Radha Blank
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“I Wanted the Movie to Have a ‘Time Out of Time’ Feel”: Cinematographer Eric Branco on Shooting the Black-and-White The 40-Year-Old Version
On the title page of her script for The 40-Year-Old Version, director and star Radha Blank wrote: “A New York Tale in Black and White.” Cinematographer Eric Branco took those words to heart, shooting the Netflix production almost entirely on Kodak Double X film. In the film Blank plays an alternate of herself, a playwright once named in a “30 Under 30” list of artists to watch, now trying to reinvent herself as the rapper RadhaMUSPrime. Over the 20-day schedule, Branco shot almost entirely on locations in Manhattan and the Bronx, from apartments to studios, clubs, theaters, and crowded streets. […]
by Daniel Eagan on Oct 30, 2020 -
Flipping the Script: Mary Harron Interviews Radha Blank About Her Spirited and Wise New York Comedy, The Forty-Year-Old Version
In Radha Blank’s witty and winning feature debut, The Forty-Year-Old Version, the writer/director adopts a semiautobiographical persona: a hardworking middle-aged playwright and high school teacher who, between hustles to get her latest play produced and after the death of her artist mother, takes to open mic nights as neophyte rapper RadhaMUSprime. Onstage and in the studio with a handsome beats-supplier-turned-paramour, she raps about aging, ambition and life in New York with all the emotional honesty that’s slowly and painfully being drained from her latest play, a Harlem-set gentrification drama mounted by a patronizing white theater producer. Scanning Blank’s own biography—she’s […]
by Mary Harron on Oct 28, 2020 -
“Linus Has His Blanket. Radha Has Her Head Wrap”: Radha Blank | The 40-Year-Old Version
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? Radha’s head wrap. It seems to be a nice fashion accessory. One that nods to Black and African culture and reflects identity and cultural pride. And in a time when women obsess over our looks and feel pressured to express ourselves through hair, a head wrap feels like an act of […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 25, 2020
