Summer 2022
-
Inside Out: Michael Almereyda and David Cronenberg in Conversation on Crimes of the Future
“There is an inner life to a human being that can be as dangerous as any animal in the forest.” So asserts David Cronenberg in his supremely self-aware book-length 1993 interview Cronenberg on Cronenberg, tracking a career that has supplied us with indelible nightmare images: ravenous parasites, murderous mutant children, an exploding head, a slimy gun extracted from a pseudo-vaginal slit in a man’s abdomen—to name a conspicuous few. Recalling the early films, it’s almost easy to forget that the jolting imagery emerges from compelling atmospheres of isolation and estrangement. Cronenberg’s reliable quotient of ghastly mayhem has always roared up […]
by Michael Almereyda on Jul 14, 2022 -
Art School Hangover: Director Martine Syms on The African Desperate
LA-based digital artist and filmmaker Martine Syms makes her feature debut with The African Desperate, a deeply funny and unflinching survey of the embedded racism within what the artist classifies as “elite spaces.” Syms previously made 2017’s Incense, Sweaters & Ice, a 69-minute art installation that depicts three generations of Black women and the nature of their surveillance. With The African Desperate, Syms vies for a more personal angle by centering her film on Palace (frequent collaborator Diamond Stingily), a Black MFA student who’s finishing her degree at Bard College, where the director received her MFA in 2017. While the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 14, 2022 -
The Running Woman: Writer/Director Andrew Semans on His Rebecca Hall-Starring “Resurrection”
Director Andrew Semans’s 2012 debut feature, Nancy, Please, follows Paul (Will Rogers), an unraveling Ph.D. candidate obsessed with reclaiming his dog-eared, notes-filled copy of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit from a spiteful ex-roommate (Eleonore Hendricks). Despite his increasingly desperate attempts, Paul just can’t get Nancy to relinquish the book from their formerly shared apartment. As the ex-roomie continues to live rent-free in Paul’s head, his deteriorating mental state prevents him from completing his thesis. Less interested in why Nancy won’t relinquish the book than why Paul so easily accepts his newfound submissiveness, Nancy, Please is a dark comedy about not being […]
by Erik Luers on Jul 14, 2022 -
Texts and Contexts: On Rethinking the Teaching of Cinema Studies in 2022
My students know how to edit footage and use a zoom lens; they’re experts on lighting and composing a shot. But because they learned those techniques through their phones to upload to social media platforms, they use them in a completely different manner than what usually gets taught in a filmmaking class. It might be easy to dismiss these skills, developed mostly to impress their friends, but more and more jobs are looking for university graduates who can create, use and distribute video content (or just light themselves for Zoom). In that model, appreciating a movie is not exactly a […]
by Peter Labuza on Jul 14, 2022 -
Worlds Within Screens
In the late 1990s and early aughts, film schools moved away from film itself as digital cameras (and editing) became the main tools. What’s happening today may not be quite as seismic but will still change film schools’ DNA: the movie and TV industry is moving toward virtual production. Popularized by The Mandalorian, virtual production essentially takes green/blue screen to the next level, and in some ways, it reverses traditional workflows. Instead of cast and crew finishing principal photography and then handing it off to an army of VFX techies, the techies create that VFX before anyone steps on set. […]
by Matt Prigge on Jul 14, 2022 -
Stepping In: Indie Directors Isabel Sandoval, Blackhorse Lowe and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy on Their First Television Experiences
In the past 18 months, Isabel Sandoval has expanded the narrative around queer and trans filmmakers’ abilities to direct a wide range of material with her episode of the Hulu series Under the Banner of Heaven, Blackhorse Lowe has brought quirky humor and his own life experience to Hulu’s Reservation Dogs and director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has represented Pakistani and Muslim communities in Marvel and Disney+’s Ms. Marvel. They’re all crossing over from the feature world to direct television for the first time, while also building careers outside the industry glare of Los Angeles. Award-winning trans director Isabel Sandoval moved from […]
by Destiny Jackson on Jul 14, 2022 -
After the Party: Surveying the Business and Sales Environment at Cannes
Film business sprang back to life in Cannes this year, with nary a peep from the usual “sky is falling” fearmongers. After two years of virtual markets, dealmakers were thrilled that premiering films could be watched together with international audiences, meetings could be done in person with near-full film slates and projects could be negotiated across territories with support from a multitude of producers. As UTA Independent Film Group’s John McGrath said on a panel at the American Pavilion, festivals and in-person marketplaces create the kind of urgency that drives deals and business. Indeed, there hasn’t been such an abundance […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Jul 14, 2022
