6300 Results for “Open ”
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Merawi Gerima
Although he and his five siblings were raised by notable filmmakers Haile Gerima and Shirikiana Aina, Washington, D.C., native Merawi Gerima didn’t grow up dreaming of following in his parents’ footsteps. Much of what he knew about their work came via the unfiltered critical opinion of others. “My elementary school science teacher had known about my parents’ biggest project in the early ’90s, Sankofa,” Gerima recalls, “and I remember him telling me, ’Your father is a great man, but I hope he’s being careful because this type of film could create a lot of enemies for him. People may want […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Darcy McKinnon
“I might stretch the definition of ’new face,’” jokes Darcy McKinnon, “but I am new as a documentary producer.” Indeed, McKinnon’s first experience in film came more than 20 years ago when, out of college, she worked as an assistant editor in San Francisco. That led to coproducing the one-hour 2006 POV documentary, Maquilapolis, directed by Sergio De La Torre and Vicky Funari, about activist women factory workers on the border between Tijuana and the United States. The film is, says McKinnon, “responsible for a lot of the ways I want to practice, where social justice and art come together. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Victoria Rivera
“I have a particular interest in complicated, flawed protagonists who find themselves in moral quandaries,” says writer, director and producer Victoria Rivera, a New York–based filmmaker whose success with recent shorts is leading her to her largest project, a feature adventure on the open sea exploring gender dynamics as well as the corporate politics around shark hunting. Rivera was born and grew up in Colombia, where she debated whether to become a doctor or a filmmaker. “I shadowed some doctors, and they all said, ’Go into film,’” she says. She moved to New York, attended School of Visual Arts for […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Tayler Montague
Tayler Montague’s debut short film, In Sudden Darkness, about a young working-class family in the Bronx navigating the Northeast blackout of 2003, is—contrary to its bleak-sounding title—a portrait of profound love and joy. “I didn’t have a scary blackout experience,” says the native New Yorker, who experienced the blackout as a child. “I mean, it’s corny, right? But love is the core of everything in that household.” The lights go out, and when night hits and the community starts tripping on one another’s shoes in the dark, there’s comfort knowing everyone can be recognized just by the sound of their […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Iliana Sosa
For 20 years, Iliana Sosa’s grandfather Julián took a monthly trip from the Mexican city of Durango across the border to visit family in El Paso, Texas, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’d previously traveled to the United States as part of the Bracero program, started by the U.S. government in 1942 to contract Mexican farm workers to fill in during World War II’s labor shortage. “I grew up with an image of him coming every month with his cowboy hat,” Sosa recalls, but “didn’t really know him. This allowed me to get closer. Some of the best moments of my […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Julia Mellen
“I really fucking hated Kentucky and decided to get out of there as fast as possible,” says Julia Mellen of her upbringing. She’d never had a TV, let alone regular internet access, until enrolling in a new media class at School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), for which she had to buy a computer and quickly became “obsessed with how much internet culture there was I had been completely unaware of.” In 2015, she says, the curriculum focused on “the idea of being able to create your own identity separate from your corporeal form. I had missed that […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Isidore Bethel
Since his second feature credit as an editor on Laurent Bécue-Renard’s 2014 Of Men and War, a study of Iraq veterans in group therapy, Isidore Bethel has carved out a steady line of editorial work in nonfiction, including cutting features by two of this year’s 25 New Faces, Iliana Sosa and Daniel Hymanson. His father was a cartoonist, his mother a multimedium artist trained as a paper maker; based on their dispiriting experiences, both “always discouraged me from being an artist.” Their attitude was that the art life was “a career that really fucked us over. We got sold a […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
“Make a Documentary of What’s Happening in Front of You”: DP Phedon Papamichael on Shooting Aaron Sorkin’s Courtroom Drama, The Trial of the Chicago 7
After violence disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, eight defendants were arrested for conspiracy to incite a riot — an event dramatized in Aaron Sorkin’s new The Trial of the Chicago 7. They included the countercultural figures Abbie Hoffman (played in the film by Sasha Baron Cohen), Jerry Rubin (Jeremy Strong) and Tom Hayden (Eddie Redmayne). In The Trial of the Chicago 7, writer and director Sorkin recreates the chaos surrounding the six-month trial, mingling day-to-day testimony with flashbacks of protestors and police preparing for demonstrations in places like Grant Park. In addition to following the defendants, Sorkin […]
by Daniel Eagan on Oct 16, 2020 -
“One Thing I Learned From Michael Mann, You’ve Got to Have Rules”: Brooke Kennedy on The Good Fight
In the first episode of The Good Fight, a spinoff from and sequel to the acclaimed legal drama The Good Wife, liberal attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) watches Donald Trump’s inauguration in horror. In the premiere episode of the series’ most recent season (season four), Diane wakes up to find herself in an alternate reality in which Hillary Clinton won the presidency. Both episodes – and the 38 others that have aired to date – exhibit a satirical sense as sophisticated as it is original; series creators Robert and Michelle King consistently engage with issues related to race, sex, gender, […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020 -
“By Reconnecting Us To Our Humanity, I Believe Nostalgia Could Be the Very Thing That Saves Us”: Director Jenni Olson on Her Criterion Channel-Streaming Films
Like many cinephiles I know, I’ve found the Criterion Channel to be a sort of emotional life preserver during these anxiety-ridden times; while it’s nearly impossible to achieve a state of total calm, one can come close by revisiting old favorites and making new discoveries while browsing through the streaming service’s expertly curated selection. This month the programmers have given audiences a great gift by showcasing the work of Jenni Olson, a director who understands the restorative power of nostalgia and reflection better than any other – it’s a key component to her work, and one of many reasons why […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 16, 2020
