By Amy R. Handler. The case of Daniel Ellsberg and the ‘Pentagon Papers’ is re-visited in a fascinating documentary by Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich. It is not surprising that their film, The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers was a 2010 Academy Award nominee. […]
Pieces of Momoko Ando: A Conversation With the Director of Kakera
By Johan Nordström and Doris Lang. Momoko Ando, born in 1982, is one of Japan’s hot and upcoming new directors, whose debut film Kakera: A Piece of Our Liferecently had a simultaneous release in England and Japan, after first having played the festival circuit. Momoko Ando, the daughter of actor-director […]
Peter Strickland: Director of Katalin Varga
By Henry Rowsell. Prior to the release of his debut feature length film, Peter Strickland was not a well known name in the British film industry, however Katalin Varga(2009), a harrowing vengeance noir cast against the dramatic and intermittently haunting landscape of Transylvania, has drawn the critical acclaim of judges […]
‘Like Birds in the Trees’: Charles Burnett on Life in Watts, the Abattoir, and Brain Surgery
By Jamie Isbell. Charles Burnett’s journey as a filmmaker has not been one of equidistant success after success. Starting out with untracked intentions of becoming an electrical engineer and no grasping desire to become a man with a movie camera, he was in a strange position of observation in his […]
Larry Cohen: Film Crazy
By Patrick McGilligan. ‘Mr. Cohen has mined a career out of one simple question – what’s the worst that could happen? – which he answers with the stinging, compelling heat of the exploitation thriller.’ (Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times, April 27, 2003) There’s no mistaking a Larry Cohen film. […]
Freedom Deep and The Book of Eli: An interview with director Aaron Stevenson
By Amy R Handler. In the interview below, Australian filmmaker Aaron Stevenson suggests that screenwriter Gary Whitta may have plagiarized Stevenson’s film Freedom Deep (1998, complete ‘Final Director’s Cut’ in 2008) when penning the script for The Hughes Brothers’ recent film, The Book of Eli. When confronted with Stevenson’s statements, […]
Walter Hill: Last Man Standing
By Patrick McGilligan. Walter Hill’s first produced script was in 1972, but his films are a throwback to the Golden Age and to storytelling traditions that seem increasingly endangered in today’s Hollywood. He brings a modern swagger to old-fashioned genres. He relishes stories that center on male heroics, with cinematic […]
Babak Najafi: Learning to See Sweden – in Teheran
By Daniel Lindvall. Babak Najafi was born in Teheran in 1975 and came to Sweden as a boy in the mid-1980s. He went to film school (1998–2002), specializing in documentary film-making, and then made a series of well-received short films, mostly documentary, gaining him a ‘Bo Widerberg grant’ in 2004. […]
Oliver Stone Speaks in Phnom Penh
A report by Clancy McGilligan. It was a warm day in January, which is normal for January in Phnom Penh; men sat in open-air restaurants eating noodle soup and sipping iced coffees; motortaxi drivers, perched on the seats of 110-cc Daelim motorbikes, endlessly pestered passersby with requests to be hired; […]
An Interview with Till Kleinert, Winner of 2008 Iris Prize for LGBT Short Film
By Ryan Prout. For three days in October 2008, Cardiff was host to the Iris Prize, one of the highlights on the international calendar of LGBT film festivals. Bigger, better, and brighter, the 2008 event included UK premieres of Antonio Hen’s Clandestinos (2007), Todd Stephens’s Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone […]