6583 Results for “production”
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Post Empire
Empire, Nevada, “felt like a town suspended in the 1950s, as if the postwar economy had never ended,” writes Jessica Bruder in her nonfiction book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century. The small mining town consisted of four main roads, lined with homes populated by the workers of United States Gypsum, the manufacturer of Sheetrock. Subsidized rents were as low as $250 a month, the company covered TV and internet and, as one resident told Bruder, there were “no gangs, no sirens, no violence.” But economic forces caught up with Empire. In 2011, U.S. Gypsum, a company with a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 10, 2021 -
Trailer Watch: Slamdance 2021 Premiere Teenage Emotions
One of the highlights of this year’s forthcoming Slamdance, Frederic Da’s feature debut Teenage Emotions was shot during lunch breaks at the high school Da works at as a film teacher. Even with production was cut short by COVID, the results are lively, extremely of-the-moment, immersive and funny. We’ll be publishing an interview with Da on Friday, but for now here’s the trailer.
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 10, 2021 -
The Filmic Equivalent of a Haiku: Erick Oh on his Sundance VR Film Namoo
One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]
by Randy Astle on Feb 6, 2021 -
“…Liz was Isolated as a Felon on the Run, Transitioning Alone”: Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker on Their HBO Docuseries The Lady and the Dale
Binge-worthy doesn’t even begin to describe The Lady and the Dale, Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker’s four-part, one-of-a-kind docuseries, premiering January 31 on HBO. Produced by the Duplass brothers, this twist-and-turning saga stars a three-wheeled car called the Dale (that may or may not have been viable) and its marketer extraordinaire, a visionary female entrepreneur (and longtime serial con artist) named Elizabeth Carmichael. With a promise of 70 miles to the gallon at a time when the 70s oil crisis was leaving Americans to linger at gas stations in Soviet-long lines, the Dale seemed to many a dream come true. And […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 5, 2021 -
For Buyers and Sellers, Fewer Films Meet High Demand at a Virtual Sundance 2021
The persistence of COVID-19 disrupted the 2021 Sundance Film Festival in many ways; no blizzard-clogged traffic-jams or overstuffed parties; no late-night negotiations in the Eccles lobby; no standing in lines next to fellow film travelers, giving or getting recommendations of what to see and what to miss. But even without the high altitude buzz of Park City, the pandemic did not stop Sundance’s record for deals! deals! deals! for the festival’s most commercial titles, with industry players saying the virtual event was even more competitive than previous years—“without a doubt,” said one distribution company chief. But what about those dozens […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Feb 5, 2021 -
“Is There Too Much Reading on Screen?” Carey Williams on R#J, Virtual Sundance and Pre-Vis
It may still feature two households both alike in dignity, but in Carey Williams’s modern adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, R#J, the modes of communication look decidedly different. Set in California in the here and now, Williams’s film hones in on the title characters’ brief but intense romance via their messaging tool of choice: the smartphone. Back-and-forth texts and DMs, impromptu FaceTiming sessions, tagging each other in Instagram photos and sharing personally curated Spotify playlists add to the cumulative rise and potential fall of literature’s most infamously star-crossed lovers. Produced by Bazelevs Productions (founded by popular Russian filmmaker […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 5, 2021 -
“Looking At Diversity Through A Different Lens”: Debbie Lum on Try Harder!
Lowell High School, whose student population is predominantly Asian American, is different from most US high schools portrayed on film. Director Debbie Lum came to the nationally ranked school to portray Lowell’s students, particularly so called “tiger cubs” in the heat of the college admissions process for her Sundance 2021 doc Try Harder!. Of course, not all of the Asian American students shown in the film have stereotypical “tiger moms,” and it’s refreshing to see an array of Asian American parents and students shown in communities where they feel comfortable, rather than shrinking in the minority. But the pressure on […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 5, 2021 -
Wings of the Hawk, The Parallax View, Smooth Talk: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Director Budd Boetticher made dozens of movies ranging from romantic comedies and noirs to science fiction and prison pictures, but he’s long been known primarily for the seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott between 1956 and 1960. While those films are all terrific and worthy of the praise bestowed upon them by the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, their canonization has kept many other worthwhile Boetticher works from discovery. I’ve always been partial to the movies he made as a contract director at Universal in 1952 and 1953, a period during which he made a […]
by Jim Hemphill on Feb 5, 2021 -
Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook (Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun): Cusp and Close
Hello Abby, We’ve been Gchatting through our initial Sundance 2021 reactions in between filing festival coverage proper, so it only seems logical to finish out this year by doing a direct handoff in public view. While our experiences were complementary, we had different timelines and levels of willingness to engage. You tried out a good chunk of New Frontier material and went to virtual gatherings in avatar form; true to usual IRL form, I kept a skulking low profile. Our coverage overlapped a few times online (thanks, by the way, for getting into the political dimensions of El Planeta I […]
by Vadim Rizov and Abby Sun on Feb 4, 2021 -
“A Very Sculptural Process”: Editors Natalia Almada and Dave Cerf on Users
Natalia Almada’s Users is an inquisition on technology and its inextricable nature from modern life. Juxtaposed against Californian wildfires and oceans on the rise, the film questions what progress means when we sacrifice so much in the process. Almada, alongside her co-editor Dave Cerf, describes the unique collaborative process used in editing the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Almada: Well… I’ve edited all my films. In part I think it is because I need the editing […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 3, 2021
