6300 Results for “Open ”
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Commodity Fetishism
The visual exquisiteness of Peter Strickland’s films has sometimes led to them being regarded as precious bon-bons—laced with strychnine—that favor style over substance. It’s an argument that applies no more to his self-financed feature debut Katalin Varga (2009), an unsentimental neo-Gothic rape revenge drama, than to his harrowing giallo homage Berberian Sound Studio (2012) or his depiction of an inverse Domme/sub relationship in The Duke of Burgundy (2014). Each of these movies is a penetrating psychological study of a character struggling to survive victimhood and the unfair hand she or he has been dealt. If you don’t sympathize with Katalin […]
by Graham Fuller on Dec 10, 2019 -
Economy of the Arcane: Pedro Costa on Vitalina Varela
Pedro Costa will not separate films from how they are made. We cannot escape that “how” from what we are seeing on screen, so we must make films the hard way. It is not enough for us to get them made: We must know our technicians closely, see that they are compensated fairly, ensure that our project is optimized for our tools and that those tools only operate at their zenith. Ease, Costa warns, is the sure sign of a “trap,” that, if succumbed to, will expose one’s work to “bullshit,” a word he does not use lightly. If we […]
by A.E. Hunt on Dec 10, 2019 -
Disposessions
Mati Diop conjures films that can feel like half-remembered dreams. Blending documentary and fantasy, they are both uncannily lucid in their sensory detail and strangely hazy in their fragmented and elliptical narratives. Like most people, I first encountered Diop as an actress in Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum. Back in 2008, at the urging of her friend Grégoire Colin, Diop had reluctantly auditioned for the role. The experience working with Denis was transformative. She was only three months into her filmmaking studies at Le Fresnoy, but she left. That year also marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of […]
by Paul Dallas on Dec 10, 2019 -
Parlays and Teasers
I first learned of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems—a comedy/drama built around the self-delusions, self-destructions and unbridled compulsions of a midtown Manhattan diamond dealer—back in 2011. The brothers had just completed their first feature as a directing duo, Daddy Longlegs (Josh previously directed 2008’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed), and shared a 161-page early draft. Much of the ingenious plotting of their new film was missing, but the character of that dealer, Howard Ratner, screamed out. Indelibly portrayed by Adam Sandler eight years later, Howard is a perpetual motion machine of mishap, whose schemes spiral more and more painfully […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Where Do I Go From Here?
I’ve had depression described to me as an obsession with the past, anxiety as a fixation on the future. In my experience with both, this has proven to be accurate. With my filmmaking, I feel in control, but when it comes to my own life and my influence over my mental health, often feel powerless. When framing a shot, there is a desire to capture a moment in time—emphasizing the particular light, the diegetic sounds, perhaps a slight breeze. This process is not unlike attempting to ground myself through meditative mindfulness: noticing my surroundings in detail, trying not to let […]
by Sophy Romvari on Dec 10, 2019 -
When the Streaming’s Over: The Fight to Save Vulcan Video
“A producer buddy once said to me, ’You go to New York and Los Angeles to make movies, but you go to Austin to actually watch movies.’ That’s always rung true to me.” So avers Jacob Knight, general manager of Vulcan Video in Austin, a brick-and-mortar video rental shop that’s helped fuel cinephilia in Texas’s capital for more than 30 years. With an estimated 83,000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray and an additional 7,000 on VHS, Vulcan would’ve ranked as a world-class video store in any city during any era. But as streaming services continue to proliferate and rental shops […]
by Eric Allen Hatch on Dec 10, 2019 -
Self Reflection in Theater Two
Over the past year, various reckonings—from continued collective and individual action around #metoo to protests against institutions accepting donations from the Sackler family, Warren B. Kanders and oil giants like BP—that media and arts institutions have gone through have brought the weaponization of cultural capital via art-world philanthropy onto the front pages of newspapers. Meanwhile, in the U.S. documentary film field, the way we’re talking about who holds power and how it’s dispensed has remained narrowly focused. Film festivals have jumped into this fray with public forums, panels and talks at which emboldened filmmakers and a new crop of festival […]
by Abby Sun on Dec 10, 2019 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to Filmmaker’s final issue of 2019, which continues something of a new tradition: our Sound and Visionaries section, where we spotlight six below-the-line artists in the awards conversation whose work particularly impressed us. And, accompanying these profiles are three short essays, all by writers new to the print magazine—Mark Asch, Tim Grierson and Beatrice Loayza—that look at 2019 in film through the psychic currents and generational anxieties it mined. There’s a lot elsewhere. On the cover is Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, a wild adrenaline rush of a movie whose major-league ambition is especially exciting for me as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Hits & Misses 2019: Surveying the Success of the Sundance Film Festival’s Theatrical Releases
The times, they keep a-changin’. In its immediate aftermath, the story out of Sundance 2019 was its bounteous acquisition market and record-setting sales numbers—from New Line’s $15 million purchase of Blinded by the Light to Amazon Studios’ $27 million splurge on Late Night and Brittany Runs a Marathon. By the summer, a different narrative began to emerge. While these top acquisition titles earned millions of dollars at the box office, they all still under-performed in theatrical release. Then, Amazon Studios’ veteran head of theatrical distribution Bob Berney left the company, a departure that potentially signaled shifting priorities at what had […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Dec 10, 2019 -
“The Studios Don’t Really Make Movies Like This… We’re Like Dinosaurs”: DP Phedon Papamichael on Shooting Ford v Ferrari
Based on the real-life friendship between Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby, Ford v Ferrari unfolds deeply within the racing culture of the mid-1960s. Egged on by future Chrysler head Lee Iacocca, Henry Ford commits to an expensive attempt to defeat the Ferrari racing team at the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Shelby, an engineer and former racer, works with Miles to develop and test the GT40. Ford v Ferrari is the fifth collaboration between director James Mangold and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael. Christian Bale stars as Miles and Matt Damon as Carroll Shelby. Other performers include Tracy Letts (Henry […]
by Daniel Eagan on Dec 10, 2019
