All posts by Jennifer Blair
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Ithaca Fantastik Film Festival 2018: Boundary-Pushing International Fare Thrives Amid Foliage of Upstate New York
A sleepy college town in late fall. Changing leaves and crisp air. It’s a peaceful autumn idyll for some, a John Carpenter-esque slasher setup for...
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Flash Forward: Jorge Lendeborg Jr. is Building a Promising Career With Good Instincts and His Family’s Steadfast Support
“I just always loved and enjoyed watching movies,” says Jorge Lendeborg Jr. of how he got bit by the proverbial bug. “My dad would take me to...
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“Do Something That Doesn’t Bore the Crap Out Of You”: How Rust Creek Dir. Jen McGowan Avoided a Cookie Cutter Career
“I make material that I find interesting,” says director Jen McGowan. “I’m a feminist, so those themes are present, but I like to make things...
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Embracing Change: Director Kendall Goldberg On Her Feature Debut When Jeff Tried to Save the World
“I am a creature of habit,” says When Jeff Tried to Save the World director Kendall Goldberg. “But while I was writing this film, I...
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“The Best Approach is a Calm Approach”: Welcome to Mercy Screenwriter and Star Kristen Ruhlin on Forging Your Own Moviemaking Path
Kristen Ruhlin knows a thing or two about perseverance. The screenwriter and star of Welcome to Mercy—a trippy dive into the exorcism genre from IFC...
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Novel Ideas: Moviemakers Jeremy Saulnier and Macon Blair on Adapting a Book for the Screen and Building Atmosphere
In September, director Jeremy Saulnier and screenwriter Macon Blair attended Fantastic Fest 2018 to present Hold the Dark—a fully-immersive cinematic adaptation of William Giraldi’s 2014...
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Fantastic Fest 2018: Peak Programming and Premieres and a Self-Reflective Tone Shape the Austin Hotspot’s 13th Year
At its heart, Fantastic Fest is not simply a film festival: It’s a weeklong experience of controlled extremity, in which audiences are asked to expand...
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Stayin’ Alive: What Keeps You Alive‘s Colin Minihan and Brittany Allen on Surviving a Career Wearing Multiple Hats
Colin Minihan and Brittany Allen are no strangers to multitasking. Now on the road with What Keeps You Alive, the Canadian duo present a professional...
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Fantasia International Film Festival 2018: Michael Ironside Talks Dune, Verhoeven, and Telekinesis in the Family
Few personalities encapsulate the brilliantly mad spirit of genre cinema more completely than Canadian actor Michael Ironside. In attendance at the Fantasia International Film Festival...
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Fantasia International Film Festival 2018: Five Moviemakers Talk Genre Films in Montréal
“I’m not joking when I say that Fantasia was our film school,” says François Simard of the Canadian directing trio RKSS, who were in attendance at the...
Summer 2019
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Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...