Since the publication of “The Data Says, ‘We Have a Problem’” in our Winter print edition, the conversation around diversity and the movie business has become louder and even more urgent. As more and more studies are published detailing Hollywood’s biased hiring practices and hashtags like #oscarssowhite explode across social media, now, during the lead-up to the Academy Awards, is an apt time to unlock from our paywall this article by Esther Robinson. It cogently articulates the reasons why all of us must care about these issues before it then goes on to offer actual and practical solutions that we […]

The health and identity of American independent cinema has always been difficult to gauge and define, but Sundance is our default arbiter and explainer. Of course, indie film exists far beyond the limits of Park City in January, but the festival gives the nebulous American indie sector a test sample — and as any scientist will tell you, that’s the first step in making an accurate hypothesis. So what can the films of Sundance 2015 clarify about the state of American indies, now and in the future? Some trends can be attributed to random cycles and one-time events, but there […]

Doclisboa by Pamela Cohn “I can’t trust my own memories, and neither should the audience.” — filmmaker Naeem Mohaiemen, The Young Man Was trilogy A robust and wide-ranging sidebar program at a festival draws on the conventions of the multivolume novel, or the cantos of a long poem, varied portraits refracting off a narrative throughline. Stories both epic and quotidian dovetail and, as a result, iconoclastic interventions and disruptions atomise historical temporality. What’s left behind when the so-called terrorist no longer identifies, or is identified, as such? Or is dead? Or never existed in the first place? Traces of a progression […]

When Filmmaker interviewed Chloé Zhao in 2013 for our 25 New Faces series, the Beijing-born writer/director said she was inspired by her childhood in China to set her first feature within the Native American community at North Dakota’s Lakota Pine Ridge reservation. “There are lies everywhere,” she said. “You felt like you were never going to be able to get out.” That feeling of struggle, and of a desire to escape, suffuses Zhao’s evocative Songs My Brother Taught Me, a Sundance Dramatic Competition entry that receives its New York premiere this spring at Film Forum. Her teenage protagonists — Johnny […]

Mynette Louie, president of Gamechanger Films, recently had a problem. She caught a stand-in on set not only taking photos of her film’s star, whose contract had specific photo approvals in place, but posting the photos to Facebook. “I told him to delete them from his Facebook, then I went through his phone and deleted all the photos he took on set.” Traditionally, producers, marketing departments and publicists labor over key stills and publicity images, methodically crafting a film’s identity in careful, strategic installments. This practice continues today, but can quickly be subverted by a tweet, post or status update. […]

Mistakes don’t really have a place on a film set. Sets are engineered for performance under pressure, engaging dozens and dozens of professionals, from producers to PAs, to do their best work in order to get the shot, make the day and finish the film on time — all while maintaining a good attitude and supporting the creative process. A good set is a well-oiled machine, with a cinematographer at, or near, the center. As a DP, you are interacting with just about every on-set department. Your job is to make everyone look good, and not just with your lighting! […]

Shot in New York City during the 2008 financial crisis, Steven Soderbergh’s feature The Girlfriend Experience was a cool movie about a hot topic. Ostensibly about a “new” kind of prostitution, where escorts would simulate the casual intimacy of a real relationship, it starred real-life porn star Sasha Grey even as it contained virtually no sex. But what began as a look at how the Internet enabled a new kind of solo entrepreneur sex worker — “As we were making the film, I didn’t consider [prostitution] as a metaphor for anything,“ Soderbergh said then — wound up a trenchantly austere […]