Watch the trailer for Pacifiction, the latest from Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra. It premiered at Cannes last year before screening at TIFF, NYFF, BFI London Film Festival and AFI Fest. The film stars Benoît Magimel, Marc Susini, Alexandre Melo, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Matahi Pambrun, Sergi López and Montse Triola. Pacifiction‘s official synopsis reads: “On the French Polynesian island of Tahiti, the High Commissioner of the Republic and French government official De Roller (Magimel) is a calculating man with flawless manners. His somewhat broad perception of his role brings him to navigate the high end ‘establishment’ as well as shady venues where […]
A hybrid collaboration between writer/director Alex Harvey (Walden Life in the Woods, The Last Ecstatic Days, I Am A Seagull) and the theater collective, Banana Bag & Bodice (aka Jason Craig and Jessica Jelliffe), Space//Space screens this weekend in New York City at Anthology Film Archives. Harvey has sent the teaser trailer, posted above, as well as the following notes about the film. It’s been ten years since Banana Bag & Bodice’s beloved experimental production, Space//Space made waves in the New York theater scene (“Waiting for Godot in space” raved the New York Times). Now the married performance artist duo who […]
Filmmaker‘s most recent print issue features our annual selection of below-the-line artists whose work has excited us through this Fall’s awards season. Linked below are profiles by A.E. Hunt, Vikram Murthi, Matt Mulcahey, Isaac Feldberg and Abbey Bender on the most impressive technical aspects of six recent films, which we highly recommend viewing. Editing: Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Paul Rogers, by A.E. Hunt Production Design: The Fabelmans‘ Rick Carter, by Vikram Murthi Cinematography: Bardo‘s Darius Khondji, by Matt Mulcahey Original Score: Women Talking‘s Hildur Guðnadóttir, by Isaac Feldberg Costume Design: The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, by Abbey […]
2022 was a quiet year for camera technology, thank goodness. The decade plus I’ve been covering camera breakthroughs on this website has been a rocket ride. So much velocity, so little time to stop, catch one’s breath, smell some roses. Ask yourself, who can any longer tell the difference between film and digital origination on the big screen? Be honest. No less than Roger Deakins declared film a dead issue half a dozen years ago. His latest, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, shot using Arri Alexa Mini LF (large format) and spherical Arri Signature Primes, is a loving paean to […]
What could be more heartless than selling abandoned babies? Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker asks just that, and against all odds, finds a way to understand how people could behave that way. It’s the Japanese writer-director’s first feature shot in South Korea, having most recently worked in France for his previous film La Vérité. Broker stars Song Kang-ho as Sang-hyeon, a tailor in debt to the mob, and Gang Dong-won as his younger business partner Dong-soo, an orphan. Using Dong-soo’s professional connection to a local church, the two begin covertly snatching babies from the building’s baby box, which people use to anonymously […]
As 2022 comes to a close, Filmmaker returns with our annual recap of the year’s most read posts. As I click through Google Analytics, this piece always becomes something of a revelation, a mixture of the predictable (our 25 New Faces list); the news-triggered (an old profile resurfacing on the director’s recent success, for example, or, more sadly, their passing); evergreen articles on filmmaking itself; and pieces for which strong content, aided by SEO and provocative headlines, meshed to attract an abnormally large slew of first-time readers. As in the past, the list is divided into two: the 10 most […]
If the Back To One podcast has one tradition, it is the yearly visit from its very first guest, the living patron saint of the working actor, Kevin Corrigan. This is his fifth time on the show (Ep. 1, Ep. 67, Ep. 133, Ep.185), and as you’ll hear, he still has a healthy supply of great stories, laughs, and inspiration to dish out. He talks about his recent stints on Law and Order: Organized Crime, City on a Hill, and the upcoming indie film Bang Bang; tells a hilarious story illustrating the ways he practices acting when not on a […]
A perk of living in New York is the arrival each autumn of the New York Film Festival, which this year marked a milestone, its 60th edition — kudos to The Film Society of Lincoln Center. I’ve long thought of NYFF as a sampler of what’s happening in world cinema, a box of fine chocolates à la Forrest Gump. New Yorkers attending NYFF are privileged to enjoy choice selections from Cannes, Venice, Berlin, even Sundance. Which is to say, if there are new winds blowing somewhere in Cinema, they will be felt at NYFF. This year, the drained-color look of […]
In Corsage, the latest feature from writer-director Marie Kreutzer, Elisabeth, or “Sissi” as she’s affectionately known, is tired of being Empress of Austria. She walks out of official ceremonies, refuses to eat at banquets and throws herself recklessly into horse riding and gymnastics. As played by Vicky Krieps, Elisabeth gains power by rejecting her duties. Krieps’s portrayal is a far cry from the Sissi played by Romy Schneider in a late-1950s trilogy of films, still perennial Christmas favorites on European TV. For that matter, Kreutzer’s mix of fact and fiction adds an intriguing layer of complexity to the biopic genre. […]
The abstract yet oppressive sensation of an anxiety attack is captured through intense corporeal movement in Waves, the latest from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Nat Gee. The film stars Lily Baldwin as a woman in the throes of an anxious episode, her oft-idyllic surroundings transformed into hostile environments. A well-manicured flower garden becomes a frightening, frenzied feast (and viny prison); gentle waves crashing upon a sandy shore morph into a violent assailant; a stroll in a verdant, tranquil park turns into an uneasy exercise in losing bodily autonomy. Yet as fascinated as Gee is in conveying the unsettling feeling of being consumed […]