6303 Results for “Open ”
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Revolutionary Memories and Defiant Promises
Late Fame In 1895, Arthur Schnitzler wrote Late Fame, a satirical novella about an obscure civil servant who arrives home one day to find an earnest young visitor informing him that Wanderings, a slim volume he published 30 years ago, is now a cult hit among the youth. In an ironic twist, the book itself disappeared for 100 years, only to be now rediscovered. Late Fame was written for the literary magazine Die Zeit, which wanted the manuscript cut down; after being laid aside for over a century, it was first published in Germany in 2014. The NYRB Classics original […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 16, 2017 -
Beyond the Boundaries of Language
In recent memory, there’s been a never-ending deluge of bad news for the arts and humanities in the U.S.: government support, which is already low, may be cut entirely; universities, facing budget crises, have axed language and arts programs; prominent professors spend their time writing books defending the basic value of humanistic inquiry, while their pecuniary graduate students fight for poverty wages as adjuncts, and earn a little money on the side writing articles about their plight. In the midst of all this, I was struggling to put together a dissertation proposal — it was something on the history of […]
by Carmine Grimaldi on Jun 16, 2017 -
Making of the Murray Hustle
It might have seemed like an odd fit when I was brought in to help launch the new Jonathan B. Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the University of Missouri’s esteemed School of Journalism in 2015. If one were to describe my films, such as Kate Plays Christine or Actress, the word “journalistic” isn’t likely to come to mind. Yet there I was, in the hallowed halls of the world’s oldest journalism school, working with Stacey Woelfel, a 30-year veteran of the institution, to build a new program from scratch. We wanted to create what Woelfel calls the “pirate radio […]
by Robert Greene on Jun 16, 2017 -
Reactionary Wokeness
Near the beginning of Peter Watkins’s still-astounding 1971 fictional dystopian documentary Punishment Park, one of the African-American defendants, Lee Robert Brown, is hauled in handcuffs before a makeshift, extra-legal tribunal in the sweltering California desert, where he is instructed to defend his counter-cultural militancy. He says, in part: “You talk as if this is some great, civilized, nonviolent place. It ain’t. America is as psychotic as it is powerful and violence is the only goddamned thing that will command your attention.” These lines floated to the top of my head while sitting though James Mangold’s Logan, widely praised for its […]
by Nicholas Rombes on Jun 16, 2017 -
Spinning Out: Edgar Wright on Baby Driver
Writer and director Edgar Wright has long been a fan of mixing tones and genres in his movies, from his celebrated feature debut Shaun of the Dead and its unofficial companion pieces (Hot Fuzz and The World’s End) to the graphic novel adaptation Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. All of those movies were at least partially, if not primarily, comedies, and Wright’s latest film Baby Driver, which shares its title with a memoir by Jan Kerouac (Jack’s daughter), has plenty of verbal and visual laughs scattered throughout its narrative. This time, however, the laughs coexist with an emotional weight that’s […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jun 16, 2017 -
Pedagogical Praxis
George Bernard Shaw’s famous adage, “Those who do do, those who can’t, teach. He can do, does. He who cannot, teaches,” fails when it comes to film schools. Scratch the surface of most film school faculty lists, and you’ll find filmmakers who not only do but are also doing. Developing scripts, raising financing and shooting while on sabbatical, university-ensconced independent filmmakers have one foot in the ivory tower and one foot in the shape-shifting world that is today’s independent film production. Inevitably, then, they bring their hard-fought wisdom into the classroom, which means they must also grapple with one tough […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
All Day and a Night: Josh and Benny Safdie on Good Time
I’m in the Safdie brothers’ office in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, looking at a giant Japanese King of New York poster, and we’re talking about fired FBI director James Comey, whose awkward dinner with Donald Trump has just hit the news. “The guy is 6 foot, 8 inches,” Benny says. Or maybe it’s Josh. My tape recorder isn’t turned on yet, and the two talk rapid-fire, trading sentence fragments and out-exclaiming each other. “And he refused to play basketball with Obama! The one president who played basketball, Comey would be the tallest guy on the court, and he didn’t want […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Time Waits For No One: David Lowery on A Ghost Story
Most readers of this magazine will recognize David Lowery as the director of the breakout picture Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, a Malickian, modern-day Western containing a beautifully spare, elliptical romance between Casey Affleck’s Bob and Rooney Mara’s Ruth. More mainstream moviegoers will recall Lowery from last summer’s multiplex, where his fantasy drama Pete’s Dragon, a remake in name only, pulsed with both wide-eyed innocence and emotional heart — two qualities often lacking in blockbuster entertainment. But more perspicacious viewers will go back further and remember two earlier works. The first is Lowery’s micro-budget 2009 debut feature St. Nick, a tale […]
by Amy Seimetz on Jun 16, 2017 -
VR.edu
When I studied at the London Film School just over a decade ago, students originated all of our projects on 35 and 16mm film and cut them on Steenbecks and Avid Media Composer. What a difference a dozen years make: Now schools have moved beyond the digital video revolution and computer animation to whole new media and formats. Virtual, augmented and mixed reality are forming increasingly large components of university curricula, giving a shot of innovation to narrative filmmaking in the academy and bringing university computer science programs into the realm of traditional film schools. You might expect VR courses […]
by Randy Astle on Jun 16, 2017 -
Dispatches from San Francisco, Visions du Réel and Big Ears
San Francisco International Film Festival Celebrating its 60th edition, the San Francisco International Film Festival — now rebranded as the hashtag-friendly SFFILM Festival — impressed this first-timer not as a hoary institution, recumbent upon its laureled legacy, but as a festival keen to stake out vibrant new tangents, mindful of its city’s history (cinematic and otherwise) and full of surprises. Both those qualities were abundant in the closing night spectacle: The Green Fog, which celebrated San Francisco’s indelible place in a century of movies in an appropriately twisted manner. The festival commission brought filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 16, 2017
