6576 Results for “production”
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6 Years Writer/Director Hannah Fidell at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Following up her debut feature, A Teacher, Hannah Fidell premiered 6 Years at SXSW before traveling with it last month to the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. A relationship tale about two twenty-somethings navigating the complications of post-collegiate life, the film stars Taissa Farming and Ben Rosenfield. Filmmaker caught up with Fidell in Paris to learn about working without a script, returning to Austin for production and how film theory has affected her filmmaking. 6 Years will be released later this year by Netflix. Filmmaker: 6 Years is the second film in your Texas trilogy. Because the movie was improvised, did you ever […]
by Taylor Hess on Jul 21, 2015 -
Nine Answers for Anxious Film Investors
The process of finding investors for independent film can be trying, to say the least, but it can also be illuminating. Anyone who has ever attempted to find money for a film knows that there are typical questions that always get asked by first-time investors: How will I make back my investment? When do the investors get paid? How is the deal structured? Can I come to the premiere? While looking for partners for Lazy Eye, our micro-budget feature, writer/director Tim Kirkman received an e-mail from a potential investor who had forwarded our package to a friend/advisor. The email contained […]
by Gill Holland and Tim Kirkman on Jul 16, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: David O. Russell’s Joy
Originally a spec script from Bridesmaids co-writer Annie Mumolo, Joy received a top to bottom rewrite from David O. Russell before production, and the results appear to be somewhat darker than his last two screwball jabs, American Hustle and The Silver Linings Playbook. In any event, here is your first look at the rags to riches tale of Joy Mangano, inventor of the Miracle Mop, as played by Russell regular Jennifer Lawrence.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 15, 2015 -
Film Writing on the Spam Internet: A Hasty Categorization
We were deep in production on our summer issue last week, so I didn’t have much time to think about the extremely sudden shuttering of The Dissolve, the three-days-shy-of-two-years site that attempted to fill a surprising hole on the internet by primarily/substantially dedicating itself to writing moderate-to-lengthy reviews for just about every film released. This is a service still performed by the trades, The New York Times and other periodicals, but decisions inevitably must be made about which films to relegate to 200 terse words or less, or to ignore entirely. Ignoring this hierarchy, The Dissolve made sure all reviews […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 14, 2015 -
“We Lost U2. What About Ennio Morricone?”: Phil Joanou on State of Grace, Making Heaven’s Prisoners and Working for Blumhouse
In September 1990, the American cinema changed forever when Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas exploded onto the country’s multiplex screens. I’ve written elsewhere about that film’s influence and impact, which was so massive that its unfortunate side effect was to eclipse several other excellent mob films that were released at the same time. Indeed, the period was a remarkable one for terrific gangster movies – Miller’s Crossing, King of New York, Men of Respect, and The Godfather, Part III all premiered in the fall of 1990. To varying degrees time has been kind to all of these films, but none has aged […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 14, 2015 -
“We Didn’t Fictionalize Much”: Sean Baker on Tangerine
Shot on three iPhones 5s’s with a pair of unknown actresses as leads, Sean Baker’s Tangerine was a hazardous proposition, but the finished product justifies every ounce of risk involved in the production, showing just how far the crew could stretch a minuscule budget. Shot on and around real Los Angeles streets and shops, the film keeps pace with transgender sex workers Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) as they zigzag around the city on Christmas Eve on dual missions. Sin-Dee’s embarking on a “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” revenge mission against her two-timing boyfriend […]
by Alice Stoehr on Jul 8, 2015 -
Medium-Length Highs Over Fragmented Landscapes: FIDMarseille
Diversity’s the aim of every city’s game, but Marseilles really does have everything. Greek in origin, Roman by design, Arabic in flavor, French in architecture and Mediterranean in climate: this encouragingly rough-edged melting pot is an appropriate setting for a film festival like FIDMarseille. Eschewing the standard but arbitrary practice of dividing films based upon format or duration, FID throws all of its selections together: fictional shorts, feature-length documentaries, mid-length essay-films and just about every hybridized bastard form in between. At a time when festivals are increasingly wary of upsetting sponsors and other funding bodies, appealing where they can to […]
by Michael Pattison on Jul 7, 2015 -
To Not Be Crippled by Storytelling: Les Blank’s A Poem is a Naked Person
Early in Les Blank’s A Poem is a Naked Person, we see a shirtless, bearded man in cutoffs standing in an empty white pool nonchalantly scooping tiny scorpions into a mason jar with a piece of paper. At first, this action is underscored with “Take Me” by George Jones, carried over from the prior scene, which featured Jones playing in musician Leon Russell’s riverside Oklahoma recording studio. As the Jones song winds down we’re treated to the scorpion catcher’s musings on creativity, on how letting children draw on blank walls is sensible parenting, on how he’s made uncomfortable by prefabricated […]
by Jeff Reichert on Jul 1, 2015 -
“One Light in the Right Place Takes the Place of Three or Four in the Wrong Place”: DP Darren Genet on The Vampire Diaries
I first became aware of cinematographer Darren Genet when I encountered his work on All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, a surprisingly lyrical and beautiful horror film that had more in common with the work of Terrence Malick and ’70s-era Peter Bogdanovich than with other teen slasher films. Awestruck by Genet’s visual originality and technical precision, I continued to follow his work as he ventured into television (CSI: Miami) and continued to evolve as a feature cinematographer on films like Jada Pinkett Smith’s criminally underrated directorial debut, The Human Contract. That film exhibits all of Genet’s strengths: a bold and […]
by Jim Hemphill on Jul 1, 2015 -
Queer Film Pioneer Monika Treut on Of Girls and Horses
A legend in lesbian cinema, Monika Treut has been making films for 30 years, starting with her 1985 narrative feature Seduction: The Cruel Woman (featuring Udo Kier – not bad for a debut film), and right through to this year’s Of Girls and Horses, a poetic coming-of-age tale that also serves as a celebration of nature’s transformational power. Along the way Treut has also explored the nonfiction realm, turning her lens on everything from gender identity (1999’s Gendernauts) to Taiwanese food (2012’s The Raw and the Cooked). Filmmaker was fortunate enough to catch up with the Hyena Films co-founder (along […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 30, 2015
