Tag: Sundance

Imperfection is spectacular!

Posted on by Paul Risker

Karen Cinorre’s directorial feature debut, the American drama Mayday (2020), premiered at this year’s Sundance and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Her short film Plume (2010), about a boy rescued by an ostrich who finds himself drifting between the human and animal realms, but belonging to neither, foreshadows the themes of her feature film.

At an unnamed seaside venue, an unusual storm complicates preparations for a wedding. When Anastasia (Grace Van Patten), a restaurant server, is asked to go down into the basement to flip the switch after the power has short circuited, sparks fly. She wakes up on a rugged coastline where she meets a group of female soldiers, led by Marsha (Mia Goth), who are fighting an endless war against men. Over the radio they pretend to be damsels in distress, luring the sailors to their deaths. As Ana trains to be a sharpshooter, she comes to realise that she’s not the ruthless killer they expect her to be, and in spite of feeling empowered in this alternate world, she knows she must find a way home.

In conversation with DMovies, Cinorre discussed her directorial debut feature, her feelings of empowerment, and being haunted by the film for many years.

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Paul Risker – Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or a defining moment for you personally?

Karen Cinorre – The defining moment that brought me to storytelling may have been hearing Laurie Anderson’s work for the first time when I was quite young. Someone gave me cassettes of her work in the United States, and she was such an incredibly evocative storyteller. She had such a strange but delightful sense of humour, and probably an intelligence that all worked together in this interesting way, I hadn’t heard before.

So that was my inspiration for storytelling, and then when I went to university, I had so many creative impulses. I trained as a dancer, a musician, and I did drawing and painting. I could not get enough of the art making crafts, and I was very lucky to have Lesley Thornton as a teacher and mentor at [Brown] university.

She was such an extraordinary teacher and in her class she pushed out every rule of filmmaking. She let us discover it for ourselves, it was pure discovery. I loved that within filmmaking, and I had this palette of everything I loved. I had dance, music, sound and movement, and the weather itself was part of the palette. After that I was never going back.

PR – ‘What we are’ versus ‘who we feel we are’ can often be out of synch. When did you feel that you could call yourself a filmmaker?

KC – It was really simple. I felt like a filmmaker the first time I opened a Bolex camera and put my hands on the metal inside. I just knew I was in love and I would never let go of that camera.

PR – Could you have imagined that one day you would have made this film?

KC – When I was learning about filmmaking, I definitely imagined myself making films with a large canvas – these “world-building” films like Mayday. This particular story matured and evolved with me over the years because of opportunities and life, and priorities. I would work on it, then I would leave it, and then I would work on it again. It haunted me for many years and then I had an intense period of working on it. I realised that so many of my experiences and also my hindsight on those experiences, was informing how I was writing the film.

PR – Watching Ana’s experiences in the alternate world provokes a sadness, because it reminds us of the impossibility to physically enter our own dreams, and transform our reality.

KC – When you say there’s a sadness to it, do you mean that there’s a sadness that one feels a need to escape, or there’s a sadness that you can’t stay in that place?

PR – Both, because it’s sad to not be able to escape into the imaginary world, but it’s sad that we should want to escape our reality.

KC – [Laughs] Yes, there’s a sadness on both ends. There’s a sadness that one would feel the need for escape, and I think it’s very human. It’s a natural impulse in the modern world and in our psyche, and that’s a fascinating way to move a story along.

There was a sadness in me just writing that she had to leave this world and her friends. They’d shared so much together and I remember thinking it’s a bit like The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy goes home and they don’t believe she’s done anything. They try to convince her that she never went anywhere, and they tell her she’s crazy. I thought how wonderful it would be for a young woman to make the choice to return to her life and be completely transformed by everything that happened to her. And for her not be told it didn’t happen, that she shouldn’t have left, but for the experience to be joyful because she leaves with such richness. Of course, someone having to leave her friends and move on is sad, and we felt that on set each time one of the actresses would leave. It was sad, but joyful.

PR – If a dream is not real, it does not mean that it cannot empower you or change the way you think and feel. Would you agree that dreams are just as valid as real experiences?

KC – There are some ancient Daoist philosophers, and I read early on these passages about how some of them believed there was no waking and no dreaming. It was one trajectory, it was all the same. You were on the same path and there was no real and unreal. It’s all real, it’s just you’re here and then you’re there. It all has the same validity, there’s no difference. I thought that was intriguing, and why have we created this extreme difference of real and unreal?

