By Ali Moosavi. After only two feature films and a documentary, Massoud Bakhshi has come to the forefront of the Iranian directors. He started his filmmaking career with the faux documentary, Tehran Has No More Pomegrenates!/ Tehran Anar Nadarad (2007). On the surface, it was a nostalgic, amusing, comedy-musical portrait […]
Crisis and Recall: An Interview on “Chapter 1: Liv” (2018) with Dominic Stephenson
Tom Ue
October 16, 2020
By Tom Ue. In “Chapter 1: Liv” (2018) by Manchester-based writer and director Dominic Stephenson (under eight minutes long), we learn of a car accident: Liv (Brooke Vincent) wakes up, apparently recovering from an injury, and she is encouraged by her mother (Sally Ann Matthews) to go over what she remembers. […]
From Playground to Labor: An Interview with Kodi Smit-McPhee on 2067
By Zoe Kurland. I felt a strange sense of identification as I watched 2067’s opening scene – my planet was burning, too, and I was powerless to stop it.” The film 2067 begins in the deep dark of space. As Earth spins slowly into view, fires erupt across its surface. […]
Oppression Descends: João Paulo Miranda Maria on Memory House (TIFF 2020)
By Gary M. Kramer. What I needed from Pitanga was the history of the cinema in his body and his eyes. I needed to bring to the screen the ‘blood in his eyes.’” João Paulo Miranda Maria makes an auspicious feature film debut with Memory House, which had its World […]
No Escape from the “Rooms”: An Interview with Director Will Wernick
By Ali Moosavi. You don’t have to be a seasoned movie fan to predict the entire course of the film very early on in the proceedings.” Before watching No Escape (Will Wernick, 2020), I was not aware of the entities called escape rooms, which apparently are very popular all over […]
“Anything but this project, I would have been wary”: An Interview with Daniel Kraus on George A. Romero and Writing The Living Dead
By Tony Williams. I had no intention of sending off Romero in anything less than grand style.” As discussed in my review essay, novelist Daniel Kraus began conceiving The Living Dead (New York: Tor Books, 2020) with Romero at a time when creative frustration with the film industry began to […]
Solidarity in a New Era – An Interview with April Wright on Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story (2020)
By Yun-hua Chen. Stuntwomen really represent the larger picture of the ongoing struggle that women and people of color have had, just looking for a fair share in this industry.” Covering the span of film history, from The Perils of Pauline (1914) through Wonder Woman (1975) to Fast & Furious […]
“Sweetheart” Strikes Back: An Interview with Roseanne Liang on Shadow in the Cloud (TIFF 2020)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. Even though it’s set during a world war, it’s not a ‘lest we forget movie’, it’s not a past based thing. It’s a movie that is about the now….this dehumanization is universal.” – Roseanne Liang With its world premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, Chinese-New […]
The Anti Rape-Revenge Film: Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli on Violation (TIFF 2020)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. There is something super cathartic about the idea of revenge, and what we recognised when first making the film is that really we’re making an anti revenge film. It’s like the film is designed to scare you not to seek revenge because of how it’s going to […]
Stuntwork over CGI: Filmmaker Brian Skiba on Directing The 2nd
By Ali Moosavi. Politics is a dirty game, no matter which side of the table you’re on.” –Brian Skiba There is a certain genre of film which, perhaps unkindly, can be called “Budget Action”. These are not the big budget action movies starring Keanu Reeves or Tom Cruise; or even […]