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Tina Satter
The language in Tina Satter’s Is This a Room is quotidian, banal. One sample exchange: “Do you have any pets?” “I do. I have two pets.” “Because you’ve been gone for a while, so do we need to maybe let them out and use the bathroom and stuff like that?” But as structured and placed within a conceptual frame by Satter, the dialogue—directly taken from two FBI transcripts of agents interviewing whistleblower Reality Winner at her home, as well as a phone call from Winner to her sister on a recorded jailhouse line—surgically reveals gendered power dynamics as well as […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Jordan Strafer
A nearly wordless short designed for both gallery and theatrical viewing, Jordan Strafer’s PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER is set aboard a private jet flying from London to Miami. Onboard are a stewardess and three passengers: a young woman in a pink dress, a severely sunburned middle-aged man and, laying across a pull-out seat, a sickly patient in a hospital gown, intubated as he goes in and out of consciousness. What follows is a frequently beguiling, uniquely humorous experimental excursion 30,000 feet above ground that includes unsettling makeup effects, mannequins, homicides carried out in first-person POV, a fatal plane crash and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Antonio Marziale
A three-person, one-set short that dazzles within that setup, Antonio Marziale’s Starfuckers opens with an unnamed young man (Antonio Marziale) weeping and closes with the same image reframed as coming from a place of empowerment. In between, he arrives at a ritzy house in the LA hills and performs an act of hired degradation for a member of the showbiz elite (Jonathan Slavin). Showering, the unnamed young man admits an accomplice (Cole Doman) through the bathroom window and, one drugged drink later, the tied-up exec wakes up to their show. The first young man performs in drag alongside his accomplice, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Georden West
The spirit of Boston’s oldest gay bar, the now-shuttered Playland, is summoned, as though via seance, in the debut feature of artist and filmmaker Georden West. In their ambitious, nearly uncategorizable Playland, now in post-production, West creates a series of uncanny tableaux and interactions in precise 4:3 compositions—trancelike moments among the bar’s cooks, waiters and bartenders as well as drag performers—that slide across decades, from the late 1930s to the mid-’90s, building narrative along the way. Bits of archival footage of the bar and its surrounding Combat Zone neighborhood are woven throughout, and the film’s vintage soundtrack would thrill the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Alex Morelli
In 2015, Alex Morelli drove through Ely, Nevada, for the first time as part of a larger western road trip. “I’d been researching the history of the west and the extractive economies that have sustained some of these really small, isolated communities,” he recalls. Ely had gone from stagecoach town to copper mining boom and bust before the late 1980s, when a maximum security prison facility was built there, becoming the area’s primary employer. After passing through, Morelli “couldn’t get Ely out of my head” and, with grant money, continued making trips there. When Nevada decided to build an execution […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Michele Mansoor
Michele Mansoor began freelancing full-time for casting director Jennifer Venditti’s company JV8 Inc. after college, scouting for A24 productions like the Safdies’ Good Time and Uncut Gems and HBO’s Euphoria. While casting for the title role of Yann Demange’s White Boy Rick, Mansoor returned to Columbus, Ohio and was introduced to Chrissy Brown, a woman whose 15-year-old son, Gage, would’ve proven perfect for the role—had he not been incarcerated for felonious assault with a firearm. After serving his 18-month sentence, Gage would quickly return to prison for a similar offense and an additional four years of confinement. Although she was […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Jorge Sistos
Jorge Sistos was sitting in a New Jersey McDonald’s when inspiration struck for his most recent short, In Freedom, currently in post-production. While pursuing an MFA in directing at NYU (he obtained his degree in 2021), he regularly commuted to Manhattan from humble Garden State digs. After one of these NJ Transit bus rides, he was hankering for a midnight snack of Chicken McNuggets. As he ate, he noticed a middle-aged couple with two toddlers at a nearby table, engaging in a teary phone call in Spanish. As he eavesdropped, the details of their difficult situation became clear: They were […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Lucy Kerr
Growing up in Houston, Lucy Kerr remembers that “disciplinary systems were a big part” of her childhood. These included attending “a very difficult private school academically. Ballet was a part of that: I enjoyed the discipline and intensity of how it pushed my body, even at a young age, and having that form of expression, but how gendered it is, and how much suffering there is in the dancers, wore on me. That’s a big part of my work now: how our bodies are disciplined and conditioned on a daily basis.” That work includes her first feature, Family Portrait, which […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Darol Olu Kae
In a way, Hollywood was always within earshot of Darol Olu Kae’s home in Watts, Calif., but he didn’t consider filmmaking a possibility growing up. The road to such a career was shrouded from view, as was the integral role his hometown played in myriad Black arts movements, particularly free jazz—Watts being the home of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, or Ark, a non-traveling music ensemble, founded in 1961 by the late avant-garde jazz virtuoso Horace Tapscott (composer for the LA Rebellion films Passing Through and As Above, So Below, directed by Larry Clark). It would take leaving home and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022 -
Erin Johnson
In January 2021, video artist Erin Johnson and film editor Charlotte Prager began a residency at Surf Point, Maine, in a house built in 1971 for artist Beverly Hallam and art collector Mary-Leigh Smart. Johnson didn’t initially intend to use the space as subject matter for her work: “I was just planning on editing another project while I was there,” she recalls, “but was quickly drawn to the history of the house and the architecture itself.” Rifling through the residence, she found a collection of slide photos of the house, photographer unknown; only one actually shows people, in the form […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2022
