Interview

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 […]

By Amir Ganjavie and Shadi Javadi Abhari. The future of the western film genre, with its generic pattern, relation to historical narratives, and cinematic form, is a constant source of concern in cinema. Over the past couple of decades, various filmmakers, including Tommy Lee Jones (2005’s The Three Burials of […]

By Matthew Sorrento. Of all the writers busy in print and onscreen, it’s great to see Nick Antosca having made a place for himself. With a sizable talent from the start, he began publishing fiction – novels and stories – upon finishing undergraduate work. His early speculative works, like the […]

By Paul Risker. Katharine Isabelle’s discovery of films could not have been more different than my own. My place has always been on the spectatorial side of the silver screen, whilst for the actor her encounter with film from a young age was interactive and set in motion experiences she […]

By Amir Ganjavie. Reza Mirkarimi’s Today has been selected to represent Iran at the Oscars in 2015, after the film’s recent screening at the Toronto Film Festival (TIFF). According to Jonathan Rosenbaum, “in some respects, the plot’s departure as well as the conclusion of Today may remind us the ‘first’ Iranian New Wave, Ebrahim […]

By Anna Weinstein. There are few documentaries about comic books and even fewer about women in comics. In fact, according to Marisa Stotter, the director of the new documentary She Makes Comics, her film is the first to explore women behind the “ninth art.” Stotter is a recent graduate of […]

By Jude Warne. Mariana Rondon is an expert articulator of youth. In her award-winning 2007 film Postcards from Leningrad she tackled elements of her own particular young person’s experience. Now in her latest release, Bad Hair, she offers up a tale of misunderstanding and miscommunication between one original and resilient […]

By Amir Ganjavie and Nojan Norouzi. Rakhshan Bani-E’temad officially represented Iran at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival with her film Tales, which has been harshly criticized in Iran by ultraconservatives who argue the film to be a dark and unrealistic portrayal of the nation. As a result, the film […]

By Paul Risker. In a recent interview with Rolf De Heer, on the subject of influences and inspiration he told me, “I always think I am the son of all the influences I have ever had, which is all the films I have ever seen, and all of the life I […]