Nathan Silver
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Nathan Silver’s Undeniable Pressure Cookers
A producer friend of mine recently opined that if your film does not get into Sundance, it’s a financial failure. That’s a hard and fast rule that doesn’t necessarily hold, beyond the frightening fact that nowadays, only one in five Sundance films receives theatrical distribution. Independent films still ink deals out of SXSW, Tribeca and the margins of Toronto, but what of the films that aren’t afforded the spotlight of the festival circuit? More and more it seems that unique perspectives are cast aside for formulaic, middle of the road, audience pleasers at these high profile showcases. Filmmaker Nathan Silver is […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Apr 14, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head
Home to one of my favorite scenes of 2013, Nathan Silver’s Soft in the Head now has a delightfully cryptic trailer ahead of its April 18 release at New York’s Cinema Village. Roving, drunken mess Natalia (the loose-limbed Sheila Etxeberría) finds an empathetic respite from the city streets at a predominately Jewish male shelter, run by patron saint Maury (Ed Ryan.) Entirely improvised, Soft in the Head constructs its narrative from kinetic exchanges that bely the simplicity of the film’s storyline with their engrossing frenzy. More aggressive than his breakthrough Exit Elena (which will have its own run in April at Anthology), Soft in the Head teems […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 26, 2014 -
“The Line Blurs:” Morals of Filmmaking
“Anything that happens in front of the camera is some kind of performance,” said experimental filmmaker Lynne Sachs at the top of Tuesday’s “The Line Blurs: Shifting Narratives in Filmmaking” panel. Sachs, along with Caveh Zahedi, Josephine Decker, Keith Miller and moderator Nathan Silver, spent an hour debating the division between narrative and documentary forms at DCTV. The evening was chockfull of quotable quotes as the participants reflected on their own work with equal doses of humor and candor. Zahedi, for starters, admitted that he initially considered documentaries to be “the autistic younger brother of cinema,” and only labels his […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 12, 2013 -
“The Line Blurs” at DCTV
Tomorrow evening at 7:30 pm, DCTV will be hosting “The Line Blurs: Shifting Narratives in Filmmaking,” a panel on the increasingly ambiguous division between fiction and nonfiction in filmmaking. It is a timely discussion, one that will probe questions as to whether or not a delineation between the two forms has ever existed, and why viewers and critics alike are bent on categorization. The panel will feature filmmakers Josephine Decker, Keith Miller, Lynne Sachs and Caveh Zahedi, with Nathan Silver in the moderator’s chair. Silver, director of Soft In The Head and Exit Elena, shoots without a script, mining the people […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 9, 2013 -
Exit Elena – A Hammer to Nail Review
Nathan Silver’s film had its world premiere at the 2012 Edinburgh Film Festival and opens theatrically on July 12, 2013, in at the reRun Theater in Brooklyn. Visit the film’s official website and Facebook page to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published on November 13, 2012. The biggest challenge facing the lead character of Nathan Silver’s hilarious Exit Elena during her first fumbling stint as a live-in nursing assistant isn’t her elderly patient. In fact, if Elena could simply take care of Florence as she’s supposedly been hired to do, she might be the perfect aide to help […]
by Dustin Guy Defa on Jul 11, 2013 -
16 and Pregnant: Behind the Scenes of Simian, a Tragic Comedy
Nathan Silver’s second feature Exit Elena opens at the reRun Theater this coming Friday, but the prolific Silver has already premiered his third feature, Soft in the Head, on the festival circuit and has just wrapped production on his fourth, entitled Simian. Below is a photo blog written by Silver, Simian‘s producer and co-writer Chloe Domont and Cody Stokes, the film’s co-writer, cinematographer and editor. We just finished shooting Simian, a narrative feature that follows Robbie, a Norman Mailer wannabe who takes refuge at a makeshift home for pregnant teens. The idyllic backdrop of the Hudson Valley seems to be […]
by Nathan Silver, Chloe Domont and Cody Stokes on Jul 10, 2013 -
Five Questions with Soft in the Head Director Nathan Silver
Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena was one of the surprises in the 2012 crop of American indies, a delightfully idiosyncratic lo-fi portrait of a withdrawn live-in nurse who becomes a key figure in the family household where she’s working, far beyond her professional role. The film, which featured all non-actors including Silver’s mother, girlfriend and Silver himself, premiered at Edinburgh and has played around the world since then, in the process winning fans such as director Hal Hartley and Filmmaker‘s own Brandon Harris (who recently programmed the film as part of Hammer to Nail‘s screening series). Though Exit Elena is still on […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 10, 2013 -
EIFF 2012: NEW BEGINNINGS
Walking around the opening party you couldn’t help but hear the word “rebirth” a lot. As the most heavily pregnant person in the room, this made me jump, but I soon joined in the celebration. The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival had just opened with William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, and the evening was a definite success. Not everyone liked the film — there were questions about on-screen violence towards women in particular — but everyone agreed that as an opener, new festival director Chris Fujiwara had hit the right note. Smacked it right on the kisser, you might say. There […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on Jun 24, 2012 -
Five Questions with Exit Elena Director Nathan Silver
“Sorry to put you in the middle of this,” says Cindy Akerman (Cindy Silver) to Elena (Kia Davis), as they sit at breakfast and she argues with her husband about her decision to hire Elena as a live in nurse for his mother without telling him. And so it begins. At 71 minutes long, filmmaker Nathan Silver’s Exit Elena is an exquisite gem of a movie. We watch as Elena is dragged into the dysfunction of family life and struggles to maintain her professional role looking after the elderly Florence (Gert O’Connell) while her employer drags her along to zumba […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on Jun 21, 2012
