Melora Hardin is best known for playing Jan on the American version of The Office. She was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the series Transparent. Recently she stepped back into the role of Trudy Monk for Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, which is streaming now on Peacock. On this episode she talks about bringing the character Mabel Montgomery-Mayflower to life in the new independent film Golden Vanity, and how the perfect combination of director’s vision and true collaboration helped her deliver that tour-de-force performance. She takes us back to her early days as a child […]

The post “I Was Like a Pig in Mud Making Golden Vanity.” Melora Hardin, Back To One, Episode 272 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

This post is part of a series, Girlblogging. Read the introduction here. Maybe you have seen this image: five outlines of a head (turned sideways in profile), each holding (in its mind’s eye) one of four images of apples stamped (from left to right) in decreasing order of detail, except for the last head, which is empty. This is an image of images, an image about how imagination works.  At its most basic level, imagination is image visualization. When you think of an apple, what do you see?  In The Love Witch (2016), witchcraft looks a lot like imagination—energy concentrated […]

The post Girlblogging: The Love Witch first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Oxbelly, the Greek non-profit founded by producer and Faliro House founder Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, announced today an open call for the 2024 Oxbelly Retreat, to be held June 22-30 in Costa Navarino, Greece. Screenwriters, episodic writers, and fiction writers will be supported through in-person workshops and/or one-on-one sessions. All expenses for fellows are covered, and there is no application fee. The application deadline is January 19, 2024. From the press release: The Oxbelly Retreat is an annual gathering of international storytellers, dedicated to the exchange of ideas, deepening of craft and broadening of artistic horizons through intercultural dialogue. In 2024, […]

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The Sundance Institute today announced the 91 feature films, episodic and New Frontier works that comprise the 2024 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival. Premieres by Steven Soderbergh, Lana Wilson, Nathan Silver and the Zellner Bros. join debuting filmmakers such as Jazmin Renée Jones, Haley Elizabeth Anderson and River Gallo at the festival, which runs January 18 – 28, 2024 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. A selection of the film’s programming will also be available online from January 25 – 28. Sundance received a record 17,435 submissions this year from 153 countries, with 4,410 being feature […]

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It might seem strange for an actor to have a breakout year at age 54. To those who witnessed Colman Domingo’s star rise on the New York theater scene in the early aughts and would cringe at now labeling the actor a “discovery”—I don’t disagree! I first encountered Domingo’s stage work in summer 2008, in the Broadway premiere of Passing Strange that would be filmed a few days later by Spike Lee. (Looking over Domingo’s earlier theater credits, I realize now that I would’ve first seen him in the 2003 Shakespeare in the Park production of Henry V, but the […]

The post “Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things”: George C. Wolfe on Rustin first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Film Independent has announced the nominations for the 2024 Spirit Awards. May December, Past Lives and American Fiction lead the group with five nominations each, while on the television side The Last of Us and I’m a Virgo received four each. Among other independent films receiving nods were Showing Up, We Grown Now, birth/rebirth, Earth Mama and Passages. “This year’s exciting group of Spirit Award nominees reflect the undeniable strength and vitality of independent storytelling – this is the beating heart of film culture today,” said Josh Welsh, President of Film Independent in a press release. “It’s especially thrilling to […]

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Celebrating its 30th anniversary next month, the Slamdance Film Festival has announced the full lineup for its 2024 edition, unspooling in Park City and Salt Lake Utah from January 19 – 25. The selection consists of 32 features, of which 17 are World Premieres, 75 shorts, and five episodic series. Oscar-winning filmmaker Carol Dysinger’s One Bullet is the opening night film, and the closing is Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation. “Our 2024 Slamdance lineup is a testament to filmmakers who dare to push their stories to the very edge of filmmaking, making it deeply personal yet globally resonant,” said Festival Director […]

The post Slamdance 2024 Announces Its Full Lineup first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

You might know Robbie Tann from Preacher, The Deuce, or when he played Billy on Mare of Easttown, or Whitty in the “Mazey Day” episode of the latest season of Black Mirror. Currently he plays Shipley in this year’s most exciting and original sci-fi film, The Creator. On this episode, he tells how the run-and-gun style of shooting on that production, combined with the cast and crew’s infectious passion for the project, helped with all aspects of his work. He explains why he now bypasses a straightforward “roadmap” of preparation, focusing instead on letting the role seep into his unconscious. […]

The post “Part of Being an Actor is Living All the Time with a Certain Sensitivity”: Robbie Tann, Back To One, Episode 271 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s the year of book fairs featuring the collections of voracious cinephiles. Summer’s end saw the Tom Verlaine Book Sale, where several friends and colleagues picked up movie-related editions. And this weekend sees another collection hit the market, this time at New York’s Metrograph Theater. As part of their Holiday Book Fair, Metrograph today and December 16 will be selling the personal collection of books, magazines and journals collected by critic Tony Pipolo, who passed away this past Spring. From the announcement: A passionate moviegoer, intellectual polymath, writer of great acclaim, and Professor Emeritus of film and literature at CUNY, […]

The post Today’s Metrograph Book Fair Includes Collection of Late Critic and Author Tony Pipolo first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In 1951, a volcano erupted on Fogo, one of the Cape Verde islands. That incident is the starting point for The Daughters of Fire, an experimental short by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa.  Costa splits the screen into panels portraying three women—Adelaide, Clotilde, and Irodina—singing over an arrangement of Biagio Marini’s “Passacaglia (Opus 22).” The film ends with footage from A Erupcao do vulcao da ilha do Fogo, a 1951 documentary by ethnologist Orlando Ribeiro. The films are part of Canción de Pedro Costa, a museum exhibition currently touring Europe. In museums the films are projected separately in three different […]

The post “Why Make It Simple?” Pedro Costa on The Daughters of Fire first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.