6582 Results for “production”
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Omnes Films
A bizarre sacrificial rite of passage for a suburban neighborhood’s teen population; an inquisitive woman discovering a portal to the past via her late aunt’s hurdy-gurdy; an awkward businessman entering the wrong hotel room and stepping into the crosshairs of quarreling lovers—these are but three stories in the recent cinematic output of Omnes Films, a Los Angeles-based collective of filmmakers. Making their presence known with the world premiere of Tyler Taormina’s debut feature, Ham on Rye, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in early 2019 (and its international premiere later that summer at the Locarno Film Festival), Omnes has […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to Filmmaker’s 29th anniversary edition—and, as has been the case the past several years, the fall edition is also our 25 New Faces issue. Here, you’ll meet 25 filmmakers—or sets of filmmakers or, in one case, a production company—that have impressed, moved or surprised us, and who we are eager to track into the future. We started the list in 1998 and, looking back, it’s fascinating to see the trajectories of its first graduating class. Peter Sarsgaard, of course, is an in-demand actor. Jamie Babbitt’s But I’m a Cheerleader recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, was rereleased in a new […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 11, 2021 -
My Job During a Pandemic: Launching a Film Publishing House
We’d been planning the launch of the publishing house for two years before the pandemic made a joke of all timelines and schedules. Our original idea was to inaugurate Fireflies Press in 2020 with the art book Memoria, a chronicle of the making of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s new film that exemplifies the creative forms of commentary we’re interested in exploring with the press. What better launching pad, we thought, than the film’s much-anticipated premiere at Cannes in May? On February 27, 2020, our designer and art director James Geoffrey Nunn flew to Berlin for what was supposed to be the start […]
by Annabel Brady-Brown and Giovanni Marchini Camia on Oct 11, 2021 -
Annalise Lockhart
In Annalise Lockhart’s unsettling Inheritance, no matter what land you own, you can never escape the white gaze. Set in her parents’ Vermont cabin that she grew up visiting every summer, Lockhart’s short centers around Norra (Victoria A. Villier), a young Black woman granted the deed to her father’s land on her 25th birthday. After the deed is officially handed over during a celebratory dinner with Norra’s dad (Ron Brice) and brother (DeLeon Dallas), she notices a pair of glowing eyes peering out from beyond the trees of the forest. The following morning, Norra notices even more eyes, possessed by […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Reflect What You Are: Jim O’Rourke Interviews Todd Haynes about The Velvet Underground
It’s 1963: High-minded Welsh musician John Cale participates in a concert of Erik Satie’s Vexations—per the composer’s intent, 840 piano performances of the same piece, totaling 18 hours—alongside experimental luminaries like John Cage, La Monte Young and Tony Conrad. Later that year, Cale appears on the CBS game show I’ve Got a Secret, where guests are grilled by a panel that tries to determine what their particular secret might be. Cale’s performance of the Satie piece is eventually established as his in front of a slightly disbelieving host and audience. The not-so-politely implicit question: Why would anyone do something so […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Naz Riahi
The two shorts Naz Riahi released on Vimeo during the pandemic—Sincerely, Erik and Andros in the City—are in a boxy aspect ratio because the format reminded her of the tube TV she’d watch growing up in Iran. The sound mixes are basic and, she says, “not intentional”: “I literally didn’t have the money, but the films came out during the pandemic when everybody was just watching on their computer, and they work fine on that.” “Intentional,” however, was the barely graded color correct, which gives the films a relaxed, low-contrast vibe. “My DP, Alec [Cohen], was like, ’Please let me […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Fox Maxy
Fox Maxy’s work skitters along associative tracks. Testimony, interviews and activism often play for an extended length against digital backdrops and landscapes that Maxy creates themselves; other times, footage of friends and family are edited into rapid-fire cascades, their links often excitingly too fast to follow. Soundtracked by a jittery mix of Native artists and more ubiquitous figures (Tupac and Dolly Parton are in there, too), the results are a slipstream into Maxy’s consciousness, where cultural and political issues sit side-by-side with diaristic footage shot since 2011. “I realized I didn’t want to work in the white world at all,” […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Meg Smaker
Meg Smaker traces the motivation for Untitled Terrorist Rehabilitation Film, currently in post, to three events. The first was 9/11, when she worked as a firefighter: “I loved firefighting, and thought I’d always be one, and then 9/11 happened. I saw my firehouse go from a place of love and support to a place of hatred, bigotry and fear. And nothing that was being presented on mainstream media answered any of the questions generated from that day.” Wanting to better understand, Smaker travelled to Afghanistan six months later “and was immediately humbled by my own ignorance of the world. Everything […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 11, 2021 -
Out in the World: The Vital Role of the Social Impact Producer
Often I read the news and feel jaded about what I find there, desensitized to very real issues. Then, as a viewer, I’ll watch a film, or see a moving play or artwork, and feel the urge to do something—to learn more, to do my part. As a filmmaker, have you ever developed the concept for a film, or been in the middle of production, and thought more specifically about the change your film could spark in the world? Have you ever watched and thought to yourself, “What can I do?” Answering these questions with concrete initiatives that go beyond […]
by Cecilia R. Mejia on Oct 11, 2021 -
North Star: Nina Lorez Collins on Her Mother Kathleen Collins’s Life and Legacy
“It is all about an urge, a powerful and overwhelming urge, to fulfill myself, to fulfill this life that is inside me, to fulfill it in every way, leaving nothing untapped. That is what it is all about: the excesses, the anxiety, the restlessness, the pain, carrying around in me this irrepressible need to fulfill myself in every way possible.”—Kathleen Collins If I were to attempt to choose one word to sum up Kathleen Collins’s work it would be interiority. The idea of leaving nothing untapped or laying it all bare is prevalent across her plays, screenplays, short stories and […]
by Tayler Montague on Oct 11, 2021
