Scott Cummings
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Sundance 2024: A Different Man, Realm of Satan
There’s a story about a Soviet commissar who, upon seeing Solaris, proved that he both completely understood the movie and didn’t understand it at all by indignantly demanding to know what the point is of humanity going from one end of the universe to the other if they bring all their emotional shit with them. That’s not far from the moral of Aaron Schimberg’s third feature A Different Man, the story of a man who gets radical plastic surgery only to find out he still has to live with himself. Containing elements of Seconds (plastic surgery with unintended consequences) and […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 22, 2024 -
“The Easiest Thing to Get People to Do on Film is the Sexual Stuff”: Scott Cummings on His Sundance Doc Realm of Satan
A decade after Buffalo Juggalos, which explored the Faygo-spattered milieu of the Juggalo subculture in his native Buffalo, N.Y., Scott Cummings returns with a full-length immersion into another misunderstood community, the Church of Satan. Realm of Satan, which premieres Jan. 21 in the NEXT section of the Sundance Film Festival, is a deeply collaborative endeavor that adapts the philosophy and practices of the church into a rigorous yet playful visual approach that also takes liberties with observational form through inspired use of VFX. Cummings, who began work on the film in 2016 and persisted through the pandemic, spoke with Filmmaker […]
by Steve Dollar on Jan 21, 2024 -
Exclusive Clip: Scott Cummings’s Sundance-Bound Realm of Satan
Never have the words “in collaboration with” carried such a potent charge as they do in Scott Cummings’s Sundance-bound documentary, Realm of Satan. Working with members of the Church of Satan, Cummings hypnotizes viewers into the landscapes, physical spaces and ultimately mindsets of this misunderstood group as they, in the words of the Sundance programmers, “fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.” Writing about his previous film, Buffalo Juggalos, Cummings, a Filmmaker 25 New Face, said, “The Juggalos were not my subjects, they were participants, and every choice I made honored that participation.” There’s a similar ethos at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2024 -
Watch: Experimental Filmmakers Imaginatively Respond to the Pandemic in Cinema-19
In the brisk, 43-minute anthology film, Cinema-19, a group of experimental filmmakers respond to the coronavirus pandemic with diverse and imaginative results. The films are all 190 seconds long and, say the curator/organizers, filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler, “do not attempt to summarize the pandemic, but instead focus on the personal, the political, the sensual, the distant, the abstract, and the absurd.” Highlights include Courtney Stephen‘s poetic essay film on irises, hundreds of which she encountered on walks in the five-mile radius she and her mother were confined to during quarantine. (“This is a trick,” she says in voiceover. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 25, 2020 -
“My Film is Not About Juggalos. It is a Juggalo”: Director Scott Cummings on Making Buffalo Juggalos
I’ve given up explaining that Buffalo Juggalos isn’t a documentary. I come from a narrative background but I should make clear that Buffalo Juggalos is not really a narrative film either. Three years ago I decided Buffalo Juggalos would be a 30-minute film, shot on video, composed of thirty shots, each one minute long. The film would be a series of scenes featuring real Juggalos. There would be no interviews or music; if there was dialogue, it would have absolutely nothing to do with being a Juggalo. Even though there are narrative elements throughout, they have been subjugated by the […]
by Scott Cummings on May 27, 2014
