Matt Wolf
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Archive Fever: The Films of Matt Wolf
When I was a student at Bard, I spent a lot of time looking at a poster taped to Ed Halter’s office door for Matt Wolf’s 2008 film Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, about the composer, country-folk singer, disco trailblazer and avant-garde pioneer who passed away in 1992 of AIDS. Sometime later, I hosted a screening of Keep The Lights On by Ira Sachs, which is full of Russell’s beautiful music. Ira told me afterward that he had discovered the artist through Wild Combination, a film that introduced a lot of people to Russell but which also introduced […]
by Conor Williams on Nov 7, 2023 -
Watch: Matt Wolf’s 2012 Short I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard
Filmmaker Matt Wolf has made his 2012 documentary short I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard available to watch on Vimeo. The film utilizes archival recordings of Brainard reading his seminal 1970 memoir-poem I Remember, as well as videos and photos from the artist’s childhood and NYC exploits. Brainard’s artistic legacy is expansive and multi-disciplinary, encompassing collages, assemblages, paintings and drawings, among other art forms. He was also a prolific writer, often using hand-drawn comics to accompany his poetry and prose. Brainard died in 1994 of AIDS-related complications. Wolf, who was one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces of Film in […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 13, 2022 -
“While It’s Not About the Experience of Being Quarantined Per Se, It Taps into a Kind of Universal Experience”: Director Matt Wolf on His Moving Saga of Human Ambition, Spaceship Earth
“Theater engages the whole organism,” says Biosphere 2 Director of Systems Engineering William Dempster. “Movement, through emotion — [it] gives you insight into yourself. Building a foundation from which we could go on and do other projects.” Accompanying Dempster’s voiceover early in Matt Wolf’s engrossing and unexpectedly stirring documentary, Spaceship Earth, is black-and-white footage from the first public activity of John Allen’s band of “Synergists”: a traveling theater production called The Theater of All Possibilities. The artistic value of the production is indeterminate; seen in brief clips, it falls somewhere on the continuum between The Living Theater and an Allan […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 14, 2020 -
“I Wanted to Subtly Evoke Biosphere 2 in My Interview Shots”: Matt Wolf | Spaceship Earth
Whether capturing or creating a world, the objects onscreen tell as much of a story as the people within it. Whether sourced or accidental, insert shot or background detail, what prop or piece of set decoration do you find particularly integral to your film? What story does it tell? Our film Spaceship Earth is comprised almost entirely of archival footage, but we did a number of interviews in studios across the country. The most important object for this film is a modular erector set of geodesic rods that appears out of focus behind all of our interview subjects. Production designer […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 26, 2020 -
Tribeca 2019 Critic’s Notebook: Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, Rewind, 17 Blocks, All I Can Say
Now that every 10-year-old has a pocket-sized film studio and multiplex in their hands via the smartphone, and debates over the cinematic legitimacy of streaming platforms rage on, there’s a certain sweet nostalgia associated with dead formats of a less pixel-saturated age. VHS was perhaps the most physical—and vulnerable—of physical media: cheap plastic shells containing magnetic tape that could easily tangle in a faulty player. Yet, along with the camcorder, which likewise came into common use in the early 1980s, it has found a permanent niche in pop-culture consciousness that is, perhaps, greedy for a certain archival innocence—a throwback to […]
by Steve Dollar on May 7, 2019 -
“I Saw the Film as a Mystery — To Try and Understand Someone Who Didn’t Want to be Understood”: Matt Wolf on His Doc, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
With Matt Wolf’s Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project opening today at the Metrograph in New York, we are reposting Scott Macaulay’s interview with Wolf prior to the film’s Tribeca premiere. Wolf will be doing a number of Q&As opening weekend with various moderators, including, tonight Lynn Tillman, as well as, this weekend, Charlotte Cook, Melissa Lyde, Sierra Pettengill, Collier Meyerson, Stuart Comer and Macaulay (the latter at the Saturday, 1:15 PM screening). From 1979, just before the launch of CNN, to 2012, when she passed away, Marion Stokes — an African-American Philadelphia woman, communist, public access television host, collector of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2019 -
Race, Robbery and Going Viral: Eight Short Films from Sundance 2017
As the 2017 Sundance Film Festival wraps up another edition of high-profile features with notable stars, secret screenings and exorbitant sales, attention must be paid to the less-covered but no less worthy shorts that premiered in Park City last week. Brought together in eight blocks (Animation, Documentary, Midnight, and Shorts Programs 1-5), these films represent an equal mix of prolonged, thought-out narratives and fleeting moments of inspiration discovered on the fly. For better or worse, shorts are often seen as a director’s calling card for upcoming feature work. While that’s all well and good (and I hope further success comes their way!), […]
by Erik Luers on Jan 26, 2017 -
“Just Because It’s Not Online Doesn’t Mean it Doesn’t Exist”: Tips on Finding and Using Archival Footage from DOC NYC Pro
Sitting in the audience at a DOC NYC Pro Masterclass just days after the election, I found it impossible to separate the discussions and stories from the story of our country at this moment. Everything going on in film seems so important and relevant to how we see ourselves and the world, and nowhere do we see this as directly as in documentary. This was brought home by producer, director and archivist Sierra Pettengill (director, Town Hall; archival producer, Kate Plays Christine) in a panel taking place Sunday, November 13 called “Getting Creative With Archives.” Pettengill showed a clip from […]
by Audrey Ewell on Nov 14, 2016 -
Cinematographer Nick Bentgen on Shooting Matt Wolf’s Sundance Short, It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise
Following 2013’s Teenage, cinematographer Nick Bentgen reteams with director Matt Wolf for a short film about the man behind the look of one of children’s literature’s most-loved characters, Eloise. It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise is a portrait of Hilary Knight, whose sharp line drawings visualized for generations the Plaza Hotel-dwelling young girl introduced in Kay Thompson’s books. Executive produced by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner of Girls, the short film will premiere on HBO in March but receives its festival launch at Sundance on January 24. Here, Bentgen, who directed Northern Lights and shot Ballet 242 and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2015 -
The Kids Are All Right: Matt Wolf on Teenage
Based on Jon Savage’s 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture, Matt Wolf’s elliptical and handsome documentary Teenage delves into the history of teen-hood, revealing how those formative years between 12 and 20 produced generations that were cultural forces to be reckoned with in the West during the 20th century’s earliest decades. Using a collage style that includes archival footage, newsreels, dramatic reenactments (anchored by recognizable young actors such as Jenna Malone and total newcomers found by street-casting impresario Eleonore Hendricks), the movie takes us to pre-war Germany, through the pages of diaries of midwestern 15-year-olds, and to dance […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 16, 2014
