For decades John Waters has been the filmmaker who has sprung to mind when one thinks about Baltimore and the movies. But with the release of his exquisitely directed, formally rigorous second feature, Putty Hill, Matt Porterfield adds his name to the city’s cinematic honor roll. “For me, Baltimore — the physical environment and its people — is a real source of inspiration,” he says. “It’s a diverse but stratified city, an amalgam of the North and South, divided along race, class, and socioeconomic lines. I hope my films can perform some kind of social function by bridging gaps and […]
For Arielle Javitch, whose first feature, Look, Stranger, is currently in post, moviemaking and movement have always been intertwined activities. She began her career as a dancer, and when a back injury sidelined her from performance, she began to make short dance films. “They started as pure movement, and then they began to get more narrative,” Javitch remembers. “One of my shorts was about refugees, and I used testimonies from different [refugee] stories, trying to make them visual through dance and other imagery. The film was beautiful, but it didn’t succeed, and then I knew I had to move into […]
Danfung Dennis, who is self-lensing his first directorial effort, says he had never handled a video camera before starting production. But for Dennis, who made his name as a photojournalist covering strife in China, Iraq and Afghanistan, the transition was an organic one. “The Canon 5D Mark 2 came out,” he remembers, “and it was very similar to the cameras I had been using. With just one button push I was shooting HD video.” Dennis, who had been shooting in Kabul for Newsweek, thought he might make a short Web video about the conflict there. But soon Dennis upsized his […]
“I started out as a child actor,” says Kasper Tuxen, the Danish d.p., who has in the space of a year become sought after by American independent directors looking for adventurous cinematic collaborators. “I was 13; I had a lead role in a Danish film, but from the first day of the shoot I was interested in cinematography.” When he got older Tuxen thought about becoming a rock musician but enrolled in the Danish Film School in Copenhagen instead. “It was a very technical education,” Tuxen says. “For four years it was all about film and exposure.” After film school, […]
In December 2009, Mike Stoklasa uploaded “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” Review, a 70-minute takedown of George Lucas’s 1999 film. Astute in its critique, perverse in its use of humor and hypnotically narrated in the first person by a serial killer character in severe need of a decongestant, the review used footage from the film, its DVD extras and the occasionally third-party source to systematically prosecute Lucas’s crimes against filmmaking and his betrayal of Star Wars fans’ pent-up devotion. Once posted, the video went viral. Lost co-creator and Star Trek producer Damon Lindelof gave it immediate mainstream cred at Slashfilm: […]
Made piecemeal over four years, Sultan Sharrief’s Bilal’s Stand is a brazenly autobiographical, starless, penny-pinching production from Detroit about one black Muslim teen’s decision to go to the University of Michigan despite the naysayers in his family as well as in the diverse, suburban high school he treks to instead of the more toxic Detroit public high school nearby. Rough around the edges, it’s told with enough freewheeling inventiveness and first-person verve that it transcends its obvious financial limitations and offers a glimpse of utterly authentic working-class black life in the industrial Midwest. In the world of cinema, studio or […]
Winner of the Focus Features Best Film Award at the 2010 Columbia University Film Festival, the Student Choice Award, and an Audience Award, Babyland by Marc Fratello is one of the most devastating shorts you’ll see all year. It starts off like a blue-collar version of a Nicole Holofcener film, or perhaps one by Todd Solondz. By day, a lonely young upstate New York woman (played beautifully by Marielena Logsdon) trolls baby boutiques and children’s bookstores, connecting with fellow mothers-to-be. The only thing is, the slight bulge in her blouse is only padding. She’s not pregnant. But such is her […]
When you live next to Harmony Korine some unconventional ideas can creep into your head. So when Brent Stewart was thinking about making a chamber-piece drama on 35mm and shooting the whole thing with little to no camera movement he went to his famous filmmaking neighbor for some advice. “I knew it would be a challenge to pull off because even Harmony said to me, ‘Man, that’s risky.’” But, The Colonel’s Bride, Stewart’s debut feature, is an intimate look at loneliness, old age and death with striking photography, a haunting score and a stirring lead performance that shouldn’t be missed. […]
“I once had a director cry when she walked through the main character’s set because she was so moved. That was definitely one of the most rewarding moments for me as a designer.” In the past few years, production designer Jade Healy’s hands have touched a diverse selection of notable independent films: Ti West’s House of the Devil, Zeina Durra’s The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Sundance success happythankyoumoreplease and Joe Swanberg’s Alexander the Last. She began in production, as an assistant producer on Asia Argento’s The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, after interning for Muse Production’s Chris Hanley; next […]
If you go to the website of Zac Stuart-Pontier (zac-edits.com), your browser heading will display the following: “Zac edits really, really, really well.” This cheeky claim was earned in early 2010 when the three feature documentaries that Zac had been working on since he graduated NYU in 2006 premiered within a month of each other: Jody Lee Lipes and Henry Joost’s NY Export: Opus Jazz, which premiered on PBS and took to the festival circuit with gusto in March, via SXSW; James Rasin’s biographical doc Beautiful Darling, about the Warhol superstar Candy Darling and the loves she left behind, which […]