FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “UNION SQUARE” DIRECTOR NANCY SAVOCA

Nancy Savoca’s True Love was an early high-water mark in the modern independent film movement. In fact, its storyline, newcomer casting and loose style is now the template for much current indie drama. So, it’s great to report that over 20 years later Savoca is back with another intimate drama realized on a low budget and entirely outside the industry. With a stellar cast (Mira Sorvino, Tammy Blanchard and Patti Lupone), Savoca explores sister dynamics through the lens of a Canon 5D. The film, Union Square, premieres today at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Filmmaker: What were the origins of Union Square, and were the relationship dynamics of the film’s two lead sisters inspired by any in your own life?

Savoca: I was sitting in a coffee shop with (producer) Neda Armian and (screenwriter) Mary Tobler. We were venting our frustration that we couldn’t raise money for any of our projects and Neda said, “Let’s just shoot something. Anything! Shoot in my apartment. It’s yours!”

Little did she know that I’d take her up on it.

We had to finance this ourselves and needless to say, our resources were limited. My biggest fear was that, because of our low budget and short schedule, we’d be forced to shoot some boring, half-baked ‘two-people-in-a-room’ scenario. (Neda’s apartment is actually just one room).

So, I entered the project feeling a bit shaky but, luckily, Mary was fearless. Over the summer, she and I batted the script back and forth. It was great fun to get the emails with her latest draft- like opening a lovely gift every time!

I also enlisted the help of my favorite movie couples: Roberto Rossellini/Anna Magnani and John Cassavetes/Gena Rowlands. “The Human Voice” (part of the feature, Amore) and Woman Under the Influence, were an inspiration for telling an emotionally powerful story within a small canvas.

Like both films, I wanted to bring our audience in close with some difficult women. Maybe it’s a reaction to so-called “reality tv” which makes us see people as either crazy, stupid, uptight or bitchy. It plays on our … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “CAPRICHOSOS” DIRECTOR ALISON MURRAY

Several years ago director Alison Murray moved to Buenos Aires, where she danced tango competitively, married her tango partner, had two daughters and, now, has completed her fourth feature. Not surprisingly given these life changes, the film, Caprichosos, deals with dance. But instead of tango, Murray has focused on the murga — what she dubs “tango’s poor cousin.” Performed by groups of costumed dancers who rehearse their theatrical presentations for months before premiering them at Carnival, the dance is a local tradition suffused with beauty, drama, and a slight undertone of menace. Writes Murray in a director’s statement, “Unlike its cultural cousin the tango, murga is not taught in any institution; it’s a tradition of social protest and commentary that has remained hidden in the arrabals, the slums of Buenos Aires. With this film we are infiltrating the world of the murgeros, and meet some of the characters that make this dance of empowerment a community-building, life-saving socio-political activity.”

Dance, and more broadly, movement, have featured in all of Murray’s previous films — documentaries Train on the Brain and Carny, and narrative Mouth to Mouth. These films are united too by their empathetic portrayals of cultural outsiders and keen understanding of the relationship dynamics of small groups. Caprichosos has these traits as well, eschewing the overused tropes of many performance films by exploring the history of the dance and the lives of its dancers before showing us the performance itself. It’s a winning, layered film with indelible characters, and a window into vibrant dance world unknown to most of us. We asked Murray five questions about murga, tango and filmmaking in Buenos Aires.

Filmmaker: Which came first — the desire to make a film about the murga dance or to tell the individual stories of the Caprichosos? Or was the movie inspired by the fusion of the two?

Murray: At first I wanted to do something more extensive in terms of researching the roots of the dance in actual dance traditions in Africa, but I ended up focusing more on the indivdual characters in the group and … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “THE PATRON SAINTS” DIRECTORS BRIAN M. CASSIDY AND MELANIE SHATZKY

Photographers-documentarians Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky use dark humor and unconventional storytelling techniques to look at patients living in a nursing home for their debut feature, The Patron Saints. Known for their Hurricane Katrina short God Provides and their photography highlighted on their site, piegonprojects.com (two reasons why we selected them for our 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2007), Cassidy and Shatzky’s unique eye of making the ordinary look extraordinary has us excited in seeing this premiere at TIFF.

Filmmaker: Tell us a little about what your film is about?

