By Roger Nygard. Every documentarian starts out doing interviews wrong. I learned the hard way, by making all these mistakes.” Interviews are the main ingredient in the documentary recipe, so how you conduct them is crucial. Everybody starts out doing interviews wrong. I learned the hard way, by making all […]
The Substance is a Documentary
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. As far as emotional fidelity is concerned, The Substance is a documentary. No other film I have ever seen so perfectly captures my subjective experience of the culturally enforced dissociation that happens en masse when, as a woman, your body starts to age.” I recently turned 50. […]
Rediscovering a Hollywood Luminary: Francis Ford & The Craving
By Jeremy Carr. Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions has once again sifted through the annals of film’s rich origins and, with producer and Ford scholar Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, worked to digitally restore and release a key Francis Ford feature as well as a grouping of shorts….” Before he was known simply as […]
“When Did the British Ever Appreciate Their Great Men?” – Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
By Jonathan Monovich. The way film history should be taught, recognizing greatness and encouraging students to be excited about classic films of the past.” David Hinton’s Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (2024) is and should go down as one of the great documentaries about film history. […]
Dreams Remastered: On the 4K Remaster of Burden of Dreams (1982)
By William Blick. Les’ combination of integrating nature and the indigenous people and the story of the burden of Werner’s dream, all these elements make for a really compelling story, and in such a sensitive and poetic way.” –Harrod Blank Harrod Blank, Nick Bergh, and Anthony Matt discuss the new […]
Yin and Yang: Stephen Soucy’s Merchant Ivory
By Jonathan Monovich. Chronicling both the hits and lesser known entries in the Merchant/Ivory catalogue, Soucy’s film thrives due to its expansive presence of recurring cast and crew collaborators.” The glam/art rock icon, Bryan Ferry, famously said “other bands wanted to wreck hotel rooms; Roxy Music wanted to redecorate them.”1 […]
In a Motley Assortment: On Filmmaker Joanna Hogg
By Shonni Enelow. Hogg’s films present rich and compelling psychological characters while eschewing that legibility of motive.” Hogg’s films capture the tones and rhythms of contemporary relation quite differently from other historical realisms. The half-spoken, half-interrupted speech of her characters, the way they repeat themselves, revise their words, in conjunction […]
Carla and Gottlieb: Between the Temples
By Jonathan Monovich. Encourages laughter at the absurdity of life while simultaneously empathizing with life’s difficulties that engulf its eclectic characters.” You can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can certainly be drawn by it. The same goes for a film’s poster. As an owner of the Minnie […]
The American Friend: Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr, You’re best off surrendering to its mad logic.” Like some of the neo-noirs that inspired it, Claude Schmitz’s The Other Laurens (L’autre Laurens, 2023) boasts a dizzyingly convoluted plot. I look at my frantically scribbled notes on the film, and despair washes over me. I take […]
Flight in Search of Asylum: On In the Land of Brothers
By Yun-hua Chen. People often say there are more important problems in Iranian society and no time to discuss [the Afghan refugee crisis]. That’s not a good excuse.” –Alireza Ghasemi Filmmakers Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi discuss their new feature Stemming from profound concerns and affection for Afghan refugees who […]