Featured
“We Were Together 24 Hours a Day for Six Weeks”: Bill and Turner Ross on Gasoline Rainbow
Gasoline Rainbow
Gasoline Rainbow, the seventh feature by Bill and Turner Ross, marks a return to a world of young people familiar from the brothers’s early efforts 45365 (2009) and Tchoupitoulas (2012), which centered, respectively, on residents of Sydney, Ohio and New Orleans, Louisiana. Like those formative works, the duo’s latest is uniquely attuned to adolescent emotions and the rhythms of small town America—except with a broadened perspective and formal command afforded by 15 years of working in a variety of modes and milieus. The film follows five high schoolers from the fictional town of Wiley, Oregon who take to the open road for one last adventure before deciding between college and getting a real job. But what begins as a carefree road… Read more
Jeonju 2024: Cinema Projects Past and Future
Direct Action
It’s not necessarily that, in a pathetic version of Henry Hill’s childhood desire to be a gangster, I’ve “always wanted to attend a pitch forum.” But I’ve admittedly been curious to see how this particular part of the festival-film apparatus works and never had ready access; impelled by both that and ties of friendship, I went on my third day at this year’s Jeonju International Film Festival to the Jeonju Cinema Project pitching panel. Fellow Filmmaker writer and pal Blake Williams was one of the seven projects—four Korean, three international, with one finalist selected from each category—selected to pitch at the Next Edition section of this year’s iteration of Jeonju’s initiative, which is similar in aspects to the Venice Biennale… Read more
“This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024
Fertile Life
Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia. “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused on resisting institutional complicity with the genocide in Gaza,” Prismatic Ground founder and programmer Inney Prakash tells Filmmaker. “For a while,… Read more
The American Pavilion Announces 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase
2023 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase winners
The American Pavilion announced today the 36 short films selected for its 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, sponsored this year by the non-profit Gold House. From the press release: The 2024 showcase features 36 official selection films in four showcases – Student Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker LGBTQ+ films, and an Alumni Showcase. The 2024 selections include International films from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sevap/Mitzvah), China (A Roadside Banquet), Panama (Ojue), Colombia (Bogotá Story), the United Kingdom (Under the Blue), Mexico (Balam), and Ukraine (Ukrainians in Exile). Female directors are again well represented with more than half of the films directed or co-directed by women. A few of the esteemed artists who contributed to this year’s films include two-time… Read more
“It’s About the Energy You Bring to the Life of Your Movie, Not Just About the Movie Itself”: Al Warren on Dogleg’s Six-Year Journey
Dogleg
“I love the feeling of the room in a packed house watching a good movie,” says writer, director and actor Al Warren on the phone from Los Angeles. “I want to model my career on that. It’s become a priority for how I approach my work. How will it be shown to an audience in-person? When I see a friend who has put their soul into the making and completion of their movie and then they don’t really have any plans on how they want to show it, I am confused.” At this moment, when the future of independent film distribution has more brick walls and question marks surrounding it than ever before, thinking outside the box is not just a… Read more
AI, UHD and 35mm: Arbelos Films’ David Marriott on the Present and Future of Film Restoration
The Rubber Gun
Launching in 2017 with a reissue of The Last Movie, Arbelos Films grew out of co-founders’ David Marriott, Dennis Bartok, Craig Rogers and Ei Toshinari’s experiences working at Cinelicious Pics. Since then, their slate of reissues have included Sátántangó, whose restoration opened up a relationship with the Hungarian National Film Archive that’s led to further Hungarian films being put out by the company, including Son of the White Mare and Twilight. In addition to Arbelos, Marriott has now started a second company with Jonathan Doyle, Canadian International Pictures, specifically focused on his native country’s cinema. Invited to the Jeonju International Film Festival to present three of those titles—1965’s Winter Kept Us Warm, 1977’s The Rubber Gun and 1984’s Hookers on… Read more
