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Issue 103 Spring 2008
THE BOMB BLAST
Filmmaker Harmony Korine (Gummo) returns after an eight-year hiatus with Mister Lonely, a hilarious film involving skydiving nuns, celebrity impersonators, and Werner Herzog.
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Karim Aïnouz’s Madame Satã broke taboos on all sorts of sexuality. The filmmakers discuss the internal geography of a peripatetic outsider, and the contradictions of their country and the condition of human nature.
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Filmed in Sicily, Small Boats completes the trilogy Cast No Shadow (commissioned by PERFORMA 07). The two directors speak about migration, transition, and fallen angels.
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Mary Jordan’s documentary on the legendary Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures) fueled the same debates Smith faced in his lifetime—on authenticity, ownership, and purity of vision. With artist Nayland Blake.
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Director Steven Shainberg and producer Andrew Fierberg share a successful partnership forged in projects like Secretary and their latest, Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The two sit down to compare notes.
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Los Angeles-based actress Esther K. Chae traveled to South Korea to speak with renowned film director Park Chanwook about the final installment in his revenge trilogy, Lady Vengeance, just out in the States.
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Israeli filmmaker Judd Ne’eman has unflinchingly analyzed the collective distress of Jews and Arabs since the ‘70s. Scholar Janet Burstein caught up with Ne’eman to discuss his dedication to his land and its peoples.
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Culiacán-based filmmaker Beto Gómez works against the grain of a Mexico City–dominated film industry to produce some of the most exciting new films in Mexico, including his most recent, Pink Punch.
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These two New York natives discuss growing up in Brooklyn, the allure of the of the Museum of Natural History, and the perils of the autobiographical question in this instant classic from 2005.
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Well known in the art world for her distinctive videos and performance pieces, Miranda July is quickly expanding her audience. Writer Rachel Kushner examines the lineage of common themes and recurrent imagery in July’s body of work.
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Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has made nearly 30 films, all of which have been seen by musician and producer Jim O’Rourke. Lesser known in the US than in Japan, his films are mesmerizing, visually stunning narratives with international relevance.
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In his latest film, Ama: The Memory of Time, Salvadoran poet and filmmaker Daniel Flores y Ascencio records the oral history of shaman Don Juan Ama, who witnessed the murder of his uncle, the leader of a 1932 indigenous revolt in El Salvador.
>>>31-year-old Brooklyn filmmaker Jonathan Caouette has been documenting his own life since he was eleven. His staggering debut Tarnation, part documentary and part narrative, is a densely layered testament of Caouette’s life and that of his family.
>>>Since his earliest documetaries, Danish filmmaker Jørgen Leth has always worked with a set of strict principles that he lays out for himself at the beginning of each project—a technique that inspired Denmark’s Dogme movement.
>>>In his feature fiction debut, director and co-writer Ra’anan Alexandrowicz follows James, a young African, on a wide-eyed pilgrimage to Israel, where he finds that the Holy Land he had imagined does not exist. Liza Bear caught up with him in Cannes.
>>>A powerful yet restrained drama revolving around a family in the aftermath of a crisis, The Mother casts Anne Reid as a 65-year-old widow having an affair with her daughter’s 30-something married boyfriend (Daniel Craig).
>>>Before camcorders, webcams and reality TV, there was Harvey Pekar and his home-grown autobiographical comic book series, American Splendor. Culled from Harvey’s encounters in daily life, the series and their grumpy antihero attained cult status.
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Documentary filmmaker Martina Kudláček has just completed the definitive biographical film on legendary avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren, In the Mirror of Maya Deren.
>>>German film director Michael Haneke likes to describe his films as disturbing; what he disturbs: the viewer’s tendency towards a rote emotional response.
>>>With humanitarian rather than political aims, Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandhar (2001) was intended to focus on the plight of women in Afghanistan under an oppressive regime. Then came September 11th, and Afghanistan was thrown into the spotlight.
>>>In 1996, the center for Cinematographic Education and Production launched an ambitious audiovisual project thoughout Bolivia with various national indigenous confederations. As a result, native populations are working collaboratively to record stories.
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With his film Piñero, self-taught director Leon Ichaso has found the ultimate marginal character in poet and playwright Miguel Piñero, whose brilliance and flair for self-destruction hover over downtown New York’s fabled history.
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Set amid the gangs of teenage snipers roaming the streets of Medellín, Our Lady of the Assassins, adapted by Barbet Schroder for the screen, pits a writer’s existential dilemma against the random acts of violence that punctuate life in Medellín.
