Ed Lachman
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“Transitioning From Digital Back to Film”: DP Ed Lachman on Maria
For years the object of cult devotion, Maria Callas went from a dazzling career as a soprano to international celebrity, a figure of relentless scrutiny even after she lapsed into silence. Maria continues director Pablo Larraín’s fascination with larger-than-life figures like Jacqueline Onassis (Jackie) and Princess Diana (Spencer). Here, Angelina Jolie takes on the role of Callas, seen over several years of her life in Europe and the United States. Larraín’s kaleidoscopic approach jumps among timelines and locations, assembling a character from moments large and small. Although we see glimpses of Callas’s successes on stage, Steven Knight’s screenplay primarily takes […]
by Daniel Eagan on Dec 10, 2024 -
“A Haunting Symbiosis”: On Ed Lachman’s Newly Restored Lou Reed & John Cale Concert Film, Songs for Drella
Not merely an addendum to Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground, Ed Lachman’s Songs For Drella is a ravishingly beautiful, sometimes thrilling audiovisual recording of a song cycle by Lou Reed and John Cale, the founders of the Velvet Underground. Cale and Reed’s early musical collaboration as the VU was inspired but unlikely – they had diametrically opposed musical roots and passions. Short lived as the band was, it became the source for punk, glam, and whatever followed from those fundamentally subversive pop genres. The VU began sliding toward death when Reed effectively fired Cale in 1968. (He had fired their first producer, Andy Warhol, […]
by Amy Taubin on Oct 22, 2021 -
“Every Shot Has a Beginning, Middle and End”: Conversations With Cinematographers: The Eye Behind the Lens
Conversations With Cinematographers: The Eye Behind the Lens Jacqueline B. Frost Routledge, 2021 “I’m attracted to edgy things,” explains cinematographer Maryse Alberti in a matter-of-fact response to a question posed by Jacqueline B. Frost in a new collection of 23 interviews titled Conversations With Cinematographers: The Eye Behind the Lens. The statement is part of a longer, quite charming commentary by Alberti, who also recalls her arrival in the US as a 19-year-old au pair with almost no exposure to moving images, early work photographing bands for New York Rocker magazine, and eventually shooting Stephanie Black’s 1990 documentary H-2 Worker, […]
by Holly Willis on Sep 3, 2021 -
“Every Civilization Has Had Its Time”: DP Ed Lachman on Quarantine Viewing and the World Outside
In April, as we began to put together the Summer, 2020 issue of Filmmaker, we asked directors, cinematographers, editors and other film workers to send us their thoughts on the quarantine and their own creative lives. The responses printed here were collected from April through mid-June — personal statements that speak variously to individual filmmaking practices, films halted mid-production, politics, art and life. Read all the responses here. — Editor I’m in self-isolation with my thoughts of how the world and our images have changed… but will we? I’m rereading Paul Schrader’s Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, a brilliant […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 8, 2020 -
“This Is the First Film Todd and I Filmed Digitally”: DP Ed Lachman on Dark Waters
Starting with 2002’s Far from Heaven, cinematographer Ed Lachman worked with director Todd Haynes on four features before this year’s Dark Waters. Based on a true story, the movie follows corporate attorney Rob Bilott (played by Mark Ruffalo) as he investigates industrial pollution on a farm in Appalachia. The case widened to include the entire town of Parkersburg, West Virginia, and led to a years-long lawsuit against DuPont. Lachman spoke with Filmmaker at Camerimage, the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, held this year in Toruń, Poland. Filmmaker: How did you and Todd approach this story? Lachman: In his storytelling Todd has always dealt with how our culture treats the outsider and insider. The difference is […]
by Daniel Eagan on Dec 3, 2019 -
“It’s Inspirational That He Creates a Language to Tell a Story That’s His Own”: Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still Discussed by DPs Ed Lachman and Philippe Rousselot and Critic Adriana Prodeus
The debut feature from writer and director Hu Bo, An Elephant Sitting Still, caused a sensation when it screened at the 2018 Berlinale. Nearly four hours long, the movie unfolds over the course of a day in and around a blue-collar housing development in a third-tier Chinese town. Interlocking narratives follow a bullied high school student, an elderly parent pressured to move into a nursing home, a gangster who must avenge an attack on his brother and a girl’s illicit relationship with a married teacher. The movie’s running time, difficult subject matter and troubled production have left an air of […]
by Daniel Eagan on Mar 8, 2019 -
Twilight Hours: Shevaun Mizrahi on Her Elegiac Documentary, Distant Constellation
With Shevaun Mizrahi’s documentary Distant Constellation opening at NYC’s Metrograph today from Grasshopper Film, we’re unlocking from our print issue this feature with the director. It’s not news that nonfiction editing can be an attenuated process. Still, with footage so fully formed, I didn’t expect that Mizrahi would keep returning to Istanbul for three more years, logging more hours on the way to showing a nearly-locked cut at 2017’s True/False Film Festival, with her world premiere following later that year at Locarno. The additional time she took turned out to be crucial for capturing two additional strands that give the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 2, 2018 -
Color Grading Film and Digital for Wonderstruck
Colorist Joe Gawler of Harbor Pictures has worked on a number of films and television shows over the years, including A Most Violent Year, Midnight in Paris and Arrival. For Wonderstruck, Gawler had to work with multiple film stocks. The story takes place in two time periods—the 1920s and the 1970s—and black & white and color film were used to convey the different time periods, while digital material was also shot for both periods. In this interview he talks about working with film and digital and how to become a better colorist. Filmmaker: How did you become involved in this project? Gawler: There’s […]
by Michael Murie on Oct 26, 2017 -
Color, Crews and Shooting Digitally: Ed Lachman and Vittorio Storaro at NYFF 2017
One of the highlights of the 55th New York Film Festival was the Master Class with Vittorio Storaro and Ed Lachman. Hosted by Kent Jones, the 90-minute presentation covered a wide range of subjects and also included key clips from the work of the two great cinematographers. Storaro and Lachman have been friends for over 40 years. Lachman claims that he was Storaro’s first American fan, after seeing both The Spider’s Stratagem and The Conformist at the 1970 NYFF. He subsequently worked with Storaro on Luna, when the Italian DP began shooting American movies but had not yet secured a […]
by Jamie Stuart on Oct 13, 2017 -
A Wonderstruck Tweetstorm
Larry Gross first appeared in Filmmaker with the Todd Haynes/Safe cover story of our Summer 1995 issue. A screenwriter (48 Hours, We Don’t Live Here Anymore, Porto), producer and director, he has contribued many interviews and essays since, but, in our Winter 2015 “Super 8” column, we took note of another element of the Gross oeuvre: his seductive and compelling use of Twitter, in which carefully honed critical arguments on myriad topics cascade onto screens in the form of tweetstorms. For this 25th anniversary issue, we asked Gross to commit one of these tweet storms to dead-tree media before he […]
by Larry Gross on Sep 14, 2017
