6580 Results for “production”
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“I Believe in a Holistic Approach to World Building”: Sophie Jarvis on her TIFF-Debuting Psychological Drama Until Branches Bend
Veteran production designer Sophie Jarvis’s assured feature debut Until Branches Bend is one smartly executed, unexpected gem. Premiering in the Discovery section of this year’s TIFF, the psychological drama (really a contemporary horror film) follows a cannery worker named Robin (2016 TIFF Rising Star Grace Glowicki) whose life is upended after discovering a creepy bug in a peach while (conveniently) alone at break time. Unable to get her boss to take the very real threat of a catastrophic invasion seriously — and perhaps risk a factory shutdown — she decides to go public with her unappetizing finding, which entails sounding […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 9, 2022 -
Doc Society Climate Story Fund Awards $645,000 in Grants to Nine New Projects
The Doc Society Climate Story Fund announced today nine new creative projects from around the globe that will receive a combined $645,000 in grants, with each work demonstrating a concerted effort to advance climate justice and protect biodiversity. This is the second cohort to receive the Climate Story Fund, which supports work from a wide array of storytelling mediums, including musical dramas, podcasts and documentaries. The fund prioritizes storytellers from underrepresented communities on the front lines of the global climate crisis, with the intent of providing much-needed support from production to impact campaigns. There is special emphasis on projects that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 8, 2022 -
“The Fear Was Real”: John Christopher Jones on Returning to Set with Advanced Parkinson’s (Back to One, Episode 219)
Esteemed veteran actor John Christopher Jones returns to the podcast (his first time was episode 13) to talk about conquering the “real fear” he had of going back to work, in a guest starring role on the television series New Amsterdam, while dealing with the unpredictable and often debilitating effects of worsening Parkinson’s. Then he takes us on a brief tour of the various directors that worked well for him over the years, and others that, sometimes hilariously, fell a little short, like José Quintero and his maddening direction in the 1985 production of The Iceman Cometh with Jason Robards. […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Sep 6, 2022 -
Duration and Velocity: An Interview with Larry Gottheim
Despite making decades of fascinating film work and playing a pivotal role at Binghamton by founding the film department and bringing Ken Jacobs onboard, Larry Gottheim remains an under-celebrated figure in the American avant-garde. With Fog Line (1970)—an 11 minute single-take of fog slowly rising in a meadow, trees asymmetrically clustered, framed by telephone wire—he found a semblance of universal acclaim in the underground. The “first period” of Gottheim’s work (of which Fog Line is a crucial part) takes an approach largely inspired by the stoic film observations of Andy Warhol, a rubric of silence and static framing which trains […]
by Ruairí McCann and Maximilien Luc Proctor on Sep 6, 2022 -
“We Were Filming at a Time When Putin Was Arresting Opposition”: Sarah McCarthy on Her Telluride-Premiering Doc Short Anastasia
Sarah McCarthy is no stranger to navigating the myriad challenges posed by authoritarian states. Indeed, the Australian doc-maker has shot in precarious political places throughout the world, from the Philippines, to Saudi Arabia to Russia—where she’s returned time and time again. Nor is she a stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival, where following on the heels of feature-length works (The Sound of Mumbai, The Dark Matter of Love) she now debuts her latest short Anastasia; and the innocuous title, much like the film’s titular character, belies one powerful punch. Anastasia Shevchenko is a Russian civil rights advocate who’s been arrested […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 3, 2022 -
“Directing When You Are an Editor Feels Like Cheating”: Cinque Northern on His Telluride Doc Short Angola Do You Hear Us?
Having already made the prestige fest rounds to great acclaim this year—from Tribeca to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage outdoor film series just this summer—Cinque Northern’s Angola Do You Hear Us? is now a must-catch at Telluride. The documentary short follows the incomparable actor and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson on her artistic and spiritual mission to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to none other than the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The film also explores all the baggage, bureaucracy and ultimate blocking that was met with a work centered on racial injustice (that deftly connects the capitalistic dots […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 3, 2022 -
“Making These Documentaries Is Like a Wild Goose Chase All Over the Globe”: Chapman and Maclain Way on Untold Volume 2
Now in its second season, Untold—the Netflix documentary series executive produced by brothers Chapman and Maclain Way (Wild Wild Country)—continues to offer an intriguing selection of sports-centered stories. From covering the world’s most successful female boxer to the infamous “Malice at the Palace” brawl, Volume 1 of the series became popular for choosing to tell a side of a notable story you thought you knew—essentially a nonfiction offering of feature-length episodes packaged under the Untold umbrella. As a basketball fan, I was curious to see what Volume 2 would include. Having premiered on August 16th and rolling out an episode […]
by Erik Luers on Aug 30, 2022 -
“The Only Important Thing is the Work”: Austin Pendleton on a Life on Stage (Back to One, Episode 218)
Austin Pendleton might be best known for My Cousin Vinny, or What’s Up Doc? but the 82-year-old actor, director, playwright and teacher is a one-man theater institution. It almost seems like there isn’t a great play that he hasn’t performed or directed, somewhere, in his more than 60 years in the business, and he’s not slowing down in the slightest. In this epic, 90-minute episode, what Meryl Streep said of Pendleton will ring tru: “There’s no line between the man and his work.” He talks about his latest performance, in the celebrated new Tracy Letts play The Minutes, then takes […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Aug 30, 2022 -
“I Would Cut with Scissors if I Had To”: Editor Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir on Bullet Train
In Bullet Train, a half dozen assassins, the screw-up kid of a Russian crime lord and a lethally venomous snake are among the passengers on the titular mode of transport travelling from Tokyo to Kyoto. Balancing the sheer volume of characters and orchestrating the intricately choreographed tussles of action maestro David Leitch (John Wick and Atomic Blonde) already present ample challenges for an editor. For Elísabet Ronaldsdóttir, the Icelandic cutter of both Wick and Blonde, the degree of difficulty was further embellished by an array of flashbacks, Thomas the Tank Engine metaphors, surprise cameos and Engelbert Humperdinck needle drops. With […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Aug 24, 2022 -
The Evolution of Impact: The Future of Social Change and Nonfiction Storytelling
The conversation about documentary impact has undergone a number of shifts since impact producing began to emerge as a practice within the documentary field around 20 years ago. Today it is almost expected that a social issue documentary film will be accompanied by an impact campaign to help ensure its story will reach audiences and motivate them towards social change, deeper engagement with a story’s themes and further learning. But earlier, things were different—the argument had to be made that some documentary filmmakers should focus on impact and to develop best practices for engaging audiences around a film and its […]
by Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress on Aug 23, 2022
