6583 Results for “production”
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“The Only Similarity Between My Film and Brecht’s Play Lies in the Title”: Sabrina Zhao on The Good Woman of Sichuan
“This is neither an adaptation nor a work of fiction,” an intertitle informs the viewers after five minutes of uninterrupted observation of the rural landscape through the window of a passing train. “Only the quoted lines from The Good Person of Szechwan are supposed to be fictitious.” Sabrina Zhao’s directorial debut The Good Woman of Sichuan is upfront when it comes to disclosing its hybrid nature—between documentary and fiction, the film borrows the little plot there is from Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan. Or does it really? After the first disorienting encounter with the film’s seemingly disjointed […]
by Ren Scateni on Mar 26, 2021 -
SXSW Critic’s Notebook: Poly Styrene: I am a Cliché, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, Disintegration Loops, J’ai Été Au Bal
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Poly Styrene. I was in college, hanging out at a buddy’s one evening. We were drinking beer, smoking pot and playing records. One of them was something new, a document of the current London punk-rock scene: Live at the Roxy London WC2, featuring now-legendary acts like Wire and the Buzzcocks. The songs were by turns arty or aggro, surging out of a mix that felt submerged in an ambient murk. And then this teenager’s voice cut through. Over the curdled notes of Lora Logic’s saxophone, drums clamor and the song explodes. “Bind […]
by Steve Dollar on Mar 23, 2021 -
Jeremy, The Bad News Bears, The Bermuda Depths and Isle of the Dead: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
One of the surprise hits of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival was the low-budget coming of age film Jeremy, an unassuming drama starring two unknowns and directed by an American documentarian whose low-key approach yielded powerful emotional effects. Sixteen-year old Robby Benson had been acting on Broadway since he was nine but was fairly new to movies; his co-star, Glynnis O’Connor, was even less experienced and fluked into her part when she tagged along with her brother Darren (who starred in another interesting 70s high school movie, To Find a Man, the year before) on his audition for the part […]
by Jim Hemphill on Mar 19, 2021 -
“Is the Real Horror the ‘Old Ways’ Or the Civilization That We Built?: Kier-La Janisse on Her SXSW Doc, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched
What began as a BTS feature for a home video release of The Blood on Satan’s Claw, a 1971 cult favorite about Satanic possession in a 17th century English village, premiered this week at the South by Southwest film festival as a three-hour opus on the allure and dread of folk-horror. “I started working on a half-hour bonus feature for Severin [Films] and it just kept getting really big,” says Kier-La Janisse, whose directorial debut Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched adds yet another hyphen to her endeavors as a film historian-memorist (The House of Psychotic Women), editor, curator and educator (she […]
by Steve Dollar on Mar 19, 2021 -
A Dying Landscape Etched in VR: Adi Lavy on Her SXSW Doc Once Upon a Sea
The Dead Sea is one of the unknown casualties of the turbulent politics of the Middle East. Population growth since the founding of Israel has diverted much of its source water for human use. Mineral extraction companies have reduced it even further, and of course global warming is continually increasing temperatures and making the region more arid. Since the watershed basin is shared between Israel and Jordan it requires international cooperation to address, and though there have been attempts to do so they have not matched the challenge that the Sea is facing. The result is that the Sea shrinks […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 16, 2021 -
Back to One, Episode 146: Leonardo Nam
Westworld star Leonardo Nam didn’t know that I saw him perform a scene in an acting class in New York City way back when. An inventiveness and creativity were on display there that I still see in his work. In this hour, he tells an amazing story of literally coming to a crossroad in his young life, and how he boldly chose what felt right, and turned toward the pursuit of acting. He talks about the importance of finding the “play” in every role, why the costuming days are his favorite in pre-production, and how meditation helps get him “back […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Mar 16, 2021 -
“Letting Go…Trusting that the People You’ve Casted Will Bring it to a Better Place”: Karishma Dube on Bittu
Karishma Dube’s Bittu begins with sound before image, a vague squabble over black before it drops you into the middle of a world in motion. The opening shot is not held long before cutting to the next. It is one among many, does not announce itself as the beginning, and is not so contrived and defined that you can remember exactly when the film began. Suddenly, the viewer’s immersed in a story that started well before they became a witness to it. The opening shot introduces the film’s namesake little girl, Bittu, as played by the phenomenal first time performer […]
by A.E. Hunt on Mar 12, 2021 -
Don’t Tell a Soul, Wrong Turn and The Choirboys: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
The potential for horror films to serve as vehicles for provocative moral inquiry is fully realized in a pair of excellent thrillers new to Blu-ray and DVD from Lionsgate, writer-director Alex McAulay’s Don’t Tell a Soul and the surprisingly original 2021 reboot of the 2003 cult classic Wrong Turn. Both films seem, at first glance, to be routine low-budget programmers, but it quickly becomes apparent that the filmmakers are up to something more ambitious and rewarding than simply jerking the audience around with cheap shock effects. Don’t Tell a Soul follows two young brothers who break into an elderly woman’s […]
by Jim Hemphill on Mar 12, 2021 -
Shot Reverse Shot: The Inheritance Director Ephraim Asili in Conversation with Residue Director Merawi Gerima (Part Two)
(Click here to read part one of Gerima and Asili’s conversation.) Gerima: Since we’re talking about the realities of Black cinema: when you don’t have time or money, a lot of times rehearsal plays an important part. I wanted to ask you about your process with your actors before you got to the studio. Did you have time to rehearse? Asili: Not as much as I would’ve liked, but what we did have, that I would say was even better than rehearsals was, I had written about half of the script, but I had pretty elaborate backstories. So, when I went […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 11, 2021 -
“It’s Kind of Scary to Think About Letting Anyone and Everyone Into the Edit Bay”: Jethica Director Pete Ohs On Twitch Livestreaming His Edit
Drawing from the world of gaming, writer/director Pete Ohs is embarking on a post-production experiment for his pandemic-shot film, Jethica: live-streaming his edit. “I know that YouTube is overflowing with editing and software tutorials but I’ve never heard of anyone actually editing a movie live,” he writes in an email, and I can’t think of anyone who has done this either. Beginning this week, Ohs is using Twitch to transmit his editing screen as well as webcam footage of himself behind the console, allowing viewers to track his process cut-by-cut. “I imagine the audience for this stream is going to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 11, 2021
