Spring 2022
O, Vengeance! — Robert Eggers on His Bloody Viking Epic, The Northman
Soft-spoken but direct in his goals, Robert Eggers is dedicated to precise historical accuracy—even though the filmmaking process can prove painful. The director’s previous two films, the 19th century-set The Lighthouse and the 17th century horror film The Witch, were released by A24 to critical acclaim. Now, Eggers travels further back in time for his largest production yet, The Northman, a bloody 10th century Viking epic that’s equally brutal and poetic. In the opening minute, young Amleth (Oscar Novak)—son of King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke) and Queen Gudrún (Nicole Kidman)—is horrified to witness his mother kidnapped and his noble father slain […]
Features
Portal to Portal: Jane Schoenbrun on We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
The central promotional image for We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is of a young girl, covered in glow-in-the-dark paint, holding up a googly eye to her face as she barrels toward a laptop camera. This is Casey: She is a kid, and she is on the internet and she is in her bedroom, alone. The film takes its name from its own invented World’s Fair Challenge, an internet myth that causes something dark to alter within its participants. Sources vary on what exactly happens: Some people appear to be sucked into their computers, some turn to plastic, some […]
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How to Deliver Your Film to a Festival (2022 Edition)
In 2018, I wrote a version of this article1 that treated the exhibition dominance of Digital Cinema Packages (DCP) as a historic certainty. Technology had advanced enough where the cost and/or ability to create a DCP were no longer considered a burden for independent filmmakers. As always with historic certainty, history happened: The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the widespread adoption of virtual film festivals. Separately, the call for justice and equality led to the widespread adoption of accessibility features for films. These concurrent developments, combined with the decline of the theatrical market and technological obsolescence, have created an environment that can […]
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Kiss Me Before You Wake Up: An Excerpt From Michael Almereyda’s Book, Tesla: All My Dreams Are True
Tesla: All My Dreams Are True, forthcoming from OR Books, is a jigsawed account of my attempts at conjuring a movie about Nikola Tesla over the past 40 years, tracking questions and clues about the elusive inventor’s life and legacy. The following excerpt is one of the least self-effacing of the 25 chapters, in which the author shamelessly confides early experiences as a screenwriter and director while Tesla’s name is hardly mentioned. This is in keeping with one of the book’s epigraphs, an injunction from Derek Jarman: “As the film falls apart, gather up your mistakes and treasure them.” See shadow puppet plays and imagine […]
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Goodbye to the 14-Hour Day: The Entertainment Industry’s Shifting Work/Life Balance
“[I]t’s as if our whole society is burned out.”—The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 20, 2022 During the ongoing “Great Resignation,” tens of millions of Americans—including those in the film industry—have quit their jobs. But the employment shifts in the entertainment business have as much to do with people leaving their work as with reassessing the ways in which they work. After months of pandemic-mandated pauses and soul-searching, phrases such as “work/life balance” and “self-care”—previously anathema to a culture of all-hours dealmaking and work—have finally arrived. If, as one executive says, “14-hour workdays, sleep deprivation and, too often, unhealthy meals” used […]
How to Deliver Your Film to a Festival (2022 Edition)
Kiss Me Before You Wake Up: An Excerpt From Michael Almereyda’s Book, Tesla: All My Dreams Are True
Other articles
- Words with Friends: On Writing Accountability Partnerships
- 2020-22: Cinema Year Zero or, My COVID “Movie Journal” (So Far)
- Truly Micro: Pete Ohs and Tzvi Friedman on Their Ultra-Low-Budget Features, Jethica and Man
- Stage Craft
- Tequila Sunrise: On the Location Shooting of Dos Estaciones
- Bigger Budgets: Inflation and Crew Shortages Slam Independent Film
- Revolutionary Song: Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman on Their Afrofuturist Musical, Neptune Frost
- Editor’s Letter
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Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis
In 1968, Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm planned to run an advertisement in a science fiction magazine with a list of authors announcing their opposition to the Vietnam War. But when they reached out to fellow members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to add their names, Merril and Wilhelm were shocked. There were significant numbers of vehement pro-war authors in the community, and they also wished to share their views with the science fiction-reading public. When the advertisement ran in Galaxy Science Fiction, it covered two full pages. On the right, the names of authors including Ursula K. […]
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Event Horizon: Gaspar Noe on His Devastating End-of-Life Drama, Vortex
In 2012, after months in Buenos Aires helping care for his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother, Gaspar Noé traveled to Cannes and saw Michael Haneke’s Amour, about a husband dealing with his wife’s stroke. “Oh my god, I cried watching that movie,” he says. “Even if that movie had nothing to do with my personal life, it was about someone who needs to die, and at that time we were considering how my mother could die peacefully.” After the festival, Noé returned to Argentina; his mother died a few weeks later. When the Palme d’Or–winning, and quite brutal, Amour went on to international […]
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Simple Machines: The Inspiring Teaching of Experimental Animator Jodie Mack
“Find the note, and then deviate,” urges experimental animator Jodie Mack. The colorfully clad artist is a third of the way through her antic presentation to the November 2021 Film Friends gathering hosted by the Echo Park Film Center. Now in its second year, the monthly online series this go-around is focused on “simple machines” for filmmaking. Mack has been cheerfully showing some of her own creations, like a bicycle-driven zoetrope, but speedily moves on to her love for singing. “My voice is a simple machine!” she rhapsodizes before breaking into a wide-mouthed croon, one or two notes above the […]
Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis
Event Horizon: Gaspar Noe on His Devastating End-of-Life Drama, Vortex
Simple Machines: The Inspiring Teaching of Experimental Animator Jodie Mack
