Interview

By Paul Risker. Veteran of the short film Pascal Chind’s latest endeavour Extrême Pinocchio (2014) finds the French filmmaker looking back into the past to Carlo Collodi’s original story by giving it a more “contemporary spin.” The spectatorial experience of a film in one sense could be perceived as being […]

By Pete Donnelly. A group of long-revered musicians who performed countless hits in the 60s and 70s, the “Wrecking Crew” consisted of mostly unheard of session players who created a production line style, a kind of music-making machine. Record producers relied on their exceptional competence and speed to “crank out […]

By Jude Warne. Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber are no strangers to the investigative process; as immensely talented documentary filmmakers, this is part of what they do. Dub Lawrence, the subject of the team’s SXSW-screened film Peace Officer, is no stranger to this either, having been a police officer that […]

By John Duncan Talbird. Back in college, my friends and I went to see Do the Right Thing (1989) when it first came out. We’d been reading about the film for weeks before it arrived in the little Southern college town where we lived. Some critics were raving that this […]

By Paul Risker. Going behind the scenes of Blood Fight, the latest film from amateur filmmaker and aspiring Canadian action hero Elliot Scott, Jaret Belliveau and Matthew Bauckman encounter the truth of cliché first hand in their documentary Kung Fu Elliot. Viewer sentiments like “fact is stranger than fiction,” “art […]

By Amir Ganjavie and Leila Pasandideh. It has been a few weeks since Kianoosh Ayari’s Paternal House (2012) was banned from screening, for the second time. At first banned after its premiere at the 2012 Venice Film Festival by the Iranian government agency that funded the project, the film went back under Ayari’s control when he received approval to screen the […]

By Jude Warne. Bernard Rose is a firm believer of the interrelations of film and music. Music always seems to have been central to his approach to cinematic style. Rose got his start in filmmaking directing music videos such as UB40’s 1983 hit “Red Red Wine” and Frankie Goes to […]

By Matthew Sorrento. John Boorman’s status as a major filmmaker was sealed with five words from Lee Marvin: “I defer those to John.” The actor then left the room, which contained Boorman and the producers of Point Blank (1967); they had just conferred that Marvin had approval over the script and […]

By Paul Risker. From the pages of Alan Smith’s Here Be Monsters! (2005) Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi release the Boxtroll creatures from the stillness of the page and set them loose to roam the big (and small) screen. When I spoke with Annable and Stacchi I discovered two humble […]

By Paul Risker. For Life Itself (2014) – a prominent snub by the Academy in the documentary category this year – filmmaker Steve James paints the landscape of a life and maturation of Roger Ebert, the man and the critic. “I wanted to get my arms around it all” explained James, “To show how the way in which he lived […]