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Nate Dorr & Nathan Kensinger
As climate change’s effects grow in potency, documentaries about their impending wrath multiply. And while most of these nonfiction works are well-meaning but artistically lacking issue docs, a few aim to educate and engage the viewer. The short films of Nate Dorr and Nathan Kensinger fit that bill, offering documentaries that put a piece of land’s past in conversation with its present, while knowing that its future can’t be guaranteed. Sharing a passion for photographing hidden spaces in New York City, the two filmmakers randomly met over 15 years ago in the Freedom Tunnel, a dilapidated enclave located underneath Riverside […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Andrew Norman Wilson
One of experimental cinema’s foremost wordsmiths, Andrew Norman Wilson has brought a unique sense of narrative to the world of video art, new media and installation. For more than a decade, the California-born artist has continually foregrounded storytelling in ways that suggest a future beyond the gallery. With In the Air Tonight, a 2021 Sundance shorts selection that reimagines an apocryphal origin story behind Phil Collins’s 1980s synth-pop hit, and his forthcoming first feature, Impersonator, about a Hollywood street performer who drifts into the fantasy life of their invented persona, Wilson seems set to enter a new stage in his career. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Meg Smaker
Meg Smaker traces the motivation for Untitled Terrorist Rehabilitation Film, currently in post, to three events. The first was 9/11, when she worked as a firefighter: “I loved firefighting, and thought I’d always be one, and then 9/11 happened. I saw my firehouse go from a place of love and support to a place of hatred, bigotry and fear. And nothing that was being presented on mainstream media answered any of the questions generated from that day.” Wanting to better understand, Smaker travelled to Afghanistan six months later “and was immediately humbled by my own ignorance of the world. Everything […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Out in the World: The Vital Role of the Social Impact Producer
Often I read the news and feel jaded about what I find there, desensitized to very real issues. Then, as a viewer, I’ll watch a film, or see a moving play or artwork, and feel the urge to do something—to learn more, to do my part. As a filmmaker, have you ever developed the concept for a film, or been in the middle of production, and thought more specifically about the change your film could spark in the world? Have you ever watched and thought to yourself, “What can I do?” Answering these questions with concrete initiatives that go beyond […]
by Cecilia R. Mejia on Oct 11, 2021 -
The COVID Challenge: Arthouses Adjust to a Reconfigured Landscape
In the Heights, Black Widow, Respect and Candyman—not typical indie-film fare, but because of the pressures of the ongoing pandemic on theatrical moviegoing, these are just some of the films arthouses have booked over the past several months. Granted, the supply of new available films was massively down, and theaters have been desperate to get audiences back into seats, but COVID-related shifts in arthouse exhibition have been significant, myriad and potentially long-lasting. And none of it is good for indie filmmakers. For example, here’s something you probably don’t want to hear from your neighborhood indie venue: “We’re seriously considering playing […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Oct 11, 2021 -
Faye Ruiz
During March 2020, Faye Ruiz was finishing her last semester at the University of Arizona. As COVID began to ravage the world, Ruiz was still on the hook for completing her senior thesis, The Lights Are On, No One’s Home, a 10-minute short that follows a trans woman (played by Ruiz) who returns to her hometown after running away years before to find that everything she once loved has eerily disappeared. “Everything was super uncertain, and I had to finish the film, coloring and sound design without access to the school’s equipment,” says Ruiz. Despite the strain of a global […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
North Star: Nina Lorez Collins on Her Mother Kathleen Collins’s Life and Legacy
“It is all about an urge, a powerful and overwhelming urge, to fulfill myself, to fulfill this life that is inside me, to fulfill it in every way, leaving nothing untapped. That is what it is all about: the excesses, the anxiety, the restlessness, the pain, carrying around in me this irrepressible need to fulfill myself in every way possible.”—Kathleen Collins If I were to attempt to choose one word to sum up Kathleen Collins’s work it would be interiority. The idea of leaving nothing untapped or laying it all bare is prevalent across her plays, screenplays, short stories and […]
by Tayler Montague on Oct 11, 2021 -
Breaking Bodies: Julia Ducournau on Titane
Following her breakout film, the high school cannibal romp Raw (2016), filmmaker Julia Ducournau doubles down on her predilections for freely reconstructed human flesh. The Palme d’Or–winning Titane strays even further from traditional narrative logic, emerging as a baroque investigation of the power of bodies to morph in response to the desires and violence of both people and machines. Taking its title from the metal plate installed in a young girl’s head after her father (Bertrand Bonello, in a fun bit of casting) crashes their car amid her aggressive fury, it is, yes, the movie where a woman fucks a […]
by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli on Oct 11, 2021 -
Stanley Kubrick’s “Manhattan Project”: How Two Experimental Filmmakers Contributed to 2001: A Space Odyssey
It was December 1964, and Stanley Kubrick had a problem: No one wanted his new movie. The 36-year-old director had spent months writing a treatment for a science fiction film titled Journey Beyond the Stars with renowned novelist Arthur C. Clarke. When he started to pitch it, however, he found that no movie company wanted to produce it, with only MGM showing a vague interest. Considering his near legendary status nowadays, it may come as a surprise to learn that in the early 1960s, despite his growing reputation, Kubrick did not yet have movie moguls at his beck and call. […]
by Simone Odino on Oct 11, 2021 -
Environmental Storytelling
In August 2021, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a new report on the global state of the environment, highlighting the shrinkage of glaciers, warming of oceans, massive forest loss, extreme heat, devastating drought and more. While the report is crushing, it is also fuel for action. Indeed, the BBC’s climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, suggested that 2021 could be the year for finally making climate change a top priority, citing the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in early November as just one landmark event that could help consolidate action. For filmmakers teaching in universities, the […]
by Holly Willis on Oct 11, 2021
