The Editor's Blog

Contemplations and digressions from Filmmaker's Editor-in-Chief by Scott Macaulay

  • Almodovar’s Lockdown, J.G. Ballard’s World, Aphex Twin, Hal Willner and Spin-Off Podcasts: 4/8/2020 Links

    Are you looking for a trusted, socially-distanced source to provide you with semi-regular cultural recommendation links during this time of pandemic? Okay, well, I’m not really either. My inbox too is full of check-ins and missives from journalists and curators seeking to maintain a digital relationship by supplying Netflix watchlists and the like during this awful interregnum. So consider these posts as much an activity for me as you as I revive this column by highlighting a few things that may provide some degree of interest, empathy or wisdom. Some things to shift your attention away from the cable news…  Read more

    On Apr 8, 2020
    By on Apr 8, 2020 Columns
  • Filmmaker’s Spring, 2020 Issue Online and Un-Paywalled

    Filmmaker‘s Spring 2020 issue is now online, arriving in mailboxes, and at whatever newsstands and bookstores that are still open amidst the Coronavirus pandemic. And because so many of us are working from home, sheltering in place, or on some form of lockdown, we’ve released every article from the paywall and are also providing to all a link to a free PDF of the entire issue. As Managing Editor Vadim Rizov wrote in a tweet, the issue’s runlist is one organized around something of a now-phantom slate of films and topics. Going to press at the end of February, the calendar…  Read more

    On Mar 20, 2020
    By on Mar 20, 2020 Columns
  • Not (Really) a List: Recapping 2019 As Seen from the Pages of Filmmaker

    2019 will soon be the past, but once it was the future — a subject explored by Joanne McNeil in her Filmmaker print and online column, Speculations. She revisited films (The Running Man, Akira, Blade Runner) specifically set in 2019, assessing not just the accuracy of their future-dreaming but also the fantasies of progress their own eras entertained. McNeil listed various aspects of the present, including policy denial around climate change, that the films missed. But considering the last quarter century, who could have predicted that filmmaking — and film culture — would have landed where it is? While there’s…  Read more

    On Dec 27, 2019
    By on Dec 27, 2019 Columns
  • What’s Inside Filmmaker‘s Winter 2020 Issue, On Newsstands Now

    Filmmaker‘s Winter 2020 issue — our most beautiful issue yet — is now on newsstands (and selling out, we hear), as well as arriving in mailboxes. What’s in it? Our cover is Uncut Gems, with me interviewing Josh and Benny Safdie about their adrenaline-fueled Adam Sandler-starring film — an interview that goes into the details of shooting the fountain scene with Sander that we have used as our cover image. Director Anna Rose Holmer interviews Greta Gerwig about her Little Women; Aaron Hunt talks with Pedro Costa about 2020 release Vitalena Varela; Paul Dallas interviews Mati Diop about Atlantics, currently…  Read more

    On Dec 24, 2019
    By on Dec 24, 2019 Columns
  • Black Friday Sale — One-Year Print Subscriptions, 40% Off

    For our U.S. readers partaking in the shopping ritual known as Black Friday, Filmmaker is this weekend discounting our one-year print subscriptions 40%. One year — four issues — of Filmmaker is now only $10. And by subscribing you’ll also immediately receive our fully searchable and downloadable library of digital editions going back to 2007. In two weeks you’ll receive the our Winter, 2020 digital edition, and then your print subscription will begin with the Spring, 2020 issue. Filmmaker‘s print edition is a stylish, compelling read with a look and feel unlike any film magazine. Plus, our print issue includes…  Read more

    On Nov 29, 2019
    By on Nov 29, 2019 Columns
  • 48-Hour Flash Sale: Subscribe to Filmmaker at 50% Off!

    5/25/19 UPDATE: This flash sale is now over — that is, if you’d like to get our Summer issue, which is already at the printer. We’ll keep the coupon code alive for a while for stragglers who stumble on this post. Your subscription will start with our next issue. As we gear up to ship our Summer issue of Filmmaker to the printer, which includes our annual Film School guide, we’re offering a 48-hour flash sale that discounts our print edition by 50%. Get one year, four issues, as well as access to our print issue archive back to 2007,…  Read more

    On May 22, 2019
    By on May 22, 2019 Columns
  • Filmmaker‘s Top 20 Posts of 2018

    For Filmmaker‘s annual look at our top posts of the year, as determined by Google Analytics, we break the list into two: the top 10 posts of the year, and the top 10 2018 posts drawn from our archives. So, jumping right into it…. The Top 10 New Posts of 2018 D.P. Larkin Seiple Breaks Down Every Shot from Childish Gambino’s This is America. I’ll immodestly say that Matt Mulcahey’s Shutter Angles column presents the best DP interviews out there, and this one, hot on the heels of the Childish Gambino viral hit, topped our list of the best new…  Read more

    On Dec 27, 2018
    By on Dec 27, 2018 Columns
  • Remembering Chantal Akerman, 1950 – 2015

    Director Chantal Akerman died three years ago today, and I wrote the following remembrance in the Filmmaker newsletter just a few days later but never posted it online. I wrote it from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I arrive again today. So, it seems fitting to remember Akerman once again by finally posting it here. (Photo above, taken on an 1MP digital camera at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2001.) Here in Venice, on the small island of San Servolo, we were talking about Jeanne Dielman. Tom Quinn, one of the filmmakers attending the Biennale College Cinema, had included a…  Read more

    On Oct 5, 2018
    By on Oct 5, 2018 Columns
  • What Would You Like to See at Filmmaker in 2017?

    One of the challenges facing sites covering film and media these days is one of content overload and focus. As boundaries between fields start to blur, as television, gaming and virtual reality start grabbing cultural mindshare, there’s a question, for us, of where to devote the resources of our small staff and band of freelancers. Additionally, Filmmaker prides itself on being accessible to its readers, and that poses challenges too, with a large number of questions and comments arriving across multiple social platforms. So, to start off 2017, we’re asking for your anonymous feedback. Simply, what would you like to…  Read more

    On Jan 1, 2017
    By on Jan 1, 2017 Columns
  • Filmmaker Black Friday through Cyber Monday Sale: Subscriptions 50% Off!

    We tastefully waited until noon to post here our first-ever Filmmaker Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. (See coupon codes below.) It’s simple and straightforward: subscriptions, both print and digital, are 50% off. That means a print subscription is $9 and a digital subscription is only $5.00. Digital gets you a year of online access to not just the four print editions — which you can read online, through your browser, or which you can download as PDFs — but also all back issues up until 2007. It’s a huge resource. For $4 more, you get all of that and the print…  Read more

    On Nov 25, 2016
    By on Nov 25, 2016 Columns
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