One of the most surprising revelations about the painter (and multimillion-dollar mass marketer) Thomas Kinkade, “the most successful artist of his time” according to the synopsis for Miranda Yousef’s SXSW-premiering doc Art for Everybody, is not that he was, well, “the most successful artist of his time.” Nor that after his death a decade ago from a drug and alcohol overdose his family discovered a secret trove of rather dark and sometimes disturbing work, images at complete odds with the sugary sweet depictions of small-town life that once graced the walls of the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery franchises, a ubiquitous presence […]
“Like an Abel Ferrara Jr., [Calvin Lee] Reeder meshes thought and design with genre storylines, like a Euro-filmmaker making ’70s drive-in films,” wrote Mike Plante in his 2007 25 New Face profile of the Portland, Ore.-born filmmaker. Sixteen-years later, the alt-horror auteur is still moving between the border spaces of various horror and science-fiction sub-genres, with his newest work — the SXSW-premiering independent TV pilot Harbor Island — being one of the most existentially offbeat yet. The festival’s program book provides the narrative gist but not the work’s extremely odd affect, which is something like watching Rupert Pupkin act in […]
Students and alumnx of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Film have been honored by the Center for Arts + Social Justice (CASJ) with fellowships in support of their groundbreaking activism and award-winning work, which brings social issues to a global audience. CASJ recognizes projects that show an indelible commitment to social justice, and creators who seek to inspire community-based change through the arts. Jen Gilomen ’23: Maternal health advocate investigating systemic injustices Brought about by Gilomen’s own birth experience, Delivering Justice explores maternal mortality and the maternal healthcare crisis in the United States, which disproportionately affects women of […]
Now that the drama is over about whether the Academy would disqualify Andrea Riseborough for her rules-skirting DIY Oscar campaign for To Leslie, we can now return to the question every indie filmmaker wants to know. Just how do you run a DIY Oscar campaign on an indie film that grossed less than $30,000? I don’t know exactly how she did it, but I can tell you how I did it with my recent Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ that grossed about the same (though with slightly different results). In short, the road to getting an Oscar nomination (much less an award) […]
When it comes to music documentaries, the bar is low—some new footage, a long-unseen live performance, maybe a fresh anecdote or two—and yet rarely cleared. For Pavement fans, though, Louder Than You Think will be essential viewing. The trim 90 minutes tell the story of the band’s original drummer, Gary Young, also the engineer of their first sessions at the Stockton, California record studio from which the film gets its name. It’s no secret that Young was essentially kicked out of the band for his heavy drinking habit, which is still on full display in this film; throughout his interviews, Young […]
According to cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, writer/director Todd Field often expressed his desired aesthetic for TÁR in a series of repeated Field-isms: Let’s just witness. Don’t gild the lily. Don’t make it look like a movie with a capital “M.” In other words, make the style invisible. However, Hoffmeister’s work was far from invisible to his peers, who bestowed an Oscar nomination upon the German DP for his work on the film. TÁR—Field’s first feature in more than 15 years—follows the downfall of a composer/conductor played by Cate Blanchett as she prepares a career-capping performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. […]
At this year’s edition of the SXSW Film & TV Festival, two significant milestones will be achieved: the festival will celebrate its 30th iteration, and it will be programmer Claudette Godfrey’s first as the organization’s newly-minted Festival Director. She was passed the torch back in October, taking over for SXSW leader Janet Pierson, who previously occupied the position for 15 years. An Austin native, Godfrey has effectively worked from the ground up since she began at SXSW as a volunteer crew manager in 2006. During a recent interview via Zoom, Godfrey told me about the various job titles she’s amassed […]
Some set their calendars by January’s Sundance, which like clockwork kicks off each new year of indie releases. For me, these 11 intense days of nonstop screenings are a rich bounty that takes time to digest. Ergo my slow coverage, below. Usually I manage to see about 30 of the 120 features Sundance typically selects. This has always worked out to a quarter of the program. What are the odds someone else saw the exact same combination? My dictum for years now has been that no two people see the same Sundance. Even the most diligent reviewers and audience members […]
Five years after the release of her sophomore album Historian, musician Lucy Dacus shares the music video for the album’s emotionally-charged single “Night Shift” directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The filmmaker (and former Filmmaker contributor) behind We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the forthcoming A24 project I Saw the TV Glow depicts a romance-fueled The Wizard of Oz theme party. Dacus stars in the music video alongside actors E.R. Fightmaster, Eva Victor and Jasmin Savoy Brown of Yellowjackets and the latest Scream reboots, fellow musicians Phoebe Bridgers (Dacus’s boygenius bandmate and co-star of TV Glow), Hop Along‘s Frances Quinlan, […]
I first saw Justin Zuckerman’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater—the writer-director’s ultra-low-budget, MiniDV-shot feature debut—back in December at Williamsburg’s Spectacle Theater. I’d been invited on a whim by the film’s emerging producer Ryan Martin Brown, and I happened to be long overdue for a visit to the volunteer-run microcinema. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was quickly charmed by Yelling Fire‘s humble yet lived-in digital aesthetic, impressively taut script and endearing ensemble of adrift, wannabe New Yorkers. Shot between November and December of 2019 and made for less than $3,000, the film feels like a strange, beautiful […]