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“Nostalgia for When Things were Terrible”: Conner O’Malley, Danny Scharar and Jack Bensinger on Rap World
There’s an honesty to Rap World, the feature debut of co-directors Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar, beyond its vérité stylings. With Scharar playing the director, Ben, Rap World is a mockumentary following three friends—Matt (O’Malley), Casey (Jack Bensinger) and Jason (Eric Rahill)—from Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, as they trudge through one long night in a quixotic attempt to make a rap album. It is January 11th, 2009: a month earlier The Dark Knight was released on home video, in nine days George W. Bush will leave office, the Great Recession looms and America feels like it is on the cusp of some […]
by Alex Lei on Oct 24, 2024 -
Revolution and TikTok Stick Nation: On Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s DIRECT ACTION
A TikTok trend called “Stick Nation” has become one of my favorites. Folks around the world introduce themselves with a simple “what’s up, Stick Nation?,” then present a stick they’ve found. We’ll usually get to hear where they found said stick and if it’s oak, birch or pine. Over the past few weeks, sticks were my route to escapism until I saw a more meaningful use for them in Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau’s DIRECT ACTION. The movie begins with a desktop screen as we start to jump back and forth between protests from 2016 and 2018 in Notre-Dames-des-Landes. Since […]
by Matilda Hague on Oct 24, 2024 -
Catapult Reveals 2024 Development Slate with 15 New Projects
Catapult Film Fund, which provides non-fiction filmmakers with early stage funding and mentorship, announced today its 2024 Development Grant recipients. Through its flagship program, the California-based nonprofit will help launch 15 new projects from around the world, including stories from China, India, Iran, Mexico, Russia, and across the United States. As noted in a press release, half of the projects are by film teams of color and more than 80% are directed by women and nonbinary filmmakers. The projects were selected from a competitive pool of 900 applications, a record high for the organization. Each film team will receive a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 22, 2024 -
“‘Knowing’ is Such a Sh*tty Place To Be — It Just Cancels Out All These Other Possibilities”: Maria Dizzia, Back To One, Episode 314
Actor, director, coach, teacher, Maria Dizzia is a perpetual student of the craft of acting, which makes her celebrated and in-demand for all those jobs. The movie My Old Ass and the play Pre-Existing Condition are a couple of her most recent projects. On this incredibly dense and gold-filled episode, she generously gives us a peek into the aspects of the work that she deems important to focus on, worth struggling with, or where she simply finds the most fruit. She talks about the huge importance of those first subconscious “offerings,” how to use the discoveries made when “alive” to […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 22, 2024 -
“I Knew Exactly How to Bring It to the Screen”: Marco Calvani on High Tide
Italian playwright Marco Calvani makes his feature film debut as a writer-director with High Tide, a Provincetown-set indie drama that centers on the need for communal tenderness after a heartbreak. Lourenço (Marco Pigossi, now Calvani’s husband) considers P-town a paradise. Having left his native Brazil years ago in order to live life as an out gay man (a fact he still conceals from his mother), the queer enclave provides ample community and connection for the handsome young man. However, recent events have made the locale feel more oppressive than he expected: his long-term boyfriend up and left without warning, visa […]
by Natalia Keogan on Oct 21, 2024 -
“A Throwback to Nancy Drew and Columbo”: Alice Maio Mackay on Carnage for Christmas
For her fifth feature, 20-year-old Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay gifts us Carnage for Christmas. A renegade force in the no-budget genre realm, her previous work has explored demonic cults, ancient parasites, vigilante vampires and Stephen King filtered through a uniquely queer lens. Maio Mackay’s latest features a supernatural, bloodlusting Santa Claus that small town residents have adopted as part of their folklore. The return of young adults for the holiday season awakens this mythologized entity, though it seems particularly drawn to Lola (newcomer Jeremy Moineau), a true crime podcast host who hates making the annual trek to her hometown. […]
by Natalia Keogan on Oct 18, 2024 -
Introducing Considerations, An Awards Season Newsletter
Earlier this week, Filmmaker launched a new newsletter, Considerations, by Tyler Coates. Following and handicapping the annual film industry awards races, Considerations will feature sharp commentary on the pictures, the players, the money and the spectacle. Subscribe here to receive it for free, and first, every Tuesday. — Editor The best way to begin this newsletter is with an introduction and a list of my bonafides. I was previously the awards editor at The Hollywood Reporter, where I’d been covering the Oscar and Emmy races since 2019. I’ve spent over a decade in the digital media content mines, having also […]
by Tyler Coates on Oct 17, 2024 -
“I’ve Learned Over the Years That If You Show Up with a Basketful of Ideas, It’s Almost Always Rewarded”: Cory Michael Smith, Back To One, Episode 313
“There are practical paths and intuitive paths with each character,” says Cory Michael Smith at the start of this episode, and it’s a recurring theme throughout. The talented actor was Riddler on the series Gotham, a standout in three Todd Haynes films, and now plays Chevy Chase in Saturday Night. On this episode he details the careful process of studying Chevy clips for months before diving into the script. He talks about the importance of “ridding myself of any hint of fraudulence,” why it’s so important for him to show up with lots of ideas, how being intentional with his […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Oct 15, 2024 -
“I’ve Got My Finger on the Zeitgeist”: Matt Farley on Local Legends: Bloodbath
Several years ago on my birthday, I woke to a text from a friend: a link to “The Emily Poop Song”. For a minute and twenty-one seconds, I listened to what the album title described as “The Odd Man Who Sings About Poop” repeat my name over and over, often punctuated with the word “poop.” There were fifty songs on the album, all about different people and feces, but that turned out to be only a tiny portion of the odd man’s output—across several Spotify profiles, Matt Farley has written over 25,000 songs. While some are about our smelly bodily […]
by Emily Huse on Oct 15, 2024 -
DIY Baltimore: New/Next Film Festival 2024
“Another year, another New/Next” looks to become a certainty in Baltimore. After last year’s inaugural festival, it wasn’t known if New/Next Film Festival was a one-off event or if the Maryland Film Festival would return from hiatus. In 2024, both happened a couple months and a block apart in Station North, and both announced on their closing nights that they will be back for 2025. For the foreseeable future, Baltimore has two tentpole, unjuried independent film festivals; what is not certain is how they are going to interplay with each other as establishments, rather than events with question marks attached. […]
by Alex Lei on Oct 11, 2024
