Fall 2019
25 New Faces of Independent Film 2019
Click here to read this year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film list.
Features
They Came From Within: Bong Joon-ho on Parasite
“This is so metaphorical!” Ki-woo’s metatextual reaction to the unlikely gift of a stone from his friend Min early in Bong Joon- ho’s Palme d’Or–winning Parasite isn’t the film’s most startling moment, but it’s an early jolt that both sets and undermines viewer expectations. Ki-woo (wide-eyed Choi Woo-shik—Okja, Train to Busan) lives in an underground apartment with his underemployed family, including humbled but unvanquished father Ki-taek (Bong regular Song Kang-ho, unsurprisingly great) and scheming sister Ki-jung (Park So-dam, cynical and hilarious). When Ki-woo becomes a tutor for the daughter of a rich family, the action settles into that family’s stunning […]
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Outer Visions: Leo Goldsmith and Gregory Zinman on Serving as Ad Astra‘s Experimental Film Consultants
It’s a rare thing for scholars to be asked to serve as advisors on studio films of any size, no matter the topic. (Hell, we’re usually not even asked to authenticate representations of academia itself.) So, it came as a pleasant surprise indeed for Brooklyn-based scholar and curator Leo Goldsmith and Georgia Tech film and media professor Gregory Zinman when they were asked by director James Gray to serve as advisors on his latest film, Ad Astra, scheduled for a September release by 20th Century Fox. Said to be a moody, existential science fiction film (Zinman and Goldsmith have read […]
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Also Sprach Kubrick: Sayings, Maxims and Aphorisms of Chairman Stanley
It was 1966, a year into the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the MGM Studios in Borehamwood, northwest of London, when I suddenly realized I had been quoting some of Stanley Kubrick’s sayings over the preceding months. One of the props men had complained to me about the difficulty in buying something, and I replied, “Well, you know what Stanley says: ’In England, it is easier to sell something than to buy something.’” Up until then, I’d had an arsenal of quotes from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary (a work Kubrick much admired, see below—and right) and one […]
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Inside Out Planets: NASA’s Influence on Cinema’s Visions of Outer Space
In 1975, an interdisciplinary group of engineers, artists, physicists, architects and urban planners convened for 10 weeks at Stanford University and the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The group assembled to design complete and convincing systems for sustained life in outer space. Fred Scharmen—author of Space Settlements, a new book that considers the cultural impact of the 1975 Summer Study’s proposals—notes the most “influential outcomes” were the trippy paintings made to illustrate these ideas. These paintings, in watercolor, acrylic and gouache, depict bright bubbles of life and majestic rings—appearing like cornucopias in cutaway view—with tranquil landscapes and […]
Outer Visions: Leo Goldsmith and Gregory Zinman on Serving as Ad Astra‘s Experimental Film Consultants
Also Sprach Kubrick: Sayings, Maxims and Aphorisms of Chairman Stanley
Inside Out Planets: NASA’s Influence on Cinema’s Visions of Outer Space
Other articles
- Nostalgia For the Too-Well-Remembered ’90s
- The Soul that Remains: Paul Harrill on Light from Light
- I Say What I Mean
- Made For These Times: Ulrich Köhler on In My Room
- The Business Cycle: Anthony Kaufman On the Legacy of Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen’s Production Company Parts & Labor.
- The Forever War
- Raiders of the Lost Screens
- Creating Community Through Cinema: The Echo Park Film Center and MONO NO AWARE
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Trauma & Transformation: Alma Har’el on Her Shia LaBeouf Drama, Honey Boy
Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy is an emotional prism, generating moments that are warm, traumatic, unsettling and scarring. So, it’s no wonder that the process of constructing such an intimate and emotionally shattering film was equally grounded in feeling. Har’el’s narrative feature debut (her previous features are the documentaries Bombay Beach and LoveTrue) contains Shia LaBeouf’s most gripping performance to date and showcases the two collaborators’ ability to make art containing expressive power and emotional wisdom. In Honey Boy, also written by LaBeouf, we meet Otis (Lucas Hedges), a movie star who’s sent to rehab and forced to confront his childhood […]
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Emotional Exploration: Cinematographer Natasha Braier on Shooting Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy
Knowing that Alma Har’el worked in a fluid, in-the-moment fashion, and that dancing with the actors in the scene was key to the story, DP Natasha Braier started prep by going through the script and asking the director for each scene, “Describe the scene with a feeling.” During prep and while shooting, Braier always wanted to root the camera in the emotions of each scene. In her previous work on films like The Neon Demon and The Milk of Sorrow, Braier tapped into her ability to capture human experience with stylized camera work and expressive lighting. We discussed how she […]
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Aesthetic Confidences: On Andrzej Zulawski and Meeting Possession Screenwriter Frederic Tuten
In April 1980, actor Sam Neill and screenwriter Frederic Tuten were sitting next to each other on a flight from Paris to New York. The two were about to embark on the making of a film and had been spending time with its director in France. Tuten was new to screenwriting but had already picked up on the hierarchy of above-the-line talent and was amazed the producers had sprung for him to sit in first class with the lead actor. He offhandedly asked Neill, “Isn’t this whole film world just about money?” Neill corrected him, “It’s not about money, it’s […]
Trauma & Transformation: Alma Har’el on Her Shia LaBeouf Drama, Honey Boy
Emotional Exploration: Cinematographer Natasha Braier on Shooting Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy
Aesthetic Confidences: On Andrzej Zulawski and Meeting Possession Screenwriter Frederic Tuten
