The last two years have prompted much contemplation and reconsideration of the reasons why we make our films as well as the ways in which we make them. What aspect of your filmmaking—whether in your creative process, the way you finance your films, your production methodology or the way you relate to your audience—did you have to reinvent in order to make and complete the film you are bringing to the festival this year? In March 2020, I was just a few weeks out from production on my first film in 10 years and my first studio film. When it […]

Disclosure: I’ve never done therapy, although it has certainly been suggested over the years. Any recent therapy-curiosity was tempered by watching a couple of episodes of the Naomi Watts/Netflix series Gypsy, which made seeing a therapist seem like being the unwitting subject of a Sophie Calle art piece. Offering a point-of-view both more optimistic and realistic is, timed to National Therapy Day, a set of six new shorts from directors Alex Karpovsky and Teddy Blanks in which five women and one man discuss their various experiences in therapy. Director Kimberly Peirce talks about an experience in couples therapy, author Susan […]

Hormones wreck havoc throughout the body, sending the fragile teenage ego into dismay, and for a good part of our formative years we exist in a state between childhood innocence and realizations of adulthood. Showcasing sharp wit and highly quotable dialogue, comic-book artist turned animator Dash Shaw has encapsulated all these feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing in his creatively unhinged first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea, which stars an enviable voice cast of indie stars: Jason Schwartzman, Lena Dunham, Susan Sarandon, Maya Rudolph and Reggie Watts. Pulling from his own recollections of navigating the dangerous waters […]

Where is all the great independent animation? While Pixar and LAIKA are spinning out animated classics for a new generation, and independent filmmakers are putting their own idiosyncratic spins on nearly every genre, there have been relatively few animated independent features in recent years. And this is despite a boom in quality graphic novels and the new talent that creates them. It’s too early to know whether or not My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea is the beginning of a new movement in independent animation, but the feature, premiering tomorrow at the Toronto International Film Festival, brings with […]

Shortly after 11 o’clock this morning, Lena Dunham offered the Austin Convention Center’s Vimeo Theater a holistic timeline of her rise from hostess-who-lived-with-her-parents to independent cinema’s most overanalyzed success story. Fresh from SNL and somehow running on fumes with the utmost effervescence (she claimed to have written her speech at 3 am), Dunham recounted her days as an aspiring filmmaker with candor and self-effacement. Even if, on the set of Tiny Furniture precursor “Delusional Downtown Divas,” she was “struggling how to turn on the camera,” it’s clear her preternatural drive has always been intact. A tireless maker and unabashed experimenter, Dunham consistently stressed the importance of […]

As you may have heard, Lena Dunham recently took some time out of her stacked schedule to appear on the cover of Vogue. As is the magazine’s custom with women who weigh more than a hanger and call comedy into their line of work, the spread lacks any semblance of effort, though the article is worth a read. A couple days ago, Vogue released a supplementary short, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, that plays up this indulgent image of Dunham as a clumsy thing, lost in the world of high fashion. The sitch is this: Dunham is so nervous the […]

With each passing year, it seems more and more archaic to refer to television’s current landscape as a ‘Golden Age.’ How long exactly can a ‘Golden Age’ last before we start to consider it a permanent phenomenon? For a decade and a half now, we’ve seen a steady stream of pioneering shows that have changed the mainstream standard for quality television. Yes, many of these shows exist on the fringes of TV – are supremely low-rated or in constant threat of cancellation. And yes, the medium is still undoubtedly in a state of flux, as everyone scrambles to figure out […]

The first season of Lena Dunham’s Girls had its sneak preview at SXSW in March this year, but the show was such a success that it’s going to be already in early January 2013 that season two kicks off. The newly released first trailer for the new season is below, and I for one am excited to see what Filmmaker‘s ridiculously successful former intern will be offering up in the new year.

In Nobody Walks, Ry Russo-Young’s third feature film, which she co-wrote with Lena Dunham, Martine (Olivia Thirlby), is a young artist from New York who comes to stay in the pool house of a Los Angeles therapist and sound designer (Rosemarie DeWitt and John Krasinski) to finish the sound mix on her film. Her presence alters the warm, supportive environment of this supposedly open-minded household. There are permanent repercussions for the whole family, and most crucially for Martine. It’s a smart, sexy, and unresolved film about the struggles a young woman can find in trying to express herself sexually and […]

Gayby might be the first feature from writer/director Jonathan Lisecki, but its ace comic timing and deft depiction of physical humor suggest a seasoned comedic maestro. Expanded from a short that Lisecki shopped around the festival circuit in 2010 (it debuted at Slamdance and went on to hit more than 100 venues), the film is easily one of the year’s funniest, much thanks to its maker’s classic instincts for drumming up laughs. A veteran of independent theater, Lisecki couples a sharp, knowing wit with a mature sense of benevolence, yielding a well-rounded comedy for a demographic that desperately needs it. […]