Cassidy/Shatzky: The Patron Saints is a hyperrealistic glimpse into life at a nursing home.

Filmmaker: What motivated you to tell a story about life in a nursing home?

Cassidy/Shatzky: A feeling that we might be able to depict an aspect of life that is rarely, if ever seen on film. A lot of people have a tendency to deny that this stage of life exists, because it’s frightening or sad. As a result, residents often live in even greater solitude because their existence is too difficult for us to accept. As artists/filmmakers, we attempt to reveal or make visible these unseen areas of life. Early on in this process we both saw the potential for making a portrait or a kind of dirge that could deal with the subject matter in ways that could be at times very intense, but also tender and even humorous.

Filmmaker: Were there any inspirations (directors or films) behind the style of your film?

Cassidy/Shatzky: Mostly, we were trying to connect to our own intuitions, the rhythms of the place and the people who lived there, the mood or whatever else was going on. We both have a background as photographers and tend to favor work that on first glance might be difficult to deal with head-on but which also has a tenderness or a strange beauty. Photographers like Diane Arbus, Roger Ballen, Nan Goldin and Richard Billingham come to mind. Also the writer J.M Coetzee.

Filmmaker: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?

Cassidy/Shatzky: From the outset, we … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “HABIBI” DIRECTOR SUSAN YOUSSEF

When we chose Susan Youssef for our “25 New Faces” list in 2009, the Brooklyn born filmmaker of Lebanese and Syrian parents was in post-production on her feature Habibi, which she had been working on since 2002. “I’ve been working on the film for eight years, continuously,” she said. “I’ve never fought for something so hard before — I’ve defined my whole existence around this film.” Fortunately for Youssef, her work has paid off. Habibi premiered last month to strong response at the Venice Film Festival and now plays Toronto before heading to Dubai.

Based on an ancient Sufi parable, Habibi tells the tragic story of two young lovers in the Gaza Strip, Qays and Layla, who struggle to be together and express themselves through art in a restrictive culture. We asked Youssef about her long journey, how she finished her film, and her next project.

Filmmaker: When we last spoke to you, it was 2010 in our “25 New Faces” profile, and you had been working on the film for eight years. What’s happened in this last year, and what was involved in this final push to finish the film?

Youssef: Well, first off, I have to say the ’25 New Faces’ profile was an incredible push for HABIBI, that brought the film to the attention of a lot of people that have now become our allies, and have introduced us to other who befriended the film.

The ’25 New Faces’ profile, in part, led me to a brea through on my working process on this film. For a long time, I worked devotedly on the project, believing that I only had to make an amazing product to succeed. I was improving the edit, writing the best grant applications I could, reaching out to other artists, such as the composer, who could really enhance the film with me. But within this year, I watched my colleagues who were having their breakthroughs with their film–getting the financing, premiering, getting the sales agent–and I realized that while of course the quality of their work was good, their friends and backers … Read the rest

“GIRL MODEL” DIRECTORS ASHLEY SABIN AND DAVID REDMON

In both narrative and documentary film, the character of the fashion model has long been a symbol of not only glamor but also a kind of post-modern alienation. Depicting a Russian teen model casting and one young girl’s travel to Japan for modeling work, Girl Model, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s absolutely riveting new documentary, is set in a morally adrift culture in which the image of childhood is a globally traded commodity. Nadya is an innocent-looking, blonde 13-year-old for whom modeling work is both a dream and way out of the poverty she’s grown up with in Siberia. But the modeling contract she signs is full of loopholes and onerous clauses (if she gains a centimeter around her waist, it’s void, for example), and, with her parents remaining in Russia, she has no real protectors in Japan.

As a character, Nadya is both heartbreaking but also something of a heroine, refusing to be beaten down by the world she’s found herself in. Fascinating for different reasons is the film’s other main character, Ashley. A former model in the 1990s, Ashley is the scout who organizes the casting, selects Nadya, and brings her to Japan. Intelligent and beautiful but also conflicted and mysterious, Ashley comes off as both predator and victim, a woman smart enough to understand the moral dilemmas of her world while being unable to stop working within it. In Girl Model Redmon and Sabin illuminate both these characters while using their stories to create a hauntingly lonely film that in its poetic reach is about much more than one corner of the modeling world.

