6583 Results for “production”
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Darcy McKinnon
“I might stretch the definition of ’new face,’” jokes Darcy McKinnon, “but I am new as a documentary producer.” Indeed, McKinnon’s first experience in film came more than 20 years ago when, out of college, she worked as an assistant editor in San Francisco. That led to coproducing the one-hour 2006 POV documentary, Maquilapolis, directed by Sergio De La Torre and Vicky Funari, about activist women factory workers on the border between Tijuana and the United States. The film is, says McKinnon, “responsible for a lot of the ways I want to practice, where social justice and art come together. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Daniel Antebi
Revealing a personal experience of sexual assault is intimidating in any context. Detailing the ordeal in an op-ed for Teen Vogue seems almost unfathomable. But that’s exactly what Daniel Antebi did in January 2019, recounting the day he, then a 14-year-old martial arts student in Washington, D.C., was sexually abused by his instructor. Detailing the ways in which society discourages men from speaking out against assault, the article came accompanied by a 65-second Strength Speaks Up public service announcement (PSA) directed by Antebi, featuring a martial arts student trapped in an unhealthy power dynamic with his teacher. Born in Mexico […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Hayley Garrigus
Describing his work as a journalist on the alt-right beat in 2017, Joseph Bernstein noted that he had “a high personal tolerance for shit.” It’s a description Hayley Garrigus thinks could also apply to her approach to nonfiction filmmaking, she says, “mixed in with pure curiosity for people, this naiveté I approach these subjects with. I’m going to come at you as if I don’t know you at all, without any preconceived notions.” You Can’t Kill Meme, her first feature, is bookended by the unnerving image of an CG-animated Pepe the Frog cradled like a baby in a man’s arms […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Victoria Rivera
“I have a particular interest in complicated, flawed protagonists who find themselves in moral quandaries,” says writer, director and producer Victoria Rivera, a New York–based filmmaker whose success with recent shorts is leading her to her largest project, a feature adventure on the open sea exploring gender dynamics as well as the corporate politics around shark hunting. Rivera was born and grew up in Colombia, where she debated whether to become a doctor or a filmmaker. “I shadowed some doctors, and they all said, ’Go into film,’” she says. She moved to New York, attended School of Visual Arts for […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Christine Haroutounian
In Christine Haroutounian’s second short film, World, Claudette (Hasmik Hovian) has arrived in an Armenian village to take care of her dying mother. The 22-minute short generates one whiplash sensation after another in its very impolite rendering of end-of-life caretaking: black comedy via a visit from a neighbor bringing unwanted soup as an excuse to chide Claudette (“Your mom was right. Her death will be a good lesson for you”), abrupt visual shocks from the animal kingdom (a vividly red shot of a chicken with its head cut off, a fly crawling around Claudette’s barely breathing mother’s mouth), randomly initiated […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Joseph Sackett
Writer/director Joseph Sackett had won some free film stock at a film festival and decided to “write something short and simple.” In a day, he wrote a draft of a story about a young boy who falls in love with his babysitter—and then dreams that he’s actually coursing through her veins, inhabiting her lungs. Shot by Jomo Fray two-and-a-half weeks later, and starring Colby Minifie and Tre Ryder, the short, I Was in Your Blood, elegantly moves from a tender series of stolen moments as the boy crushes on his babysitter to the trippy animated finale of his dream. “I […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Tayler Montague
Tayler Montague’s debut short film, In Sudden Darkness, about a young working-class family in the Bronx navigating the Northeast blackout of 2003, is—contrary to its bleak-sounding title—a portrait of profound love and joy. “I didn’t have a scary blackout experience,” says the native New Yorker, who experienced the blackout as a child. “I mean, it’s corny, right? But love is the core of everything in that household.” The lights go out, and when night hits and the community starts tripping on one another’s shoes in the dark, there’s comfort knowing everyone can be recognized just by the sound of their […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Daniel Hymanson
Chicago native Daniel Hymanson’s first feature, So Late So Soon, grew from his longtime relationship with artist and children’s teacher Jackie Seiden. Hymanson started taking her classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago around age five and became a regular visitor to Jackie and late artist husband Don’s house. Shot over a multiyear period, including a stretch when Hymanson lived across the street, So Late So Soon is a lovingly assembled portrait of a (mostly) harmonious couple living in a house dominated by their sculptural installations. Elegant editorial leaps to archival footage expand the crowd-pleaser’s more sorrowful […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Nadav Kurtz
In 2006, Nadav Kurtz was 23 years old and working his first full-time film editing gig in Chicago. The movie, a crime thriller mockumentary called Street Thief, was “a fake documentary that followed the everyday life of a burglar in Chicago,” Kurtz recalls. “Even more intriguingly, the two brothers” making the film—director Malik Bader and his producer brother Sam—“hinted that it was based on real experiences of people that they knew.” The first-time fraternal filmmakers were thrilled when Street Thief was selected for competition at that year’s Tribeca Film Festival, but the excitement was quickly extinguished when, five weeks before […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020 -
Keisha Rae Witherspoon
T, Keisha Rae Witherspoon’s 13-minute directorial debut, commences with a moment of near silence. First, there is slow-motion revelry, dancers in marvelous homemade ball gowns and hand-painted R.I.P. T-shirts adorned with the faces of their beloveds, a voice crooning, “We’re here to honor our dead.” The silence that follows is transitional. We see drawings of “T”’s myriad incarnations—Trayvon Martin, the Vitruvian Man, the eponymous R.I.P. T-shirt—before a series of documentary-style interviews with the ball’s attendees, which feel astonishingly unscripted. As Witherspoon dreamt up the opulent, memorial T Ball at the heart of the film—a 2019 Sundance Official Selection and the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020
