Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia.  “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused […]

The post “This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The American Pavilion announced today the 36 short films selected for its 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, sponsored this year by the non-profit Gold House. From the press release: The 2024 showcase features 36 official selection films in four showcases – Student Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker LGBTQ+ films, and an Alumni Showcase. The 2024 selections include International films from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sevap/Mitzvah), China (A Roadside Banquet), Panama (Ojue), Colombia (Bogotá Story), the United Kingdom (Under the Blue), Mexico (Balam), and Ukraine (Ukrainians in Exile). Female directors are again well represented with more […]

The post The American Pavilion Announces 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“I love the feeling of the room in a packed house watching a good movie,” says writer, director and actor Al Warren on the phone from Los Angeles. “I want to model my career on that. It’s become a priority for how I approach my work. How will it be shown to an audience in-person? When I see a friend who has put their soul into the making and completion of their movie and then they don’t really have any plans on how they want to show it, I am confused.”   At this moment, when the future of independent film […]

The post “It’s About the Energy You Bring to the Life of Your Movie, Not Just About the Movie Itself”: Al Warren on Dogleg’s Six-Year Journey first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Gasoline Rainbow, the seventh feature by Bill and Turner Ross, marks a return to a world of young people familiar from the brothers’s early efforts 45365 (2009) and Tchoupitoulas (2012), which centered, respectively, on residents of Sydney, Ohio and New Orleans, Louisiana. Like those formative works, the duo’s latest is uniquely attuned to adolescent emotions and the rhythms of small town America—except with a broadened perspective and formal command afforded by 15 years of working in a variety of modes and milieus.  The film follows five high schoolers from the fictional town of Wiley, Oregon who take to the open […]

The post “We Were Together 24 Hours a Day for Six Weeks”: Bill and Turner Ross on Gasoline Rainbow first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Launching in 2017 with a reissue of The Last Movie, Arbelos Films grew out of co-founders’ David Marriott, Dennis Bartok, Craig Rogers and Ei Toshinari’s experiences working at Cinelicious Pics. Since then, their slate of reissues have included Sátántangó, whose restoration opened up a relationship with the Hungarian National Film Archive that’s led to further Hungarian films being put out by the company, including Son of the White Mare and Twilight. In addition to Arbelos, Marriott has now started a second company with Jonathan Doyle, Canadian International Pictures, specifically focused on his native country’s cinema. Invited to the Jeonju International […]

The post AI, UHD and 35mm: Arbelos Films’ David Marriott on the Present and Future of Film Restoration first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Over the past year and a half, no actor in any medium has given me more inspiration through their work than Mia Vallet. As a company member and frequent performer at the exciting NYC “loft theaters” Adult Film and The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research, she continues to show the thrilling possibilities for this craft of acting, culminating in her performance as Nina in Sea Gull, Adult Film’s new version of Chekov’s masterpiece, opening on Friday May 10th in Manhattan. On this episode, she talks about her training at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and early […]

The post “When Acting Really Became Fun for Me Was When I Stopped Worrying So Much About the Audience”: Mia Vallet, Back To One, Episode 290 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In 2022, Lizzie Borden’s virtually unseen first feature Regrouping was restored and given its first-ever theatrical run. That film joins the now-canonical Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986) in what some have termed her “New York Feminisms” trilogy, all three of which are now screening together on the Criterion Channel for the very first time. Together, the three films set a blueprint for a contemporary model of feminist filmmaking deeply situated in her place and time that prioritized discussion and conflict as ways of building something new. A long-time fan and recent friend of Borden, I sat down […]

The post “Everything About Women Interests Me”: Lizzie Borden on the New York Feminisms Trilogy first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Fifteen minutes into John Rosman’s elegantly scripted and emotionally harrowing debut feature, New Life, you’re wired into the psyche of Jessica Murdock, a young woman fleeing an unspecified old life and grappling with primitive elements of survival: where to sleep and what to eat. And, within a few scenes, where to live, find a job and rebuild. In her impressive feature debut, a fierce Hayley Erin brings both a feral intensity as well as a wary calm to these moments, which are of the sort found in many independent films dealing with women leaving bad relationships, or of those searching […]

The post “As Much As I Want to Explore a Character, I Can’t Lose Sight of Those Thriller Elements”: John Rosman on His Horror Drama Hybrid, New Life first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Through chronicling a critical turning point for the residents of Chicago’s now-defunct Cabrini-Green public housing project, writer-director Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now explores how the reverberations of this bygone time and place continue to register today. Set in 1992 amid the real-life death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis—who was walking to school with his mother when a stray bullet struck him—Baig’s film follows young boys Malik (Blake Cameron James) and Eric (Gian Knight Ramirez) as they grapple with the aftermath of the tragedy.  Despite the oppressive living conditions due to Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) negligence, Malik’s home life is replete with […]

The post “I Was Definitely Paying Homage to Stories Set in Chicago”: Minhal Baig on We Grown Now first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Judy Reyes is best known for playing Carla on the TV series Scrubs, but her nearly three-decades-long career is packed with roles on long-running shows like Devious Maids, and in movies like Birth/Rebirth, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Actress. Her latest is Hannah Marx’s highly anticipated screen version of John Green’s celebrated novel Turtles All The Way Down (coming to MAX on May 2nd). On this episode, she takes us back to the beginning—her “dramatic” childhood household serving as a form of acting training, defying her mother when she wanted to actually be […]

The post There’s Nothing Better than Working with Talented Peers Who Give.” Judy Reyes, Back To One, Episode 289 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.