I spoke to Sabin via Skype while Redmon worked in the background and joined in to answer a couple of my questions.

Filmmaker: Let me start by asking you what came first with this movie — was it the idea of following girl models in general, or was it one of the subjects?

Sabin: What came first was the main scout, Ashley. She approached us after watching two of our films at MoMA. She was interested in us making a film about … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “CRAZY HORSE” DIRECTOR FREDERICK WISEMAN

Legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman heads to the Toronto International Film Festival with his latest film on dance, Crazy Horse. Highlighting the famous cabaret in Paris, Wiseman uses his patented verite style to give an unprecedented look inside the work and lives of the women who makes the Crazy Horse legendary.

Filmmaker: Tell us a little about what your film is about?

Weisman: I Followed the day to day activities involved in the rehearsing and staging of a new show at the crazy horse, a parisian cabaret famous for its beautiful dancers and erotic dances.

Filmmaker: Why a verite look at Paris’ cabaret club, The Crazy Horse?

Weisman: I am very interested in dance. This is the third film on dance I have made following ballet (The American Ballet Theatre) and La Danse-The Paris Opera Ballet. A documentary can try to convey the ephemeral beauty of the vareity of patterns the human body is capable of creating.

Filmmaker: What’s the most fascinating thing you learned about the girls who work there?

Weisman: How nice, normal and talented they are.

Filmmaker: You’ve been making films since the 1960s, what still drives you to make movies?

Weisman: It is better than working for a living.

Filmmaker: Do you watch a lot of documentaries?

Weisman: No. I do not watch a lot of movies. I like to work, read and ski.

… Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “THE LONELIEST PLANET” DIRECTOR JULIA LOKTEV

With The Loneliest Planet, the follow-up to her acclaimed feature Day Night Day Night, writer/director Julia Loktev builds a piercing drama around the contrast between a beautiful wide-open landscape and the ugliness of a momentary, possibly reflexive, moment of human behavior. In the film, an adventuring couple (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) trek through the Georgian mountains with a for-hire guide (Bidzina Gujabidze). A violent encounter changes everything. But in Loktev’s world, the hurt comes not from gunplay or kidnappings but from something more subtle. We asked Loktev about the relationship of landscape to story, about silence, and about the progression of her filmmaking.

Filmmaker: The Loneliest Planet deals with the dynamics within one couple’s relationship. Are these dynamics a product of the extreme situation they find themselves in, or are they fissures you think exist, perhaps unseen, within couples in everyday situations?

Loktev: The central rupture in the film is something no woman wants to imagine the man she loves would ever do, could ever do. The rupture happens at what might just be the happiest time in this couple’s relationship. They’re in love, they’re getting married in a few months, they’re traveling, which may be the thing that brings them closest together. So the rupture is not an extension of building tensions, but a sudden stark interruption of all that came before. It really comes out of nowhere and throws them off course, off balance. At the same time, to look at your question another way, I suppose it is a kind extreme version of what happens in relationships every day. A microscopic gesture, possibly unintended, quite likely unintended, a small misstep, and suddenly you feel unloved, suddenly everything shifts.

Filmmaker: You scouted various locations before shooting in the Georgian mountains. What was specific about this location for you, and why there as opposed to another locale?

Loktev: I was born in Russia, so I grew up with this mythical image of Georgia. Georgia was the vacation paradise, the jewel of the Soviet Union. My mom trekked across the Caucasus when she was in university, … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “PARADISE LOST 3: PURGATORY” DIRECTORS JOE BERLINGER & BRUCE SINOFSKY

In the mid ’90s filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky traveled to West Memphis, Arkansas for a documentary they were making for HBO on the gruesome murders of three boys and the trial of the three teens who were charged. The film, Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, gave the trail nationwide interest as Berlinger and Sinofsky revelaed a case that was hardly open and shut. Coerced confessions as well as questionable evidence and testimony made viewers uncertain if the three defendants — Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin — were guilty and the fight to free the West Memphis 3 was born. The 18 year journey for the filmmakers that has led to the sequel, Paradise Lost 2: Revelations and support from celebrities like Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder and Johnny Depp was to conclude with Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. But weeks before finishing the cut for TIFF news broke that the West Memphis 3 would be freed. With a new ending premiering at the New York Film Festival, Berlinger and Sinofsky must now decide if this is when they put down their cameras or if there’s a story after the freeing of the West Memphis 3.

