On Sacred Deers and Ghost Stories: Talking with Production Designer Jade Healy
When it comes to design, I always try to get into the heads of the characters and then I try to map out the history of the location itself. Who[…]
Category: Interviews
Directors · Interviews · Romance
Staging Pleasure: In Conversation with The Love Witch’s Anna Biller
On The Love Witch: “I like to make films with a kind of dream logic. My films are a mix of reality and fantasy, or a mix of what is[…]
Activist & Political · Asian · Directors · Interviews
Challenging the Censor: An Interview with Indian Political Documentarian Rakesh Sharma
“India has always assigned a special sort of power to film . . . an extraordinary power to corrupt gullible masses has been given to cinema.” – Rakesh Sharma *[…]
Directors · Drama · Interviews
“What Remains When You Die”: Nanni Moretti Talks About My Mother (Mia Madre) (2015)
Editor’s note: This is the second director interview by our correspondent Amir Ganjavie, this one conducted at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival. The film discussed, My Mother, is being released in the U.S.[…]
Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
Happy Birthday, Pam Grier: Interview with the Accidental Action Heroine
It’s time again to tip our hat to Pam Grier, who’s 67 today (born May 26, 1949), by reposting Steve Ryfle’s interview. Here the incomparable star of Foxy Brown and[…]
Directors · Interviews · SF & Fantasy
Futureworlds: Talking with Yorgos Lanthimos about The Lobster (2015)
The Lobster tries to look at how we are as people – what it means to be single, alone, or involved with someone and all of the constraints that society[…]
Directors · Drama · Interviews
Articulating Desire: Talking with José Luis Guerín about The Academy of the Muses (2015)
For me, the idea of having an academy of muses is an impossible, if not ridiculous, idea; but, the discussions and debates that occurred among them struck me as fascinating,[…]
Asian · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Being Human: An Interview with Hong Kong Filmmaker Cheung King-wai
Note: This interview was conducted in English during the Hong Kong International Film Festival in Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on 3 April 2016. The author wishes to thank Esther Yau,[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Berlinale Dispatch #1: Gianfranco Rosi Talks About Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) (2016)
Editor’s note: This is the first of two interviews (next up: Nanni Moretti) our correspondent Amir Ganjavie conducted with directors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 11-21). Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire[…]
Asian · Directors · Historical & Epic · Interviews
“A Different Space and Time”: Hou Hsiao-Hsien on The Assassin (2015)
Hou on The Assassin: I don’t believe we should blindly obey masters. Nie Yinniang is ordered by her master Jiaxin (Sheu Fang-yi) to kill a high-ranking official, but – once[…]
Directors · Interviews · Visual Artists · Writers & Critics
“That’s something the viewer can choose to see.” An Interview with Mike Leigh on Mr. Turner
MIKE LEIGH: People have said to me, “Oh, I’m surprised Turner was like that, I would have thought he would be rather Byronic and beautiful and ascetic and nervously brilliant”[…]
Books · Directors · Interviews · Writers & Critics
Orson’s Charmed Circle of Fragments: A conversation with Josh Karp on his new book Orson Welles’s Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind
I could begin to see how the movie was art imitating life and then morphed into life imitating art, with such a palpable sense of the greatest director who ever lived[…]
Directors · Interviews · Middle East
Iranian Independent Cinema, Its Challenges and Future: An Interview with Abdolreza Kahani
I have made films both in Iran and France, so I know the conditions. In France, when funding is given, there are no strings attached to it. You are free[…]
Activist & Political · Directors · Interviews
“The World of the Road Is a State of Exception”: Boris Lojkine’s Hope Explores the World of African Migrants
Hope is the title, half ironic, half resolutely sincere, of a stunning film about African migrants trekking across a continent’s most forbidding landscapes to reach the promised land of Europe.[…]
Comic Melancholy: A Brief Chat with Emmanuel Mouret
My characters try to do the right things, but their feelings, their desires drag them somewhere else, so that they have to “negotiate” with themselves. And that interests me because[…]
A Product of Their Space: Interview with Joanna Hogg on Her Film Exhibition (2014)
British filmmaker Joanna Hogg pushes her brave, stripped-back and honest style further with her latest film, Exhibition. Having made a successful debut in 2007 with Unrelated, she continued to focus[…]
BLFJ News · Interviews · Writers & Critics
Bright Lights, Big Cine: Interview with Bright Lights Editor Gary Morris
In the shameless self-promotion department (and because it’s his birthday), we decided to retrieve this interview with Bright Lights’ head honcho Gary Morris. Our favorite interviewer, Matt Sorrento, talked to him in[…]
Interview: Editor Joe Walker on 12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Shame, and More
Joe Walker gives us the skivvy on working with the acclaimed director of 12 Years a Slave, editing for TV versus films, music and editing, and much more. In November[…]
Interview: Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt on Working with Steve McQueen and More
Sean Bobbitt talks about changes in the industry, shooting news and documentary versus dramatic features and shorts, and working with the acclaimed director of 12 Years a Slave. Sean Bobbitt[…]
Directors · Documentaries · Interviews
Inside New York’s Subway Secret: Talking with the Makers of La Voz de los silenciados (The Voice of the Voiceless)
When a film screening is greeted first with silence, it is certainly not easy on the director. “It was so scary, everybody was so silent in the theatre we were[…]
