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DISPOSABLE MEMORIES FROM SXSW
I pack quickly the night before leaving for SXSW. Not only do I forget to bring business cards, I don’t even pack my digital camera. I pop into a CVS once I’ve landed in Austin and pick up a two-pack of disposable cameras. I’m surprised they still sell them. My five day jaunt across SXSW is a flurry of rain, movies, tacos, friends, panels, and long lines. I watch Purple Rain on VHS. I watch V/H/S in a movie theater. I’m asked by multiple people if I’ve heard what this year’s Tiny Furniture is. I hear a big-four agent tell […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 16, 2012 -
Five Questions with Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me Director Drew Denicola and Producer Danielle McCarthy
If you recognize the name Big Star, chances are you’re already a fan. Considered by many grandfathers of indie-rock, the band formed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1971. A precarious time for music, Big Star released their first two albums (the dual pop masterpieces #1 Record and Radio City) just as the major labels were riding the post-60s hangover away from creative ingenuity and towards corporate rock excess. Beleaguered and disheartened by their lack of mainstream success, Big Star went on to release one more album, the frustrated and nihilistic chronicle of artistic disintegration Third / Sister Lovers. Co-founder Chris Bell […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 15, 2012 -
The Kid with a Bike — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s The Kid with a Bike premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it shared the Grand Prix with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. It is being released theatrically by Sundance Selects on 03.16.12.) The Kid with a Bike is propelled by eruptive moments nestled between long stretches of calm. That it is seen through the eyes of a child too young and confused to understand as much about himself as the viewer does would appear to make the eponymous bicycle rider’s case an ironic one, but it mostly just makes it sad. Every time […]
by Michael Nordine on Mar 15, 2012 -
Corinna Belz, Gerhard Richter Painting
Capturing the moment a work of art is born, or rather the arduous process through which a particular masterwork begins to reveal itself to a painter or sculptor, is an old subject for cinema. Hollywood in the classical and postwar era loved biopics, bringing to the screen highly romanticized, larger-than-life portrayals of everyone from Rembrandt to Van Gogh, Michelangelo to Toulouse-Lautrec. There are fewer great films that focus single-mindedly on the creative process, however. Jacques Rivette’s La belle noiseuse is one, a masterful film about a fictional artist whose laborious, continually frustrated efforts to paint his beautiful young muse are […]
by Damon Smith on Mar 14, 2012 -
A Conversation with the Dardenne Brothers
The Kid with a Bike, the latest from the Belgian Dardenne Brothers, is opening this Friday, March 16, courtesy of Sundance Selects. The touching story already picked up the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes last year in addition to being nominated for a Golden Globe and Spirit Award. After his heartbreadking role in the Dardennes’ The Child, actor Jérémie Renier reprises his role as a deadbeat dad, Guy, who abandons his twelve-year-old son, Cyril, to be looked after by the local hairdresser, Samantha. She struggles to fill in the missing holes Cyril’s absent parents left behind while trying to keep him […]
by Ariston Anderson on Mar 14, 2012 -
Ten Tips on Shooting Low-Budget Movies from SXSW
At SXSW a panel titled “The Great Cinematography Shootout” gathered a group of directors and cinematographers to discuss independent film lensing in an age of proliferating formats and lower-cost, high-quality cameras, like the Canon 5D. The directors of photography were Jody Lee Lipes (Girls, Tiny Furniture, and also the director of Opus Jazz), James Laxton (Medicine for Melancholy, Leave Me Like You Found Me), Clay Lifford (Gayby, and also the director of such films as Wuss and Earthling), PJ Raval (Trouble the Water, Sunset Stories, and also the director of Trinidad); and filmmaker, editor and d.p. David Lowery (Pioneer, and, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2012 -
Five Questions with Leave Me Like You Found Me Director Adele Romanski
Producer Adele Romanski has built quite a filmography in a very short time. Last year, she opened David Robert Mitchell’s nostalgia-laced sleeper-hit Myth of the American Sleepover. And less than two months ago, she made a splash at Sundance with Katie Aselton’s Black Rock (which sold to LD Entertainment). Throw in a stint as a Sundance Producer’s Lab Fellow, plus several projects in development (including Mitchell’s Sleepover followup Ella Walks the Beach and Adam Bowers’ We’re A Wasteland) and it should become obvious that Romanski has been, to say the least, busy. So when did she find time to direct […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 12, 2012 -
Five Questions with Girls Creator Lena Dunham
Is Lena Dunham about to change television? Recent years have seen big-screen critical darlings like Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, and Diablo Cody make the pilgrimage over to the small screen. But last year’s announcement that the 25-year old Tiny Furniture director would be masterminding a new series for HBO seemed a more direct link between the indie film and TV industries than had been attempted previously. And as if cementing this link, Girls premieres today with a special sneak preview screening at SXSW – the festival that initially launched Dunham’s career. Audiences are in for a treat, as Dunham’s wit […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 12, 2012 -
Five Questions with Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Director Ben Shapiro
Photographer Gregory Crewdson is renowned for his elaborately-staged photographs, huge in scope, size, and ambition. So filmmaker Benjamin Shapiro had his work cut out for him when he set out nearly a decade ago to follow Crewdson and demystify the artist’s process. But the biggest surprise of Shapiro’s long-awaited film is just how open, eloquent, and down-to-earth Crewdson is when discussing his art. Crewdson allows the audience unrestricted access to his shoots (not to mention his personal life), even taking us along as he searches for locations, subjects, and inspiration. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters is a refreshingly frank look at […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 11, 2012 -
Five Questions with Welcome to the Machine Director Avi Zev Weider
The process of making your first documentary – overseeing all of the moving parts, researching and scheduling interviews, shaping raw footage into a compelling, complete whole – this is undeniably a daunting process. Now imagine doing the same while caring for newborn triplets. When filmmaker Avi Zev Weider and his wife turned to in-vitro fertilization after having trouble conceiving, they never expected triplets. But this is indeed what they got – three underweight infants who spent the first several months of their lives in the hospital’s high-tech neo-natal intensive care unit. Weider was already fascinated with the topic of humankind’s […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 10, 2012