Filmmaker: Tell us a little about what your film is about?

Berlinger: It’s rare that filmmakers have an opportunity to cover a story with an 18 year perspective and involvement, where the passage of time changes the nature of the information you have gathered.  Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory chronicles the 18-year odyssey of Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley, three teens incarcerated for a horrifying crime they maintain they did not commit. In our latest installment, we tried to make the film a self-sufficient viewing experience, so that you don’t have to have seen the previous films to fully comprehend this complicated case. However, for fans of the series, old facts are reexamined, new evidence is revealed and new suspects are scrutinized.

Sinofsky: Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory is a continuation of the trilogy which started with Paradise Lost and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations. … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “PAUL WILLIAMS STILL ALIVE” DIRECTOR STEVEN KESSLER

As director Stephen Kessler notes in his documentary, Paul Williams Still Alive, in the ’70s, the tiny blond singer was everywhere. He could be found on daytime game shows (The Gong Show) and nighttime dramas (The Love Boat), on The Muppets as well as in the lead of a Brian DePalma film (The Phantom of the Paradise). And then he faded from the cultural limelight. How much of his disappearance can be explained by the simple fact that people — audiences and performers — get older? Or does the fade of Williams’ quirky and emotional star say something deeper about the state of our culture? For Kessler, the subject was also a re-entry to the feature business; it’s been over a decade since his films The Independent and Vegas Vacation. We talked to him about all of this, as well as what he’s learned from directing commercials.

Filmmaker: When did you first encounter Paul Williams? And when
did you first decide to make a documentary about him?

Kessler: About five years ago, I was looking around online to buy an album from one of my favorite dead entertainers, Paul Williams. As it turned out, he wasn’t dead. I found out he was playing a gig up in Winnipeg. That’s where I met him.

Filmmaker: How did you first approach Paul about the documentary? How did you sell him on it?

Kessler: In Winnipeg, I told Paul I wanted to make a doc about him, and he turned me down. I told him that most people didn’t know his music anymore, and they should. And a film could help that. And he told me that I could film him for that one day, and we’d see how it went. That was the beginning of almost three years of filming.

Filmmaker: The film seems to trade on the idea that Paul Williams is a little bit of a “lost” figure in terms of cultural recognition. For you, this film seems to come after a decade-plus break since your last film. What have you been … Read the rest

FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “YOUR SISTER’S SISTER” DIRECTOR LYNN SHELTON

With Your Sister’s Sister, writer/director Lynn Shelton brings a top-flight cast (Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass and Mike Birbiglia) to an isolated island cabin on Puget Sound for a tale of grief, romance, and sibling rivalry. Duplass plays Jack, still reeling over the death of his brother a year earlier. Iris (Blunt), his best friend and dead brother’s ex, suggests he get his bearings at her father’s cabin, and there he’s unexpectedly confronted by Hannah (DeWitt). Needless to say, things get complicated in this latest from one of independent film’s most compelling new auteurs.

Via email we asked her about quick schedules, isolated places and, of course, sisters.

Filmmaker: Like your second film, My Effortless Brilliance, this feature takes your characters to a removed location, where their dramas unfold. What attracts you to this kind of set-up, and what role does the location play in this film?

Shelton: I love nothing more than to kidnap an entire cast and crew, dragging them off to the wilderness to make a movie. It is my fantasy scenario. It means that, for the duration of the shoot, there’s really no retreat from the film’s world back to “the real world.” Everyone gets to hang out together after the work day is through, bonding over lovely dinners and bottles of wine and campfires and saunas (and midnight screenings of the original Conan The Barbarian!) and it makes our time on set together that much more familial and comfortable and, therefore, fruitful.

As for how the location relates to the story of this film, it’s essential in this case. Being physically removed from the civilized world helps the characters feel less confined by the normal strictures of that world, which aids in propelling the story forward at its outset. And, ultimately, being stuck in the same house on a remote island together acutely intensifies the resulting tensions between the characters as the drama unfolds.

Filmmaker: Did your way of making films have to adapt in any way to the presence of Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, both of whom are coming … Read the rest