The air became almost oppressively heavy with humidity on my second proper morning of Overlook. Walking to a relatively cheap brunch outpost called Toast, my boyfriend and I became drenched in sweat from the weight of cotton pants and button-up shirts after a 10-minute walk in 9 AM sunlight. The news of a 20-minute wait for a table didn’t bother us: it meant we had exactly enough time to head back to the hotel and change into full-blown summer garments before being seated. The sudden immersion into a solstice-temperate climate didn’t trouble me (or my skin, which cleared considerably from […]
One of John Waters’s favorite movies of 2022, Sick of Myself possesses a distinctly American outlook despite being the creation of Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. Indeed, the ego-driven, crime-ladden pursuit for fame and recognition are as present in Sick of Myself as they are in many of American trash ambassador Waters’s films. “No, it’s not Female Trouble,” wrote Waters in his Artforum blurb of the film, “but it’s just as nuts,” and the film’s overtly American satirical edge has everything to do with his decision to relocate to Los Angeles several years ago. Sick of Myself follows Signe (Kristine Thorp), a […]
After a four-hour flight delay (owed to a malfunctioning back-up system accessory, subsequent plane evacuation and a lengthy re-fueling process), I arrived in New Orleans exhausted but still, miraculously, eager to spend much more time sitting in a shifting rotation of seats. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t entitled to complain much. I’d been invited to cover the annual genre-themed Overlook Film Festival, now in its seventh year, and was genuinely thrilled by the opportunity. As a relatively green (not to mention newly full-time) magazine staffer, longtime horror obsessive and someone who’d yet to visit New Orleans, Overlook presented […]
A document is always an outsider’s view. –John Berger It had been five years since I attended CPH:Forum, with a pandemic in between. I’m having a lot of trouble recognizing once-familiar things in general but I know CPH:DOX well, having attended off and on for over 12 years, and I know that it used to stand for something unique in the nonfiction landscape. And while vestiges are still there, it felt this edition (March 15 – 26 in Copenhagen, Denmark) as if the whole enterprise was at a tipping point in terms of growth. Don’t misunderstand: What the team there accomplishes, […]
Today, BAVC Media (formerly Bay Area Video Coalition) announces their 2023 MediaMaker Fellowship cohort, comprised of emerging and mid-career artists embarking on social documentary projects. All seven participants will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funding as well as mentorship, feedback sessions and workshops during a nine-month period. The fellows are Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Aurora Brachman (Dear You), ilana coleman (The Inventory, also a 25 New Faces of Film from 2017 and co-writer of fellow 25 New Face Juan Pablo González‘s 2021 film Dos Estaciones), Tommy Franklin (You Don’t Know My Name), Cyrus Moussavi (Somebody’s Gone), Hannah Myers (Daddy) and tashi […]
On this special episode, we’re talking all about voice! Neda Lahidji is an actor, singer, vocal health coach, voice teacher and a certified vocal health first aider. She specializes in the voices and vocal health of actors, VO actors, and singers, including any vocal athletes in the film industry as well as directors who use their voice tremendously throughout production. She talks about the different factors that affect the voice, gives us techniques to help maintain a vocal athlete’s optimal vocal health, shares her own stories of various vocal ups and downs, explains why it’s almost all mental, and much […]
The tongue-in-cheek title card for The Doom Generation—“a heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki”—isn’t merely an enduring “fuck you” to homophobes. Amid a sexless and puritanical American film landscape, coupled with an equally regressive online discourse on whether sex scenes in films are ever truly necessary, the emphasis on a sexual movie by Gregg Araki, regardless of orientation, transmits a much-needed erotic jolt. Newly restored in a 4K director’s cut, with grisly moments previously nixed for an Araki-unapproved R-rated cut now restored, The Doom Generation follows a trio of heartthrobs on a road trip from hell. After a night out clubbing, teen […]
Agnès Godard films the opening sequence of her fifth collaboration (following four features and a short) with writer-director Ursula Meier, The Line (La Ligne), in static slow motion: Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) hits her mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), who falls and collides against the keys of her own piano, rendering her deaf in the impacted ear. A restraining order charges the eldest daughter not to come within 200 meters of her mother—an invisible boundary she immediately ignores with abrasive attempts to make amends until her younger sister paints a literal perimeter around the house. Margaret hovers at a little hill at one end […]
Set in a shadowy world of scam artists and grifters, Sharper follows four characters through interlocking stories set in a modern-day noir version of New York City. From Park Avenue penthouses to abandoned warehouses, director Benjamin Caron builds a dangerous world filled with betrayals and double-crosses. Justice Smith plays Tom, manager of a used bookstore. A chance meeting with Sandra (Briana Middleton) leads to Max (Sebastian Stan), a self-professed con man. Max will encounter Madeline Phillips (Julianne Moore), a wealthy widow with designs on corporate titan Richard Hobbes (John Lithgow). Sharper is the feature debut for Caron, best known for his […]
Filmmaker‘s issue #122 is arriving in mailboxes and at newsstands now, and in conjunction we’ve launched a Spring Subscription sale until Sunday. For the first time, we’re discounting our print and digital subscriptions by 50%. A one-year digital subscription — which includes our archives back to 2007 — is just $5. In the US, a print subscription is just $9. Both subscriptions include access to all paywalled content as well as Filmmaker on Exact Editions, which offers fantastic browser and tablet reading. (Check out a sample issue here.) Your subscriptions help underwrite all of our editorial content, including on the […]