By Paul Risker. The storytelling process in film and television is made up of perspectives. There are the perspectives from in front of and behind the camera as well as the voyeuristic perspective of the audience. While often an interview will engage with a single one of these perspectives, our […]
A Frolicsome Ride: Cop Car
August 15, 2015
By Elias Savada. Somewhere out in the middle of America, amongst the Colorado cattle fields and its arrowhead-laden landscape, we find Travis (James Freedson-Jackson) and his long-haired buddy Harrison (Hay Wellford) roaming the plains. These ten-year-olds are either innocent pioneers out for a long, extended walk or have left home […]
Grim History: Robert Gliński on The Battle for Warsaw
August 15, 2015
By Paul Risker. Robert Gliński’s The Battle for Warsaw (2014), which was originally titled Stones for the Rampart before it was given a title with a more dramatic resonance, brings the director’s career full circle. His early work focused upon the Soviet occupation of Poland, while Stones for the Rampart […]
Imprisoned by the Past: Narrative Mastery in Bota
August 14, 2015
By Brandon Konecny. In his foreword to William Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom! (1936), John Jeremiah Sullivan points out that “a fundamental law of storytelling is: withhold information.” By this he means that instead of front-loading a story with character information—a charge of which a substantial amount of today’s screenwriters are guilty—a […]
Sublime Silences: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
August 13, 2015
By Paul Risker. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014) – is it a statement or is it a question? On the one hand it is a statement and yet for any narrative literate spectator it is a question in the shell of a statement – the film an […]
Going Solo: Jem Cohen on Counting
August 13, 2015
By David A. Ellis. Filmmaker Jem Cohen was born in Afghanistan in August 1962. His father was working there for the United States Agency for International development, and Jem remained in Kabul for around two years before returning to the states. He went to public school before attending Wesleyan University […]
The Mesmerising Journey of Song of the Sea
August 11, 2015
By Cleaver Patterson. Since that historic evening on the 21st December 1937, when the father of the animated feature film Walt Disney unleashed the game changing force that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs upon an unsuspecting public, the studio which bares his name has more or less dominated […]
The 12th Indian Film Festival Stuttgart
August 11, 2015
By Yun-hua Chen. The Indian Film Festival Stuttgart, founded by Filmbüro Baden-Württenberg, is one of the oldest and largest Indian festivals in Europe. Previously named “Bollywood and beyond” up until 2011, the festival now focuses on what is “beyond” Bollywood in Indian cinema and strives for a multifaceted program which […]
A Personal Fever Dream: Listen to Me Marlon
August 8, 2015
By Elias Savada. Listen to Me Marlon, the new documentary about the controversial and complex actor Marlon Brando, follows a similar technique found in A Fuller Life, which I recently reviewed. Both use the words of its subjects to tell an absorbing tale. The Sam Fuller film has the words […]
FilmInt on the Underground: Everyday Terror in A Dark Souvenir
August 8, 2015
FilmInt on the Underground is a blog dedicated to emerging filmmakers. By April L. Smith. Modern horror films have tended to fall back on gore or jump scares to evoke fear in the viewer. Matthew Pillischer’s A Dark Souvenir uses none of these tricks of genre, instead harkening back to the slow […]