6296 Results for “Open ”
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“I Knew Exactly How to Bring It to the Screen”: Marco Calvani on High Tide
Italian playwright Marco Calvani makes his feature film debut as a writer-director with High Tide, a Provincetown-set indie drama that centers on the need for communal tenderness after a heartbreak. Lourenço (Marco Pigossi, now Calvani’s husband) considers P-town a paradise. Having left his native Brazil years ago in order to live life as an out gay man (a fact he still conceals from his mother), the queer enclave provides ample community and connection for the handsome young man. However, recent events have made the locale feel more oppressive than he expected: his long-term boyfriend up and left without warning, visa […]
by Natalia Keogan on Oct 21, 2024 -
“A Throwback to Nancy Drew and Columbo”: Alice Maio Mackay on Carnage for Christmas
For her fifth feature, 20-year-old Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay gifts us Carnage for Christmas. A renegade force in the no-budget genre realm, her previous work has explored demonic cults, ancient parasites, vigilante vampires and Stephen King filtered through a uniquely queer lens. Maio Mackay’s latest features a supernatural, bloodlusting Santa Claus that small town residents have adopted as part of their folklore. The return of young adults for the holiday season awakens this mythologized entity, though it seems particularly drawn to Lola (newcomer Jeremy Moineau), a true crime podcast host who hates making the annual trek to her hometown. […]
by Natalia Keogan on Oct 18, 2024 -
Introducing Considerations, An Awards Season Newsletter
Earlier this week, Filmmaker launched a new newsletter, Considerations, by Tyler Coates. Following and handicapping the annual film industry awards races, Considerations will feature sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money and the spectacle. Subscribe here to receive it for free, and first, every Tuesday. — Editor The best way to begin this newsletter is with an introduction and a list of my bonafides. I was previously the awards editor at The Hollywood Reporter, where I’d been covering the Oscar and Emmy races since 2019. I’ve spent over a decade in the digital media content mines, having also […]
by Tyler Coates on Oct 17, 2024 -
“I’ve Learned Over the Years That If You Show Up with a Basketful of Ideas, It’s Almost Always Rewarded”: Cory Michael Smith, Back To One, Episode 313
“There are practical paths and intuitive paths with each character,” says Cory Michael Smith at the start of this episode, and it’s a recurring theme throughout. The talented actor was Riddler on the series Gotham, a standout in three Todd Haynes films, and now plays Chevy Chase in Saturday Night. On this episode he details the careful process of studying Chevy clips for months before diving into the script. He talks about the importance of “ridding myself of any hint of fraudulence,” why it’s so important for him to show up with lots of ideas, how being intentional with his […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 15, 2024 -
“I’ve Got My Finger on the Zeitgeist”: Matt Farley on Local Legends: Bloodbath
Several years ago on my birthday, I woke to a text from a friend: a link to “The Emily Poop Song”. For a minute and twenty-one seconds, I listened to what the album title described as “The Odd Man Who Sings About Poop” repeat my name over and over, often punctuated with the word “poop.” There were fifty songs on the album, all about different people and feces, but that turned out to be only a tiny portion of the odd man’s output—across several Spotify profiles, Matt Farley has written over 25,000 songs. While some are about our smelly bodily […]
by Emily Huse on Oct 15, 2024 -
DIY Baltimore: New/Next Film Festival 2024
“Another year, another New/Next” looks to become a certainty in Baltimore. After last year’s inaugural festival, it wasn’t known if New/Next Film Festival was a one-off event or if the Maryland Film Festival would return from hiatus. In 2024, both happened a couple months and a block apart in Station North, and both announced on their closing nights that they will be back for 2025. For the foreseeable future, Baltimore has two tentpole, unjuried independent film festivals; what is not certain is how they are going to interplay with each other as establishments, rather than events with question marks attached. […]
by Alex Lei on Oct 11, 2024 -
Register Now for Free Hundreds of Beavers Distribution Case Study
Next Thursday, October 17, over Zoom at 2:00 PM Eastern, Jon Reiss — a longtime Filmmaker contributor and author of the new and highly recommended (and distribution-focused) 8 Above Substack — and I will be hosting a distribution case study on DIY hit Hundreds of Beavers with producer Kurt Ravenwood. We’re going to investigate how the Hundreds of Beavers became a breakout success that grossed over $500K at the theatrical box office — more than tripling their production budget of $150K. Kurt will reveal how their team identified, mobilized and grew their audience, how they eventized their theatrical release and created […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 10, 2024 -
“There Is a Bombardment of Violent Images in Our Lives”: Director Pascal Plante on His High-Tech Serial Killer Drama Red Rooms
Real world inspirations and dark web folklore converge in Red Rooms, the third feature from Quebecois filmmaker Pascal Plante that has conjured much buzz since its U.S. theatrical release last month. Named after the fabled sinister backdrop of covertly circulated online snuff videos, the film dissects our culture’s obsession with gorey details. As the first day of a shocking murder trial unfolds in a Montreal courthouse, the devilishly striking Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariépy) is first in line to snag one of a handful of seats available to the public. The man on trial, bald and lanky Ludovic Chevalier (Maxwell McCabe-Lokos), is […]
by Natalia Keogan on Oct 9, 2024 -
“You Really Have To Let Go and Trust That Something Funny Will Happen”: Michael Urie, Back To One, Episode 312
Michael Urie is one of those mega-talented actors who seems to jump effortlessly from theater (like Torch Song, Spamalot, and, currently, the revival of Once Upon A Mattress) to television (like Ugly Betty, Younger, and, currently, Shrinking), with a genuine love for both. On this episode, he talks in-depth about his acting process with a humility and a humor that is infectious. He explains why he decided to always be off-book on day one, how he came to believe in himself as an actor after starting out wanting to be a director, tells an interesting story about the temptation to […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 8, 2024 -
Proud Boys, Bears and BDSM: Camden International Film Festival 2024
Given the jittery churn of U.S. election year media in a late-capitalist death spiral, it can help to look elsewhere for a parallel perspective on the rise of illiberal authoritarians and a mass public siege on the seat of national governance, a la the Jan. 6 insurrection, amid their downfall. If nothing else, what has happened in Brazil over the past several years offers a startling, even unreal reflection of post-MAGA America, with the presidency of right-wing blowhard and Trump wanna-be Jair Bolsonaro ascendent amid a corruption scandal that sent his competitor, leftist Workers Party candidate and former president Luiz […]
by Steve Dollar on Oct 7, 2024
