Edwin Lee Gibson’s stage career spans 40 years and over 100 U.S. and international theater productions. On television he is currently reprising his role as series regular “Ebraheim” in season 2 of FX’s hit series The Bear. On this episode, he talks about the importance of listening, “letting the character find me,” working with the late Peter Brook, cultivating a relationship with fear, how his stutter actually made him dig deeper into the study of speech, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. And if you’re […]
Creative studio and production company Even/Odd has partnered with the Kiarostami Foundation on a special product collection that celebrates the legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. The collection currently features three items: a 40-page graphic novel and activity book that reimagines Kairostami’s 1987 film Where Is the Friend’s House?, a small-batch mulberry jam inspired by his 1997 film Taste of Cherry and reprints of original posters designed by the filmmaker for Friend’s House, Certified Copy (2010) and A Wedding Suit (1976). These products are the first of many that the California-based company (founded by Mohammad Gorjestani, a 25 New Faces of […]
In 1989, Friday the 13th transplanted its hockey-masked slasher from summer camp to concrete jungle for the franchise’s eighth installment, Jason Takes Manhattan. That titular promise was not fully delivered upon: Manhattan was mostly Vancouver and Jason spent much of the running time on a boat full of high schoolers traveling to the city. The newest Scream offers up a similar relocation as Ghostface follows the previous chapter’s survivors from Woodsboro to college. Again, a Canadian city (this time Montreal) stands in for New York. But this time, the killer actually spends the entire running time chasing his victims through […]
Applications are now live for The Gotham Film & Media Institute’s (formerly IFP, and Filmmaker‘s publisher) annual Gotham Week Project Market. The overarching Gotham Week event takes place between September 16-22, and the Project Market will be held from September 18-22. This year’s programming will consist of in-person events in New York City as well as virtual offerings. The Project Market connects new documentary and fiction projects in various stages of production with industry executives looking to develop, finance or distribute works across mediums, whether they be audio, feature-length film or episodic works. In addition to pitching and receiving feedback, […]
At Filmmaker, we are seeking freelance writers to cover new media — AR, VR, XR, the metaverse, AI-generated work, etc. — as well as audio (podcasts, etc). Opportunities exist for regular print columns as well as web columns and one-off web pieces. Ideal writers will have published writing samples and deep knowledge of these topics and be able to cover them from a Filmmaker style, which is to mix critical appraisals with insights into the production, technical and financing issues that affect both individual works and the respective fields. If you feel you qualify and would like to pitch or […]
Continuing his string of against-type performances for independent filmmakers, Jim Gaffigan stars in writer-director Colin West’s SXSW 2022 premiere Linoleum as Cameron, a Ohio-based family man who hosts a children’s science program from his garag; he always wanted to become an astronaut, but this adolescent show will have to suffice). One day, a car unexpectedly crashes down from the sky, its driver revealed to be Cameron’s doppelgänger who—as we will find out in later scenes—has moved in across the street and is taking over hosting duties for Cameron’s television program. Understandably deflated and confused, Cameron arrives home one evening to discover […]
The following essay appeared in Filmmaker‘s Spring, 1999 print issue and is being reprinted in remembrance of Noah Cowan. Cowan, a festival programmer, non-profit executive director and critic, was also Filmmaker‘s Contributing Editor and chief festival correspondent, and he passed away January, 25, 2023 in Los Angeles. “Festival strategy” has become one of the more annoying buzz terms of the American independent film “industry.” However, the presence of three major festivals, all distinctive and legendary, clustered together in the winter months demands, in fact, that any serious American independent filmmaker finishing a film in the fall recognize the need for […]
Beginning with 2011’s Is the City Only One?, Brazilian filmmaker Adirley Queirós has considered the history of his hometown of Ceilândia in sci-fi and western-inflected narratives made in close collaboration with nonprofessional performers. Dry Ground Burning, co-directed by the former soccer player-turned-filmmaker with Joana Pimenta (the DP of his 2017 Once There Was Brasilia), was shot over 18 months and took two years of post-production to complete, and that labor shows in the most expansive and ambitious of these films yet, each of which builds on and echoes its predecessors. Is the City Only One? foregrounds the experiences of workers […]
Provoked by a recent artist residency at La Becque in Switzerland, I started to develop a Swiss-set romantic fantasy film called Interlaken that will take place between an ancient alien theme park and a Swiss heritage open-air museum, both located on the outskirts of the titular town. Amid multiple trips back to what has been called the “playground of Europe,” I probed archives, forums, blogs, databases and gray matter for cinematic depictions of Switzerland, which is more of a challenge than one would think considering it’s squeezed, accordion-like, between France, Germany, Italy and Austria, each of which has fostered four […]
Talking to The Guardian’s Xan Brooks in 2014, Kelly Reichardt reflected on the students she’s taught in her teaching position as an artist in residence at Bard. “The kids I know, I love them, but they’re not mad the way we used to be,” she noted. “They seem so unafraid and so un-angry. It makes them very nice people. It doesn’t make for great art. I ask them all the time: ‘Aren’t you mad at anything?’ They look at me like I’m off my rocker.” That sense of simmering discontent percolates through Michelle Williams’s performance as Lizzy, a ceramics sculptor […]