Interview

By Yun-hua Chen. Mohammed Ali Atassi brought his second documentary, Our Terrible Country, co-directed with Ziad Homsi, to the Viennale 2014. The film follows the perilous journey of the Syrian intellectual Yassin al-Haj Saleh, at a time the country has been torn apart by the ongoing war. This road trip […]

By Paul Risker. David Fincher’s work features a compelling cast of characters. Working alongside the filmmaker to give these characters life on the screen, by lifting them off the page and placing them into the hands of actors, has been casting director Laray Mayfield. One of the many integral collaborative roles in […]

By Anna Weinstein. Documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy made history in 2012 when she became the first Pakistani to win an Oscar for her documentary Saving Face. She won an Emmy for her 2010 documentary Pakistan: Children of the Taliban, and to date she has made more than a dozen films […]

By Paul Risker. Lucy Lawless is no stranger to television. She has traversed time itself from swords and sandals (Xena: Warrior Princess, 1995-2001, filmed in her home country, New Zealand) and science-fiction (Battlestar Galactica, 2005-2009) to dramas down under in Jane Campion’s miniseries Top of the Lake (2013) and now Shelley […]

By John Duncan Talbird. Jeffrey Radice’s No No: A Dockumentary about the life and career of African American baseball great Dock Ellis is currently in theaters. Nominated for the Grand Jury prize at Sundance, this is his directorial debut. He was executive producer for the award-winning short documentaries Mondo Ford, The […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Joseph Lawson is an American filmmaker who is an unabashed special effects fan, action movie enthusiast, and utterly pragmatic about how films get made today in a rapaciously competitive environment. He’s a commercial filmmaker, working in Hollywood, making films as entertainment. Along the way, he’s getting […]

By Paul Risker. Arguably the icon of onscreen childhood angst is Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) in François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows (1959). His desperate gaze out to sea is one that is seared onto the cinematic consciousness. Fast-forward more than half a decade and Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013) sparks the […]

By Paul Risker. Inevitably there must be a point of origin, and whilst it would be an exaggeration to term the short film Point Mugu (2013) as such, it is a film of firsts for three individuals who have expanded and explored their creative horizons. Actress Amelia Jackson-Gray couples her writing […]

By Paul Risker. What is in a number? Well in answer to a self-posed question, something of significance, as Virginia Madsen has or will have donned by the conclusion of next year a collection of guises that reaches into triple figures. So who is Virginia Madsen? There is Virginia Madsen […]

By Paul Risker. Steven Knight is primarily known as the screenwriter of Dirty Pretty Things (2002), Amazing Grace (2006) and Eastern Promises (2007), directed by Stephen Frears, Michael Apted and David Cronenberg, repsectively. Last year saw Knight add to his early television directorial credit, helming his directorial debut and sophomore […]