Students and alumnx of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Film have been honored by the Center for Arts + Social Justice (CASJ) with fellowships in support of their groundbreaking activism and award-winning work, which brings social issues to a global audience. CASJ recognizes projects that show an indelible commitment to social justice, and creators who seek to inspire community-based change through the arts. Jen Gilomen ’23: Maternal health advocate investigating systemic injustices Brought about by Gilomen’s own birth experience, Delivering Justice explores maternal mortality and the maternal healthcare crisis in the United States, which disproportionately affects women of […]

The post Filmmakers Explore the Intersection of Arts and Social Justice at VCFA (Sponsored Post) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Now that the drama is over about whether the Academy would disqualify Andrea Riseborough for her rules-skirting DIY Oscar campaign for To Leslie, we can now return to the question every indie filmmaker wants to know. Just how do you run a DIY Oscar campaign on an indie film that grossed less than $30,000? I don’t know exactly how she did it, but I can tell you how I did it with my recent Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ that grossed about the same (though with slightly different results). In short, the road to getting an Oscar nomination (much less an award) […]

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When it comes to music documentaries, the bar is low—some new footage, a long-unseen live performance, maybe a fresh anecdote or two—and yet rarely cleared. For Pavement fans, though, Louder Than You Think will be essential viewing. The trim 90 minutes tell the story of the band’s original drummer, Gary Young, also the engineer of their first sessions at the Stockton, California record studio from which the film gets its name. It’s no secret that Young was essentially kicked out of the band for his heavy drinking habit, which is still on full display in this film; throughout his interviews, Young […]

The post “Never Delete Your Old Footage”: Jed I. Rosenberg on Pavement Documentary Louder Than You Think first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

According to cinematographer Florian Hoffmeister, writer/director Todd Field often expressed his desired aesthetic for TÁR in a series of repeated Field-isms: Let’s just witness. Don’t gild the lily. Don’t make it look like a movie with a capital “M.” In other words, make the style invisible. However, Hoffmeister’s work was far from invisible to his peers, who bestowed an Oscar nomination upon the German DP for his work on the film. TÁR—Field’s first feature in more than 15 years—follows the downfall of a composer/conductor played by Cate Blanchett as she prepares a career-capping performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic. […]

The post “I Would’ve Shot the Telephone Directory of New York If Todd Had Asked Me To”: DP Florian Hoffmeister on TÁR first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

At this year’s edition of the SXSW Film & TV Festival, two significant milestones will be achieved: the festival will celebrate its 30th iteration, and it will be programmer Claudette Godfrey’s first as the organization’s newly-minted Festival Director. She was passed the torch back in October, taking over for SXSW leader Janet Pierson, who previously occupied the position for 15 years. An Austin native, Godfrey has effectively worked from the ground up since she began at SXSW as a volunteer crew manager in 2006. During a recent interview via Zoom, Godfrey told me about the various job titles she’s amassed […]

The post Five Questions for SXSW’s New Film & TV Festival Director Claudette Godfrey first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Watch the trailer for the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual First Look showcase, which will run from March 15-19 in Queens, New York City. The 38-film lineup features 25 New Faces of Film alums Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan‘s New Strains, which recently won a Special Jury Prize at IFFR as well as Kevin Jerome Everson‘s short Gospel Hill, on which he collaborated with Claudrena N. Harold. Other notable titles include Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel‘s short film Maid, which will be shown ahead of the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita. We’ve also covered several First Look films during their premieres at other festivals, including […]

The post Trailer Watch: MoMI’s First Look 2023 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Sarah Polley’s Women Talking tells a harrowing story of women in an isolated Mennonite colony attempting to find justice in the wake of vicious abuse by the men of their community. Adapted from Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel, which was inspired by true events, Women Talking is a dark film in both a narrative and visual sense, probing all-too-relevant issues of patriarchal violence and religious extremism in dark, shadowy tableaus.  On its face, the film doesn’t seem like the type to prioritize fashion, but the wardrobe of modest long dresses and rigid silhouettes speaks volumes about how clothing can be used […]

The post “Painting with Colors That Have Some Muddy Water in Them”: Costume Designer Quita Alfred on Women Talking first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Five years after the release of her sophomore album Historian, musician Lucy Dacus shares the music video for the album’s emotionally-charged single “Night Shift” directed by Jane Schoenbrun. The filmmaker (and former Filmmaker contributor) behind We’re All Going to the World’s Fair and the forthcoming A24 project I Saw the TV Glow depicts a romance-fueled The Wizard of Oz theme party. Dacus stars in the music video alongside actors E.R. Fightmaster, Eva Victor and Jasmin Savoy Brown of Yellowjackets and the latest Scream reboots, fellow musicians Phoebe Bridgers (Dacus’s boygenius bandmate and co-star of TV Glow), Hop Along‘s Frances Quinlan, […]

The post Watch: The Jane Schoenbrun-Directed Music Video for Lucy Dacus’s “Night Shift” first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

I first saw Justin Zuckerman’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater—the writer-director’s ultra-low-budget, MiniDV-shot feature debut—back in December at Williamsburg’s Spectacle Theater. I’d been invited on a whim by the film’s emerging producer Ryan Martin Brown, and I happened to be long overdue for a visit to the volunteer-run microcinema. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was quickly charmed by Yelling Fire‘s humble yet lived-in digital aesthetic, impressively taut script and endearing ensemble of adrift, wannabe New Yorkers. Shot between November and December of 2019 and made for less than $3,000, the film feels like a strange, beautiful […]

The post “We Expected for Pretty Much No One To See It”: Justin Zuckerman on Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Spanish actor Marta Milans reprises her role as Mama Rosa in the second installment of the Shazam saga, which hits theaters March 17th. If you binged White Lines during the pandemic, you appreciated her work in that Netflix hit series. On this episode, we go way back to when she played Goneril in King Lear…at age 8! She takes us on a journey of her life as an actor, a job she says you cannot do well unless you “must do it to breathe.” She tells us the reason why language comes easy for her, how music plays a big […]

The post “You Have To Live and Breathe This”: Marta Milans (Back To One, Episode 243) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.