A force to be reckoned with since his first short in 1987, queercore filmmaker Bruce LaBruce (who we interviewed last year regarding his latest short porn film) has worked consistently since then. His latest feature, The Misandrists, is right in keeping with his established interests. From the official synopsis: When an injured male leftist on the run discovers the remote stronghold of the Female Liberation Army — a radical feminist terrorist group whose mission is to usher in a female world order — one of the members takes pity on him and hides him in the basement. However, the man in […]
I’m a director with one feature film to my name, and I also work as an editor and colorist. About a year ago, I was doing some editing consultation on an early draft of a documentary. Before I gave the director notes, I asked, “What festivals are you looking to have this play in?” He was taken aback. For him, a film—at least this sort, conceptualized as an art film—should be a pure object of creation, and industry concerns should be taken into account only after post-production is completed. I’ve come to disagree. Considering the potential audience and distribution channels […]
As a singer, actress, writer, and director, Sylvia Chang has been at the forefront of Asian culture since the 1970s. She has worked with directors like King Hu, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To and Jia Zhangke, and directed several of her own features. Chang is the subject of a 15-movie retrospective at the Metrograph running May 18–27. Along with films she directed, including Murmur of the Heart and 20 30 40, the series includes Shanghai Blues; That Day, on the Beach; Mountains May Depart, and Office, a musical based on her stage play Design for Living. Chang spoke with Filmmaker Magazine after the New York […]
Directing episodic television can be one of the most challenging forms of filmmaking. A tricky balancing act is required by having to simultaneously meet the expectations of the audience, the demands of the network and showrunner, and the desires and opinions of actors and crew, who have been on the show for years — and all while providing a distinctive enough point of view so as to make one’s self essential to the process (and thus get asked back to direct more episodes). Few directors have managed to navigate the intersection between personal expression and mass entertainment as well as […]
CANNES – Given the news events of the last year, it’s no surprise that the deficit of women and people from ethnic, disabled, and LGBT backgrounds working within the film industry has been a focus at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. On a positive note, practical action has been a key theme here, with many female industry figures expressing a sigh of relief that change is slowly happening across the various sectors of the film industry. Still, this is not without considerable effort. To start the festival, an anti-sexual harassment hotline was put in place in partnership with the French […]
Among the markers of a great film—of a great work of art in general—is its ability to conjure itself up unannounced, repeatedly, in the light of neighboring films and artworks; it becomes a lens through which other work is viewed, a standard by which everything else is held, a shadow enlightening the world we now walk through. This is one way of briefly reiterating something I attempted to articulate in my third dispatch: Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Bookis great art, corroborated for me by its persistent presence in my consciousness during the last several days of movie watching—most notably (and […]
Los Angeles-based writer/director Joe Penna has made a name for himself in the YouTube world with his popular channel MysteryGuitarMan. Combining his passion for music and stop-motion animation, the channel, now over ten years old, boasts 2.8 million subscribers and over 400 million views. Videos such as “Guitar Impossible” have screened at the Guggenheim Museum. In addition to his many commercials for top brands, the native Brazilian gained further attention for his short films, including Instant Getaway, that was produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and Turning Point and was selected to play at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. […]
Speaking of soap operas: Jaime Rosales follows Farhadi’s plunge into the vernacular of Spanish culebrones with a complementary appropriation of melodrama in Petra, an achronological chronicle of one woman’s search for truth, history and her own identity. Starring Bárbara Lennie (who, funny enough, also appears in a significant supporting role in Everybody Knows), the movie intrigues from the outset, playfully opening with a title card announcing Chapter II, along with a concise summary of the key narrative information this chapter will provide (“How Petra enters Jaume’s world”), a strategy that each subsequent chapter also employs. At his characteristically unhurried tempo, […]
Filmworker, the title of Tony Zierra’s Cannes 2017-premiering portrait of Leon Vitali, is a term coined by the subject himself, probably still best known for his portrayal of Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon. But the former British TV star, who set aside his rising career to spend three decades as Stanley Kubrick’s behind-the scenes right-hand man (and more), seems to have never fallen out of love with the acting craft. Indeed, chatting with Kubrick’s actors’ coach/location scout/sound engineer/marketer — and current film restorer — one gets the sense that every role Kubrick tasked Vitali with was just that, a new […]
From Filmmaker‘s print issue archives comes this Fall, 2000 interview with director Asia Argento, who discusses her highly recommended and, today, even more vital feature debut Scarlet Diva with Travis Crawford. (Richard Kern did the original photos.) “Mixing humor and self-laceration, Tortoise and Nina Simone, Argento uses the tools of digital video to create a thoughtful aesthetic distance from her own semi-autobiographical lead character,” was our subhed for the piece, which we’re reposting today as the theatrical rerelease of the film opens at the Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn. One could be forgiven for approaching Scarlet Diva with a healthy degree of […]