Spring 2025
-
Speaking in Tongues: How Koyaanisqatsi Was Reborn as The Vivid Unknown
When I step into the exhibition hall, three large screens display rapidly shifting, AI-generated images of natural and industrial landscapes. The overstimulating visuals resist easy interpretation, and they are also responsive to the viewers in the room. The video stops when the room is empty and speeds up as the room becomes more crowded. The longer one stays in the room, the more one’s “shadow” on the screen becomes visible—effects all made possible by a complex real-time vision-tracking system. This is The Vivid Unknown, an immersive installation that recreates the groundbreaking 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi using AI. The piece is a […]
by Deniz Tortum on Mar 18, 2025 -
Life, Compressed: Austin Bunn’s Short Film Screenwriting: A Craft Guide and Anthology
Familiarity is where short films go to die. So says Austin Bunn, rephrasing a statement by the British-Moroccan filmmaker Fyzal Boulifa, who feels that the abundance of shorts characterizing our moment makes playing it safe as a screenwriter the biggest risk of all. Boulifa is just one of many filmmakers cited in Bunn’s new book, Short Film Screenwriting: A Craft Guide and Anthology, published in October 2024 by Bloomsbury. Bunn may be best known to Filmmaker readers as the co-author, with Christine Vachon, of 2007’s A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and […]
by Holly Willis on Mar 18, 2025 -
Paging Peter Andrews: Steven Soderbergh on Being His Own DP
When Steven Soderbergh was 13 years old, his father enrolled him in an animation class taught by Louisiana State University students. Soderbergh could draw but quickly became bored with the tedious process of bringing those drawings to life. Instead, he pulled the film camera off the copy stand and began shooting whatever he pleased. From the very beginning, Soderbergh had no interest in doing things as prescribed. Whether alternating between the commercial and the experimental, challenging traditional release conventions or embracing new technologies in a quest to expedite the filmmaking process, Soderbergh has spent his career upending the status quo. […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 18, 2025 -
Blue Skies in Park City: Against the “Off Year” Sundance 2025 Narrative
Reports of Sundance’s death are greatly exaggerated. Even before this year’s festival was over, industry journalists rushed to declare its demise, from The Wrap’s Sharon Waxman (“Low Sales. No Standouts. Slow Sundance. Where Does Independent Film Go From Here?”) to The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield (“Get it Together, Indie A-Holes. What part of ‘extinction event’ do you not understand?”). But let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe “the vibe was off,” as one producer notes, but what do you expect after twin catastrophes—the Los Angeles fires and the inauguration of Donald Trump—were still smoldering during the event? “I think the market was […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Mar 18, 2025
