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The Editor’s Signature
Alex Saks remembers the process of producing Thoroughbreds, the dark suburban teen thriller written and directed by Cory Finley, as a whirlwind. At the time, Finley was a hot up-and-coming playwright making his first foray into filmmaking, and he didn’t have an established team of collaborators. With a limited window of actor availability, production launched shortly after Finley delivered a script, which meant there was a tight window to hire key crew. Among the most important decisions the team had to make was who would edit the movie. “[An editor] really is the department head on the movie, other than […]
by Max Cea on Sep 18, 2024 -
Carlos A.F. Lopez
Carlos A.F. Lopez distinctly remembers the “rainy, gross Seattle day” that forever changed his relationship to movies. “I was a goth 12-year-old, and my step-dad took me to see Seven,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘Oh, that movie made me feel awful!’ I said, ‘Me too, but in the best way.’” A lifelong Seattleite, the 42-year-old Lopez came of age in the “grunge era,” originally finding his artistic footing in that “tight-knit underground scene” as a music video director for friends’ bands. One of his proudest videos is for “Bong Life” by local act The Intelligence. Granted free rein to […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Tomi Faison
In 2020, Tomi Faison joined a Discord server created by her friend Joshua Citarella. “A bunch of us were super online during the pandemic,” recalls the Baltimore-based video artist and filmmaker. “Politics were on everyone’s mind, but it felt like there was a discursive gap.” So, participants formed a weekly book club to help guide their conversations, which inspired many to produce essays and artworks. The Do Not Research Substack was created as an online platform for these pieces, alongside other commissions, that probe the “emerging online subcultures, political trends and different phenomena” indicative of our current moment. “It very […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
Subtle Inconsistencies: Filmmakers and Generative AI in 2024
In Orhan Pamuk’s novel The Black Book, there’s a story about a mannequin maker and his underground workshop. The craftsman believes that after the introduction of cinema, people began to lose their natural gestures and now simply imitate the movements and behaviors of actors they see on the big screen. To preserve natural and native mannerisms, he undertakes an immense archival project: He makes mannequins of people performing small gestures in great detail. I’m curious what the craftsman would do faced with generative AI. AI film festivals and competitions are growing in popularity. Last May, the second annual Runway AI […]
by Deniz Tortum on Sep 18, 2024 -
Clementine Narcisse
Clementine Narcisse, a senior at NYC’s School of Visual Arts, winces when she realizes that I recognize her from one of her recent TikToks. “I forget that when you put stuff on the internet it can go viral,” she laughs about the video, which pokes fun at nonmonogamy. “Hopefully, I’ll be known for my films and not my dumbass TikToks.” The 21-year-old can rest assured that her current output—completed as requirements for her SVA degree—distinguish her as a rising talent most “content creators” couldn’t dream of aspiring to. Her passion, vision and voice are discernable, remarkable for someone who helmed […]
by Emily Huse on Sep 18, 2024 -
“The Presence of the Moments While Performing Was, I Think, Something I Was Just Starved for as a Person”: Booger Star Grace Glowicki, Back To One, Episode 309
The mega-talented Canadian multi-hyphenate Grace Glowicki gives an incredible performance in Mary Dauterman’s debut feature Booger. On this episode, she reveals why she was interested in the project before even opening the script, and how she could just tell Dauterman was going to be the kind of director that would give her the support she needs. She talks about her current focus on examining issues dealing with authority, her love of bodily fluids in film, her struggle with emotional scenes, how directing herself as an actor actually helped her acting career, differences between the Canadian and American indie film scene, […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Sep 17, 2024 -
FILM FEST KNOX Announces American Regional Film Competition Selections for Second Edition
Following its inaugural edition last year, Knoxville, Tennessee’s FILM FEST KNOX returns for its second year from November 14 to 17. Here are the five films announced for this year’s American Regional Cinema Competition, the winner of which will receive an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run in Regal Entertainment’s cinemas. From the press release: The directors of the competition films—Vera Brunner-Sung, Tracie Laymon, Nicholas Colia, Brandon Colvin, and Kelsey Taylor—will be in attendance, along with additional cast and crew, who will introduce the films, participate in Q&As, and discuss the current state and future of regional cinema. Collectively, these filmmakers have screened […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 17, 2024 -
“The Budgetary Challenges of Getting a Dead Squirrel Puppet”: DP Sam Davis on Dìdi
In the opening scene of Dìdi, the titular 13-year-old and his friends film themselves blowing up a mailbox and making a run for it while laughing hysterically. It perfectly encapsulates director Sean Wang’s view of adolescence as “the worst version of yourself, having the best time of your life.” Set in 2008 in Wang’s hometown of Fremont, California, the coming-of-age story follows a Taiwanese American teen during his final summer before high school. Though not strictly autobiographical, the film was inspired by Wang’s own adolescence and the making of it was awash in familiarity. The main character’s bedroom scenes were […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Sep 16, 2024 -
TIFF 2024: The Gesuidouz, Sad Jokes, The Future
A standard festival story: I had plans to see a particular film at the end of TIFF 2024 day one, but my schedule had to be hastily rearranged, I had time to kill and thought I might as well see a movie I was kind of curious about. So there I sat at the P&I screening of Kenichi Ugana’s Midnight Madness world premiere The Gesuidouz, sandwiched between two independent theater bookers having a catch-up. The man on my left started reeling off every anime he’d programmed for the last two months and would be showing for the foreseeable future; the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 13, 2024 -
“We Ascribe this Cuteness to Older Women”: Sarah Friedland on Familiar Touch
Depicting aging and diminishing mental acuity, with increasing candor about same, essentially has become its own subgenre—the drama of descent or disappearance. Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch feels like something different, eschewing the conventions of linear decline to stay rooted in the present-tense bodily experience of its protagonist: Ruth Goldman, played by a galvanizing Kathleen Chalfant. Beyond the subjective design of the filmmaking—comprising not just what we hear, but how we understand the premise of any given scene—this is a catalyzing collaboration between Chalfant, storied veteran of both stage (Wit) and screen, and Friedland, a student of choreography who sought out […]
by Nicolas Rapold on Sep 13, 2024
