One of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2015, Reinaldo Marcus Green makes his feature debut as a writer/director with Monsters and Men. The film tells the story of a police shooting and its aftermath in the community of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Green hired cinematographer Patrick Scola (Southside with You) to shoot the film, which screens in competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Ahead of the film’s premiere, Scola spoke with Filmmaker about how he sought to blend both “naturalism” and “heightened reality” in the film’s visual approach. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 21, 2018I’ve written before about my fondness for local news: “a fun, seemingly randomized mash-up of crimes caught on security cameras, traffic and weather updates, forced banter, cooking segments, deep concerns about marijuana use and ‘reporting’ that’s thinly veiled support for the NYPD.” One segment in the latter mode still regularly replays in my mind: following the 2014 shooting of two NYPD officers, one channel — playing to that unflappable demographic which believes the police are always in the right — aired a particularly shameless segment in which a reporter found a seven-year-old black child to tearfully state how much he […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 21, 2018As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? I’m a zero-inbox kind of guy. I can’t have widget notifications on my phone, they drive me insane. So, in general, I like to get ahead of things before they get ahead of me. As Negro Leagues pitcher Satchel Paige said, “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.” I’ve always attributed that quote to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2018