Sean Price Williams
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“I Wanted the Film to Feel Like a Christmas Tree Ornament from your Attic”: Charles Poekel on Sundance NEXT Film Christmas Again
With Charles Poekel’s charmingly melancholy debut, Christmas, Again, the independent film maxim “write what you know” gains a corollary: “write what you can learn.” For his tale of a withdrawn Christmas tree salesmen just trying to get through the season, again, Poekel gained knowledge of his protagonist’s trade by opening and operating his own stand in Greenpoint — a job he’s still doing five years later. Defiantly non-melodramatic and with the well-worn feel of a ’70s New York character study, Christmas, Again has both poetry and an unprepossessing air. In other words, it’s a perfect holiday visitor. Christmas, Again premiered […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2015 -
Watch: Sean Price Williams’ Frantic Fran’s Jewish Stuff
Last week, Robert Greene posted a “virtually unseen” mid-length documentary, shot and edited by Sean Price Williams in 1998, entitled Frantic Fran’s Jewish Stuff. Three years before the cinematographer’s first official credit, and nine years before his quasi-breakthrough with Frownland, the 16mm film presages the close-ups and striking compositions that earned Williams some of the best notices of his career with this year’s Listen Up Philip. And it’s pretty entertaining, as well.
by Sarah Salovaara on Dec 23, 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 -
The Limits of Quality Control: On Sticking with Mini-DV
There are many reasons why people get into making movies, but the fetishizing of gadgets might be my least favorite. Cheaper, higher-end video cameras make “quality” more attainable, but no matter how many pixels there might be in a high-definition image, it can’t make a story clearer. Yet, independent filmmakers are often drawn to the newest, hottest equipment, as if the barrier to making a decent movie can be scaled by stacking the latest and fanciest gear and climbing over. I’ve made four nonfiction features and, like a digital video Luddite, I’ve shot all of them with my trusty Panasonic […]
by Robert Greene on Oct 20, 2014 -
Director Maiko Endo on Kuichisan
Easily the most out-there film I saw at last year’s CPH:DOX was one touted by the programmers as “the discovery of the festival”: Maiko Endo’s Kuichisan, receiving its New York debut tomorrow as part of the LaDiDa Festival. Previously, Endo was a vocalist in the band Battles and co-produced Jessica Oreck’s documentary Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo. Now, Oreck has produced Endo’s debut picture, with Beetle Queen d.p. Sean Price Williams behind the camera. Stunningly shot in both black-and-white and color, Kuichisan is a tumbling collection of images, organized as much by feeling, sensation and the rhythms of its experimental soundtrack […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 13, 2012 -
92YTRIBECA’S POST-MUMBLECORE LA DI DA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCED
I’ve had wind of this for a while, via both filmmaker Kentucker Audley and programmer Miriam Bale (who has a feature on Beasts of the Southern Wild in our current issue), but now the news is public. On September 14 and 15, the 92Y Tribeca will host the first La Di Da film festival, which takes a look at the recent work of a group of post-Mumblecore figures, including Amy Seimetz, the Safdies, Sean Price Williams, Dustin Guy Defa, Alex Karpovsky, Kate Lyn Sheil, Eléonore Hendricks and Audley. In the press release explaining the genesis of the event, Bale says, […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 23, 2012 -
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is now available on DVD through Factory 25. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published at Hammer to Nail in conjunction with the film’s theatrical release at Film Forum on May 12, 2010.) The knowledge that Jessica Oreck is an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History in New York City who has never previously made a film might cause one to worry that Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo will be an unavoidably stiff and grueling piece of video academia. Worry not, skeptic. Oreck’s wildly precocious exploration of Japan’s ongoing […]
by Michael Tully on May 19, 2011
