Robert Greene
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Making Issue Films Doesn’t Have to Feel Dirty: Nick Berardini on Making Killing Them Safely
The term “issue” in the context of filmmaking can cause a lot of consternation for aspiring filmmakers. It can feel dirty just saying it out loud. When I first began making my debut feature, Killing Them Safely, I was at times apologetic for the subject matter. Early on, one of my producers would get in the habit of telling others it was “a film about TASERs,” and I would cringe. “It’s not a film about TASERs,” I often corrected him, “It’s a film about TASER International. There’s a big difference.” At times I felt like I was being a bit […]
by Nick Berardini on Dec 4, 2015 -
Psyched: Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth
In his compact, unnerving new chamber film Queen of Earth, Alex Ross Perry packs a potent, inventively off-key punch with his combo of a brilliant pre-credit emotional breakdown scene and the baroque calligraphy of the main title and the credits themselves upon its completion. He holds the face of the anguished Catherine (Elisabeth Moss) in tight close-up in the former, her hair mussed, tears and mascara forming rivulets that slowly cascade down her cheeks. Her interior pain is palpable. Off-camera, longtime boyfriend James (Kentucker Audley) tells her it’s all over, justifying his infidelity and assailing her “suffocating overreliance.” Some of […]
by Howard Feinstein on Aug 26, 2015 -
Haunted Houses and Hidden Spaces
The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld Behind the familiar Internet most of us inhabit skulks the dark net: unlinked, encrypted, password-protected sites and pages serving as forums for everything from marijuana-by-mail sales to mutual suicide webcam pacts. Author Jamie Bartlett is director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Media at the United Kingdom think tank Demos, which makes him well qualified to dive in and find out what the deeper implications of the dark net might be. Some British reviewers have taken issue with Bartlett’s optimistic assessment that these unregulated channels are by and large a good thing; […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 28, 2015 -
The Strange Dream: Pitching Your Film at the CPH:FORUM
CPH:DOX is like a strange dream. That dream where you wake up and everyone understands that artistically motivated documentaires have a place, have meaning, are celebrated. And frankly the weirder the better. The pitch forum at this Copenhagen-based documentary festival is no exception. Coming up on its fourth year, it is the home of the eccentric doc sibling. The one that confounds and delights, and maybe has broadcast potential, but maybe could also play in an art gallery. In its beautiful peculiarity, the CPH:DOX forum stands out strongly from most of the other pitch forums that abound on the documentary […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 17, 2014 -
“You Might as Well be Selling Drugs”: Robert Greene on Actress
“I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal,” I wrote after seeing the film at True/False this year. The quick takeaway: This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. Sliding from seemingly straightforward self-presentation to ambiguously unfeigned snapshots of daily life, director and subject collude, not so much valorizing her attempts to jumpstart her career and finances (“I have to make a […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 6, 2014 -
Watch: Robert Greene on “The Art of Nonfiction”
Last week, Sight & Sound released their poll of the top 50 documentaries of all time, sourced from 340 critics, programmers and filmmakers. The list includes seminal films such as Nanook of the North, Sans Soleil, Man With a Movie Camera, and Salesman, as well as recent, form-pushing works in The Act of Killing and Leviathan. Robert Greene took time out of his impressively hectic schedule to craft a video essay that is a send up to said titles and more, examining documentary for its inimitable, observational approach, and noting that “the art of nonfiction lies in the tension between chaos and structure.” Head over to Sight&Sound to view it.
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 7, 2014 -
True/False Diary 2: Actress, Killing Time, Boyhood
Full disclosure: I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal. This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. (Greene’s written for Filmmaker about deciding to premiere his fourth feature at this year’s True/False.) Burre is introduced in a bright red dress standing before a kitchen sink, moving in ambiguously charged slow-mo. Is it true that, as she muses, “I tend to break […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 5, 2014 -
True/False Diary 1: Approaching The Elephant, Demonstration, Sacro GRA
Halfway through, it’s too early to take the overall temperature of True/False 2014 in its 11th year (my fifth attending, each year with the hotel paid; full disclosure). All smooth so far, though it’s early going, so let’s forego atmospherics at this point and jump into one of the festival’s world premieres, Approaching The Elephant. (“Thanks for everyone being here for basically the highlight of my life,” director Amanda Rose Wilder said in her introduction.) The subject is “free schools”: further left on the continuum than Montessori, and (at least as practiced by the subject school’s founder Alex Khost) an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 1, 2014 -
Robert Greene, Fake It So Real
Big-time professional wrestling has long been a lucrative business, but for the men of Lincolnton, North Carolina’s Millenium Wrestling Federation, the social cohesion and outlet for their imagination the sport provides is their primary compensation. As chronicled in director Robert Greene’s fantastic new documentary Fake It So Real, wrestling has never seemed as intense and physically costly. Yet Greene is not interested in mining the sport for tales of snake-bitten men reaching for a glory that will never come; this isn’t a doc version of The Wrestler. Woebegone men are few and far between in this world, despite the fact […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 11, 2012 -
ROBERT GREENE’S FATHER’S DAY SHORT
Filmmaker Robert Greene, whose Kati with an I was one of our Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Gotham Award nominees last year, has posted on this Father’s Day a 20-minute short about his grandfather, Goodbye Engineer. Check it out below. GOODBYE ENGINEER from prewarcinema on Vimeo.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 19, 2011
