Kwol Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol’s Short Vacation is a graduate thesis film, a side benefit of which is not needing two opening minutes for production company logos but instead being able to jump right into a trim, conflict-free 79 minutes. Four South Korean middle school girls—three long-time friends, the fourth a new-in-town addition to their group—take a long train trip to photograph the rural end of the railroad line. Their photography club teacher has handed out disposable 35mm cameras with the summer vacation assignment to photograph “the end of the world,” however they’d like to interpret that. Taking the train a few […]
I last interviewed Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze, China Heavyweight) before the TIFF premiere of 2019’s This Is Not a Movie, which follows the uncompromising humanitarian war correspondent Robert Fisk (who died just this past October) on his eternal mission to give the lie to bothsidesism. And while Chang’s latest doc Wuhan Wuhan – an on-the-ground account of life during lockdown from the perspective of several brave and traumatized frontline workers – might seem a breaking news departure, it’s actually very much in line with the multiple award-winning filmmaker’s character-first approach. Whether tackling issues of capitalist exploitation, controversial righteous journalism, […]
Now streaming on HBO Max, Genera+ion follows Orange County, California, high school students searching for their identities in a world of lockdowns, relentless social media, and clueless parents. The series was developed by Zelda Barnz and her father, Daniel Barnz, (a Filmmaker 2007 25 New Face). Executive producers include Daniel’s husband (and Zelda’s father) Ben Barnz and Lena Dunham. The first eight episodes began filming in September 2020. The second half of season one wrapped in early April. Four cinematographers have worked on Genera+ion, including Sean Porter for the pilot, Yaron Orbach, Xavier Grobet, and on three episodes in season one […]
Premiering online timed to Earth Day from Field of Vision is a stunning and poetic Arctic-shot short, UTUQAQ, directed by Iva Radivojević. Acting as her own cinematographer, Radivojević counterpoints elegant and abstract patterns across sweeping planes of ice with more human-scale documentation of the work of four researchers drilling ice cores in the region’s freezing temperatures. The narration — in Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) by Aviaja Lyberth — is from the point of the view of the ice itself, evoking the earth’s geological memory as it confronts efforts of the researchers working in the moment to learn about what is being lost […]
The past year has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at filmmakers, disrupting distribution timelines, cutting the legs out from under theaters, and depriving our community of opportunities for networking, sales, and press. But there have also been bright spots. While contending with major disappointments this year, many filmmakers have successfully pivoted to unique and impactful releases — models that are worth learning from and iterating on in the years ahead. It’s tempting to reminisce upon the “before COVID” times with rose-colored glasses, but independent filmmakers were struggling to get by long before 2020. Following its completion in 2018, our […]
Currently competing for both the Dox:Award and the Politiken Danish:Dox Award at this year’s hybrid CPH:DOX (April 21-May 5), Camilla Nielsson’s President is a riveting followup to 2014’s Democrats, which centered on two political rivals in a Sisyphean quest to transform Zimbabwe from a corrupt dictatorship into a fledgling democracy. It’s also a film Nielsson never intended to make. But that was before a ban, a military coup, and the rise of two new political rivals led the undaunted director to pick up her camera once again. With President Nielsson focuses on the young and charismatic leader of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) Nelson […]
On the sad occasion of Monte Hellman’s passing, we’re republishing this interview of the director that originally ran here in March, 2011, by Nick Dawson. Focused on his “comeback” film, Road to Nowhere, the interview also deals with Hellman’s career in general, his philosophy towards filmmaking, and mentions a tantalizing unmade project based on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s La Maison de Rendezvous. — Editor There’s little better at restoring one’s faith in cinema then when a great director returns from the wilderness. Terrence Malick was MIA for 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but Monte Hellman’s time […]
When film buffs talk about early sound horror films, they tend to associate the period with Universal and its justly famous monster movies. Yet at around the same time, Michael Curtiz directed three important horror pictures at Warner Brothers, the first two of which are far more transgressive, disturbing, and graphic than anything to come out of Universal City. Doctor X (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), and The Walking Dead (1936) aren’t as iconic as later Curtiz classics like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Casablanca (1942), and White Christmas (1954), but they’re every bit as atmospheric and […]
Set during London’s so-called “Three-Day Week” period — just over two months in 1974 when Conservatives in Britain rationed electricity as part of a dispute with the coal miners whose output supplied most of the country’s energy — Corinna Faith’s The Power is an impressively accomplished debut feature that yokes a classic ghost story to the dynamics of the contemporary #MeToo movement. Val is an apprentice nurse working her first night shift in an aging East London hospital. There are plenty of shadows as lights go out in unused areas, and gas lanterns are the most frequent source of illumination. […]
In the wake of Radu Jude’s Golden Bear victory at this year’s Berlinale for his latest, the pandemic production Bad Luck Banging, or Looney Porn, streaming platform DAFilms is hosting a five-film retrospective of his work. In the above video, recorded as an introduction to the series, Jude looks up a Romanian right-wing website which condemns him at last in verse. “You, cinephile, if you care who finances films, wish him to rest in peace and forget what he’s done,” reads part of the poem he recites without a blink. Click here to learn more about the series.