Inspired by Diego Echeverria’s 1984 documentary, Los Sures, Living Los Sures is an expansive documentary produced over five years by 60 artists at Brooklyn’s UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. Premiering online today here at Filmmaker is Álvaro, directed by Alexandra Lazarowich, Elizabeth Dealaune Warren, Daniel J Wilson & Chloe Zimmerman, a short doc about the daily ritual of longtime Southside, Brooklyn resident Álvaro Brandon. Timed to the restoration and Metrograph screening of Echeverria’s cinema verite work, about the largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community of the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Living Los Sures consists of 40 short films, the interactive […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2016Premiering online on Vimeo is Unmappable, a short documentary by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma that presents a complicated portrait of an artist and sex offender. Here’s Whitney Mallett writing about the film previously for Filmmaker at the Atlanta Film Festival. The short documentary Unmappable is a portrait of Denis Wood, whose poetic mapmaking challenges the distinction between art and cartography. He also had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy — a friend of his son’s who began living with the family — for which he spent 26 months in prison. Both the story and tone directors Diane Hodson […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 1, 2016After appearing on our 25 New Faces list in 2012, director, writer, producer and actor Jim Cummings has popped into the page of Filmmaker from time to time, offering advise on making and marketing short films and what filmmakers can learn from South Park. Cummings, who is a producer of two of the past year’s best independents (Krisha and The Grief of Others), has an intriguingly hard-to-pin down filmmaking personality. So, when he suggested that Filmmaker partner with him on a series of videos documenting the journey of his new short, Thunder Road, to Sundance, we quickly agreed. Of course, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 23, 2016Earlier this year I produced a very low budget short film, Affections, directed by Bridey Elliott and premiering at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Armed with a Master’s Degree and several experiences assisting producers in the past, I assumed I knew everything I needed to in order to create an accurate budget. As with all firsts, this was an incredible learning experience that highlighted several integral lessons to keep in mind while creating any kind of film budget. Look to the script Although labor intensive, it’s worth spending the time to do a comprehensive script breakdown (a big spreadsheet outlining […]
by Sarah Winshall on Jan 22, 2016Any filmmaker who has been around the block knows something about reactions to films — when you’re first praised for the cinematography, something has gone wrong. And when a critic spends more time on plot description than on analysis or commentary, well, then, he or she is just aiming to hit their word count. I thought of these two truisms while watching Review, the latest short from Filmmaker 25 New Face Dustin Guy Defa. Watch it above.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2015Anyone who’s seen Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack knows that the Angulo brothers have a flair for costuming, and those talents are on full display in Mukunda Angulo’s Mirror Heart, a rather abstract short film made for Vice. Billed as “an imaginative tale about a cast of dreamlike characters who unify around the necessity to create,” Mirror Heart also employs the voice acting of a handful of the brothers as that nagging, negative portion of one’s creative conscience. Check out the short above and a making of video at the link.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 25, 2015Straight from BAMcinemaFest where it preceded Krisha last Friday is Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva‘s short film, Porcupine. A far cry from the subterranean world of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Porcupine features Gocheva as a woman holed up in her sun-drenched Brooklyn apartment, trying and failing to reconnect with her partner through a series of unanswered phone calls. Strung together, her voicemails intimate a relationship — and several household items — lost. Check it out above.
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 22, 2015In honor of Vimeo’s updated Cameo app, filmmaker Paul Trillo created a short film entirely shot and edited on an iPhone, appropriately titled “The Life and Death of an iPhone.” Trillo utilizes the phone’s POV to create the illusion of a constant “feed” between cuts, which he accomplished in camera: Believe it or not the transitions are deceptively simple like a slight of hand. At the end of each take, we just did a quick wipe into black. The key is to do these moves at the same speed each time and make sure you’re cutting on precisely the right frame. I found that […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jun 19, 2015To premiere at La Semaine de la Critique is a singular achievement in itself. For one thing, it comes with the boasting rights of having triumphed through a discerning selection process, one that whittles over 1,700 submissions down to a lineup of merely 20 films. For another, as the competition running parallel to the Cannes Film Festival since 1962, La Semaine’s commitment to showcasing and nurturing new global talent through a combination of selectivity and exceptional personal attention has established it as one of the most valued platforms of exposure for budding filmmakers. But for New York-based editor-turned-writer/director Sonejuhi Sinha, […]
by Anisha Jhaveri on May 19, 2015A BAFTA nominee, Oscar Sharp’s The Kármán Line tells the unusual tale of Sarah (Olivia Colman), who inexplicably begins to levitate in her living room, showing no signs of slowing down, not even as she breaches the atmosphere above her very roof. A rich tonal brew, the film is also a showcase for some seamless visual effects as Sarah moves through floors and the sky alike. Since The Kármán Line premiered at SXSW, Sharp signed with Tobey Maguire’s Mental Pictures and is in development on a sci-fi feature. You can watch the short, now streaming in The New Yorker‘s Screening Room, above, and hear from […]
by Sarah Salovaara on May 15, 2015