By Yun-hua Chen. I am from the André Bazin’s school of thought about realism. If I could let the camera roll non-stop, without touching it, I would let it run, if what is in front of me interests me….: Debut feature of the Ghanaian born Kofi Ofosu-Yeboah, who writes, directs, […]
Psychedelica Away from the Factory: José Pablo Escamilla on Mostro (Locarno FF)
By Yun-hua Chen. That’s what we aimed to do, to make a protest. In Mexico it’s been very hard for some years. This is a cry for justice.” A dreamy, yet political directorial debut by the Mexican director José Pablo Escamilla, Mostro is set in an undetermined dystopian time, but […]
Family Ties: Toby Poser and John Adams on The Adams Family’s Hellbender
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. After seven features, starting when the girls were 6 and 11 years old, we’ve learned how to dance together pretty well. It’s a constant evolution, not only our collective education with camera and sound equipment, but also in building a solid democracy as far as how we […]
Archetypes and Native American Cinema: Lyle Corbine Jr. on Wild Indian
By Ali Moosavi. Despite the title and the grandiose nature of the film…[Makwa’s journey] was really a personal retelling of things that I’ve seen in my Ojibwe community and the different responses to trauma there.” Wild Indian is the feature film debut of Native American filmmaker Lyle Corbine Jr. Lyle. […]
Detectives and Androids, 2021: Filmmaker Andrew Baird on ZONE 414
By Ali Moosavi. Very much noir and very little sci-fi.” A detective let loose in a world full of androids. No, we’re not talking about Blade Runner. On the surface, Irish director Andrew Baird’s feature film debut, ZONE 414, bears some similarities to the Ridley Scott classic. They are, however, […]
Martyrs Lane and the World of Small Things: An Interview with Ruth Platt (Fantasia 2021)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. It’s not a film of huge landscapes and unusual settings…. I wanted to build this world of small things, small truths, details, a sensory landscape that makes sense for this child.” Even for those of us with little connection to formal religion, especially as children when lost […]
The Face of the Female Guestworker Experience: Pınar Öğrenci on Gurbet is a Home Now
By N. Buket Cengiz. I began to explore how the guestworker phenomenon was represented in literature, cinema, and music…. As one of the latest representatives of the new generation migrant artists, I wanted to follow the footsteps of the artists before me and join them by including this kind of […]
Inside the Memory Box: Kelsey Egan and Emma Lungiswa De Wet on Glasshouse (Fantasia 2021)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. How does one ‘belong’ to a place? How many years must you live in a place for it to be home? Some things must be earned, but even if earned, one is never guaranteed a sense of belonging. Glasshouse is unplacable because the human experience should not […]
Life Saving Persian Lessons in Concentration Camps: An Interview with Vadim Perelman
By Ali Moosavi. Many people are unhappy about me humanizing the Nazis and making the viewer even sympathetic (a Nazi)…. I wanted to show that we are all capable of that, not only the Germans. I don’t think that’s ever been shown in any of the Holocaust movies; only in […]
Getting Some: An Interview with Hisonni Mustafa
By Johnnie Hobbs III. Actor-turned-filmmaker Hisonni Mustafa’s (formerly Hisonni Johnson) new work as writer-director, Take Out Girl, focuses on a 20-year-old college dropout (Hedy Wong) who attempts to save her family’s business through moving drugs. In the audio interview below, Johnson comments on his film and his path in filmmaking. […]