6296 Results for “Open ”
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Masterclasses at Qumra 2024 by Leos Carax, Claire Denis and More
Launched ten years ago by the Doha Film Institute, Qumra is an industry convention held annually in Qatar’s capital city of Doha. Through panels, workshops, screenings and masterclasses, Qumra brings together a cross-section of producers, festival programmers and journalists in an effort, according to organizers, to “provide mentorship, nurturing, and hands-on development for filmmakers from Qatar and around the world.” This year’s edition, which ran from March 1 to 6, arrived at a particularly fraught moment for the Middle East with Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. After cancelling last November’s Ajyal Film Festival in solidarity with Palestine, the DFI, which […]
by Jordan Cronk on Mar 15, 2024 -
“I Don’t Feel Comfortable Making Cinema That Gazes From Afar”: Tatiana Huezo on The Echo
Located within the Mexican municipality of Chignahuapan in the state of Puebla, the rural village of El Eco acts as a microcosm for various stages of life and the oft-small moments that herald them in filmmaker Tatiana Huezo’s documentary of the same name. The Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker weaves together intimate scenes among three local families, exploring themes of gender, labor and generational shifts in attitude amid a sprawling and bucolic—yet unpredictably volatile—stretch of Mexico’s highlands. The Echo is Huezo’s fifth feature, marking her return to nonfiction storytelling after helming her 2021 debut narrative film Prayers for the Stolen. With this transition, […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 14, 2024 -
Back To One, Episode 282, Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion in 4 Parts star Anastasia Olowin On the 10-Year Journey to Bring the SXSW Hit to the Screen
The Brooklyn-based actor Anastasia Olowin stars in Shaun Seneviratne’s Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion in 4 Parts, which just had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. She has such a command of the screen and brings so much life to her character, it’s hard to believe this is her first feature film. On this episode, she takes us back to her training at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing, her eight years producing and acting in new work for the stage, and the 10-year journey to bring Ben and Suzanne to the screen. She talks about the collaborative process at […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 12, 2024 -
“We Wanted the Film to be Available for Free”: Kris Bowers & Ben Proudfoot on the Oscar-Winning The Last Repair Shop
On an unassuming downtown block, the Los Angeles Unified School District (L.A.U.S.D.)’s Musical Instrument Repair has excelled for many years. A big fuss is never made by tireless employees (former musicians or quick learners who grew on the job) working long hours while tending to the wear-and-tear of damaged instruments public school students have relied on. Arts programs are severely neglected and underfunded in the United States; this repair facility—essentially a warehouse with minimal lighting but hundreds of tools and thousands of spare parts—provides an essential if underappreciated essential service. Hoping to enhance the visibility of these dedicated craftsmen, Ben […]
by Erik Luers on Mar 8, 2024 -
The Sadean Horror of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex: Artist and Filmmaker Charles de Agustin on Mission Drift
The precarious and conflicted economics of non-profits — both material and libidinal — are the subject of artist and filmmaker Charles de Agustin‘s short narrative essay film Mission Drift, which, over the past year, has screened at festivals, art spaces and microcinemas in conjunction with panel discussions that are integral to the piece itself. (Writes D’Augustin on his website, “The medium of Mission Drift is described as ‘video and discussion:’ the work may only be publicly presented if it is followed by a robust audience discussion on the issues at hand, structured in consultation with the artist if he is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2024 -
Los Angeles Festival of Movies (LAFM) Announces Inaugural Lineup for April 4-7, 2024
Co-founded by Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall, the inaugural edition of the Los Angeles Festival of Movies is slated to take place this April 4 through 7 in venues across east Los Angeles. Today, the festival announced its inaugural lineup, including selections from former 25 New Faces of Film Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (recently interviewed by Jordan Cronk about their new film, Dream Team) and Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan. Below, find the full line-up with descriptions from the festival’s press release. Official Selection Dream Team, dir. Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn Gasoline Rainbow, dir. Bill Ross IV & […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 7, 2024 -
“A Frankenstein Set of Lenses”: DP Matthew Libatique on Maestro
25 years ago, Pi—a $70,000 indie about an obsessive mathematician shot on 16mm black and white reversal stock—put cinematographer Matthew Libatique on the map. In the intervening quarter century, Libatique has earned three Academy Award nominations and shot multiple films for Spike Lee, Jon Favreau, Joel Schumacher and Darren Aronofsky. He helped inaugurate the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and dipped into the D.C. sandbox with Birds of Prey. He’s shot horror movies, westerns, sci-fi flicks, war dramas, biopics and whatever genre mother! falls into. But what Matthew Libatique hasn’t done since Pi is shoot a film in black […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 6, 2024 -
Women in the Wilderness: How Nat Geo’s Queens Aims to Close the Gender Gap in Natural History Filmmaking
When National Geographic’s Janet Han Vissering and Wildstar Films’s Vanessa Berlowitz got the idea to make Queens, a six-part natural history series about female animals made by an all-woman production crew, they knew it would be a challenge. Only something like five percent of wildlife filmmakers are women, a number far short of the 20 to 30 percent average across the entertainment industry overall. They didn’t know how hard it would be, though. “On the camera side, before Queens there were probably about five women who’d had the opportunity to get to the ‘premium wildlife’ level of work,” Berlowitz explains. “There […]
by Marah Eakin on Mar 6, 2024 -
“Feeling Vulnerable is a Good Thing”: Hugo De Sousa, Back To One, Episode 281
As an actor, Hugo De Sousa had breakout leading roles in We Used to Know Each Other, Mister Limbo, and Everything in The End. I was introduced to his work as an actor/filmmaker, with the celebrated shorts he made in collaboration with Frank Mosley—The Event and Good Condition. On this episode he talks extensively about the making of those films, and his latest, which might be of particular, cathartic interest to listeners of this podcast, the absurdist short Je Ne Suis Pas Une Star De Cinéma. Plus he discusses the importance of feeling “out of balance in front of the […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 5, 2024 -
“I Don’t Invest Hope in Celebrity or Leaders Too Much, But I Do Have Hope in People”: Mitch McCabe on Their True/False Premiere 23 Mile
While the pandemic spurred many (white collar) Americans to flee the big cities and retreat to the safety and comfort of living room Zooming, Detroit native Mitch McCabe returned home to the big city and instead roamed the often chaotic streets, eventually journeying throughout Michigan, camera in tow. What the veteran filmmaker-educator (and Flaherty Seminar and MacDowell fellow) witnessed was what we all primarily saw in that “unprecedented” election year: anger. At lockdowns, at those attending protests unmasked. And masked. At the murder of George Floyd, at the BLM movement, at Trump. At Democrat elites like Governor Gretchen Whitmer and […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 1, 2024
