Airing Your Dirty Laundry
Doug Block wasn’t sure he had a film yet. His mother had passed away and he was videotaping his father’s…
Making Films
A Conversation with Les Blank
In his new film All In This Tea, director Les Blank operates at the far extremes of technology, using digital…
Movies on the Move
The original idea was to drive filmmaker Ben Blaine into the countryside and abandon him, but since Ben can’t drive…
Blurring the Lines
Ohio-based filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s 3-hour and 45-minute documentary A Lion in the House follows five families with…
Voices from Issues Past
What happened at AIVF over the last 30 years? Coming up with a coherent and entertaining way to answer that…
AIVF: And What it Meant to Me
I first became aware of AIVF when Martha Gever was editor of The Independent. I marveled at this national organization…
One-Two Punch
I thought that making Monster’s Ball was rough. I vowed upon wrapping that film that I would never make another….
On the Margins of the Multiplex
In 1973, a young, cinema-loving bohemian couple fled the high rents of Manhattan for the more affordable suburbs of Huntington,…
Q&A – James Schamus
Writer, producer, and film executive James Schamus has had about as brilliant a career in independent film as they come,…