Compliance
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Learning to Love the Heterodoxy
During this year’s True/False Film Festival, I sat on a panel with four formidable colleagues to bat around the question of how, pray tell, critics should evaluate documentary films. Should we approach nonfiction films differently than we approach fiction films, or as part of the same continuum? Should we evaluate documentaries on a content curve, taking subject matter, political intent or real world impact into account, or should we see them as cinema, full stop? I’m not sure we made any great strides toward consensus on these questions, but I’m also not sure that consensus would be of any service […]
by Eric Hynes on Apr 23, 2013 -
Please Hold
In the fall of 2007, I interviewed Craig Zobel about his first film as a director, Great World of Sound, a wryly funny drama about scamming “talent scouts.” Zobel, who for some years worked as a UPM and co-producer for David Gordon Green, was on a high after getting great reviews at Sundance earlier that year, selling Sound to Magnolia at SXSW, and then being chosen as one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces in the summer. As we casually chatted before the interview officially began, Zobel talked about a script he had written that was to be his next movie, […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 19, 2012 -
DISPOSABLE MEMORIES FROM SXSW
I pack quickly the night before leaving for SXSW. Not only do I forget to bring business cards, I don’t even pack my digital camera. I pop into a CVS once I’ve landed in Austin and pick up a two-pack of disposable cameras. I’m surprised they still sell them. My five day jaunt across SXSW is a flurry of rain, movies, tacos, friends, panels, and long lines. I watch Purple Rain on VHS. I watch V/H/S in a movie theater. I’m asked by multiple people if I’ve heard what this year’s Tiny Furniture is. I hear a big-four agent tell […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Mar 16, 2012 -
“COMPLIANCE” | writer-director, Craig Zobel
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, January 21, 11:30 pm –Library Center Theatre, Park City] My movie is closely based on a true event, though I actually stumbled upon the story years after it was a news item. (Is “Ripped from old headlines!” a saying?) To delve too much into the events might dampen some of the film’s enjoyment, but in brief, it involves some people who are essentially talked into holding a person against her will, naked, in the stockroom of a fast food restaurant for hours. I can’t say when I first discovered this story that I had a “Eureka!” moment, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2012
