The Brooklyn-based actor Anastasia Olowin stars in Shaun Seneviratne’s Ben and Suzanne, A Reunion in 4 Parts, which just had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. She has such a command of the screen and brings so much life to her character, it’s hard to believe this is her first feature film. On this episode, she takes us back to her training at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing, her eight years producing and acting in new work for the stage, and the 10-year journey to bring Ben and Suzanne to the screen. She talks about the collaborative process at […]
A woman, a car, a gas station and a factory — from this minimalist set of locations Shannon Triplett has crafted a surprising work of supernatural suspense in her writing and directing debut, Desert Road, which premiered this weekend at the SXSW Film Festival. Kristine Froseth is the woman, a 20-something would-be professional photographer on a solo trip. When her car’s tire blows out on the ribbon-like highway, she’s momentarily dazed before coming to and walking back to that gas station to call for help. In a chilling and quickly rendered series of events, she realizes that help is not […]
On an unassuming downtown block, the Los Angeles Unified School District (L.A.U.S.D.)’s Musical Instrument Repair has excelled for many years. A big fuss is never made by tireless employees (former musicians or quick learners who grew on the job) working long hours while tending to the wear-and-tear of damaged instruments public school students have relied on. Arts programs are severely neglected and underfunded in the United States; this repair facility—essentially a warehouse with minimal lighting but hundreds of tools and thousands of spare parts—provides an essential if underappreciated essential service. Hoping to enhance the visibility of these dedicated craftsmen, Ben […]
World premiering at this year’s SXSW, writer-director-star Alice Lowe’s sophomore feature Timestalker certainly feels like it’s been a long time coming. Arriving eight years after Prevenge, her 2016 debut that she shot and starred in just weeks before giving birth to her eldest daughter, Lowe’s latest was stalled for a slew of reasons—motherhood, COVID, involvement in other projects—but Timestalker’s extended development served to sharpen Lowe’s filmic instinct while shooting, resulting in an ambitious, blood-spattered time loop rom-com more aesthetically and thematically assured than its 22-day shoot may have initially allowed for. Lowe stars as Agnes, an ordinary woman who we […]
Co-founded by Micah Gottlieb and Sarah Winshall, the inaugural edition of the Los Angeles Festival of Movies is slated to take place this April 4 through 7 in venues across east Los Angeles. Today, the festival announced its inaugural lineup, including selections from former 25 New Faces of Film Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (recently interviewed by Jordan Cronk about their new film, Dream Team) and Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan. Below, find the full line-up with descriptions from the festival’s press release. Official Selection Dream Team, dir. Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn Gasoline Rainbow, dir. Bill Ross IV & […]
25 years ago, Pi—a $70,000 indie about an obsessive mathematician shot on 16mm black and white reversal stock—put cinematographer Matthew Libatique on the map. In the intervening quarter century, Libatique has earned three Academy Award nominations and shot multiple films for Spike Lee, Jon Favreau, Joel Schumacher and Darren Aronofsky. He helped inaugurate the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man and dipped into the D.C. sandbox with Birds of Prey. He’s shot horror movies, westerns, sci-fi flicks, war dramas, biopics and whatever genre mother! falls into. But what Matthew Libatique hasn’t done since Pi is shoot a film in black […]
When National Geographic’s Janet Han Vissering and Wildstar Films’s Vanessa Berlowitz got the idea to make Queens, a six-part natural history series about female animals made by an all-woman production crew, they knew it would be a challenge. Only something like five percent of wildlife filmmakers are women, a number far short of the 20 to 30 percent average across the entertainment industry overall. They didn’t know how hard it would be, though. “On the camera side, before Queens there were probably about five women who’d had the opportunity to get to the ‘premium wildlife’ level of work,” Berlowitz explains. “There […]
Chicken & Egg Pictures, the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting women and gender-expansive filmmakers with funding and mentorship, today announced its 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab grantees. The organization is granting $40,000 each to ten feature documentary film projects, directed or co-directed by first- or second-time directors. Funds are targeted for production, and each director will also receive year-long mentorship. From today’s press release: The 2024 (Egg)celerator Lab films find families reimagining their histories, legacies, generational grief, and intimate end of life journeys such as in Ashley O’Shay’s Southmont Drive (Working Title), Gabriela Díaz Arp’s Matitinó, and Emma Francis-Snyder’s Anatomy of a […]
Pitch People is a feature documentary that takes an energetic look at the pitch business, a dynamic world that started in Europe, made its way to the U.S. boardwalks, and exploded on worldwide television in the 1990s. The film was completed in 1999. It was well-received at various festivals and independent film venues but a year later, it was still incomplete. It was missing an audience, partially due to it never having a formal theatrical release. In 2020, production and postproduction stopped due to the pandemic. With advanced filmmaking tools available and new ways of making people aware of a […]
Directed by and co-written with collaborator and husband, Ethan Coen, filmmaker and editor Tricia Cooke’ Drive Away Dolls (or Dykes, per the end credits) finds her doing sapphic donuts around classic movies like Kiss Me Deadly and even a little North By Northwest. As Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) decide to take a trip to Tallahassee, they’re dogged by inept criminals seeking a package and suitcase in the back trunk of the car the pair have rented. If the road trip movie and film noir have long been exercises to explore the American psyche and the landscape’s possible […]