I first became introduced to the work of Robert Townsend unceremoniously when his family sitcom, The Parent ‘Hood, premiered on The WB network in 1995. A professorial father figure with a wife and four children, Townsend’s character seemed, at least to my adolescent eyes, the ideal American dad. A noble role that fit him like a glove, Townsend must have enjoyed following up his caped-crusader directorial effort, The Meteor Man, with a sitcom that afforded him a more domesticated form of heroism.  Those types of roles were not often offered to Townsend. Released in 1987, his directorial debut, Hollywood Shuffle, […]

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The Sundance Institute announces eight filmmakers selected for the fifth annual Momentum Fellowship, a program created to provide financial support and coaching for mid-career artists from underrepresented communities. The year-long fellowship is tailored for artists who have recently achieved a major accomplishment—such as a successful feature film or episodic work—and offers customized guidance for the fellows as they aim to level up in their careers. “Over the years, the fellows selected for Momentum have all experienced success with their recently completed projects. This has often been a critical moment for artists  to receive creative and tactical support as they focus […]

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NEON has released the trailer for How to Blow Up a Pipeline, director Daniel Goldhaber’s loose adaptation of Andreas Malm’s non-fiction text of the same name. Goldhaber previously appeared on our 25 New Faces of Independent Film list back in 2018 with collaborator Isa Mazzei on the strength of their debut feature Cam, which Goldhaber directed and Mazzei wrote. Mazzei returns as a producer on this film, with Goldhaber co-writing the script with Jordan Sjol and star Ariela Barer. Pipeline, which was shot on 16mm by DP Tehillah de Castro, is Goldhaber’s sophomore feature-length directorial effort. Vadim Rizov interviewed Goldhaber […]

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Upon release in 2018, the first Black Panther became the highest grossing standalone super hero movie in history, while achieving a lasting cultural relevance exceedingly rare even among the box office juggernauts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But with the passing of Chadwick Boseman, the actor behind the titular hero, maintaining the status quo in the sequel was an impossibility. For Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the story’s throughline became grief and the narrative center shifted from Boseman’s T’Challa to his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and mother Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett, who received an Oscar nomination for the part). That new focus […]

The post “Anamorphic’s Biggest Fan”: DP Autumn Durald Arkapaw on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Delaware County, New York. Never heard of it? Makes sense. It’s a large county in the Catskills region of New York with a rich agricultural history of farming—there are more cows than people. There are also the most idyllic rolling hills, beautiful, lush green valleys, adorable Main Streets and a wealth of true architectural gems. With a low cost of living compared to other areas in the region and state and production friendly municipalities, this a county that has enjoyed a recent explosion in production and the county is eager to bring in more. Excited by the economic impact of […]

The post Discover Delaware County (Sponsored Post) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Just a few months after The Novelist’s Film hit theaters, prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo returns with Walk Up. Both films were programmed during the 60th edition of the New York Film Festival this past fall, and as such Film at Lincoln Center will open Walk Up on March 24. A trailer from The Cinema Guild arrives today. The film’s official synopsis reads: In his ninth film for Hong Sangsoo, Kwon Haehyo plays Byungsoo, a film director who goes with his daughter Jeongsu (Park Miso), an aspiring interior designer, to a building owned by an old friend (Lee Hyeyoung) […]

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Over the past eight years, Jon Bois has become a key pioneer of documentaries made for the internet. As the creative director of Secret Base, the YouTube channel of sports blog network SB Nation, his work across three series—Pretty Good, Chart Party and now Dorktown, co-written by Alex Rubenstein—takes often unconventional and lesser-known sports stories as a jumping-off point for increasingly ambitious, deftly handled portraits of some of Americana’s most crucial mainstays. By focusing equally on the minutiae of statistics, the highs and lows of a game and the many human dramas within sports teams and the cities surrounding them, Bois and Rubenstein establish […]

The post “We Aren’t Simply Trying to Appeal to Nostalgia”: Jon Bois on the Art of Sports Docs first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Is Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, in fact, a mystery? It certainly presents as one at its beginning, when a group of unlikely friends, whom we will come to know as “the shitheads,” are whisked away to the private island of billionaire-bro Miles Bron (Edward Norton). As Daniel Craig’s returning sleuth Benoit Blanc points out, “You’ve taken seven people, each of whom has a real-life reason to wish you harm, gathered them together on a remote island and placed the idea of your murder in their heads.” So far, so trad. The film’s setting isn’t as familiar […]

The post Vibes Out: Is Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Really a Mystery? first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The Tokyo Reels, a project by Subversive Film (Mohanad Yaqubi and Reem Shilleh), was first exhibited as an installation and mini film festival at documenta fifteen. This collection of 20 films depicting the Palestinian struggle was safeguarded for decades by Japanese activists before its preservation by Subversive Film. Following its restoration, the collection served as the basis for R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (2022), set to have its North American premiere at this year’s True/False Film Festival. In November 2022, as R21 was having its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, we spoke with Yaqubi on transnational film […]

The post “A Militant Archiving Process”: Mohanad Yaqubi on R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Today, The Overlook Film Festival unveils the slate for its 2023 edition, to take place in New Orleans from March 30-April 2. The horror-focused festival will open with Universal’s Dracula reboot Renfield and close with Evil Dead Rise, the latest entry in the Evil Dead franchise. Additional programming includes interactive events, live performances, immersive programming and parties.  Several retrospective titles have also been announced, entailing a 30th anniversary screening of Joe Dante‘s Matinee, a 10th anniversary screening of Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive, Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger accompanied by a live score and William Castle’s The Tingler “featuring surprise […]

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