The following conversation is an excerpted chapter from The Cutting Room, an upcoming book by documentary film editor Mary Lampson tracing the story of a woman building a life and career as an editor in an industry hostile to both women and independent filmmaking. Traveling over the decades through massive changes in documentary storytelling and filmmaking technology, the book revisits her work with some of the great talents of the documentary form while chronicling major technological changes connected directly to her brother Butler Lampson’s groundbreaking work on the development of the personal computer. In a moment when the conversation about documentary film feels all too […]

The post A Conversation with Luke Lorentzen from Mary Lampson’s The Cutting Room (A Work in Progress) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In Free Time, writer-director-producer Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature, directionless office drone Drew (comedian Colin Burgess) decides to quit his job. After all, the position is hardly fulfilling (nor is he particularly gifted at it), and why spend all day bleary-eyed behind a screen when all that New York City has to offer exists just outside the door? Soon enough, Drew’s naive work-life musings are proven to be drivel, and his joblessness puts a mighty strain on his few remaining social relationships. His WFH roommate Rajat (Rajat Suresh) doesn’t seem thrilled with Drew’s daytime presence in the apartment, nor does […]

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The debut release from Metrograph Editions, Sean Price Williams‘s 1000 Movies is just that — a list of 1,000 movies seen and appreciated in some way by the director/cinematographer, listed chronologically across its 6″ x 4.25″ pages. There is much white space. Not included is any kind of foreword, such as a personal essay explaining the project’s genesis. (For that, you’ll have to look to interviews such as this one, or Matt Folden’s on the Metrograph site.) There are no Letterboxd-style ratings, no film stills, and not even an author bio; there’s just Lizzie Harper’s drawing up front of an […]

The post “If There are Esoteric Titles in the List, the Unfortunate Thing is That They are Esoteric at All”: Sean Price Williams on 1000 Movies first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Off-screen at least, Berlinale was a political mess this year. The final edition of director Carlo Chatrian, who came from Locarno six years ago and brought his adventurous taste with him, was marred by conflict. The festival began with prominent and necessary protests against genocide in Gaza and controversy over the invitation (later revoked) of leaders from Germany’s far-right AfD party. And it ended ugly, when No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham, who made his film with a Palestinian-Israeli collective of filmmakers and activists, received death threats and had his family in Israel menaced after his acceptance speech for its […]

The post Critic’s Notebook: The 2024 Berlin International Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Filmmaker is proud to continue our annual partnership with the Filmfort Film Festival by exclusively hosting six short films from this year’s lineup, which will be available to view on our site through Saturday. The three day festival—which occurs during the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho—highlights an array of emerging independent cinema. Alongside robust film programming, Filmfort also features DIY panels and filmmaker Q&As in the heart of the city’s downtown area. Check out this year’s selection of films below. Broken Flight dir. Erika Valenciana, Mitchell Wenkus 2023, USA, 18 mins Synopsis: At the Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Annette […]

The post Watch Now: Short Films from the 2024 Filmfort Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“Are you getting what you want, bitch?” Philly Abe, the focus of Elizabeth Nichols’s Flying Lessons, repeatedly offers similarly styled examples of “director-subject negotiations,” in which the latter grumbles before giving the former what they want, now with the added gift of self-reflexive dramatic tension. Director-subject relations are currently an especially fashionable topic (cf. the recent, clearly-titled film Subject); at this year’s True/False Film Fest, Flying Lessons provided its most interesting treatment. Abe is presented first as a representative of a vibrant and unprofessionalized ’80s downtown NYC arts scene but has an equally important relationship to the filmmaker, whose presence […]

The post True/False Film Fest 2024: Creative Subjects first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

A series of miles-long empty dirt lots lie wedged between the Ritz Carlton and the Red Sea Mall, the two primary venues of the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Barren, with all signs of previous inhabitation fully erased, the site of the future Jeddah central district is a curious sight in the middle of a city of four million. When completed in 2027, it will be the cultural, industrial and touristic center of the city; for now, as endless empty space, it’s such a vertigo-inducing sight of rapid construction and development that it’s impossible to imagine anything […]

The post Critic’s Notebook: The 2023 Red Sea International Film Festival first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

After the mixed reception given to the first trailer for George Miller’s forthcoming, Cannes-anticipated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, where Anya Taylor-Joy plays a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa from Max Max: Fury Road, Warner Bros. has dropped a new trailer today that reveals a lot more of the film’s action, chronological sweep (different actors play Furiosa here) and overall look. Scored, to my ears at least, to an orchestral version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” the trailer is found above.

The post Trailer Watch: Furiosa: A Max Max Saga (Trailer #2) first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Lukas Gage is on a roll. In shows like The White Lotus, Euphoria, You, and the latest season of Fargo, films like How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Down Low (which he also co-wrote), and now the eagerly anticipated Road House reboot, he’s been able to display his immense talent and range. He’s even played himself in Gossip Girl and The Other Two. On this episode, he explains how sometimes doing the opposite of what’s described is beneficial in an audition, why over-directing doesn’t work for him, the importance of creativity for the actor, how he arrived at his current […]

The post “There Is an Acceptance that Is Happening with Me Right Now Where I Just Only Care About Doing the Work”: Lukas Gage, Back To One, Episode 283 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Just as The People’s Joker was preparing to premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, a “strongly worded letter” arrived that threatened immediate legal action if Vera Drew’s scrappy, bold feature debut went ahead with its multiple planned screenings. Warner Bros. was less than pleased that Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose based their film on a trademarked DC franchise, and it likely didn’t help that the film reimagines many of these characters as a largely queer troupe of “anti-comedians” who regularly talk shit about very powerful forces in the contemporary comedy landscape—Saturday Night Live creator-producer Lorne Michaels appears as […]

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