Jodie Mack is a filmmaker and experimental animator whose works include Yard Work is Hard Work (2008), Dusty Stacks of Mom: the Poster Project (2013), and Let Your Light Shine (2013). She has also made a series of textile-based flicker films that were semi-recently featured at the Harvard Film Archive under the program title “Jodie […]
CIFF REPORT #1: ON “HALE COUNTY”, “BABY BROTHER”, AND “NORMAN NORMAN”
The nonfiction feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening [2018] is first and foremost a sensorial experience, not a narrative one. With that said, filmmaker RaMell Ross does introduce his main characters very early on: first Daniel and Quincy, two young basketball players on the come-up in Hale County, AL, and then Boosie, who is […]
LABOR OF LOVE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW BUJALSKI
Andrew Bujalski is an American filmmaker whose movies include Funny Ha Ha [2002], Mutual Appreciation [2005], Beeswax [2009], Computer Chess [2013], and Results [2015]. His latest film is Support the Girls [2018], which follows a cast of characters that all either work at or patronize Double Whammies, a Hooters-adjacent breasts-themed sports bar located somewhere […]
IFFBOSTON 2018 REPORT #2: ON FILMS SCREENING 4.27
The Independent Film Festival Boston 2018 continues until Wednesday, May 2. A full list of films and programs scheduled for 4.27—and throughout the rest of the festival—can be found on their website. Friday, April 27 “Shorts Hereford: Documentary,” program includes DIANNA GOES TO THE FREE SPEECH RALLY [2018], directed by Dan Albright DIEGO […]
IFFBOSTON 2018 REPORT #1: ON FILMS SCREENING 4.25 & 4.26
Over the next two weeks, we’ll be publishing short-form reviews of films playing at the Independent Film Festival Boston 2018, which runs from Wednesday, April 25 to Wednesday, May 2. The films considered below are scheduled to play during the festival’s first two days. Wednesday, May 25—Opening Night EIGHTH GRADE [2018], written […]
IT WENT TO 11: A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE BOSTON INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF WOMEN’S CINEMA
The Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema was founded in 1993 by Marianne Lampke, Connie White, and Anne Marie Stein. At the time, Lampke and White were the owners and operators of the Brattle Theatre, and Stein was the executive director of the Boston Film/Video Foundation. The festival continued until its 11th and final […]
BUGGIN’ OUT ALL OVER AGAIN: ON THE BUGS BUNNY FILM FESTIVAL AT THE BRATTLE
Rarely does one go to a film festival in the hopes of watching something they’ve seen before. And yet that’s often the case with the Brattle Theatre’s Bugs Bunny Film Festival, an early-February hallmark that begins its 23rd annual iteration this week. For as long as I’ve been attending, the format has remained more or […]
FAMILY PHOTOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH YANCE FORD, DIRECTOR OF “STRONG ISLAND”
Images from Strong Island, courtesy Netflix Yance Ford is an American nonfiction filmmaker whose first feature-length film, Strong Island [2017], was recently released by Netflix. Strong Island follows three generations of the Ford family, with the central focus being the 1992 killing of Yance’s brother William Ford, by a 19-year-old man who never faced charges […]
FESTIVAL REVIEW: ‘DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?’
In this recorded version, there are still vestiges of the confrontational manner of a live performance—certain lines in the narration stick out that way, for better or for worse, like “this is not a white savior story, this is a white nightmare story,” or, with regards to Harper Lee’s original Mockingbird, “her [story] is liberal—mine is radical.”
CIFF INTERVIEW: DIRECTOR J.P. SNIADECKI, OF “EL MAR LA MAR”
The new film primarily displays landscape footage of the Sonoran desert, while the audio track features interviews with numerous figures that have experienced the location firsthand—including immigrants who had just crossed the border, as well as some patrolmen who consider it their job to stop them.
