Welcome to the 2010 edition of Filmmaker‘s annual survey of new independent film talent. Victoria Mahoney Writer-director Victoria Mahoney began her artistic career as an actress in theater and then film. “Shelly Winters was my teacher,” Mahoney says. “If you touched your hair too many times in her class, she’d come over and cut off your bangs. She taught me the gift of stillness.” After working off-off Broadway, Mahoney went to L.A., did a number of pilots, a few European films, and a season of Seinfeld (she played Gladys Mayo, owner of the clothing store Putumayo). But then there […]
Here are articles of interest I’ve bookmarked over the last few days in my Instapaper. * In the Edmonton Journal, Atom Egoyan discusses the rise and what he sees as the slow decline of independent production, linking it to not only external forces (technology, economic cycles) but also the fusion of independent production with a particularly American urge for self-expression. Egoyan speaks in a matter-of-fact tone. Able to transcend the pettier concerns of a frequently petty industry, thanks to a sophisticated world view, trenchant sense of humour and healthy dose of Canadian humility, Egoyan sees the shifting business model as […]
“I started out as a child actor,” says Kasper Tuxen, the Danish d.p., who has in the space of a year become sought after by American independent directors looking for adventurous cinematic collaborators. “I was 13; I had a lead role in a Danish film, but from the first day of the shoot I was interested in cinematography.” When he got older Tuxen thought about becoming a rock musician but enrolled in the Danish Film School in Copenhagen instead. “It was a very technical education,” Tuxen says. “For four years it was all about film and exposure.” After film school, […]
In December 2009, Mike Stoklasa uploaded “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” Review, a 70-minute takedown of George Lucas’s 1999 film. Astute in its critique, perverse in its use of humor and hypnotically narrated in the first person by a serial killer character in severe need of a decongestant, the review used footage from the film, its DVD extras and the occasionally third-party source to systematically prosecute Lucas’s crimes against filmmaking and his betrayal of Star Wars fans’ pent-up devotion. Once posted, the video went viral. Lost co-creator and Star Trek producer Damon Lindelof gave it immediate mainstream cred at Slashfilm: […]
After living in London as a child, Sean Durkin spent his final year before moving back to the States in the English countryside. For the then 11 year old, the sprawling, beautiful landscape was a world away from the hectic streets of the city. But when night came, so did dark seclusion and feelings of fear and anxiety — feelings heightened by the scary movies Sean and his mother would spend their evenings watching. “As a child I built this irrational fear of home invasion,” Durkin, 28, recalls. “All of these unsolved mysteries seemed to always happen in Southern California, […]
A number of new talents have come from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in recent years, and one recurring theme has been the face of Trieste Kelly Dunn. Aaron Katz’s Cold Weather and Brett Haley’s The New Year made significant festival splashes this year, and beach-party styled Vacation!, by Zach Clark, seems positioned to do the same. Despite very different tones and directing styles, Dunn is each film’s center, and she makes perfect sense in every movie. “In college, the professors used to talk about knowing what play you’re in,” says Dunn. “You do Ibsen, French […]
Possessor of a sneaky sort of charm that hides his utter tenaciousness, Rashaad Ernesto Green, a promising directorial talent from the Bronx, makes movies that get under your skin with what, upon reflection, seems like relative ease. His pictures, a trio of shorts and a forthcoming feature, openly seek to reveal the humanity within the taboos and faux pas of people of color. Green is clearly out to surprise us with his unusual depictions of equally unusual milieus, and he isn’t much for asking permission. “I was in a black box theater in St. Louis, reading The Seven Habits of […]
Writer-director Victoria Mahoney began her artistic career as an actress in theater and then film. “Shelly Winters was my teacher,” Mahoney says. “If you touched your hair too many times in her class, she’d come over and cut off your bangs. She taught me the gift of stillness.” After working off-off Broadway, Mahoney went to L.A., did a number of pilots, a few European films, and a season of Seinfeld (she played Gladys Mayo, owner of the clothing store Putumayo). But then there were all those “ridiculous films I did to sustain myself. And that’s when I began to feel […]
I’ve been interested in the concept of alternative forms of currency, barter and exchange with regards to independent film production and distribution for a little while. Back in November I blogged about a Doug Rushkoff speech on video in which he discussed some of the new start-ups exploring these ideas. I wrote: With two-and-a-half minutes to go, Rushkoff reaches the reason I decided to watch the video: a discussion of alternate forms of currency to facilitate creative value exchange. Of course, the idea of local currency or script, actually being practiced in some communities, has surfaced recently in discussions about […]
Valhalla Rising, which stars Mads Mikkelsen (best known for playing the much more suave devil Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) as a one-eyed, mute, enslaved gladiator who joins a group of Viking Christians on a conquest that turns into an existential journey to hell, is certainly not what one would expect from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. And that’s part of the beauty of the film. Before this latest atmospheric mood piece containing echoes of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Refn helmed the hyperkinetic Bronson, about England’s most dangerous criminal turned cult hero who never seemed at a loss for […]