By Gary M. Kramer. One of the best documentaries at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival was director Sean Dunne’s Oxyana, a strong and searing film about an epidemic of addiction. Showcasing 18 residents of Oceana, a West Virginian town crippled by Oxycontin drug dependency, the film features lyrical shots of […]
Interview with Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado, Tribeca Film Festival
By Gary M. Kramer. The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival presented the world premiere of Big Bad Wolves, a thriller from Israeli filmmakers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado. The pair’s previous film, Rabies, showed at Tribeca in 2011, and this stylish film shows their maturation. Big Bad Wolves is an intense horror-comedy […]
“Difficult” Black Women: A Q&A with Shola Lynch
By Daniel Lindvall. Documentary filmmaker Shola Lynch’s new film, Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, tells the story of how the brilliant young intellectual Angela Davis was transformed into an international icon in the space of a few short years in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film focuses […]
Interview with Jon Gartenberg, Tribeca Film Festival
By Gary M. Kramer. Jon Gartenberg had been curating experimental films for the Tribeca Film Festival since 2003. He previously curated film at MOMA. For this year’s program, Let There Be Light: The Cycle of Life, Gartenberg scoured hundreds of submissions and winnowed them down to 13 films from Canada, […]
Interview with Sharon Badal, Tribeca Film Festival
By Gary M. Kramer. Sharon Badal has curated another terrific program of shorts for the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. Starting with 2,870 entries, she and her staff/screeners have selected 60 shorts, 30 of which are World Premieres. “I think that’s great to have this many new short films to introduce […]
A Cannibalistic Feast: An Interview with Joshua Oppenheimer
By Daniel Lindvall. Anwar Congo wraps a steel wire a couple of times around a pole, then around his own neck. He is demonstrating how he killed hundreds of “communists” on this very rooftop terrace somewhere in northern Sumatra almost 50 years ago. Now a greying playboy, Congo is one […]
Death of the Moguls: An Interview with Wheeler Winston Dixon
By Daniel Lindvall. With his new book, Death of the Moguls: The End of Classical Hollywood, Wheeler Winston Dixon has performed no mean feat in finding a fresh and illuminating perspective on what is probably the most written about phenomenon in film history, the Hollywood studio system. By placing the […]
Annie and the Gypsy: Interview with Russell Brown
By Gary M. Kramer. Writer/director Russell Brown makes short, sharp films that investigate how and why friends treat each other badly. His enjoyable feature debut Race You to the Bottom (2005) had two BFFs taking a tour through wine country and cutting each other down over the course of their […]
Truth in Pop Art: An Interview with Donny Miller
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “Remember, you can have anything. You just have to think it. Just kidding, life isn’t that simple.” (Donny Miller) Donny Miller is one of the more interesting visual artists working today; he’s active not only in graphics and painting, but also video art, performance art, and […]
Magpie: Interview with Marc Price
By Leo Collis. In his follow up to critically acclaimed budget-zombie movie Colin, Marc Price is set to release new project Magpie to the festival circuit. Known as the £45 film, Colin made waves when screened at Cannes in 2009 and created a huge buzz about the bright filmmakers future. […]
