25 New Faces of 2010
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Marc Fratello
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 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2010 -
Brent Stewart
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. […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 17, 2010 -
Jade Healy
“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 […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 17, 2010 -
Holden Abigail Osborne
In February 2009, Holden Abigail Osborne’s brother Zach was released from prison and put under house arrest. In grad school at NYU Film School, Osborne grabbed a camera and jumped on a plane to Missouri. She wouldn’t understand why she had done it until the short film the footage became was completed. “It was my form of intervention,” she says. The result was Solitary/Release, a two-part short film that premiered at SXSW this year. Solitary is a documentary about her brother transitioning back into society while under house arrest, navigating a complex reentry into the lives of his family after […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 17, 2010 -
Zac Stuart-Pontier
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 […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 17, 2010 -
Rebecca Richman Cohen
Early on in Rebecca Richman Cohen’s career in film she worked in the edit suites of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 as an assistant editor. But when the movie was over, rather than pursue film through further editorial work, she decided to go to law school. “I was ready to sink my teeth into something concrete,” she says. “Going to Harvard Law School was a tough decision because I loved film. But I felt that the law would ground me in social issues and add something substantive if I decided to return to film.” While in law school she worked one […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2010 -
Sean Durkin
After living in London as a child, Sean Durkin spent his final year before moving back to the States in the English countryside. For the then 11 year old, the sprawling, beautiful landscape was a world away from the hectic streets of the city. But when night came, so did dark seclusion and feelings of fear and anxiety — feelings heightened by the scary movies Sean and his mother would spend their evenings watching. “As a child I built this irrational fear of home invasion,” Durkin, 28, recalls. “All of these unsolved mysteries seemed to always happen in Southern California, […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 17, 2010 -
Jason Byrne
When we caught up with filmmaker Jason Byrne to include him in this year’s “25,” it was via e-mail from Tanzania. At the same time Byrne’s hypnotic experimental documentary Scrap Vessel winds its way along the festival circuit, he is working as an audio/visual archivist for the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Living in East Africa for the last two years has been a deeply rich experience, and this job has been fascinating but psychologically difficult at times, especially when listening to the many graphically explained testimonies from witnesses to the genocide,” he writes. Byrne has worked previously as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 17, 2010 -
Trieste Kelly Dunn
A number of new talents have come from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in recent years, and one recurring theme has been the face of Trieste Kelly Dunn. Aaron Katz’s Cold Weather and Brett Haley’s The New Year made significant festival splashes this year, and beach-party styled Vacation!, by Zach Clark, seems positioned to do the same. Despite very different tones and directing styles, Dunn is each film’s center, and she makes perfect sense in every movie. “In college, the professors used to talk about knowing what play you’re in,” says Dunn. “You do Ibsen, French […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 17, 2010 -
Robert Machoian & Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck
When they met as undergrads at CSU Monterey Bay, Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck had different styles but found a third when working together. “A lot of my early work was pushing what people can process with quick cuts and juxtaposition of image,” Ojeda-Beck says. And “I was really exploring duration,” Machoian adds — “what can be done in a single shot and really raw, raw sound, mainly straight off the mic.” Their short films together display a handle on classic arthouse film style. Visuals are the key, along with luscious colorful imagery and solitary characters in simple situations, with […]
by Mike Plante on Jul 17, 2010
