Watch Freedom Dreams: Black Women and the Student Debt Crisis, the latest documentary short from The Intercept. Directed by Astra Taylor and Erick Stoll—two former 25 New Faces of Film from 2006 and 2017, respectively—the doc profiles Black women who have been buried by the staggering amount of student loan debt they’ve accrued. The film is narrated by former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner, who is an advocate for cancelling student loan debt nationwide. The film points out that Black women are often forced to take out more loans compared to other demographics due to an overwhelming lack of intergenerational […]
SFFILM, in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, announced today the 18 feature projects that will receive SFFILM Rainin Grants totaling $450,000. These grants will provide funding to advance each project to its next creative stage, generally entailing support for screenwriting and further development. Distributed on an annual basis, the SFFILM Rainin Grant is typically awarded to “to filmmakers whose narrative feature films meaningfully explore pressing social issues and/or have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community,” according to a press release. However, this does not mean that the grants are reserved exclusively for Bay Area […]
The panels have been announced for the 2022 Gotham Week Conference, the first time the event will occur in person since 2019. The panelists include Jenny Slate and other team members behind Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, director of Bodies Bodies Bodies Halina Reijn and co-directors of The Janes Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes. Slate, who voiced the title character and co-wrote the script, will be joined by Marcel director Dean Fleischer Camp and animation director Kirsten Lepore. Other panelists at the 2022 Gotham Week Conference include Adamma and Adanne Ebo, the respective director and producer of Honk For Jesus. […]
HBO has released a featurette on the official Euphoria YouTube channel that delves into the meticulous editing process behind the show’s second season. In a roundtable conversation with creator Sam Levinson and editors Julio C. Perez, Laura Zempel, Aaron I. Butler and Nikola Boyanov, the team recap the best scenes they cut, how they constantly re-worked narrative threads and the “intense privilege” they feel to continue working on the show together. The show follows Rue (Zendaya), a high schooler who struggles with drug addiction, and several of her equally rebellious (and oft-troubled) classmates. Euphoria feels particularly distinct due to its […]
If every film is a document of its own making, then Lodge Kerrigan’s Keane, shot in real locations in and around New York City in 2004, is also a depiction of the period in which it was made. Viewing the film on the occasion of a new digital restoration by Grasshopper Film that begins a theatrical run at Film at Lincoln Center today, I was struck by the numerous billboards and posters placed atop taxi cabs that the film’s lead character, William Keane (Damian Lewis), obliviously walks by. Short of pointing at the screen, Leonardo DiCaprio-style, as I noticed a […]
After joining forces to solve a killing (and create a true crime podcast) in the first season of Only Murders in the Building, the trio of Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short find themselves the suspects in another slaying in the latest batch of episodes of the Hulu series. Set in New York in the fictitious swanky apartment building the Arconia, the show’s entire inaugural season was lensed by longtime Big Apple resident Chris Teague (Obvious Child, GLOW, Russian Doll). For the new season, Teague’s role expanded to the director’s chair for two episodes. With the season finale premiering […]
The first trailer has arrived for acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, which features the director starring as a version of himself. According to the official synopsis, the film follows “two parallel love stories in which the lovers struggle with hidden and unavoidable obstacles, the force of superstitions and the mechanics of power.” Along with the film’s new trailer, Celluloid Dreams has uploaded two snippets from the film to their YouTube channel: one scene that contextualizes the film’s title, and another that depicts the oft-paradoxical hurdles Panahi faces in continuing his cinematic practice. A politically defiant and visually vital filmmaker, […]
Watch the trailer for Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s unnerving horror-satire Speak No Evil. The film follows two families who hail from different European countries (Denmark and Holland) and decide to keep in touch after meeting on an Italian vacation. A few months later, the Dutch family invites the Danes to visit their retro Holland abode for the holidays. As one can imagine, things soon begin to go horribly awry. In his dispatch out of Sundance, Filmmaker‘s Vadim Rizov wrote that “Speak No Evil gets the job done, buoyed in part by the novel cultural politics of its Western European faceoff.” […]
1987 was a good year to be a young action movie fan. RoboCop, Lethal Weapon and Predator all hit theaters within five months of each other before landing on VHS, where they could be watched again and again provided you or a friend had parents with an appropriately laissez faire attitude toward R ratings. That cycle of action films made a deep impression on a teenaged Jeff Cutter. Predator, in particular, brought forth an unexpected revelation about the nature of moviemaking. “I saw Predator in the theater when it came out and absolutely loved it,” said Cutter. “The Terminator was […]
Dutch actor Katja Herbers plays forensic psychologist Kristen Bouchard on the hit series Evil, which just finished its third season at Paramount+. On this episode, she talks about how saying no to the audition actually secured her the role, and hitting it off with “the Kings” (show runners Robert and Michelle King) helped her feel ownership of it. We get into the beautiful weeds about the pitfalls of over-directing and how she often simply ignores direction or translates it into something she can use. She explains why laboring over an emotional through-line is unnecessary, how working with the girls that […]