In light of SXSW’s cancellation, a private “homespun” screening of the only local production in the festival’s narrative line up, Caleb Johnson’s The Carnivores, was arranged at its cinematographer’s (Adam J. Minnick) Austin residence on the night it was scheduled to premiere. The event hoped to encapsulate the spirit of the festival all at once. Upon entrance, invited press, programmers and audience got their photo taken on a polaroid against a classic yellow backdrop and laurels. That polaroid fit snug inside an imitation festival badge. After attendees stuffed themselves with Tacodeli they dragged over the red carpet to their seats […]
by A.E. Hunt on Mar 26, 2020Lindsay Burdge is one of the bravest and best actors working in indie film this decade. Her breakout role in Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher brought her raves for her intense performance of destructive obsession. Bold choices continued in movies like Nathan Silver’s Thirst Street, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, and Joe Swanberg’s Netflix show Easy. Now she’s taken on the role of Mandy, in the long-awaited second season of Caveh Zahedi’s acclaimed The Show About The Show, after the real Mandy (Zahedi’s wife) left the show mid-production. She talks about the unique experience of working with Zahedi under these conditions, how […]
by Peter Rinaldi on May 28, 2019Nathan Silver has made eight films in eight years. That doesn’t include other shorts he’s written or executive produced. For anyone not in the business of film, that might seem standard. For anyone who is, it’s wildly impressive, especially taking into consideration the inclusion of pre-production time, when a script is written, money is raised and all the frustrating puzzle pieces of building a team have to fall into place. Silver’s latest film, Thirst Street, centers on Gina (Lindsay Burdge), an American flight attendant who becomes entwined in a toxic obsession. After landing in Paris, she falls for Jerome (Damien […]
by Meredith Alloway on Sep 28, 2017Hannah Fidell’s slow-burn character study A Teacher relies on a taut and unsettling performance by Lindsay Burdge in the title role to crawl deep under the skin of the viewer. Diana, a youthful and fetching as a high school teacher, is one of the year’s most fascinating indie film characters; a remote and somewhat coy woman who is nonetheless caught up in a forbidden sexual dalliance with a male student, one which grows from a delicate crush into a dangerous and foreboding full-blown obsession with alarming velocity. That we’re at turns sympathetic to, fascinated and repulsed by Diana is a testament to Burdge’s […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 5, 2013A Teacher, filmmaker Hannah Fidell’s feature debut, focuses on the increasingly unstable Diana (Lindsay Burge), a young teacher carrying on an affair with her underage student. But the film is not too concerned with the shocking or tawdry details of this central relationship. Instead, Fidell turns her focus inwards towards Diana’s subtly crumbling mental state, treating her gradual self-destruction as the focal point of tension. It’s a subtle and precise work, and surely one of the most unnerving selections of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Like your short The Gathering Squall, which was based on a Joyce Carol Oates […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Jan 20, 2013June 8, 2012 (continued) 9pm – The dinner and award announcement are held above the Renault car company’s showroom, which seems like a strange place but the food was absolutely delicious and included the second of three steak dinners I will have while in France. Sophie Dulac, the grande dame of Parisian cinema, and her beautiful entourage arrive. She announces that A Teacher has won and Kim and I do this really cliché slow-motion turn to look at each other, not really comprehending the win until people urge us to go up. Four years of studying French in school finally […]
by Hannah Fidell on Jun 11, 2012