17733 Results for “”
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Back to One, Episode 128: Cooper Raiff
Cooper Raiff is the writer, director, producer, editor and star of one of my favorite films of the year, Shithouse, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival this year. The 23-year-old has filmmaking instincts and a sophisticated perception of people, and himself, that belies his years. In this episode, he tells a miraculous story of getting Jay Duplass to watch his short film, and how he became instrumental in getting Shithouse made. He talks extensively about his time at the Dallas Young Actors Studio and how that foundational work instilled him with the tools he needs […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 6, 2020 -
The Great American Lie, John Lewis: Good Trouble, Eli Roth’s History of Horror and More: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
This week is a good one for documentaries, with several excellent non-fiction films on a wide array of subjects newly available on demand and/or DVD. First up is Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s The Great American Lie, which opens today on most major streaming platforms. The film examines class inequality through the lives of five people: a public school principal in an underfunded and forgotten district; a social justice advocate fighting for low-wage women workers; an attorney devoted to criminal justice reform; a steelworker whose community has been decimated by layoffs and opioid addiction; and a Southern conservative single mother working to […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 2, 2020 -
“The Emotional Arcs of Our Characters are Tied to the Stakes of the War…”: Director Lydia Dean Pilcher on A Call to Spy
During World War II, Prime Minister Winston Churchill put a network of spies behind enemy lines to aid the Resistance in Nazi-occupied countries. The SOE (Special Operations Executive) was set up to train women for the role. A Call to Spy, an IFC release opening in theaters and on demand October 2, follows three women who played crucial roles for the SOE in France. A Call to Spy is the first solo feature credit for director Lydia Dean Pilcher, after co-directing Radium Girls with Ginny Mohler. A veteran producer, Pilcher has worked in a wide variety of genres for the […]
by Daniel Eagan on Oct 2, 2020 -
“I Know So Much More Now about Pandemic Response Than I Did When We Made It”: Brian Duffield on Spontaneous
One of the most fascinating things about viewing new movies in the age of COVID is how many of them tap into current anxieties in spite of having been completed before the coronavirus arrived; films as varied in style, budget, and genre as I’m Thinking of Ending Things, She Dies Tomorrow and Tenet all resonate in this historical moment in ways that would have been very different–and probably less effective–if they had been released just a few months earlier. Screenwriter Brian Duffield’s strikingly original and extremely moving teen comedy Spontaneous is the latest film to speak to the persistent unease and […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 30, 2020 -
“No Talking Heads on Camera”: Sam Pollard on MLK/FBI
In 1963, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover began wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr. with the goal of undermining his authority as a civil rights leader. Utilizing a wealth of newly discovered and declassified files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as newly restored footage from the period, MLK/FBI delves into the Bureau’s deeply questionable methods and motives for surveillance, while painting a portrait of King that does not shy away from uncomfortable truths. Directed by Sam Pollard, best known as Spike Lee’s editor on films like Clockers and Bamboozled, MLK/FBI builds upon a lifetime of work […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Sep 29, 2020 -
“I Have Not Seen My Film with Anyone Other than Two People”: Dea Kulumbegashvili on Beginning
Dea Kulumbegashvili should have had the year of her life. At any other moment, the Tbilisi-based writer/director would have already travelled to Cannes, Toronto and San Sebastián to screen her new film for festival audiences. A remarkable accomplishment for anyone, let alone a young director with a first feature, the success of Beginning has instead been a strange, bittersweet ride. In the absence of sold-out screenings and sponsored afterparties, the festival experience in 2020 has given way to far less glamorous rituals: Zoom Q&As, geo-locked streaming links and the solitary act of viewing from home. For Kulumbegashvili, 34, the process […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Sep 28, 2020 -
Gina Duncan Announced as New Producing Director, Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Institute announced today that Gina Duncan, most recently Vice President of Film and Strategic Programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), will join the Sundance Film Festival in the newly-created role of Producing Director. Writes Sundance in a press release, “Duncan will integrate the artistic vision of the Festival with its practical, audience-facing elements. She’ll work with the programming team as they curate works for exhibition, and serve as a leader for creating strategic vision and decision-making on both the Sundance Film Festival and year-round public programs. Further key duties of the position: continuing to build policies […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 25, 2020 -
“The Interior Lives of People That Aren’t Typically Represented in Cinema”: Andrew Cohn on The Last Shift
Fascinated with the unseen men and women of forgotten America, Andrew Cohn, proud Midwestern and versatile filmmaker, has created a body of documentary work that witnesses modest, real lives without condescension or pity. Features like Medora or Night School engage with their subjects—a teenage basketball team in small-town Indiana or adult students juggling economic and personal struggles—in a compassionate and collaborative manner. Translating that honesty to fiction now with The Last Shift, his first scripted film, Cohn continues to give voice to the working poor, in this case two fast food employees in Michigan, where he’s from, whose relationship exemplifies […]
by Carlos Aguilar on Sep 25, 2020 -
Shining a Light on the Politics of Public Lands: David Garrett Byars on his Documentary Public Trust
David Garrett Byars made his feature documentary debut with No Man’s Land in 2017, a riveting chronicle of the the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (I spoke with him about it during its Tribeca premiere). In the largely verité film he manages to not only paint empathetic portraits of both the occupiers and their government opponents, but communicate the larger social and political movements that caused his characters to behave as they did. This eye for explaining complex topics comes to the fore in his sophomore film Public Trust, out September 25 from Patagonia Films. This new […]
by Randy Astle on Sep 25, 2020 -
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, The Deep, Night Falls on Manhattan, and Havana: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project has been discovering and restoring vital international films since 2007, and in its 13 years of existence has preserved 42 movies from 25 countries. Scorsese’s mission is not simply rescuing and protecting these movies, many of which would likely vanish into obscurity and physical deterioration without his Film Foundation’s assistance, but making sure they are widely available to be enjoyed by world audiences. Scorsese’s latest effort in this regard is the indispensable new Criterion boxed set Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project 3, which, like the two collections that preceded it, gathers six seminal works from […]
by Jim Hemphill on Sep 25, 2020
