In 2014 I shot a documentary in roughly three weeks. It took place exclusively in the small town of Government Camp, OR, the closest feeder village to the Mt. Hood ski resorts of Timberline, Mt Hood Meadows and Skibowl. I had cast 19-year old Sadie Ford as the lead character. She responded to a flyer I posted at the Govy Market searching for someone who ticked off my boxes: Sadie was a passionate snowboarder (not a pro), planning to live on the mountain full-time for the winter season, and was willing to let me follow her around with a camera. […]
Since Nancy Schwartzman’s filmography includes the short docs The Line, which explores sexual boundaries and consent, and xoxosms, a love story revolving around teens and tech, it’s obvious that the rape of a teenage girl by members of Ohio’s celebrated Steubenville High School football team back in 2012 would grab this director-producer-media-strategist’s attention. After all, the assault had been documented through Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and even cell phone recordings by the assailants, and it was subsequently brought to the world’s attention by a female crime blogger. Now, nearly seven years after the crime, Schwartzman takes a deeper look, revisiting […]
Hans Pool’s Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World follows the diehard band of brothers (yes, there are no citizen journo sisters featured) behind the online investigative outfit Bellingcat, founded by a shy Brit determined to unmask some of the media’s most notorious blockbuster stories. Whether that be through geo-location mapping, voice analysis, drone imagery, or even fact-checking legacy organizations like the NY Times (one of several outlets to report a staged car bombing as real), the international collective takes tools once the province of law enforcement and other paid “professionals” to separate fact from fiction in a very 21st century way. Filmmaker spoke with the […]
On the night of her 36th birthday, New York video game developer Nadia (played by the show’s co-creator Natasha Lyonne) stumbles out of a party in her honor and is killed by an oncoming car. Thus begins a cycle of “resets” in the new Netflix series Russian Doll, with each demise bringing Nadia right back to the same birthday party bathroom mirror on the same night. The Groundhog Day comparisons are unavoidable, yet as Russian Doll unfolds across its eight episodes it reveals layers of emotional complexity and existential angst that extend beyond that Bill Murray classic and its Christmas Carol-esque […]
For over 30 years the globetrotting Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann has been wowing audiences the world over. Born in Peru to Polish Jewish parents, Honigmann’s been honored with retrospectives at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and also at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where her latest work of cinematic nonfiction Buddy closed this year’s Doc Fortnight. A heart-soaring tearjerker, the doc is an exquisite portrait of the lives of six guide dogs and their owners. But because it’s a Heddy Honigmann film it inevitably transforms into a philosophical meditation — in this case, an exploration of the love affair […]
Michael Mando is best known for his captivating portrayal of “Nacho” Varga on the hit AMC series Better Call Saul. You might also know him from Orphan Black, Spider-man: Homecoming, or Far Cry 3. In his latest film, The Hummingbird Project, he plays the chief engineer of a massive high frequency trading operation opposite Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård. In this half hour he talks about his interest in the metaphysical aspects of the craft, his beginnings as a hungry but happy acting student, and how he doesn’t let fame get to his head but he’s open to the changes […]
With the “golden age” of documentary filmmaking still upon us, there’s no shortage of doc fests to attend throughout the year (especially around November, when it often feels like a nonfiction pileup). The Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, however, knows how to set itself apart from the pack. Besides now taking place in March (and thus not needing to fight with IDFA over eyeballs and premieres), CPH:DOX strives to be “the best festival in and for the world.” What this means in concrete terms is that, though CPH:DOX showcases everything from cinematic art pieces to true-crime thrillers, it’s forever rooted […]
Saturday night at the 16th annual Oxford Film Festival was prom—not an actual prom, but a sweet sixteen-themed awards ceremony complete with fried chicken and sangria, hosts in ballgowns and an electricity in the air where you felt the nostalgia of your own teenage dance. If you grew up in the south, like I did, your prom may not have felt anywhere as progressive as this one, and it wasn’t until I was standing in the packed auditorium of the awards that I realized I had mostly seen LGBTQ, minority-focused and movies with a female gaze at the festival, which […]
One of the great independent film discoveries of SXSW 2019 is a picture that is also one of the boldest artistic statements of year, Grace Glowicki’s Tito. The Canadian actor and director is known to Filmmaker readers as the female lead of 2016 25 New Face Ben Petrie’s Her Friend Adam, which I dubbed in these pages “a squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship.” Glowicki’s character’s response to her partner’s icky jealousy, I wrote, is one of “unrivaled power and blistering sexual humiliation, capped off by a loudly feigned orgasm that will erase in viewers any memory of […]
I was a paraprofessional (teacher’s assistant) at P256Q in Far Rockaway, Queens for 10 years working with at-risk youth. I loved my job! On Wednesdays, I would work half-days and go to Brooklyn College where I was studying film. Like clockwork every Wednesday as I was leaving, one of my eight-year-olds, Latina “Peanut” Bilbro, would ask me if I was “…going to make movies and be famous someday?” Reluctantly, I’d say yes, and she’d always reply with, “I believe you, Marryshow.” Years later, Latina was killed in a drive-by shooting. It was a week after her 18th birthday. She had […]