It’s maybe real that we go to bed and have these internal thoughts and struggles. I don’t feel the need to discern at all, and bringing them together is actually helpful and empowering. It gives us a deeper mystery and knowledge to what’s happening around us, and inside of us.

PR – As a filmmaker, is there a need to step back and not control the film too much, instead observing what the actors and the film itself gives you?

KC – So much is created and so much happens in filmmaking that’s out of your control. These are human beings, and there are these forces, the weather and tides, and I have no control over it. I can try to steer it and create the most nurturing soil for this story to grow in, and I can do my best to answer questions and write material, but what’s magical about filmmaking is it presents itself to us. Film is its own animal, it’s an organism that grows on its own, and it’s fascinating to be a part of it and to see that.

PR – It’s impossible to tell the perfect story, but is the joy of the pursuit that it’s an humbling experience, because while storytelling will give up some of its secrets, it will never fully reveal itself to us?

KC – I’ve had those thoughts over the years. There are parts of India’s philosophical thought about perfection and how it’s unachievable, but the quest for achieving that is spectacular, and it’s so interesting even in terms of navigation, of having your North Star. You’re not getting to the North Star, it’s a guide. It can be a tyranny if you do become an actual perfectionist trying to make something perfect, because like you said, it’s impossible. I’ve watched films and thought that was perfect, but then there’s always one part that’s not. So you have to let go of the notion that you will ever achieve perfection, but that joy of trying to come together with other people and make it as perfect as it could be, is what the craft is – it’s what drives us. It’s a driver and a notion, but ultimately not an achievable goal.

PR – Do you perceive there to be transformative aspect to the filmmaking process, where you change as a person?

KC – Yes, making a film can absolutely transform you. I always feel that when I do something creative I’m transformed, and usually one main aspect of that is I have two sides of my personality. One is quite shy and one is quite assertive, and the shyness goes away when I’m creating. I’m still very humble, or I hope I am. I feel humble but I become more assertive because you have to create the work, and you do not have a lot of time, and so you have to be fearless. It feels wonderful that you’ve had to be fearless in the face of many challenges, and it’s very empowering to make a piece of work – I would encourage everyone to try it.

Mayday had its World Premiere at Sundance, and its International Premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)

Photo Credit: Tjaša Kalkan

Mayday

Posted on by Paul Risker

At an unnamed seaside venue, an unusual storm complicates preparations for a wedding. When Anav (Grace Van Patten), a restaurant server, is asked to go down into the basement to flip the switch after the power has short circuited, sparks fly. She wakes up on a rugged coastline where she meets a group of female soldiers, led by Marsha (Mia Goth), who are fighting an endless war against men. Over the radio they pretend to be damsels in distress, luring the sailors to their deaths. As Ana trains to be a sharpshooter, she comes to realise that she’s not the ruthless killer they expect her to be, and in spite of feeling empowered in this alternate world, she knows she must find a way home.

When we daydream, there’s always the separation between the dream and one’s physical reality. Watching Ana’s transportation to an alternate world reminds us of the impossibility to physically enter our dreams. The simple pleasure of this American drama, Mayday, is it offers is that teasing thought of what if we could conquer the impossible? It’s a longing for that, and the warmth of how it feels to lose yourself in your imagination.

Up until this point late in Karen Cinorre’s debut feature, there has been little to hang the film’s identity on. It’s not psychologically incisive or heavy on themes and ideas. Instead, it’s a simple film, bookended by a beginning and an end that structurally recalls The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939). This is no coincidence, because Cinorre has stated that she was dazzled by Fleming’s film.

I’m still not wholly sure of the filmmaker’s intent, whether aspects of the film are accidental, or even is Cinorre being a little crafty? The tone of the film’s opening before Ana’s transportation, especially the bathroom scene where we first see Marsha as the bride, and meet the bathroom attendant, later June (Juliette Lewis), feels off. The female characters are only briefly introduced as minor figures to the men, none more so than the head waiter who is verbally abusive towards Ana, and controlling towards the bride. Alongside the brief closing scene that feels like someone thinking they’ve woken up, is Mayday a dream within a dream? The specifics of the restaurant and its staffing protocols, the extreme response of women at war on the coastline, and the brief ending, could suggest so. In hindsight, we should ask whether we have met the real Ana, or only the dream figure in either her dream or someone else’s?

To criticise it’s lack of themes and ideas would be to miss the point. Mayday is a story for the dreamers in us, and especially those with a penchant for creating worlds in their heads, to escape the anxiety of their everyday lives. Simplicity allows the filmmaker to emphasise that teasing thought of what if? The story often seeks to play on our emotions, and it’s not without a mix of joy and sorrow.

