More and more often different mediums and genres of filmmaking are being meshed together and Bart Layton’s newest documentary The Imposter is no different. The film’s official synopsis declares, “Documentary meets Film Noir in this astonishing true story which has all the twists and turns of a great thriller.” But this is not just a hoax to get people into the theatre. Based on an extremely bizarre story of a young man who infiltrates a family by posing as their missing son, the film follows an intricate plot of testimonies that aim to recreate the story’s noir-ish tone. Just as […]
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BLOODY DISGUSTING FOUNDER BRAD MISKA ON SUNDANCE HORROR PIC “V/H/S”
“When we started Bloody Disgusting back in 2002, we were the only ones doing it daily,” says Bradley Miska about the origins of his all-horror site. Sites like Ain’t It Cool News, Dark Horizons and Jo Blo were around too, but as its name would suggest, Bloody Disgusting hammered a wooden stake in the burgeoning field of online horror coverage and now, 10 years later, it is reaping the rewards. Management company The Collective “bought into” Bloody Disgusting five years ago, says Miska, and today the co-owned website is just one part of a gory mini-empire that also includes a […]
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WRITER/DIRECTOR CRAIG ZOBEL ON “COMPLIANCE”
Following the adventures of two mismatched salesman hawking vanity recording deals for a small Southern recording label, Craig Zobel’s 2007 Sundance picture Great World of Sound is a beautifully crafted debut feature, emotionally rich and with a sagacious perspective on America’s escalating obsession with fame. And in the months following its release, the banter between the two men, and the hapless vocalists aiming for an America’s Got Talent-style brass ring by way of a cheaply-produced studio single, must have made the film seem like a comedy to those who missed its lacerating moral critique. That’s because, as Zobel notes below, […]
