Charlotte Wells
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“I Wish Film Schools Would Teach Directors and Producers More About Music Rights”: Music Supervisor Lucy Bright
Early in music supervisor Lucy Bright’s career, she worked at Warner Classics and managed composer Michael Nyman. In 2020 she started Bright Notion Music, her own music publishing company, which has signed composers such as Hildur Guðnadóttir, Oliver Coates, and Anne Nikitin. She is known for critically acclaimed British films such as The Arbor and Slow West and more recently Tár, where her classical understanding and personal familiarity with the composers referenced in the script, helped create the movie that was named Best Picture by several major critics associations. Bright was also awarded the first ever prize for music supervision […]
by Arrow Peretz on Dec 19, 2023 -
Sundance Institute Announces 2023 Momentum Fellows
The Sundance Institute announces eight filmmakers selected for the fifth annual Momentum Fellowship, a program created to provide financial support and coaching for mid-career artists from underrepresented communities. The year-long fellowship is tailored for artists who have recently achieved a major accomplishment—such as a successful feature film or episodic work—and offers customized guidance for the fellows as they aim to level up in their careers. “Over the years, the fellows selected for Momentum have all experienced success with their recently completed projects. This has often been a critical moment for artists to receive creative and tactical support as they focus […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 2, 2023 -
Watch: David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films of 2022
Indiewire’s chief film critic David Ehrlich returns with his annual video countdown of the year’s best films, selecting 25 titles to highlight via clever editing choices and, most distinctly, various needle drops culled from a wide range of 2022 releases, from The Batman to Bones and All. In what’s also become a recent tradition, Ehrlich continues to have the director behind the top-ranked film choose a charity for viewers to donate to, as a way to “help justify the (truly humiliating) amount of time it takes me to make them.” This year, Filmmaker is proud to say that Charlotte Wells, […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jan 9, 2023 -
Within Memory: Writer/Director Charlotte Wells on Aftersun
Charlotte Wells has been saying that her first feature, which she calls “emotionally autobiographical,” was inspired by leafing through a family album and realizing how young her father was when she was born. A bittersweet aura permeates Aftersun, in which Sophie, just turned 11, spends a week before the start of term with her father, 30-going-on-31 Calum, on vacation at a Turkish hotel, just across the road from the all-inclusive resort where they sneak food from the buffet. Like Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff) in Sofia Coppola’s similarly liminal and hotel-set Somewhere, Calum’s arm is initially in a cast—the presumed vestige […]
by Mark Asch on Oct 11, 2022 -
Trailer Watch: Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun
The trailer has arrived for Aftersun, the feature debut from Scottish writer/director (and former 25 New Faces of Film) Charlotte Wells. The film chronicles the relationship between a doting father and his pre-teen daughter, specifically through the lens of a formative vacation they took to a resort in Turkey. After premiering at this year’s Cannes Critics’ Week to much acclaim, Aftersun was selected for further festival programming at Telluride, TIFF and will now screen at the 60th New York Film Festival. The film’s official synopsis reads: At a fading vacation resort, 11-year-old Sophie treasures rare time together with her loving […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 27, 2022 -
Pre-Course Work
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, 2018 -
Race, Robbery and Going Viral: Eight Short Films from Sundance 2017
As the 2017 Sundance Film Festival wraps up another edition of high-profile features with notable stars, secret screenings and exorbitant sales, attention must be paid to the less-covered but no less worthy shorts that premiered in Park City last week. Brought together in eight blocks (Animation, Documentary, Midnight, and Shorts Programs 1-5), these films represent an equal mix of prolonged, thought-out narratives and fleeting moments of inspiration discovered on the fly. For better or worse, shorts are often seen as a director’s calling card for upcoming feature work. While that’s all well and good (and I hope further success comes their way!), […]
by Erik Luers on Jan 26, 2017