In one moment when it’s suggested that Ana’s departure will jeopardise this world’s existence, we’re suddenly confronted with a dilemma. In as much as it’s Ana’s choice whether to sacrifice her desire to leave, we find ourselves interrogating it in such a way that it feels a matter of life and death. It’s a reminder of how a story can become real, the choices of the characters not only their own, but an emotional weight that’s placed upon us.

We accept that our own dreams are false, but Ana’s experience is shared with us and so it’s not her own. A sadness shrouds Mayday that’s similar to The Wizard of Oz. It’s the pain of departures and connections to a reality we have come to believe in, similarly manipulated to good effect by M. Night Shyamalan in The Sixth Sense (1999).

At the heart of the film is a message about empowering oneself. Cinorre’s film has a Jungian dimension, specifically the role dreams play in solving the problems we cannot solve in our waking state. What the director expresses is that it’s not necessarily a clear-cut resolution that is found, more a resolute feeling that empowers Ana. When one of the girls says to her, “You’re going back to so much darkness”, she replies, “In the dark I’ll see the stars.” The story manages to provoke an emotional response, and express an idea about the need to change our thoughts and feelings before we can change our lives.

Mayday had its world premiere at Sundance, and its international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), when this piece was originally written. It shows in October at Raindance in London.

Monsters and Men

Posted on by victorfraga

Darius Larson (Samel Edwards), a very friendly Afro-American dealer of illegal cigarettes, stands outside a small shop in the Bed-Stuy area of Brooklyn and meets all the local dudes. One of them is Manny (Anthony Ramos) who gets a bit of cash off him and then goes home to his wife and little daughter. Later, while out walking in the street in the evening, Manny comes across Darius, who police are trying to arrest outside the shop. Manny whips out his mobile and starts filming. Manny is not particularly interested in filming anything significant, but suddenly Darius is shot dead and Manny realises that he has recorded the full details of Darius’s death.

The recorded footage on the mobile is the central theme of the film as it reveals that Darius was shot dead without justification. All three characters who look at it closely realise that they should act on what they see. Manny acts and is viciously compromised by the cops. Dennis Williams, (acted with great nuance by John David Washington), an honest Afro-American cop who works in the same precinct as the bad cops reports it but is thwarted by the response to his report.

Zyrick Jr., a promising young African-American baseball star realise that he must act up after the cops plant incriminating material. This is to his father’s overwhelming disappointment. He is desperate for his son to succeed at baseball and, as a cop himself, does not want to rock any boats.

The film quietly but insistently emphasises how trapped people are in the machinations of power. The response to Dennis’s report is typical of the methods of power. He is interviewed with great courtesy and correctness by an investigator (an Afro-American woman) and invited to say what he knows about the bad cops (about who complaints on other matters have been made). He cannot, however, really do so as he has not worked closely with them. As the investigator leaves, she looks at him as if he is a tremendous waster of time. Dennis is not a waster of time.

The main fact is that Darius was shot dead without any justification. The establishment always makes a show of investigating criminal matters in the periphery, while carefully avoiding the root causes of the problem. Even if police forces have “rotten apples” in their midst, which their superiors deplore, not too much bad publicity is allowed to get out. This is not just an American phenomenon. It featured at the Hillsborough football stadium investigation, the shootings in Derry on Bloody Sunday and the Guildford Four.

The situation of Zyrick’s father is particularly sad. He is a loyal cop and like many Afro-American is desperate for his son to escape the obscurity of his birth by succeeding at sport. He accepts, however, that “these things happen” and it is better to leave matters as they are.

This emphasises the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. The fact is that in American society Afrp-Americans count for less, as did Irish peasants in the United Kingdom in the 19th century, East Enders in London, the tenants of Grenfell Tower, the inhabitants of favelas in Brazil, poor African peasants in the hand of ruthless dictators and so the list can go on. The film quietly and insistently demonstrates how good people are caught up in the processes of power and find it hard to escape. This is done without an undue amount of Hollywood special effects or plangent script-writing although touching scenes of children playing with the protagonists (for instance, Manny and his little daughter sending a paper dart over the Brooklyn roof-tops) tells us in a thoroughly clunky Hollywood manner that these are, after all, very decent people.

Monsters and Men isn’t just an angry movie about “Black Lives Matter” pushing all the right emotional buttons. It goes much deeper than that in its concerns, covering the experience of virtually anyone who speaks “truth to power”. The film premiered in Sundance 2018, where it was described as a “hit”. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, January 18th and then on VoD on Monday, January 21st.

