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“In New York, You Create Your Own Family” | Lana Wilson, Look Into My Eyes
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Look Into My Eyes takes place in New York City. It was always a New York movie for me, even before the pandemic started, but the experience of being in New York City throughout the pandemic made me extra-committed to the setting. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 22, 2024 -
“Is There a Difference Between Theater Improv and Doing a Psychic Reading?”: Lana Wilson On Her Sundance-Premiering Look Into My Eyes
It was 2016, the day after the presidential election, when filmmaker Lana Wilson (Miss Americana, After Tiller, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields) was filming an omnibus film about the election night in Atlantic City, NJ. To her, the night was like living in a horror movie. It was when she was waiting for her ride back to New York that she noticed a sign that said, $5 Psychic Readings. “I was feeling depressed, sad, confused and really frightened of the future,” Wilson tells Filmmaker recently, before the Sundance premiere of her latest film, Look Into My Eyes. “Without even thinking, I […]
by Tomris Laffly on Jan 22, 2024 -
“The Good, Bad and Ugly of Organizing Against Amazon’”: Stephen Maing and Brett Story on their Sundance-debuting Union
Stephen Maing and Brett Story’s unsurprisingly riveting Union is the one Sundance selection most assuredly not coming to Prime Video anytime soon — or ever. (Nor I’m guessing will the doc’s producers Samantha Curley and Mars Verrone be receiving any Amazon Studios Producers Awards from the Sundance Institute. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bezos behemoth did try to bid for Union to then bury it.) As its title succinctly implies, the film follows a group of very brave, and admirably unrelenting, activist-workers in their fight to unionize a Staten Island warehouse known as JFK8 back in 2021. […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 21, 2024 -
Sundance 2024: Presence, A Real Pain
An experiment in shooting a movie entirely from a first-person POV, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence has conceptual precedents but no meaningful ones in terms of the camera’s weight and the operator’s resulting physical relationship to it. 1947’s Lady in the Lake tried nonstop subjectivity with a bulky 35mm camera; 2009’s Enter the Void eliminated the embodied camera in its second half of weightless drifting. More recently there’s Hardcore Henry, which strapped GoPros to its protagonist’s head for a bouncy embodiment of a stuntman’s hardest workday. In Presence, Soderbergh’s longtime practice of acting as his own cinematographer and operator takes on an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 21, 2024 -
“…The Relationship Between This Father and Daughter is Forever Changed”: India Donaldson on Her Sundance-Premiering Wilderness Drama, Good One
India Donaldson has been ready to make her narrative feature debut for a while now, with three short films under her belt already. But it was only after the pandemic hit and she moved in with her family for a few months that she found her story around family dynamics in isolation. So she poured that inspiration into Good One, a terrific slow-burn at this year’s Sundance Film Festival (US Dramatic Competition) that follows the 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) on a Catskills camping trip with her dad Chris (James Le Gros) and his longtime friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). As the […]
by Tomris Laffly on Jan 21, 2024 -
“It Was Essential to Offer the Cast Complete Freedom of Movement”: DP Mauro Pinheiro Jr. on Malu
Pedro Freire’s feature debut, Malu is a multigenerational family drama about an actress whose relationship with both mother and daughter are strained. Set in Rio de Janeiro, the film depicts the frayed familial fabric that sees the women at once caring for and offending one another. Mauro Pinheiro Jr. (Reaching for the Moon, Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures) served as the film’s cinematographer. Below, he explains how he fended off problems posed by inclement weather and why he favored a sparse setup that allowed the film’s performers maximum freedom. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2024 -
“It Was Necessary to Make Non-Obvious Cuts”: Editor Marilia Moraes on Malu
Malu is a mercurial actress living with her conservative mother in a Rio de Janeiro slum while trying to navigate her strained relationship with her own daughter in Pedro Freire’s multigenerational family drama, Malu. The film is the feature debut of director Pedro Freire. Serving as editor is Marilia Moraes, whose credits include the recent Medusa and Petra Costa’s Elena. Below, Moraes dives deep into her process and what the particularities of the film required in the editing room, including the need to construct its rhythms around the performers. See all responses to our annual Sundance editor questionnaire here. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2024 -
“My Main Idea Was To Work With Perspective”: DP Michał Dymek on A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg returns to Sundance with A Real Pain, the actor’s second directorial effort following his 2021 debut When You Finish Saving the World. Eisenberg acts alongside Succession sensation Kieran Culkin, embodying cousins who travel to Poland in order to honor the legacy of their deceased grandmother. Below, cinematographer Michał Dymek describes how he was brought on board the project, the influences he and Eisenberg referenced and the emotional weight of shooting at the Majdanek Concentration Camp. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2024 -
“The Visual Idea of a House Frozen in Time” | Pedro Freire, Malu
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? The main location in Malu is the protagonist’s house, where 90% of the film takes place. The script is based on my own mother’s life, and this set is inspired by the house where I lived with her during my adolescence. The production […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2024 -
“Operating Handheld for the Whole Film”: DP Matthew Ballard on Tendaberry
23-year-old Dakota (Kota Johan) finds herself unmoored in South Brooklyn after her boyfriend returns to Ukraine in order to tend to his ailing father in Tendaberry, the feature debut from writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson. As she navigates the city over the course of an entire year, she finds moments of tenderness and trouble, all while wondering when her lover will return to join her on the shores of Brighton Beach. Cinematographer Matthew Ballard discusses how he collaborated with Anderson to capture her vision on 16mm for Tendaberry, also Ballard’s first feature-length project. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2024
