6300 Results for “Open ”
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“We Wanted to Satire Wealth and Philanthropy — It’s a Critique of Charity as a Mode of Thinking that Comes Almost Exclusively from a Place of Privilege”: Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt on Diamantino
A soccer star weaving through giant puppies on a stadium pitch clouded by cosmic cotton candy is the wildest and most memorable image from Gabriel Abrantes’s and Daniel Schmidt’s screwball satire, Diamantino, which opens its theatrical run in LA today. Debuting at Cannes in 2018, where it won both the Critics’ Week Grand Prize and the Palm Dog Jury Prize for best canine performance, the roving comedy weaves together a wacky plot with hyper-topical subjects like rising neo-facism, genetic modification and the refugee crisis. Named for its protagonist soccer stud loosely inspired by Christian Ronaldo, Diamantino begins with a fall […]
by Whitney Mallett on Jun 28, 2019 -
“A Generation of Artists Were Lost”: Roe Bressan and Jenni Olson on the Newly Restored Gay USA
Filmed over one continuous 1977 day at Pride parades across San Francisco, Chicago, New York, San Diego and other metropolises, Arthur Bressan Jr.’s Gay USA is a tapestry of anecdotes, embraces, misconceptions and confused onlookers. It not only captures the optimism and palpable ecstasy of the LGBT attendees of Pride ‘77, but uses the homophobic agenda of Anita Bryant in Dade County, Floridato provide political context as to why these happy men, women and non-binary folks galavanting along Castro Street and Greenwich Village still had very much at stake. Many of Bressan’s films outlined the political reality of being gay […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jun 25, 2019 -
“I Can Afford a Month of Editing Right Now”: Diana Peralta on De Lo Mio
While most independent films are birthed out of personal necessity, a time-crunch, and readily available locations, Diana Peralta’s De Lo Mio may represent a pinnacle of can-do gumption. Shot on location in the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic, Peralta’s debut feature uses her late grandmother’s home as its central location and its truer-than-fiction narrative—following her passing, two sisters return to their grandmother’s cozy property before it gets bulldozed and the land sold. Shot last fall but percolating in the director’s mind for years, De Lo Mio is as much about the sisters in front of the camera (performed by Sasha […]
by Erik Luers on Jun 25, 2019 -
“There’s Something to Be Said for Eliminating Variables and Keeping Things Simplistic”: DP Mike Gioulakis on the Doppelgängers of Us
In Jordan Peele’s Us, a middle class family returns home from a day at the beach to find themselves under siege by murderous doppelgängers clad in red jumpsuits and wielding scissors. Instead of leaning primarily on face replacements, compositing and other post production tricks, cinematographer Mike Gioulakis emphasized clever camera placement and the use of doubles to create the illusion of Lupita Nyong’o and her clan battling their alter egos. With Us hitting Blu-ray and other home entertainment platforms last week, Gioulakis walked Filmmaker through some of the film’s most memorable shots. Filmmaker: Since we spoke for It Follows, you’ve shot two M. Night […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Jun 24, 2019 -
Optimal Value
What’s the main reason to go to film school? You could say to broaden the mind, to learn about cinema history, to meet future collaborators. Those are all true, but at base, the chief reason is to learn a skill. Ideally, you exit your program (whether it’s undergrad or graduate) ready to enter the industry. Perhaps you won’t be doing what you expected when you first applied, but you also don’t want to emerge with no idea what’s next. That said, film school can be tough. There are countless ways to do it, and it can be hard to focus and […]
by Matt Prigge on Jun 19, 2019 -
Crisis of Representation: Why Independent Filmmakers Still Need Agents and Managers
“If you want to work in Hollywood, you must have representation,” says one industry veteran. That’s been a longstanding rule in the entertainment business for the past several decades. Despite the battle between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Hollywood’s big talent agencies over packaging fees, and the thousands of writers who subsequently fired their agents, and even amidst the plethora of new outlets and disruptive distribution technologies, independent filmmakers are still largely subject to the traditional forms of gatekeeping. (And directors haven’t had to fire their agents—at least, not yet.) So, that leaves emerging filmmakers still dependent on […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Jun 19, 2019 -
The Most Valuable Lessons: Filmmakers Remember Their Iconic Instructors
Teaching is a complex act, but most of us standing in front of students in film classrooms have never been taught to teach. Instead, we recall the teachers who impressed us, then try to repeat some part of that practice and hope for the best, often never quite realizing the impact we are in turn having on our own students. Here, three current faculty members recall iconic instructors from their college experience, and the lasting effect of key ideas and behaviors. Cauleen Smith on Lynn Hershman Leeson and Trinh T. Minh-ha Interdisciplinary artist Cauleen Smith earned a BA in creative […]
by Holly Willis on Jun 19, 2019 -
The Art of Listening: Discovering the Rhythms of a Picture Edit
I’ve had a lifelong love of music. I’m immersed in it most of the time, whether at home or on the street listening to headphones—I’m listening to Apple Music on shuffle play as I write this. I always hear the melody and instrumentation first, and can hear a song dozens of times before I even begin to notice the lyrics. I suppose this is why, as a film editor, I see film dailies first as image and second as dialogue being spoken. Image always trumps text for me. I’ll notice small movements in an actor’s face well before I hear […]
by Michael Taylor on Jun 19, 2019 -
Birth of The Son
Over the past two decades, the Dardenne brothers have cemented their status as socially conscious, ethically committed filmmakers; their attention to the underrepresented, working-class corners of Belgian society has opened their audience’s eyes to the complexity of these often-unseen lives. To read their diaries, which were published in two volumes in France in 2005 and 2015 and are now coming out in English this June and next June, is to understand how deeply their films are rooted in their reading and their determination to shape the chaos of real life into the moral arc of redemption. It is telling that […]
by Luc Dardenne on Jun 19, 2019 -
Mansion on the Hill: Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot on The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot, the creative team behind The Last Black Man in San Francisco, have the kind of backstory that’s the stuff of publicists’ dreams, a compact anecdote that grounds their feature debut. Both are native San Franciscans and met around age 10: Talbot had gotten into a fistfight, and Fails came onto the street just in time to help. The two became lifelong friends, a relationship that mutates into new form in their film. Fails (who cowrote the film’s story with director Talbot; the script’s cowriter is Rob Richert) stars as a version of himself: a lifelong […]
by Zach Mandinach on Jun 19, 2019
