25 New Faces
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Five Questions With Evaporating Borders Director Iva Radivojevic
In recent years, the island of Cyprus has become something of an unforgiving melting pot. The often life-threatening emigration of Iranians and Syrians to the once predominately Greco-Turkish enclave presents a tense social fabric that is poetically probed in Iva Radivojevic’s debut documentary Evaporating Borders. Radivojevic adopts an aesthetically meandering and unique approach to the film, which is almost paradoxically structured into character-based chapters. Filmmaker spoke with the Yugoslavian-born Radivojevic about her personal connection to Cyprus, the process of voicing the film’s narrator and other traditionally fiction form elements at work in the film. Evaporating Borders premieres today in the Visions section at […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 11, 2014 -
Secret Cinema: The Eastern Oregon Film Festival’s Remarkable 5th Edition
Unlike nearly everywhere else in the culture, bigger is not necessarily better at the Eastern Oregon Film Festival. It’s a slender event in a small town. Eleven features and 21 shorts across three days and two venues. Still, they don’t call this stretch of fully enclosed valley “La Grande” for nothing. Despite only containing about 12,000 souls, this mountainous hamlet, like Ian Clark and Benjamin Morgan’s program, leaves you plenty of room to explore. The festival opened on a Thursday night in late February, commencing with a dinner for its supporting members in the town’s recently renovated arts center. Over beer, […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 7, 2014 -
Nandan Rao’s Second Feature Hawaiian Punch Available Online
Following in the footsteps of his debut The Men of Dodge City, Nandan Rao has released his second film Hawaiian Punch for free on Kentucker Audley’s No Budge site. (Just because Kentucker is no longer making independent films, doesn’t mean he can’t afford to support them.) The 66-minute tropical excursion tracks two Mormons (Nicholas Boissonneault, Tor Kristian Anestad) through quotidien, Minimalist circumstances. Though Rao runs Simple Machine, which connects filmmakers with theatrical screening opportunities, at least a fraction of his loyalties appear to lie online.
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 4, 2014 -
Exclusively Streaming Here: “25 New Face” Ian Clark’s MMXIII
Filmmaker is delighted to be streaming exclusively Ian Clark’s third feature, MMXIII, on our site until February 27. Clark was one of our “25 New Faces” in 2012, off the back of his gorgeous short Searching for Yellow. A resident of La Grande, Oregon, where he also co-programs the Eastern Oregon Film Festival, Clark beautifully captures, in quiet moments and small details, the essence of small-town life in the Pacific Northwest. Clark previously made the features Pool Room and Country Story, and now with MMXIII has made an expansive third feature that was described as follows on the EOFF website: An experimental self-portrait, […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 24, 2014 -
Nandan Rao on The Other Men of Dodge City
The following interview took place after 2013 “25 New Face” Nandan Rao had seen for the first time The Other Men of Dodge City, a re-edited version of his own movie The Men of Dodge City cut by fellow 2013 “New Faces” Pete Ohs and Andrea Sisson. The film debuts on NoBudge from Wednesday February 19 at 7pm. You can read Ohs and Sisson’s take on the film here. Filmmaker: What was your reaction when Pete and Andrea first got in contact with you? Do you remember what their pitch was in terms of what they wanted to do? Rao: We have a mutual friend who […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 19, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love
At times, independent film can be a homogenous place for women. Since the Lena Dunham boom, tastemakers obsessively concern themselves with tales of 20-something perpetual adolescents, jobless and adrift in Brooklyn, looking for love in all the wrong places. Not so much a tonic as a blast of originality, Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love announced the arrival of one of the most assured and exciting young filmmakers in recent memory when it premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Though the film’s narrative may not seem entirely unfamiliar — we’re still coming of age in Brooklyn, experimenting sexually — Hittman’s atmospheric […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 19, 2014 -
Andrea Sisson and Pete Ohs on The Other Men of Dodge City
The following was written by 2013 “25 New Faces” Andrea Sisson and Pete Ohs in advance of the first screening of their film The Other Men of Dodge City, a re-edited version of The Men of Dodge City by fellow 2013 “New Face” Nandan Rao. The film plays on NoBudge from Wednesday February 19 at 7pm. Check back tomorrow for Rao’s response to seeing the reworking of his film for the first time. First and foremost, Nandan’s eye is a force to be reckoned with. When we first saw The Men of Dodge City, we laughed at the snail’s pace and non-existent […]
by Andrea Sisson and Pete Ohs on Feb 18, 2014 -
Mohammad Gorjestani’s “25 New Faces” Tour Photo Diary
Last November, three short filmmakers from our 2013 “25 New Faces” hit the road for a special traveling screening series, sponsored by ARRI and Sony Creative, with myself in tow. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (Needle), Mohammad Gorjestani (Refuge) and Scott Blake (Surveyor) played their films in six Midwest cities across six days, with myself in tow as Q&A moderator/tour manager/nanny. It was a unique and extremely memorable experience to be part of the tour, and you can now get an inkling of what went on at that time by checking out Gorjestani’s just-posted photo diary on Exposure, which is well worth your time.
by Nick Dawson on Feb 5, 2014 -
Eastern Oregon Film Festival 2014 to Host Filmmaker Showcase
The Eastern Oregon Film Festival, which runs from February 20 to 22 in La Grande, OR, is one of those great regional film festivals that you feel lucky to stumble upon. Brandon Harris attended EOFF last year and called it a “hidden gem” in his report. This year, co-director of programming Ian Clark, who was one of our “25 New Faces” back in 2012, graciously invited Filmmaker to program a showcase, which will feature Eddie Mullins’ droll slacker comedy Doomsdays (a 2013 Best Film Not Playing selection) and “Qasim,” the latest episode from High Maintenance by our 2013 “New Faces” Katja Blichfeld […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 31, 2014 -
First Look: “25 New Faces” Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands’ Uncertain
This year we put Ewan McNicol and Anna Sandilands on our “25 New Faces” list on the strength of their excellent doc short The Roper but also because of how excited we were at the sneak peek we’d had of Uncertain, their debut feature about a remote “town of outlaws” in Texas. The pair has now started releasing clips from the film, which will be making its world premiere at a winter festival in 2014. The first of these is above, and you can check out more via the Vimeo page of McNicol and Sandilands’ production company, Lucid Inc.
by Nick Dawson on Dec 12, 2013
