With Marie Losier’s retrospective, Just a Million Dreams, now running at New York’s MoMA through November 11, we’re reposting our interview with Losier from our Winter, 2012 print issue. The film discussed here, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, screens tomorrow, November 3. What should one expect when one artist turns their camera on another? Although the “portrait of the artist” doc is one of nonfiction filmmaking’s most durable sub-genres, audiences often expect the least from it. In the presence of a great painter, musician or author, directors are frequently expected to sublimate their own styles in favor of […]
by Esther B. Robinson on Nov 10, 2012
18 years after traveling to Arkansas to make a documentary about the gruesome murders of three young boys by alleged Satan-worshiping teenagers, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky bring their crusading story of the West Memphis Three to a miraculous conclusion with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. By Jason Guerrasio
As a child growing up in Scituate, Mass., Nick Flynn was often left to explore on his own, and he got into varying degrees of trouble. Flynn’s parents were divorced and he had no contact with his father, living instead with his mother, who worked in a bakery. She remarried to a 21-year-old Vietnam vet, and, after their divorce, Flynn wound up living with her and a new boyfriend — a member of one of the largest drug smuggling rings in New England. Around the age of 18, Flynn started working for the smuggler — unloading fishing boats and as […]
by Alix Lambert on Jan 17, 2012While the title of Eve Sussman’s (and her collaborative team Rufus Corporation’s) whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir –– shown as part of New Frontiers at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival –– refers to a seminal abstract artwork dealing with space, the video itself is all about time. In fact, this experimental piece’s apparent story about an American geophysicist named Holz (Jeff Wood) working in a post-Soviet industrial metropolis called City-A has no fixed time at all. That’s because the sum of the video’s parts aren’t just greater than the whole –– there is no whole. Through an algorithm, which Sussman has dubbed “the Serenity […]
by Peter Bowen on Jan 17, 2012
Following up his impressive debut, Reprise, Joachim Trier uses a Pierre Drieu La Rochelle novel and the Norwegian capital to create the beautifully somber Oslo, August 31st. By Scott Macaulay
Directors Joshua Marston (The Forgiveness of Blood) and Braden King (Here) discuss the making of their very different pictures through the prism of their shared experience — making an independent film in Eastern Europe.
Without a doubt, this is an amazing time to be a storyteller. We have moved beyond the simple democratization of storytelling and production tools. Funding, marketing and distribution solutions are commoditized, providing filmmakers numerous opportunities to bring their work to an audience. And now a new phase is arriving, one that merges technology with the creative process. Filmmakers will soon be able to take advantage of a world of connected objects in what has been termed the “Internet of things.” And in this environment, as always, there will be a need for good storytelling to provide a level of understanding, […]
by Lance Weiler on Jan 15, 2012