By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The tone does feel hard to put into words, I think, because Shapeless is so experiential…. Eating disorders can seduce, seeping in subtly, promising relief. You fall for it, just one time. And then another….” “Lived experience” is increasingly becoming one of those descriptors that overuse is […]
Against the “Purity Laws of Cinema”: An Interview with Isabelle Stever on Grand Jeté (Berlinale 2022)
By Yun-hua Chen. The gender concept is now so flexible. And that, I find quite appealing. The not quite so ordinary thing in this film is that here a woman is the perpetrator, and the story is told from her perspective and this perspective remains unpunished.” German director Isabelle Stever’s […]
Sting in the Tail: Filmmaker Avalon Fast on Honeycomb (Slamdance)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. These girls were actively looking for a way out, and to create separation between themselves and the world they gladly left behind. I think they felt more comfortable living in their new world the way they wanted, and controlling when others were allowed to experience and judge […]
Last Survivors Off the Grid – An Interview with Drew Mylrea and Sunil Perkash
By Ali Moosavi. They believe the world is going to end in a nuclear war and they set up places off the grid that are self-sustaining. We took that idea and it evolved into a story about a man for whom the Armageddon was really a metaphorical Armageddon in which […]
TV Divas and Armani Archfiends: Amanda Kramer on Give Me Pity! (IFFR 2022)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Give Me Pity! is a natural progression to the previous work because it pushes the idea of artificial space further. We’re located on a stage meant to look and feel like a stage. The film is about a consummate performer performing a performance.” Sissy St. Claire is a […]
A Neo-Noir Obsession: An Interview with Paul Solet on Clean
By Yun-hua Chen. Obsession in general is something that’s a sort of a bottomless wealth for me to draw on. I identify with that sort of [neo-noir] obsession about my own work, so it’s easy to tap into that personally.” The second collaboration between Paul Solet and Adrien Brody after […]
Death of a Telemarketer and the Birth of a Career: An Interview with Khaled Ridgeway
By Johnnie Hobbs III. I was acting for a bit and working as a telemarketer in the shitty call centers right near Koreatown. We’d get a number of death threats because people were so annoyed with us calling. It started to become a running joke.” Through cultivating healthy relationships and […]
Producing for Netflix, the Pandemic, and Covid-19 on Set: An Interview on Coyotes
By Anees Aref. When we did the first Covid test, I was positive. So since I had seen everyone, we had to stop for a week, during prep. That was the first case of Covid we had, and then we had five to six cases during shooting.” –Andre Logie, producer […]
Noir and the Current Moment: Eddie Muller on Dark City and Programming
Below is an excerpt from “‘Just How You’re Wired’: Talking Noir with TCM’s Eddie Muller” by Zoe Kurland, which is forthcoming in Issue 19.3 of Film International: Noir 2020 and Beyond, a special issue guest edited by Retreats from Oblivion: The Journal of NoirCon. [Noir is] just as cogent, even […]
When Parker Met A Guru Named Shuroo: Donal Brophy and Emrhys Cooper on The Shuroo Process
By Ali Moosavi. It’s about his whole cancel culture and internet bullying and the weight that it starts to have on people, if they give it too much emphasis. In the retreat Parker finds what her original passion was… really that’s what gets her through the hard times.” –Donal Brophy […]