Interview with Courtney Stephens and Callie Hernandez about the film, “Invention” Locarno Film Festival 2024
One of the most complex and sophisticated films in Locarno’s Cineasti del presenti competition this year was the American independent…
Dana Knight
Dana Knight is a freelance journalist who has been covering film festivals for the past ten years. She studied Film & Media at Birkbeck, University of London and has written for publications as diverse as VICE, Dazed and Confused, The Rumpus, The Independent Film Magazine.
Interview with Tato Kotetishvili about the film, “Holy Electricity,” Locarno Film Festival 2024
Fresh, different, unusual, unconventional could be a few words to describe the directorial debut of Georgian filmmaker and cinematographer Tato…
Interview with Kurdwin Ayub about the film “Mond,” Locarno Film Festival 2024
Based on a story that brings to mind Dubai’s captive Princess Latifa, Iraq-born, Austrian-based director Kurdwin Ayub’s second film, “Mond”…
Agnès Varda Reflects on “Jane B. by Agnès V.” and “Kung-Fu Master!”
Upon the digital restoration and US release of Jane B. by Agnès V. and Kung-Fu Master! the ever-iconic Agnès Varda tells The Independent: “A lot of people love my films but I don’t know if they are commercial. That’s why I always say, ‘I don’t have a career, I just made films.’ I am marginal and I am happy to be marginal because I’m very well known in these marginal circles of cinephiles.”
Radu Jude’s “Aferim!” is Miles Away From Minimalism
Director Radu Jude talks to The Independent about how his latest, Aferim!, may seem Shakespearian but actually uses language discovered in archival literary texts and other documents. And if you’re wondering where he’s headed next, it’s into an adaptation of work by novelist Max Blecher, sometimes called Romania’s Kafka.
NYFF 2015: Yorgos Pirpassopoulos Talks “Chevalier”
“The whole process from rehearsing to shooting was really fascinating, enjoyable, challenging and difficult,” Chevalier actor, Yorgos Pirpassopoulos, told The Independent at NYFF 2015. They rehearsed on location and brought their own ideas on character and improvisation. “I had a feeling that everything could change at any moment and that added a lot to film,” he said.
NYFF 2015: Laszlo Nemes on Recreating Auschwitz
“Yes, it’s a portrait,” explains Laszlo Nemes about his debut feature Son of Saul. “It’s a very reduced scope of an image and it actually corresponds to the limitations of a human being: you see very little, you know very little in a concentration camp. And the human experience, with hindsight, is different but the people who were there knew much less. I wanted to convey how limited we could be in this kind of situation.”
NYFF 2015: Filmmaker in Residence Athina Rachel Tsangari
In 2001, Athina Rachel Tsangari graced our cover. Fourteen years later, Dana Knight sat down with Tsangari, NYFF’s 2015 Filmmaker In Residence, at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Learn why men ask: “We’re not like that and who are you, a woman, judging us in this way?” about Tsangari’s latest film, Chevalier.
Filmmakers and Their Global Lens: Jem Cohen
Counting is a personal, essayistic documentary in 15 chapters where Cohen composes images, sound and music with remarkable intensity, combining them into a hypnotic foray through the metropolises of our world: New York, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Istanbul, Porto and a city intended to remain unknown. Time passes and stands still at the same time. Counting has it’s North American Premiere at BAMcinemaFEST 2015 on Saturday, June 27th – a Q&A with Cohen will follow the screening.