“With all these devices,” Braden King says as he gestures to his iPhone, “you never have to be where you are at all.” The comment is overwhelmingly appropriate, since King’s first narrative feature, HERE, which opens on April 13th at New York’s IFC Center, is about nothing so much as having an appreciation and understanding of where one is. The moment is all the more interesting since King isn’t talking about his film at all; rather, he’s talking about his office space. A connection, regardless, begs to be made. HERE is a formalist reinvention of the road-trip romance, a film […]
by Zachary Wigon on Apr 11, 2012Select stories from our Winter Issue are now available. You can now read online our interview with Joachim Trier about his Sundance-bound sophomore effort, Oslo, August 31st, our joint interview with directors Braden King (Here) and Joshua Marston (The Forgiveness of Blood), and Kinetic Trailer co-founder Stephen Garrett’s comprehensive piece on crafting a winning trailer. Plus, Lance Weiler’s Culture Hacker column. The issue premieres later this week at Sundance, and hits stands shortly after that, but you can read it now on your desktop by subscribing to our digital issue. Learn more here.
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 17, 2012
Directors Joshua Marston (The Forgiveness of Blood) and Braden King (Here) discuss the making of their very different pictures through the prism of their shared experience — making an independent film in Eastern Europe.
Known for his stunning 1998 documentary, Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back, as well as countless music videos for musicians including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Sonic Youth, and Dirty Three, director Braden King arrives at Sundance in Dramatic Competition with HERE. Set in Armenia — and in many ways starring Armenia — HERE is a love story camouflaged as a road movie, or perhaps it’s the other way around. The atmospheric film follows Gadarine and Will (played by Lubna Azabal and Ben Foster), an Armenian art photographer and an American satellite-mapping engineer, from the exact moment they notice each […]
by James Ponsoldt on Jan 28, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 5:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] Looking back, the process of creating Here, which is ultimately a pretty romantic, landscape-obsessed road movie, was probably about as close you can get to some kind of Fitzcarraldo or Heart of Darkness experience anymore. I suppose I’m surprised that the finished film doesn’t seem to reflect that more. There are no massive battle sequences in the film; I didn’t get to play with any pyrotechnics (damn it), but Here was the first American feature film ever to shoot in Armenia. That provided fantastic advantages and disadvantages: unimaginable challenges, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2011Originally printed in our Fall 2010 issue, we asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space. Jay Van Hoy & Lars Knudsen’s latest film, Braden King’s Here, premieres at Sundance on Friday. For Parts and Labor’s Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen, independent film success is all about work. Very hard work. Midway through our conversation about their recent producing successes, Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen realized that they hadn’t had a day off in 18 months. “You did seven-day weeks for a year-and-a-half?” […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2011