Moonlight
-
Don’t Bring Your Business Card to Borscht
I missed my 6am flight on the last day of the Borscht Film Festival. I blame Moonlight. And Miami. It had been an insanely inspiring weekend of art, film and new friendships at the festival’s 10th year down in Miami. Borscht ran February 22-26, encompassing live performances, film screenings, art installations, parties on islands and even a viking funeral — which I, regretfully, missed. I’d been hearing about Borscht for years through a number of my friends in the film community and via co-founders Jillian Mayer and Lucas Levya’s visionary films/art. Over and over, I was told the fest was […]
by Meredith Alloway on Mar 21, 2017 -
“I Was at a Point in My Life When I Needed to Take a Risk”: Barry Jenkins on his Debut Feature, Medicine for Melancholy
Nominated for Best Director and Best Picture Academy Awards for his beautiful and incisive Moonlight, Barry Jenkins has long appeared in the pages of Filmmaker. He was a 25 New Face in 2008 and then, just months later, graced our Winter, 2008 cover for his debut feature, Medicine for Melancholy. Online for the first time, here is my interview with Jenkins about the film, an interview that’s a great read and a fascinating look back at the career beginnings of one of our best directors. Usually lacking the budget to build elaborate sets, independent films have most often been shot […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2017 -
2016: The Year in 10 Double Features
The double feature has been a moviewatching mainstay since at least the 1930s. Their appeal is obvious: What better way to cap off a film than to delay real life for a few hours more with another one? Few of us catch double bills at a theater anymore, but their allure remains strong at home. As sites like Mashable and Uproxx reported this year, Netflix users can access double-feature-friendly micro-genres with ease. These days, the work of curating a dual bill of “critically-acclaimed gritty independent crime dramas” is practically done for you. You can even start the next film without […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Dec 22, 2016 -
Watch: Moonlight Wins the 2016 IFP Gotham for Best Feature
“Holy shit, man” — Barry Jenkins kicked off his Best Feature acceptance speech with a few words of thanks to the IFP and the Gothams, then enthused from the heart. “It’s so humbling to be nominated in a category with people like Kelly Reichardt,” he said. “I’ve seen Meek’s Cutoff at least 7,000 damn times.” He thanked the cast, his producers, his third grade teacher (the first person who told him his story was worth telling), his “friend and confidante on this tour” Mike Mills (director of the forthcoming 20th Century Women). Then he alluded to the unignorable reality of this political moment: “The […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 29, 2016 -
Recommended on a Friday: Moonlight, Fire at Sea, Criterion’s Boyhood Disk, Dessert, Chris Gethard and More
Our new “Recommended on a Friday” column is meant for us here at Filmmaker to throw some attention on films we love that perhaps we haven’t covered online and in print, but this week we’re just going to start by piling on a pick that you’ve already heard quite a bit about: Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight. Jenkins’s previous film, Medicine for Melancholy, was a Filmmaker cover back in 2009, and we’ve been eagerly awaiting his next film since. Moonlight — a bracingly tender, ambitiously realized and wisely provocative character study about the construction of African-American masculine identity — demands to be […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2016 -
Inside Looking Out: Barry Jenkins on Moonlight
Occasionally a movie has the look and feel of something totally original, immediately allowing one to see the protean leap its maker has taken from novice to master. Someday, when the American movie landscape is no more, simply the purview of art historians who live on Mars or on ocean front property in what we used to call Indiana, people will still regard Barry Jenkins’s startlingly effective Moonlight as a unique and supple flower, the kind of heartrending experience that gives rise to the notion that motion pictures can be a lasting, emotionally resonant art form. Drawn from MacArthur “genius” […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 20, 2016 -
Studio 54: The New York Film Festival, Part I
On the evidence of the finest films in the first third of this 54th edition of the New York Film Festival, those familiar with the exhibitionistic, amped-up social set that frolicked in, gawked at, or read about the notorious, dear-departed Manhattan night spot might find it ironic, or a misnomer, that its moniker is my appropriated title for this initial NYFF feature. Sure, Lincoln Center ranks far lower on the cool scale than the legendary club, but, a testament to tenacity, merit, and resilience — how it has managed to survive continuous power struggles and administrative shuffles of parent organization […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 29, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight
Just out from A24 is this trailer for one of our most highly anticipated films of the fall, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight. Long time Filmmaker readers will remember that it’s been a while since Jenkins, a 2008 25 New Face and the cover of our Winter, 2009 issue for his debut feature, Medicine for Melancholy, has made a movie. He’s been among the most talented American independents to have such a long break before teeing up for his sophomore film, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying, as Jenkins has developed several powerful projects over the years. (Read this short […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 11, 2016
