With most incoming film students being required to make shorts during their undergraduate or graduate studies, what exemplars of the form should they look to for inspiration? Filmmaker asked a number of friends—all filmmakers—who teach filmmaking at a cross-section of institutions to list the short films they think all incoming students should check out and be inspired by. Howard A. Rodman, professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts: I consistently recommend to my students—whose films often lead with cinematography, visual effects and sound mix—that they see Andrea Arnold’s Academy Award–winning 2003 short film Wasp. Adequate direct sound, wobbly cam, minimalist VFX, yet […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 11, 2018Annemarie Jacir’s third film, Wajib, a wry comedy set in the run up to Christmas in Nazareth, premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival before heading to, this week TIFF. The film pairs legendary Arabic actors Mohammed and Saleh Bakri together in a movie for the first time. Naturally, the father and son play father and son. Saleh, who has appeared in all three films directed by Jacir, plays Rome-based Shadi, who is returning to Nazareth after a period away for the wedding of his sister Amal (Maria Zreik). In keeping with Palestinian tradition, Shadi, alongside his divorced father, […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Sep 13, 2017A Bethlehem-born, Saudi Arabia-raised writer/director who earned her MFA in film at Columbia University in New York City, Annemarie Jacir was named as one of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” in 2004 on the strength of her short film Like Twenty Impossibles. Her first feature, the romantic drama Salt of This Sea, premiered at Cannes in 2008, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize, and was later selected as Palestine’s official submission to the Academy Awards. Following her mentorship by the Chinese directing great Zhang Yimou in the Rolex Arts Initiative, Jacir completed her second film, When I Saw You […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 9, 2012