6576 Results for “production”
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Dispatches from Thessaloniki, Macao and Cucalorus
Thessaloniki International Film Festival By Ray Pride What everyone in Greece has known since 2008 is — well, no one knows. In late December, the eurozone lenders again withdrew short-term relief measures for the demolished Greek economy, partially prompted by a one-time relief payment to impoverished pensioners for Christmas. A local observer said the current goal in Greek politics is to see “who can be less hated than all the others. Trust in political parties is rock bottom.” Greece is still in crisis, still reeling and contracting, although there are hopeful signs at street level, in cafes and tavernas, in this centuries-old, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2017 -
Super 8
The Verso Book of Dissent Some readers may find useful — for contemplation, inspiration and action — this anthology just out from Verso. Edited by Andrew Hsiao and Audrea Lim, it’s a collection of manifestoes, poems, songs and screeds from the history of opposition to authority. (Verso Books, $14.95, out now). 50 Song Memoir Writing songs for The Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt has generally had some kind of thematic guideline for each album: 69 Love Songs (self-explanatory), Distortion (ditto), et al. 50 Song Memoir, his first Fields album since 2012, may seem to be well in keeping with his previous […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2017 -
The Art of Walking: Eduardo Williams on The Human Surge
In Eduardo Williams’s shorts and, now, his debut feature The Human Surge, packs of young men and women wander without purpose but still with great persistence around the globe. 2012’s The Sound of the Stars Dazes Me and 2011’s Could See a Puma, were shot at home in Buenos Aires, 2013’s That I’m Falling? in Sierra Leone and 2014’s I Forgot! in Vietnam. Logically building on this peripatetic tendency, Surge moves from Argentina to Mozambique to the Philippines in three discrete but linked segments. No matter where the characters are, there’s often a basic MO: young people trekking reluctantly to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 18, 2017 -
Lab Experiments
When Steve Cossman founded Mono No Aware 10 years ago, he was literally the entire organization. Operating out of his apartment, Cossman — who’d attended Albright College and had just returned from a two-year program at Prague’s FAMU film school — wanted to engage with and assist the expanded cinema community. “Expanded cinema” goes far beyond traditional notions of the avant-garde: Cossman cites a recent piece by Julie Dumas as a good example of the kind of work his organization supports, in which RGB lasers pointed at a single surface created a piercing white light. “There were two buckets with […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 18, 2017 -
Keystone Cop: Why 1.66 and 1.78 Aspect Ratios Are Often Misprojected (And How to Fix That)
Jackie, Fox Searchlight’s best hope for 2016 Oscar glory, will be improperly projected throughout the world. There will be the usual projection mistakes and corporate carelessness that have become the norm in today’s multiplexes, but Jackie’s 1.66 aspect ratio will be presented keystoned more often than not: instead of a narrow rectangle that is 1.66 times longer than tall, the tops of the image will either curve inward or outward in relation to the screen. It’s an easily corrected mistake that is being ignored because of laziness. Since most projection booths are devoid of projectionists who can fix the problem, […]
by Sergio Andrés Lobo-Navia on Jan 18, 2017 -
Ruptures and Disturbances
The Killing of America The recent Severin Films Blu-ray/DVD release of the 1981 documentary The Killing of America marks the first time this notorious cult item has ever been commercially distributed in the U.S. in any form — ironic, given that it’s a film about a particularly American issue made by two American filmmakers, but it apparently hit too close to home at the time. So despite being a top 10 box-office hit that year in the country that actually produced it (Japan), the film never saw the light of day in the U.S. other than an extended run at New […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2017 -
Strategies for Sharing
“I’m the only one of these directors with a @twitter account. Am I doing it wrong?!” tweeted, tongue-in-cheek, Moonlight helmer Barry Jenkins last November. Good question: Jenkins had just been announced as one of the Best Director nominees for the Film Independent Spirit Awards (the others were Andrea Arnold, for American Honey; Pablo Larraín, for Jackie; Jeff Nichols, for Loving; and Kelly Reichardt, for Certain Women), and among such esteemed company he was the sole denizen of the Twittersphere. Was Jenkins boosting his chances during awards season by maintaining an active presence on Twitter? Or does a social media identity […]
by Stephen Garrett on Jan 18, 2017 -
The Terror of the Text: Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart on Personal Shopper
Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas’s latest feature, begins with a classic horror movie trope: an evening spent in a haunted house. Kristen Stewart plays expat Maureen — not a paranormalist or twentysomething thrill-seeker but a personal clothes buyer and stylist to Kyra, a celebrity socialite and member of the Davos set. Something of a savant, Maureen does this job with an instinctual certainty but little evident pleasure. Whether that’s due to her preternatural cool or an overlay of mourning is unclear. But several months earlier, her brother, with whom she shares a congenital heart condition, died in a drafty mansion somewhere […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2017 -
Secret Pizza, #pizzagate and Hyperreality: How My Film About Alternate Realities Was Swept Into One
“In the province of the mind what one believes to be true, either is true or becomes true within certain limits.” – John C. Lilly “I don’t believe anything, but I have many suspicions.” – Robert Anton Wilson “Reality used to be a friend of mine.” – P.M. Dawn My name is Matthew Lessner. I have been making films for the past decade, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never seen any of them. Several of my films have screened at big-name festivals, but none of them have been exactly championed or widely released. I’ve never been mentioned in […]
by Matthew Lessner on Jan 17, 2017 -
The 50 Most Anticipated American Films of 2017
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival is just a few days away, and with it begins a new cycle of stressing out about all of the movies that I haven’t been able to see yet. Hollywood operates on a very fixed theatrical schedule — leftovers dumped wholesale at the beginning of the year (I’m looking at you, Bye Bye Man), CGI franchises dominating the summer calendar, and Oscar bait rolling out from October on. Meanwhile, the landscape for smaller-budget but more adventurous films here in the States has developed its own windowing: the majority of American art films will premiere at […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 16, 2017
