Short Film
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Watch: Gillian Wallace Horvat’s “Raunchy Feminist Comedy,” Whiskey Fist
As her short Whiskey Fist has made its away across the festival circuit, director Gillian Wallace Horvat has penned a couple of essays for Filmmaker amplifying and riffing off of her shorts’ themes. Specifically, she takes aim at the rise of branded content masquerading as short films, critiquing filmmakers who surrender their “authenticity” by imagining that brand sponsorship isn’t affecting their art. Her SXSW-premiering Whiskey Fist, which Horvat says was provocatively submitted to a whiskey company’s branded film content contest (containing a scene in which a man is anally penetrated by a whiskey bottle, it lost, needless to say), is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2017 -
On the Cusp: Person to Person Director Dustin Guy Defa on Turning a Short into a Feature, Directing Actors and the Question of Agents
Dustin Guy Defa is on the cusp of big changes. The filmmaker’s second feature film, Person To Person, opens tomorrow. In it, Defa delicately interweaves multiple stories taking place over one day in the lives of New Yorkers portrayed by an ensemble of legendary performers (Phillip Baker Hall, Isiah Whitlock Jr.), name actors (Michael Cera), newcomers (Abbi Jacobson, Tavi Gevinson, George Sample III), and so-called “non-actors” (Bene Coopersmith). It’s a bighearted, hilarious and impressive display of Defa’s directorial skills and the kind of film that can jump start a career. The road to getting it made is a bit unusual. […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Jul 27, 2017 -
What Does Branded Content Have to Do with Citizens United? (Or, How are Filmmakers Participating in the Corporate Takeover of America?)
Gillian Horvat’s short Whiskey Fist plays tomorrow at Fantasia Fest. Here, she pens her second guest essay for Filmmaker. After asking whether brands’ lives matter, she returns to continue her critique of independent film’s complicity with brand messaging. The last time I unsubscribed from an Urban Outfitters e-newsletter I don’t even remember signing up for they told me they were sorry to see me go. A few days later I got a message from Citibank that they “missed me” because I hadn’t been doing any online banking recently. For a moment, I felt moved. I have close human friends that […]
by Gillian Wallace Horvat on Jul 26, 2017 -
How Viral Video Contests Led to Will Blank’s Beautiful Fantasy Short, Limbo
Recently receiving its online premiere after months of plaudits on the genre festival circuit, Will Blank’s Limbo is a beautifully executed fantasy short concluding with an unexpected philosophical gut punch. Adapted from Marian Churchland’s graphic short story, the set up is simple — a man coping with the detritus of a failing relationship heads to the desert, where he comes across a dying dog able to grant him one wish. The starkness of the environment and the pathos of the situation — nobly conveyed by Sam Elliott, who voices the (skillfully animatronic) dog — elevates this simple story into something […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 19, 2017 -
Watch: Shaka King Erases “Racial Glaucoma” in Short Film LaZercism
Newlyweeds writer/director Shaka King, who last appeared on the site with his excellent Sundance short Mulligans, is back with another imaginatively executed, of-the-moment short. LaZercism is his riff on “racial glauccoma,” a disease affecting white people that prevents them from seeing the contributions of — or just seeing at all — people of color. The comedy short, which stars Keith Stanfield (Short Term 12, Atlanta) and Robert Longstreet (I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore), proposes an easy, outpatient procedure to correct the affliction.
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2017 -
Coffee, Sake and Ambien: Writer/Director Richard Shepard on His Tribeca ’17 Short Film, Tokyo Project
An unexpected pleasure at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Tokyo Project is a romantic drama with a psychological twist starring Elisabeth Moss and Ebon Moss-Bacharach and directed by Richard Shepard, whose career traverses dark comedies like The Matador and Dom Hemingway as well as some of the most memorable episodes of TV’s Girls. But what’s unexpected about this story of two American wanderers who hook up in Tokyo while both seemingly escaping their normal lives is, simply, its existence. The half-hour work is beautifully acted and shot (by Giles Nuttgens), coursing with a kind of romantic cinephilia, and, unlike other […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2017 -
An Experiment in Biohacking: Director Kate McLean on the SXSW Short, Gut Hack
Last year, a friend asked me to come to an event about synthetic biology. I’m a documentary filmmaker, and I suspected the evening was going to be a bit over my head, but she was speaking and I wanted to show support. When I arrived, the speakers were a mix of academics, industry types, enthusiasts and scientists. I began to prepare myself in for a night of polite nodding and drinking as a man from a biotech company took the microphone to present some kind of recruitment talk about his company. Then, back near the bar, someone started to boo […]
by Kate McLean on Mar 11, 2017 -
Do Brands’ Lives Matter? Whiskey Fist Director Gillian Wallace Horvat on When Story and Advertising Collapse
In my new short, Whiskey Fist — premiering Friday, September 10 at SXSW — the characters work in front of a sign that reads “Brands’ Lives Matter.” The font is ripped off from Ed Ruscha and the fluorescent ombre background is purloined from posters of the kind stapled to telephone poles advertising local reggae or salsa concerts. Such an insidious combination of high and low appropriation characterizes the vanguard of marketing today, that joking/not joking tone that one would find flourishing in the branding firm where Whiskey Fist takes place. Branding’s sophistication is more seductive than ever, and even more […]
by Gillian Wallace Horvat on Mar 10, 2017 -
“What’s Your Secret?”: Eight Sundance Directors on Short Filmmaking and the Festival Circuit
“Do you have a film in the festival?” The first thing people say to you when they meet you at a festival is usually this question. And for many of us, the answer is a negative. We’ve emptied our bank accounts, called out of our day jobs, skipped out on weekends upstate or by the beach to work on beckoning projects. And when we get rejected by a film festival, it can feel like those sacrifices and hard work were for naught. For new filmmakers like us, festivals, along with a good online distribution plan, are a coveted way to […]
by Meredith Alloway on Feb 13, 2017 -
Short Film Premiere: Iva Gocheva’s Sunday
Receiving its online premiere today here at Filmmaker is Iva Gocheva‘s haunting short film, Sunday, an impressionistic portrait of a young Bulgarian woman living in New York who is grappling with all the various impacts — emotional and existential — of her expired visa. It’s the second short from Gocheva, who has been seen most recently on screen, as a lead, in Claire Carre’s sleeper hit, Embers. Here, the Bulgaria-born, New York-based Gocheva writes about her impetus to make the film: I feel this story started from the idea of home and what it means or feels to each of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 19, 2016
