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“Any Independent Film Is a Miracle These Days”: Alice Lowe on SXSW 2024 Premiere Timestalker
World premiering at this year’s SXSW, writer-director-star Alice Lowe’s sophomore feature Timestalker certainly feels like it’s been a long time coming. Arriving eight years after Prevenge, her 2016 debut that she shot and starred in just weeks before giving birth to her eldest daughter, Lowe’s latest was stalled for a slew of reasons—motherhood, COVID, involvement in other projects—but Timestalker’s extended development served to sharpen Lowe’s filmic instinct while shooting, resulting in an ambitious, blood-spattered time loop rom-com more aesthetically and thematically assured than its 22-day shoot may have initially allowed for. Lowe stars as Agnes, an ordinary woman who we […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 8, 2024 -
The Sadean Horror of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: Artist and Filmmaker Charles de Agustin on Mission Drift
The precarious and conflicted economics of non-profits — both material and libidinal — are the subject of artist and filmmaker Charles de Agustin‘s short narrative essay film Mission Drift, which, over the past year, has screened at festivals, art spaces and microcinemas in conjunction with panel discussions that are integral to the piece itself. (Writes D’Augustin on his website, “The medium of Mission Drift is described as ‘video and discussion:’ the work may only be publicly presented if it is followed by a robust audience discussion on the issues at hand, structured in consultation with the artist if he is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2024 -
Los Angeles Festival of Movies (LAFM) Announces Inaugural Lineup for April 4-7, 2024
Co-founded by Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall, the inaugural edition of the Los Angeles Festival of Movies is slated to take place this April 4 through 7 in venues across east Los Angeles. Today, the festival announced its inaugural lineup, including selections from former 25 New Faces of Film Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (recently interviewed by Jordan Cronk about their new film, Dream Team) and Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan. Below, find the full line-up with descriptions from the festival’s press release. Official Selection Dream Team, dir. Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn Gasoline Rainbow, dir. Bill Ross IV & […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 7, 2024 -
“A Frankenstein Set of Lenses”: DP Matthew Libatique on Maestro
25 years ago, Pi—a $70,000 indie about an obsessive mathematician shot on 16mm black and white reversal stock—put cinematographer Matthew Libatique on the map. In the intervening quarter century, Libatique has earned three Academy Award nominations and shot multiple films for Spike Lee, Jon Favreau, Joel Schumacher and Darren Aronofsky. He helped inaugurate the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and dipped into the D.C. sandbox with Birds of Prey. He’s shot horror movies, westerns, sci-fi flicks, war dramas, biopics and whatever genre mother! falls into. But what Matthew Libatique hasn’t done since Pi is shoot a film in black […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 6, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: Antony Crook’s SXSW-Premiering Mogwai Doc, If the Stars Had a Sound
The Glasgow-based “post rock” band Mogwai is no stranger to cinema, having scored numerous films and TV shows, from the original French version of Les Revenants to Douglas Gordon and Phillippe Pareno’s experimental doc, Zidane, to, most recently, the Apple TV+ show Black Bird. And now, after a 25 year career that has included 10 studio albums, the band is the subject of its own documentary, Antony Crook’s If the Stars Had a Sound,” which premieres March 12 at SXSW. Band member Stuart Braithwaite says in a press release: “We’re incredibly excited for people to see Antony’s film If the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2024 -
Women in the Wilderness: How Nat Geo’s Queens Aims to Close the Gender Gap in Natural History Filmmaking
When National Geographic’s Janet Han Vissering and Wildstar Films’s Vanessa Berlowitz got the idea to make Queens, a six-part natural history series about female animals made by an all-woman production crew, they knew it would be a challenge. Only something like five percent of wildlife filmmakers are women, a number far short of the 20 to 30 percent average across the entertainment industry overall. They didn’t know how hard it would be, though. “On the camera side, before Queens there were probably about five women who’d had the opportunity to get to the ‘premium wildlife’ level of work,” Berlowitz explains. “There […]
by Marah Eakin on Mar 6, 2024 -
Watch: Apple-Produced Takashi Miike Film Shot on iPhone 15 Pro
In what is a refreshing — at least for us at Filmmaker — changeup from the usual sorts of films that get the iPhone demo treatment, Apple has released a new 19-minute short, Midnight, directed by Takashi Miike. It’s no Audition or Ichi the Killer, naturally, but his adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s manga is a lot of fun. There’s also an accompanying short behind-the-scenes video, below, that demonstrates the use of iPhone modes like Action and Cinematic — the former’s handheld stabilization and the latter’s rack focus — as well as, most impressively, the use of the phone’s LIDAR scanner […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2024 -
Chicken & Egg Pictures Awards $400,000 Total to Ten 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab Grantees
Chicken & Egg Pictures, the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting women and gender-expansive filmmakers with funding and mentorship, today announced its 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab grantees. The organization is granting $40,000 each to ten feature documentary film projects, directed or co-directed by first- or second-time directors. Funds are targeted for production, and each director will also receive year-long mentorship. From today’s press release: The 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab films find families reimagining their histories, legacies, generational grief, and intimate end of life journeys such as in Ashley O’Shay’s Southmont Drive (Working Title), Gabriela Díaz Arp’s Matitinó, and Emma Francis-Snyder’s Anatomy of a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 5, 2024 -
“Feeling Vulnerable is a Good Thing”: Hugo De Sousa, Back To One, Episode 281
As an actor, Hugo De Sousa had breakout leading roles in We Used to Know Each Other, Mister Limbo, and Everything in The End. I was introduced to his work as an actor/filmmaker, with the celebrated shorts he made in collaboration with Frank Mosley—The Event and Good Condition. On this episode he talks extensively about the making of those films, and his latest, which might be of particular, cathartic interest to listeners of this podcast, the absurdist short Je Ne Suis Pas Une Star De Cinéma. Plus he discusses the importance of feeling “out of balance in front of the […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 5, 2024 -
“A Film Can Be a Spark, and What Comes After It Is Where the Magic Is”: Elizabeth Nichols on Her True/False-Debuting Flying Lessons
Debuting at True/False (followed by First Look), Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons is a beautiful ode to a New York City Lower East Side artist as well as to the larger “dying breed” that once roamed the streets of Alphabet City, performing in its now extinct clubs. Importantly, it’s also a call to end rampant gentrification and a love story between director and character all rolled into one. The drama began, rather unhappily, with an eviction notice after NYC real estate owner/convicted fraudster Steve Croman bought the building Nichols was living in as a rent-stabilized tenant. Within months the “Bernie Madoff of landlords” had unleashed […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 1, 2024
