6579 Results for “production”
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“It’s Punk Rock to Be Hopeful These Days”: Harley Chamandy on His Self-Distributed Feature Debut Allen Sunshine
The somber existence of a reclusive electronic musician is the focus of Allen Sunshine, the feature debut of 25-year-old Harley Chamandy. The eponymous character (played by Vincent Leclerc) resides in a charming lakeside cabin in Quebec, yet the idyllic nature of his surroundings is tempered by inconsolable grief over his wife’s recent death. As a big-name musical talent in her own right, the solitary Allen is pained by the fact that his grief is not just his own; though he deeply adored her and produced most of her music, it’s clear that fans, both rabid and casual alike, feel equally […]
by Natalia Keogan on Nov 12, 2024 -
Failure as Creative Inspiration: How I Shot — and Recorded — My Christmas-Set Musical Long December in 12 Days
In 2015 I directed my first feature. It would be six years before I was able to direct my second. But once I had completed the first draft of that script, we had the film in the can within six months. It was a breakneck pace making Long December, a Christmas-set musical drama about a singer/songwriter chasing his dreams of stardom. Its process was complicated further by my choice to not only fill the story with musical numbers performed by the cast but to capture those performances live on-camera — with no lip-syncing or back-tracking. Pulling it off took a […]
by Thomas Torrey on Nov 12, 2024 -
Conclave and Other Campaigns
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. Here we are, on Election Day — or, if you didn’t prioritize reading this newsletter on Tuesday, Election Week — and there’s no better distraction from the realities of the world and its discontents than the movies. Or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself. If your election anxiety was triggered in the middle of Focus Features’ Conclave, you’re not alone. I’m very curious to see how that movie in particular will be received post-election, […]
by Tyler Coates on Nov 9, 2024 -
Hawai’i International Film Festival 2024: Zoë Eisenberg on Chaperone
A chance encounter with a teenage Lothario who thought she was still in high school inspired Zoë Eisenberg to begin writing her solo directorial debut, Chaperone, which premiered at the 2024 Slamdance Film Festival and won the Breakouts Grand Jury Prize. “When I was 29, a 17-year-old boy mistook me for a teenager and asked me out to a party,” Eisenberg recalls. “While I declined, I couldn’t help but wonder: what kind of woman would have gone to that party? From there, the questions grew. What happens when a woman chooses not to pursue career or motherhood, the two narrow […]
by Jason Sanders on Nov 8, 2024 -
Hawai’i International Film Festival 2024: Gerard Elmore and Mitchel Merrick on Kūkini
A historical action-epic set in a 1790’s Hawai’i rift of inter-island warfare, Gerard Elmore and Mitchel Merrick’s 26-minute short Kūkini boasts kinetic chase scenes and battle sequences combined with a rigorous attention to cultural accuracy and practice: In addition to consulting with Native Hawaiian practitioners and historians, Elmore and Merrick filmed it entirely in ʻŌlelo Hawai’i, the indigenous language of Hawai’i. In addition to being a director, producer, editor and cinematographer, Elmore is one of the creators and leads of the ‘Ohina Film Labs and Showcase, one of the biggest forces giving opportunities to filmmakers in Hawai’i (a 2023 count […]
by Jason Sanders on Nov 8, 2024 -
Flowers and Songs: The Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF) At 44
Hometown premieres of several long-anticipated local films galvanized this year’s edition of the Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF), now in its 44th year. Last year, fewer films debuted due to pandemic shooting delays; “just wait until 2024” was the common refrain. But now, 2024 is here, and those awaited works have finally arrived. Showcasing the rising talents of the region’s film scene and its sheer diversity of topics and genres, films played to not only sold-out houses, but often to two or three sold-out houses simultaneously—the festival had to keep adding screenings to keep up with demand. HIFF’s decision to […]
by Jason Sanders on Nov 8, 2024 -
Hawai’i International Film Festival 2024: Alika Tengan on Molokai’i Bound
I first learned of Alika Tengan (then Alika Maikau) when his short Mauka to Makai (co-directed with Jonah Okano) screened at the 2018 Hawai’i International Film Festival, where I was a member of the Made in Hawai’i jury. The film’s naturalism, commitment to its characters and refusal of easy melodrama demonstrated a maturity far beyond the young filmmaker’s age; our jury gave it the Best Film award. It turned out to be just the first of several Made in Hawai’i Best Film awards for Tengan; he also won for his 2019 short Molokai’i Bound, and this year won it again […]
by Jason Sanders on Nov 8, 2024 -
“I Actually Feel Like the Firefly Was Caught in the Jar”: Tyler Taormina on His Cannes-Premiering Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
The below interview was originally published May 20, 2024, during the Cannes Film Festival, where Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point premiered in the Directors Fortnight section. It is being republished today, as the film is released nationally by IFC Films, including at New York’s IFC Center. — Editor Whether the sprawling fantasia that is Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point proves heartwarmingly reflective or personally destabilizing in its near-ethnographic study of American holiday ritual will depend, largely, on the composition and size of your own Xmas memories. It’s a strength of the film, however, that Taormina’s expansive […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 8, 2024 -
Tokyo International Film Festival 2024: Tsuta Tetsuichiro on Black Ox
Telling the story of a small, subsistence farming mountain community whose few remaining members keep drifting away to nearby cities, Tsuta Tetsuichiro’s second feature, 2013’s The Tale of Iya, drew upon his background growing up in rural Japan. “I was actually born near there,” he explained. “As I observed the lifestyle of the people of Iya, the idea came to me naturally to make a film set there.” After shooting his first feature on 16mm film in black-and-white, Tetsuichiro upgraded to 35m color for Iya, whose physicality throughout the seasons overwhelms with brutally immersive snowstorms and epic mountain panoramas. For his […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 7, 2024 -
“This is Going to Be the Most Circuitous Interview”: Alan Rudolph on Breakfast of Champions
25 years ago, Alan Rudolph’s Breakfast of Champions left theaters as quickly as it arrived, barely making a blip during a landmark year in American cinema save for a litany of negative reviews that all but celebrated its failure. (Luc Moullet might have been its sole admirer upon release.) Adapted from the Kurt Vonnegut novel of the same name, Breakfast captures a cross-section of American archetypes on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown; correspondingly, the film also feels like it’s also losing its mind. Rudolph, cinematographer Elliot Davis and editor Suzy Elmiger imbue Breakfast with a manic, comically grotesque […]
by Vikram Murthi on Nov 7, 2024
