Life After Provocation: Burden Documentarians Tim Marrinan and Richard Dewey on Meeting the Real Chris Burden
As if on a pilgrimage, scores of tourists and, on occasion, locals have taken advantage of a now-indispensable photo-op: the Urban Light sculpture in front...
How They Did It: DP Daniel Levin Spent a Year Embedded with the FBI For the Series Inside the FBI: New York
We circle an abandoned building in a giant field. I have a seat belt on, but the door is wide open and I cannot seem...
All Under One Roof Raving: How Michal Marczak Made All These Sleepless Nights With 3-D-Printed Gear and ADR
The essential listlessness of youth: So many have tried to capture that on camera, though every film that does so successfully makes it feel like...
Feast for the Eyes: In Search of Israeli Cuisine Dices Culinary Cinema’s Hosting Clichés
In Search of Israeli Cuisine is a portrait of the Israeli people told through food. Depending on how you count, Israel has some 150 cultures...
Who Does Native American Culture Belong To?: Mat Hames Poses the Question in Documentary What Was Ours
Mat Hames is a filmmaker who is more interested in raising questions than giving answers. That much is clear from the titles of his films,...
Monkey Business: How Commercial Director and Editor Biff Butler Came to Make Episodic Doc Long Live Benjamin
In early 2010 I was living in Los Angeles and was scheduled to edit a Chrysler commercial for the Portland, Oregon-based advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy. When...
Looking for the Silver Lining: Ferne Pearlstein’s The Last Laugh Takes Audiences on a Novel Journey to a Dark Time
In his memorable book The Life of Reason, philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who don’t remember history are bound to repeat it.” That astute observation...
The Cat Documentary Taking NYC By Storm: Ceyda Torun and Charlie Wuppermann on Their Gorgeous Film KEDi
“People who don’t love animals don’t love people either.” So says a fishmonger in Istanbul in an early scene of KEDi, the first feature documentary...
Why Doc Films (Still) Matter: The Moviemakers Behind The Age of Consequences On Getting a Message Out
“There is still no replacement in our digital age for people getting together as one, standing together as one—making a political demand.” – Chris Hayes,...
Foreign Contenders: Ukrainian Sheriffs is a Buddy Cop Doc Set Against the Annexation of Crimea
MovieMaker‘s weekly series “Foreign Contenders” features interviews with the heavyweight helmers behind their respective countries’ entries for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Each...
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Inside the Issue: Best Of
(More) Essential Moviemaking Podcasts: Five Laudable Audibles for Your Educational Pleasure
Directing is a fairly strange craft to try to learn, in part because you rarely get a chance to watch other directors at work. Determined moviemakers exhaust all the...
1Inside the Issue: Festivals
50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee in 2017
Are film festivals getting better? That is, are they providing you—independent moviemakers—more of the things you want and need? I think they are. After all, it makes sense: With...
9Inside the Issue: Producing
How to Always Deliver: Denise Di Novi on Gilding a Package, Dealing With the Artistic Temperament and Sniffing Out Hits
Denise Di Novi has forged a moviemaking career by avoiding the kind of carelessness that often bankrupted her peers. Instead, she developed and refined a keen sense for emotional...