6301 Results for “Open ”
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“I Didn’t Want the Movie To Fall Into the Category of Just Being a Film for Other Filmmakers”: Duncan Skiles Talks About Directing The Clovehitch Killer
Duncan Skiles’ new thriller The Clovehitch Killer is the kind of horror movie that gets under your skin and stays there, reverberating in the viewer’s head for hours, days, even weeks after it’s over. Its impact is all the more impressive given its low-key, understated quality. Skiles patiently, meticulously creates a mounting sense of dread without melodrama or explicit violence, relying instead on eerily stark, formal compositions and a career-best performance from Dylan McDermott. McDermott plays Don Burnside, a family man and active member of his community whose affable, slightly goofy façade masks a serious dark side. When Don’s teenage […]
by Jim Hemphill on Nov 14, 2018 -
“What We Really Seem To Be Documenting…Is A Concerted Shift Away From An America That Sees Itself As A Land Of Immigrants Towards Something Else”: Andrés Caballero And Sofian Khan On Their DOC NYC Premiering The Interpreters
With anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise globally, and with a U.S. president who champions a ban on all Muslims to this country, Andrés Caballero and Sofian Khan’s (IFP-supported) The Interpreters serves as a timely corrective, to say the least. Their up-close-and-personal doc follows three men from Iraq and Afghanistan (and one American sergeant fighting the byzantine U.S. bureaucracy on behalf of his Baghdadi friend) who served U.S. troops as interpreters — not “translators,” since their role as intermediaries went well beyond mere language — as they struggle to keep the faith and avoid death while waiting to gain asylum in […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 11, 2018 -
“There Had Never Been A Really Realistic Depiction of the Teenage Girl Experience As I Remembered It”: Director Susan Skoog Looks Back on Whatever
Susan Skoog’s underappreciated teen drama Whatever opens on a moonlit image of two lovers on a field of grass, he on top of her, in what appears to be flagrante delicto — but which is revealed shortly after to be a train run on an unsuspecting teenage girl. Disenchantment is the bedrock of Skoog’s unsparing debut, released by Sony Pictures Classics in 1998 but taking place in the early ’80s. Liza Weil — most famous as Paris Geller on Gilmore Girls — stars as Anna, a 17-year-old who loves listening to Chrissie Hynde, smoking Newports, partying and painting. She dreams […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Nov 10, 2018 -
“We Found That Securing Institutions And Private Funders Was More Viable After We Could Share The Breadth Of The Film In A Meaningful Way”: Hunter Robert Baker And Jordan Fein On Their DOC NYC-Premiering The Blessing
The Blessing, the latest from the Emmy Award-winning team of Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein, is the story of a Navajo coal miner and single dad as well as his teenage daughter, who navigate life on their reservation in northern Arizona. Other than Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside’s stealthy stunner América, I can’t think of another documentary I’ve seen this year in which the simplest of premises yields such an emotional powder keg. The film’s a nearly Shakespearean drama, one in which a deeply religious father is forced to choose between sacrilege (taking part in the destruction of his […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 9, 2018 -
“We See Documentary Film As An Inherently Collaborative Process”: Laura Green and Anna Moot-Levin On Their DOC NYC-Premiering The Providers
Laura Green and Anna Moot-Levin’s IFP-supported The Providers is a film I regrettably left off my must-see list at Full Frame, most likely because a doc that follows a doctor, a nurse practitioner and a physician assistant serving rural communities abandoned by our traditional (and traditionally broken) healthcare system sounded like something that might put this liberal urbanite to sleep. But in one of those lucky film fest coincidences, I ended up chatting with the doc’s co-director Laura Green on the ride back to the Raleigh-Durham airport, and mentioned I was returning to Santa Fe. Which is both a drive away […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 9, 2018 -
“The Film Brings Audiences Both The Joys And Pains Of Our Political System Via High School”: Alexandra Stergiou and Lexi Henigman On Their DOC NYC-Premiering The Candidates
If you spent the 2016 election season trying to wrap your head around the surreal circus that passed for political campaigning, just imagine actually participating in it while studying for exams. Such was the situation for the students of Townsend Harris High School in Queens, which since 1996 has included in its curriculum an as-close-to-real-life-as-possible Election Simulation. Fortunately, filmmakers Alexandra Stergiou and Lexi Henigman were there to capture it all. On one side is Russian-American Daniel, aka Trump, trying to focus on making America great again instead of grabbing women by the pussy. On the other, there’s Pakistani-American Misbah, aka […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 9, 2018 -
Wonder Women Directors at the 21st SCAD Savannah Film Festival
The 21st SCAD Savannah Film Festival (October 27 – November 3) featured a strikingly eclectic abundance of Specialty Series discussions and workshops this year. There was “In Conversation” (one with Barry Jenkins, another with Armie Hammer), a three-part Below the Line Panel Series (Casting, Costume Design and Production Design), and Animation Corner: Art in Motion. There was also the TV Sidebar (Starz’s Outlander was the focus, with creators and cast from the show in town — even a costume exhibit at the SCAD Museum of Art), and a Writers Guild of America-affiliated program (Writers on Writing: The Front Runner featured […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 6, 2018 -
“There Are Unlikely Protagonists Everywhere”: The 5th Docs To Watch Roundtable at the 21st SCAD Savannah Film Festival
Celebrating its fifth edition, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s Docs to Watch Roundtable is the number one reason I’ve been making the late October pilgrimage to Georgia’s charming city of (Spanish moss-draped) squares for the past few years. (That and the festival’s abundance of southern hospitality, of course. In addition to being the only fest I’ve ever been to that provides buffet-style breakfasts, lunches and dinners, guests are treated to some truly top-notch lodging. In my case, it was the lovely, Savannah River-adjacent Kimpton Brice Hotel, a mere five-minute walk from the fest’s Marshall House headquarters and the majority of […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 5, 2018 -
Twilight Hours: Shevaun Mizrahi on Her Elegiac Documentary, Distant Constellation
With Shevaun Mizrahi’s documentary Distant Constellation opening at NYC’s Metrograph today from Grasshopper Film, we’re unlocking from our print issue this feature with the director. It’s not news that nonfiction editing can be an attenuated process. Still, with footage so fully formed, I didn’t expect that Mizrahi would keep returning to Istanbul for three more years, logging more hours on the way to showing a nearly-locked cut at 2017’s True/False Film Festival, with her world premiere following later that year at Locarno. The additional time she took turned out to be crucial for capturing two additional strands that give the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 2, 2018 -
“Let Logic Steer the Ship”: Michael Simmonds on Shooting Halloween (2018)
In his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet wrote that he once asked fellow director Akira Kurosawa why he’d framed a shot in his period epic Ran in a particular way. Kurosawa replied that if he’d panned the camera an inch to the left he would’ve seen a Sony factory. Panning an inch to the right would’ve revealed an airport. I don’t know if Halloween cinematographer Michael Simmonds has read Lumet’s book, but after chatting with him I’m confident he would appreciate that anecdote. Simmonds, whose diverse credits range from the horror sequel Paranormal Activity 2 to the acclaimed documentary Project […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Oct 31, 2018
