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John Rosman
Set in Oregon, John Rosman’s debut feature New Life initially keeps its cards close to its chest. The opening shot of a bloodied, frantic woman looking for a place to hide implies someone dangerous is hot on her trail—but is she a victim or a wanted fugitive? Retrieving keys from the front steps of an empty house, the woman enters and finds an engagement ring that may or may not be hers. Within minutes, law enforcement arrives, and she’s back on the run, befriending anyone who will get her closer to the United States/Canadian border. A tale of two women—one […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Inhabiting the Role: Todd Haynes on May/December
Todd Haynes’s May December, which premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival and was snatched up by Netflix almost immediately, marks a return to the kind of expressive women’s drama for which the director is arguably most beloved. Think Far from Heaven (2002) or Carol (2015), two films about forbidden romance whose lush, stylized aesthetics both encourage nostalgia and destabilize easy emotional identification. As the title suggests, May December, too, concerns a taboo love affair—one whose throwback elements are anchored to the tabloid frenzies and true-crime obsessions of the 1990s. Written by Samy Burch, a casting director making her […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Sep 20, 2023 -
Kayla Abuda Galang
During the pandemic, Kayla Abuda Galang found herself considering making a short film. While her upbringing was split between San Diego and Houston, she’d studied in the Radio-Television-Film program at the University of Texas at Austin and decided to plant roots there after graduating in 2014. Galang took whatever odd jobs would pay the rent before embarking on a four-year stint as a wedding photographer. “Immersing myself in Texas wedding culture was such a fun detour in my life,” she chuckles. When COVID hit, Galang felt terribly homesick. Unable to see her large Filipino family in person and cooped up […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Holiday Misfits: Alexander Payne on The Holdovers
Before The Holdovers, director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti hadn’t worked together in nearly two decades. After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004, their Oscar-winning comedy Sideways went on to garner countless awards and generate profitable spinoffs—a Japanese remake, musical theater adaptation, film-branded bottles of pinot noir. During the 19 years since the film’s release, Payne and Giamatti attempted to team up on new projects, but none came to fruition until a screenplay by David Hemingson arrived on Payne’s desk a few years ago. Envisioning the script as something that could be revised and expanded upon […]
by Erik Luers on Sep 20, 2023 -
Sarah Friedland
Filmmaker and choreographer Sarah Friedland describes herself as “working at the intersection of moving images and moving bodies,” an apt encapsulation of an evolving artistic practice spanning experimental film, video installations and, now, features. Realized from 2017 to 2022, Friedland’s Movement Exercises Trilogy consists of three short films exploring the ways in which movement contextualized within specific settings encodes personal, social and political meanings. The first of the trilogy, Home Exercises, depicts older adults navigating the tasks and habits of daily living. Drills focuses on the choreographies of school and workplace preparedness exercises, referencing 1917 Boy Scouts drills as well […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Mackie Mallison
In short, experimental portraits of Asian American immigrant families, including his own, the mixed American Japanese filmmaker Mackie Mallison features conversations with older relatives conducted by their younger kin. In It Smells Like Springtime (2022), the subject is Chinese American jeweler Ada Chen—how her relationship to her parents and her work intertwine with rampant stereotypes she faces in the United States. With Live From the Clouds (2023), the focus is on the filmmaker’s Texas-based extended family and the long distance that separates them from their relatives in Japan. Incorporating home movies, animations, voiceovers and superimpositions, Mallison’s nonfiction work brings family […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Ben Brewer
“I’m not a big visual effects guy,” says Ben Brewer. “I just think of it as a democratizing tool. There’s no reason why we have to watch Star Wars—anyone with a laptop and access to YouTube can literally make Star Wars.” Or, in Brewer’s case, A Folded Ocean, which premiered at this year’s Sundance in the midnight shorts program. Ocean presents a couple who swoon around each other with an almost unbearably cloying closeness that goes from metaphorical to literal when they wake up one morning to find themselves fused at the arm. The two grow increasingly inseparable, a process […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Playing Politics: Developing the Best-Selling Board Game Shasn
I have made two feature documentaries in my home country of India. The second, While We Watched, came out on the same day as “Barbenheimer” and just finished a month-long run at the IFC Center in New York. The first one, An Insignificant Man, which I co-directed with Khushboo Ranka, ran in theaters across India for nine weeks. However, my most commercially successful project isn’t either of these—it’s a board game, Shasn (“Governance,” created by Zain Memon), that was born out of An Insignificant Man’s impact campaign and has been sold in more than 75 countries across the world today, […]
by Vinay Shukla on Sep 20, 2023 -
Faye Tsakas
Before the pandemic, Faye Tsakas worked for the distributor FilmRise and then the production company Passage Pictures. “I had a lot of loans coming out of school,” she explains of her pragmatically motivated choice to work in development, acquisitions and packaging. “I had a great time working on steady jobs that allowed me to learn about how the industry worked and to interact with filmmakers. I spent many years paying off loans and saving money and was sent to festivals in my acquisitions job—almost like a paid film school.” After she lost her job during the pandemic, Tsakas moved in […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Maegan Houang
“Everything I do is based in my personal experience, but I prefer viewing it through allegories,” Maegan Houang says of her general filmmaking ethos. “But hey, you’re talking to someone who’s watched The Godfather hundreds of times.” Houang watched that film and The Godfather Part II “every single day” growing up, but ultimately “only thought of film as an innocuous pastime.” So, when choosing a major at Wesleyan, Houang gravitated toward hard sciences and only considered studying film at her mother’s suggestion. Houang graduated in 2010 with degrees in Mathematical Economics and Film, then immediately enrolled in Wesleyan’s Film Studies […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023
