Los Angeles Film Festival
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Grappling with “Insider” and “Outsider” Documentary Filmmaking: Sally Rubin on hillbilly
From The Beverly Hillbillies to Buckwild, and from Coal Miner’s Daughter to Deliverance, the face of Appalachia has long been defined (and stereotyped and exploited) by the Hollywood eye. And in the wake of the 2016 presidential election the caricaturing continued, this time at the hands (and pens) of the press corps on the other coastal liberal side. Enter native Appalachian documentarians Sally Rubin (Deep Down) and Ashley York (Tig) to remedy historical wrongs. In their LA Film Festival Best Documentary Feature winner hillbilly the duo systematically take a wrecking ball to every highly offensive yet socially acceptable white trash […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 9, 2019 -
Five Questions with Amber Sealey, Director of No Light and No Land Anywhere
After having premiered at the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival, Amber Sealey brings her new feature, No Light and No Land Anywhere, to theaters today. The Factory 25 release screens at the IFC Center, with Sealey doing Q&As at all the evening shows. Tickets and information can be found here at the link. And, below, read Paula Bernstein’s interview with Sealey conducted just prior to the film’s festival launch. Five years after her last feature, writer-director-actor Amber Sealey returns with No Light and No Land Anywhere, a psychosexual drama executive produced by Miranda July. Starring British stage actress Gemma Brockis […]
by Paula Bernstein on Mar 16, 2018 -
Five Questions for The View from Tall Directors Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss
Hailing from the Chicago theater community is A View from Tall, a debut independent feature telling a story of teen sexuality and its collision with institutional power dynamics. Directed by Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, and based on Parrish’s play, the film deals with a loner teen, Justine, who is ostracized from her peers because of a sexual relationship with a teacher that became public. She bonds with her therapist, a disabled man with issues of his own. Since writing The View from Tall, playwright Parrish has become a successful television writer, working on shows like Supergirl and Under the Dome. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2016 -
Five Questions for My First Kiss and the People Involved Writer/Director Luigi Campi
Born in Rome, based in London and with a degree from Columbia University, Luigi Campi — whose debut feature, My First Kiss and the People Involved, premieres today at the Los Angeles Film Festival — is a truly international independent filmmaker. As he explains in our interview below, his Columbia colleagues are now dispersed around the globe, and his American connections and European passport allow him to slip between filmmaking scenes — or, perhaps, create a scene of his own. Witness My First Kiss, which finds him drawing fresh acting talent from the worlds of performance and visual art, music […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 5, 2016 -
Five Questions with Namour Director Heidi Saman
Two years ago, Filmmaker featured Heidi Saman on our annual list of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” The filmmaker and associate producer at NPR Radio’s Fresh Air had just concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign for her debut feature Namour and was beginning to prep for production. What a difference two years makes. Namour will have its world premiere in the LA Muse section of this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, where it debuts on June 5. The story of Steven, a young Arab-American valet at a slick L.A. restaurant, caught between his dead-end job and the demands of his immigrant family, Namour references such disparate films as The Graduate and Taxi […]
by Paula Bernstein on Jun 4, 2016 -
Five Questions with Tracktown Directors Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher
It’s rare, if not unheard of: a first-time feature film director who is also an Olympic athlete. Such is the case with competitive long distance runner Alexi Pappis, who, along with her boyfriend Jeremy Teicher (one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2013), co-wrote and co-directed Tracktown, a new feature film which will have its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 4. In addition, Pappas, who will compete for Greece at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil, stars as Plumb Marigold, a young Olympic hopeful trying to find balance in life. Filmed and set in the real-life “Tracktown,” […]
by Paula Bernstein on Jun 3, 2016 -
Dispatches from Cannes and the Los Angeles Film Festival
Cannes by Aaron Hillis The same way New Yorkers love to bitch about living in what they also proclaim to be the world’s greatest city, the Cannes-accredited can spend nearly two weeks in the south of France watching nothing but prestigiously vetted films and have the nerve to call it a “so-so year.” But if that was a too-common sigh, it’s partly because the festival’s main competition had few unanimous hits, which is neither unusual nor taking stock of the parallel pleasures within the Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week sections, or out-of-competition premieres of innovative multiplex fare […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 23, 2015 -
“I’ve Made it a Priority to Not Be Afraid of Evolving”: Jennifer Cochis on Producing, Programming and Directing
My German teacher in Berlin has been hacked. In class, she violates her “no speaking English” rule to explain that for nearly a year, a hacker has tracked her digital life in order to stalk her in real life. I’ve never been personally hacked — or so I think — but, the inconvenience of it seems rather minor compared to the sense of intimate violation. The Sony leak, the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence, and my teacher’s less gossip-worthy admission all underscore this pervasive reality of digital fragility. This is a topical conversation, but it’s also a really abstract one. […]
by Taylor Hess on Jan 13, 2015 -
Five Questions for Recommended by Enrique‘s Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia
Director Rania Attieh was born in Tripoli, Lebanon, and her partner Daniel Garcia grew up in South Texas. Their first feature together, Okay, Enough, Goodbye crisscrossed Attieh’s hometown, canvassing 30 locations in 40 days to create a story, they say, that is a “love/hate relationship with the city itself.” So, after that feature won plaudits on the festival circuit — and landed the two on Filmmaker‘s 2011 25 New Faces list — it seems only appropriate that they head to Texas for their follow-up. Premiering tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Recommended by Enrique is described as “a tale […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 13, 2014 -
“Maybe I Hate Pity:” Nathan Silver on Uncertain Terms
Nathan Silver first courted audiences in 2012 with Exit Elena, his charming, claustrophobic take on arrested development through the eyes of a live-in aide. His follow-up, Soft in the Head, also captured an outsider’s rambunctious navigation of new environs, so it should be no surprise that Uncertain Terms, premiering this Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival, treads the familiar territory of interloper interrupted. Silver may be a premature embodiment of Fassbinder’s creed that “Every decent director has only one subject and finally only makes the same film over and over again,” but Uncertain Terms feels more patient in execution than its predecessors, mirroring the bucolic enclave which houses a bevy of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 12, 2014