>>>Novelist Guillermo Arriaga wrote 36 drafts of Amores Perros, the award-winning Mexican film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Amores Perros is highly emotional, with cathartic rather than gratuitous violence.
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Kenneth Lonergan won Best Picture and Best Screenplay at Sundance, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his astounding debut feature, You Can Count on Me. Rachel Kushner speaks with Lonergan about his latest project.
>>>Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai’s new film, Kippur, explores the realities of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Having been a soldier in the war himself, Gitai says he is not making a political statement; rather, he has cinematically composed the chaos of war.
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Award-winning filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, best known for Chungking Express, has a new film, In the Mood for Love, which won two awards at Cannes: Best Actor for Tony Leung and the Grand Prix de la Technique for its art direction.
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First time director Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight split the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for best picture. Shot around the New Jersey docks, it is the story of a beautiful Latina with a bad-girl attitude who boxes her way out of anger.
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Turning the tables on his 1980 documentary, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, director Julien Temple reinterprets the rise and fall of punk icons the Sex Pistols. If you think you already know the story, think again.
>>>In his film, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., revolutionary documentarian Errol Morris follows the peculiar career of a self-styled execution technologist and inadvertent fascist. Novelist Margot Livesey ventures into the circle.
>>>Robert Altman cornered the American zeitgeist with wildly diverse films — Popeye, Cookie’s Fortune and Short Cuts — over a long, steady career. He discusses process, market and vision with writer Albert Mobilio.
>>>Law professor Kendall Thomas talks to the director about Hallelujah!, her documentary on the controversial performance artist Ron Athey. Thomas and Gund-Saalfield hash out the questions of religion, pain and pleasure Athey’s performances provoke.
>>>Danish director Thomas Vinterberg’s film The Celebration resembles Greek tragedy with a twist—influenced by French New Wave and The Godfather, winner of the Jury’s Prize at Cannes, its production was dictated by the neo-manifesto DOGMA ‘95.
>>>Gary Sinise may have migrated to Hollywood, but it’s not all glitter and confetti for the long-time actor/director. From the trenches of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre to the dazzle of a De Palma blockbuster, Sinise is a straight-up actor’s actor.
>>>Stellan Skarsgård is everywhere, from Breaking the Waves to Good Will Hunting and a tour de force performance in the thriller, Insomnia. Screenwriter Larry Gross charts the course from regional theater in Sweden to the big screen in Hollywood.
>>>Shot on location in Mexico in Spanish and a variety of Indian dialects, John Sayles’ film Hombres Armados (Men with Guns) is in many ways a truly foreign film. David L. Ulin talks with Sayles about how the film reflects the cultures it portrays.
>>>Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo, a partially fictionalized account of one English journalist’s struggle to save a Bosnian child, captures the moral dilemmas of war reporting.
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Wong Kar-wai’s films are kooky, cool and without being sappy, utterly romantic. The enfant terrible of Hong Kong cinema talks with playwright Han Ong about why he puts in what others leave out.
>>>English actor Rupert Graves appeared in five films in the fall of 1997: Intimate Relations, Mrs. Dalloway, Bent, Different For Girls and The Revenge Comedies. American actress Nicole Burdette figures out how he got there.
>>>The architect of dreams, filmmaker Peter Greenaway describes his film, The Pillow Book, an ode to Sei Shonagon’s 10th century vernacular sex diary and CD-roms.
>>>The consummate actress, Judy Davis talks about her starring role in the epic satire, Children of the Revolution.
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Jazz improvisation forms the delivery of Roger Guenveur Smith’s A Huey P. Newton Story. Coco Fusco probes the man and his narrative, a complex and riveting portrayal of a ‘60s icon, and a fast-fire delivery.
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Director Miloš Foreman began making films in Communist Czechoslovakia. He and writer Liza Bear talk about his film, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and censorship in the United States.
>>>Noted for his roles (co-writer/actor) in 1992’s acclaimed One False Move, Billy Bob Thornton makes his debut behind the lens with Sling Blade. He talks with John Bowe about writing the script, playing the hero and directing the action.
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Brenda Blethyn’s performance in Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies won her a Palme d’Or for Best Actress at Cannes. She talks about Leigh’s special process of improvisation.
>>>Cheick Oumar Sissoko makes African films for an African audience. Manon Slome and he discuss what this means: the difficulties, the differences and the ingenious determination with which a culture renews itself.
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Excerpts from Ada Gay Griffin and Michelle Parkerson’s film A Litany for Survival, on the great American poet, Audre Lorde. Tributes and insights from the poet herself, friends and family on what it means to live in the heart.
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