Lauren Wolkstein
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“Changing the Industry Game”: Queen Sugar Showrunner and Directors Talk Career Advancement at IFP Week
Filmmaker Elisabeth Subrin (A Woman, A Part) sends this short dispatch from IFP Week’s Screen Forward Talks: Notes to the Future Sunday program — specifically, the afternoon panel, “Through the Generations: Queen Sugar: Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey’s Queen Sugar.” The panel featured IFP alums Kat Candler (Hellion), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), DeMane Davis (Lift), Lauren Wolkstein (The Strange Ones). Beyond the brilliance of the series itself, Ava Duvernay’s production model for Queen Sugar, a cable series on the Oprah Winfrey Network, is visionary and proactive. By choosing to hire only women independent film directors who have never […]
by Elisabeth Subrin on Sep 19, 2018 -
SXSW 2017: Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff on The Strange Ones
Expanded from their 2011 short, Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff’s The Strange Ones starts with a house fire. A young boy (James Freedson-Jackson) stands paralyzed in front of it, and next we see him on the road with someone (claiming to be?) his older brother (Alex Pettyfer). Over the course of a long, strange road trip, we slowly put together some (but definitely not all) the pieces of a story of sexual assault and two people on the run from the law. Motels, diners and farms are among the upstate New York locations. The impressively assured, enticingly semi-enigmatic film had its premiere Saturday morning […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 14, 2017 -
What 12 Real Female Filmmakers Wear to Set
Do women filmmakers need to wear certain clothes on set to be taken seriously? Is a female filmmaker’s wardrobe the real secret to success? When Refinery 29 recently posted a story, “How to Dress for the Job You Want” including “film director,” they inadvertently irked a number of actual female directors and producers with their career outfit suggestions. “You’ll likely be on your feet for long days on set, but still don’t want to look sloppy, so opt for a thick ‘grandma’-style heel that can last you the whole day through, along with some soft trousers and a stylish take on the […]
by Paula Bernstein on Oct 4, 2016 -
SXSW: Producer Dan Schoenbrun and Five Directors on their Dreamy Anthology Film, collective:unconscious
In November, 2014, Dan Schoenbrun threw down a provocative artistic challenge on Kickstarter. The former IFP-staffer, sometime Filmmaker writer, and current Film Partnerships lead at the crowdfunding platform conceived of an anthology film that would charge a stellar group of up-and-coming directors with adapting each other’s nocturnal visions. Each director would write down a dream and give it to Schoenbrun, who’d then assign it to another director. As you’ll read below, the pairings wound up being more natural and forced, with the intent being not a VHS-style horror anthology but rather a more diverse film unlocking all the meanings dreams, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 13, 2016 -
Dan Schoenbrun on Kickstarting collective:unconscious
Some Kickstarter campaigns sell themselves. collective:unconscious had me at, “Five of NYC’s most adventurous filmmakers are working together to adapt each other’s dreams.” The five filmmakers in question are Frances Bodomo, Lauren Wolkstein, Josephine Decker, Daniel Carbone and Lily Baldwin, and the project’s curator cum ringleader is Dan Schoenbrun, Film Partnerships Lead at Kickstarter, who previously supported several of the filmmakers’ other projects as Associate Director of Programming at IFP. Filmmaker spoke with Schoenbrun about the conception of the project, the series timeline and the protocol for working as a collective. Donate to the campaign here. Filmmaker: What was the genesis of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 19, 2014 -
Lauren Wolkstein Talks Stony Brook Southampton and Killer Films’ 20/20/20 Filmmaking Intensive
Stony Brook Southampton’s 20/20/20 intensive filmmaking course offers participating students an opportunity to learn the practical and technical tricks of the trade from Killer Films’ Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler. Over the course of 20 weeks, the graduate-level program pairs lecture-style master classes from Killer and visiting filmmakers like Todd Haynes with development and production workshops so that each writer-director walks away with her own completed short at the end of a 20-day boot camp. Lauren Wolkstein, one of our 2013 25 New Faces of Film, reprises her role this summer as a 20/20/20 mentor for the workshop phase, and spoke […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 21, 2014 -
Park City Critic’s Notes #5: Short Shrift
There were movies. Some, like New York Times film critic (and my fellow SUNY Purchase Film alum) Manohla Dargis, said there were too many — even before she saw any of them. Sales, at least during the festival, weren’t robust; perhaps some of the weary execs, including a couple she overheard dishing on their inability to sit through American Hustle while in line for a theater, are taking her advice and sitting on their pocketbooks. Perhaps we’ll find some of these movies on VUDU or Seed&Spark or NoBudge. Maybe someone will tap an unexpected and unforeseen audience outside of the […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 26, 2014 -
“25 New Faces” Josephine Decker and Lauren Wolkstein on Hitchcock and the Choreography of Sex Scenes
Just named as two of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” Josephine Decker and Lauren Wolkstein have both produced an impressive body of work that has placed them as bold, young voices on the independent film scene. Decker’s feature Butter on the Latch premiered to strong reviews, including a New Yorker article that called her film “an utter exhilaration of cinematic imagination.” An actor in many of Joe Swanberg’s films, Decker is finishing her new feature film Thou Wast Mild and Lovely while Wolkstein, whose short Social Butterfly premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and whose The Strange Ones showed at SXSW […]
by Russell Sheaffer on Aug 19, 2013 -
Short Takes: The Role of The Short in Modern Filmmaking
Why make a short film? At Short Takes, a recent panel discussion co-presented by IFP and DCTV, the answers varied with each pass of the microphone. The participating panelists — Terence Nance, Dustin Guy Defa, Lauren Wolkstein, Ryan Koo, and Jeremiah Zagar — reflected upon prior efforts to offer a unique, holistic picture into the business and practice of short filmmaking. Koo, who recently revealed Amateur, a short prequel to his debut feature Manchild, said that he viewed the format as a calling card, a means to entice both the industry and a larger audience. Nance and Wolkstein, on the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jul 25, 2013 -
Shooting with John: Lauren Wolkstein
The concept was genius, yet a bit insane. Get a bunch of indie film nerds together (who have never met before) to travel to upstate New York for the weekend and shoot some target practice – with assault rifles. None of us had ever shot a gun before, let alone an AR-15. We were terrified. Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the group, but I was terrified. However, there was a catch, and I didn’t know this until I arrived for the target practice: we had to be interviewed immediately after firing the rounds, with the assault rifles […]
by Lauren Wolkstein on Mar 8, 2013
