6583 Results for “production”
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“We Read Adam’s Blog Every Day… So It Was Like a Daily Script”: Pia Hellenthal on Her Social Media-Themed Doc, Searching Eva
Having made my “Best Yet-to-be-Distributed Docs 2019” list, Pia Hellenthal’s Searching Eva, currently streaming on Mubi USA and with a virtual release upcoming on June 2nd through Syndicado, can now be shifted to the “best docs of 2020” category. My assessment of this “portrait of a restless, gender-ambiguous, philosophical millennial who documents her entire life — from fashion week to freelance sex work — online” might not make the film seem like must-see viewing. But that’s precisely the point — and what makes Hellenthal’s talent all the more apparent. As an often cynical critic who couldn’t care less about a globetrotting […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2020 -
“You Can Only Sit on a Zoom Call for So Long”: Tamara Mariam Dawit (Finding Sally) on Online Markets and the Hot Docs 2020 Digital Experience
Splitting her time between Toronto and Addis Ababa, Canadian-Ethiopian filmmaker Tamara Mariam Dawit is no stranger to international workshops and events. (Or to Hot Docs. When the pandemic hit the longtime alum had been set to premiere her latest Finding Sally, a personal investigation into the life of a long-lost communist rebel aunt four decades after her disappearance.) “I think the upside of online meetings is that the cost is less. You don’t have to pay for flights and hotels, which is what often makes attending a market like Cannes or the EFM too expensive for many people,” Dawit offered. “And […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 20, 2020 -
Writer/Director Lynn Shelton, 1965 – 2020
Lynn Shelton, who wrote and directed features including Hump Day, Your Sister’s Sister and Laggies, and who directed numerous television episodes, died yesterday in Los Angeles of a previously undiagnosed blood disorder. She was 54. Long associated with the Seattle independent film scene, Shelton began feature filmmaking in her mid-30s, after working in a variety of other artistic mediums. She told Filmmaker in 2012, “As far back as I can remember I always knew I wanted to be an artist. Finding myself smitten with nearly every creative medium in existence probably made the fact that I ended up deeply exploring […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2020 -
King Creole, To Catch a Thief and Gunsmoke: The Complete Series: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
The conventional wisdom among cineastes is that Elvis Presley’s best movie was the Don Siegel Western Flaming Star (1960), mainly thanks to the fact that it was one of the few times the singer worked with an important auteur. While I bow to no one in my admiration of Siegel in general and Flaming Star in particular, it’s less a great Elvis movie than a great movie that has Elvis in it; for a terrific film by a terrific director that’s also a supercharged vehicle for what Presley did best, one need look no further than 1958’s King Creole, which […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 15, 2020 -
“While It’s Not About the Experience of Being Quarantined Per Se, It Taps into a Kind of Universal Experience”: Director Matt Wolf on His Moving Saga of Human Ambition, Spaceship Earth
“Theater engages the whole organism,” says Biosphere 2 Director of Systems Engineering William Dempster. “Movement, through emotion — [it] gives you insight into yourself. Building a foundation from which we could go on and do other projects.” Accompanying Dempster’s voiceover early in Matt Wolf’s engrossing and unexpectedly stirring documentary, Spaceship Earth, is black-and-white footage from the first public activity of John Allen’s band of “Synergists”: a traveling theater production called The Theater of All Possibilities. The artistic value of the production is indeterminate; seen in brief clips, it falls somewhere on the continuum between The Living Theater and an Allan […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 14, 2020 -
“Directing Other People’s Writing Makes You Become a Better Writer”: Andrew Ahn on Driveways
There are a number of films about an inquisitive child who discovers a solemn, older neighbor next door, but it’s rare for one to provide equal weight to both the child and adult characters. Driveways, a modest but heartfelt second feature from Spa Night’s Andrew Ahn, succeeds at striking the balance. Kathy (Hong Chau) and Cody (Lucas Jaye), a mother and son from Michigan, arrive in upstate New York to clear out the home of a deceased family member and prepare it for sale. Del (Brian Dennehy), a Korean War veteran and lonely widower, spends his days sitting on the porch next […]
by Erik Luers on May 14, 2020 -
On What Would Have Been the Launch of Cannes, a Celebration of 26 Film Festivals — and 26 Festival Directors
Film festivals are all about a community coming together to celebrate an art form that we all love. They were one of the first group of events to cancelled when the coronavirus began to spread. The current crisis in the film industry (and across society and the economy as a whole) — the job losses and closures — made it difficult to publish my look back over my year in film festivals, as I’ve done on an annual basis for Filmmaker since 2014. (Also, I had broken my finger over Christmas so was unable to type for three weeks, which […]
by Kaleem Aftab on May 12, 2020 -
“We Only Zoom In on This Show! We Don’t Zoom Out!” DP Jody Lee Lipes on I Know This Much is True and Shooting 600 Hours of 35mm
Jody Lee Lipes’ first answer was drowned out by a cacophonous eruption outside his window. We’d scheduled our interview about HBO’s new show I Know This Much Is True for 7 pm—the time when New Yorkers take to their windows and balconies each night to shower frontline workers with cheers of appreciation. Wally Lamb’s source novel was released in 1998 and the show’s 10-month shooting schedule began in early 2019. Yet it’s not hard to draw parallels between the show’s weary humanism and our new pandemic reality, with lines like “We’re connected, whether I like you or not” and “You […]
by Matt Mulcahey on May 8, 2020 -
Clean and Sober, Sweet Bird of Youth, Reflections in a Golden Eye: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Michael Keaton was primarily known for comedies when he gave one of the riskiest dramatic performances of the 1980s as a fast-talking addict in Glenn Gordon Caron’s Clean and Sober (1988); over 30 years later it remains a high point in the actor’s distinguished career. Keaton plays Daryl Poynter, a coke-snorting real estate salesman who needs to lay low after he embezzles tens of thousands of dollars and wakes up next to a woman who has suffered a heart attack after doing drugs with him the night before. Not accepting that he’s an addict, Daryl decides to “pose” as an […]
by Jim Hemphill on May 8, 2020 -
“I Had to Figure Out the True Latitude, Speed and Color Science”: DP Jeff Cronenweth On The Social Network Ten Years Later and the Mysterium X Sensor
On October 1, The Social Network turns ten. The RED Mysterium X sensor (also turning ten) that rendered the film is now outmoded, but The Social Network thrives due to, not in spite of, the marks of its time. The limited latitude of the once cutting-edge camera sensor pushed David Fincher and DP Jeff Cronenweth—who also shot Fincher’s Fight Club, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo and Gone Girl—into the darker bends of The Social Network’s imitation Harvard dorms. The camera struggled with highlights, so they avoided hot windows and sunny exteriors. It also strained to digest warm tones, so they chose […]
by A.E. Hunt on May 4, 2020
