17711 Results for “”
-
Abby Harri
In one of her first professional film jobs after graduating film school at Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota-born Abby Harri was working as a PA in Oklahoma City on a hybrid feature by the Australian director Amiel Courtin-Wilson. “It was a really tiny crew, maybe fewer than seven people, and they threw me into a room and had me do casting,” she remembers. Harri grew up “painfully shy,” so for a moment the job seemed a mismatch. “But, being in a room with total strangers who were speaking about their lives, getting really deep and revealing a lot of personal things […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Rachel Walden
Rachel Walden’s 17-minute Lemon Tree, which premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in May, centers on a young boy (Gordon Rocks) whose innocence crumbles during what should be an idyllic autumnal road trip with his father (Charlie Chaspooley Robinson). After stealing a magician’s white rabbit at a county fair (a scene scored to 311’s rap-rock tune “Down”) and winning a hefty sum from a scratch-off ticket, dad celebrates a rare winning streak by plunging into a drug- and booze-induced bender (preceded by Cake’s ’90s alt-anthem “The Distance”), forcing the son to face his father’s unobscured parental follies. Walden’s sole previous directorial […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Alex Prager
Alex Prager was 20, playing drums in an LA band and having what she calls “a life crisis.” “I thought, ‘This cubicle I’m in, these jobs I have to take on the weekend to pay for my rent and food, aren’t ever going to change. How can I make sure this is not the life I end up with?’” At the Getty Museum, a William Eggleston photograph of dust-covered brown shoes underneath a bed provided an unexpected answer. “I had a physical reaction [to the photograph],” she recalls, “like I had found meaning in my life.” Six months of street […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Wes Goodrich
At the start of the 1970-set Palm Sunday, writer-director Wes Andre Goodrich’s mordantly ironic parable of cultural assimilation, Jimmy, a young Black Jamaican immigrant, is struck by a vision while attending a Black Southern church. He sees himself surrounded by an all-white congregation; their hands laid across him, he breaks into a beatific smile. Moments later, he visits the church’s pastor and announces his plan to join the all-white Baptist church nearby. The pastor is critical, unbelieving that the white church will take in this new congregant. “They’ll accept me if it’s God’s will,” Jimmy replies. Over the course of […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
25 New Faces of Independent Film 2023
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 20, 2023 -
Philip Thompson
In Philip Thompson’s I’m at Home, the host of a children’s show, played by Thompson, enters the set singing the same song at the top of every episode. “Create, create, create!” he chirps—but, while the intros repeat, his energetic spark fades as datamoshing breaks down the footage, mirroring his psychic deterioration. The spot-on recreation of an analogue children’s TV program mutates into something quieter and depressed. By film’s end, the host is sitting catatonic, staring straight into the camera. That feeling of burnout was real for Thompson, who made the film at the beginning of the pandemic, during his junior […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Risk On: Chloe Domont on Fair Play
With credits on high-profile TV series like Suits, Star Trek: Discovery and Billions, writer-director Chloe Domont had experiences in the entertainment industry where she felt like she had to adapt to the boys club. Those experiences, as well as the fear of all she could lose if she didn’t play along, were front of mind when she was crafting Fair Play, an intense, high-stakes and increasingly nerve-wracking relationship and workplace drama with notes of ’90s erotic thrillers. But in no way did Domont want to use the film industry as a backdrop for her masterful feature directorial debut. “That would […]
by Tomris Laffly on Sep 20, 2023 -
Craig Quintero
As virtual reality has developed over the past several years, various arguments have been made on its behalf. The most infamous is that virtual reality is a kind of “empathy machine,” allowing a viewer direct access to the experience of others. Others view virtual reality as the new frontier of gaming. Then, there are documentarians for whom the VR concept of “presence”—a viewer’s ability to feel themselves in a place they are not—has an almost pedagogical function, allowing them the experience of being in different cultures or within historical moments. The mysterious, unsettling work of Craig Quintero and the Taipei-based […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Marathon Training: The Documentary Awards Season Grind
By the time you read this, awards season, that annual ritual of accolades and extroversion, will be full throttle. Mounting and sustaining a campaign is often prohibitive, both as a budgetary line item and as an all-consuming occupation. Contenders live in the air and in hotels, go where their team sends them, agree to hundreds of interviews and participate in just as many Q&As and roundtables. But on the upside, an awards campaign is an opportunity to build a worldwide network of friends and contemporaries. Filmmaker reached out to former Academy Award nominees in the Feature Documentary category to share […]
by Tom White on Sep 20, 2023 -
Among the Ashes: Iterating the Generative Documentary Where There’s Smoke
I grew up in a firefighting culture full of pancake breakfasts, fire parades and beef and beers. For 20 years my dad was a volunteer firefighter and amateur fire scene photographer. He shot thousands of 35mm slides of blazes, often capturing moments of destruction that are disturbing and yet at times hauntingly beautiful. However, my dad’s obsession with fire would eventually intersect with our lives in devastating ways. In the 1980s, while on a family vacation, our van erupted in flames. 11 months later, our house burnt to the ground. For over 30 years, I’ve wondered if those two fires […]
by Lance Weiler on Sep 20, 2023