This is how I made it to Netflix

Posted on by mjbstaging

It has been less than a month since the new Austin Indie author Macon Blair received his award at Sundance. His debut movie I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore won the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize (click here for our exclusive review of the film). Before that, the young Blair’s face was seen in two films in which he worked as an actor: Blue Ruin (2013) and Green Room (2015), both by his close friend Jeremy Saulnier.

Traditionally films that are shown in Park City take a long time to reach a wider audience. Last year Sundance sensation, Manchester By The Sea was released in the UK a year later, and it is still running for big prizes in the international circuit. But people don’t like to wait. So the market search for a solution to this problem, rendering anxious movie-lovers happy and satisfied. Netflix was the first company to nail it.

Blair’s feature is out worldwide this Friday at Netflix. The American entertainment company has invested massively in cinema production and has acquired 14 titles of Sundance Festival this year. (You can check the list of films here.) By simultaneously broadcasting to 93 million members in 190 countries, Netflix is changing the way films are distributed. But does it affect the voice of creative and independent filmmakers?

DMovies writer Maysa Monção chatted with Macon Blair via Skype about such industry tactics, the creative process, Donald Trumpo, the UK and much more. The director is pictured at the top with a carrot which he grew in his own garden. As far as we are aware, this vegetable has not made it to the movie, and it has no connection whatsoever to the film industry.

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Maysa Monção – You worked as an actor and as a writer. How did you become a filmmaker? Did Jeremy Saulnier inspire you?

Macon Blair – Very much so, yeah. He has been my friend for a long time, almost my whole life. I always knew that I’d like to direct something of my own. I didn’t know exactly when. I was always looking at Jeremy, just watching him work and trying to learn everything I could from him, because he is so good. He is so talented and I feel very fortunate to have worked with him.

MM – You casted Elijah Wood for your debut. How does a well-known actor contribute to an independent movie?

MB – Certainly he has so many fans, because he has been in those larger movies [including Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit in 2012], and this brings attention to the movie. Not that they would like it or not based on what he has done before but it certainly helps. Elijah is attracted to what he likes in movies and he responded to this script. He did me a huge service by agreeing to work in this movie. Very early on he joined us as well as Melanie Lynskey [who plays the main female role].

elijahwood800
Elijah Wood is one of the protagonists in Macon Blair’s debut

MM – I watched your movie during a midnight session at Sundance. I almost gave up because I was very tired, but I am so glad I went! But that’s one thing: I noticed that nobody could remember the title of your movie…

MB – I know. That’s my fault. I picked a bad title. It made a lot of sense to me. We tried to come up with another title but I couldn’t think of another one that I liked as much. The producers originally wanted something different but they changed their mind. By the end they realised that we should go back to the original idea.

MM – How was working with Netflix? Did they influence the creative process in any way?

MB – No! Netflix is the only reason why this movie got made. Because they were willing to go with the script that I wanted to make. They were very supportive with all the cast that I wanted to work with. And they were willing to finance at the right level. Once they got on board, they would call just to say “hello”. They did not interfere with the creative side of the filmmaking. They were very “hands off”. They also gave us a huge amount of space.

MM – But let’s imagine that your film was made for a theatrical release. Would you have done anything different?

MB – I don’t think I would and the reason is that I was trying to figure out how to do it at all. It is my first film. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to target it to a specific audience or a specific demographic. I was just trying to make it not suck. Hopefully people would watch it at some point…

MM – I will be watching everything you make.

MB – Oh thank you. The review you guys did was just amazing; I loved what you guys wrote. But if it had been theatrical, it probably would have opened in a small number of theaters. It wouldn’t be there out for very long, and it wouldn’t be seen by as many people as it will on Netflix. It goes worldwide. It can stay there indefinitely. It can work as a word-of-mouth. That is the best case scenario for this type of movie.

MM – What was the most ludrical thing that happened on the set?

MB – [he laughs] I think one of the funniest scenes was when everybody was together yelling at each other [he refers to a moment in which all cast is in a house, and there is some gun shooting]. It was the first time we had all the cast together in one room. But for the rest of us the funniest thing was when Melanie had the vomit apparatus attached to her face.

MM – I don’t know if I can tell this!

MB – For her it was not funny but we were all laughing at the monitor. I felt a little guilty.

MM – Was it only one take?

MB – It took a while. There were takes from different angles. It was probably not very pleasant for her.

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A very cheerful Melanie contemplates some food, still devoid of her vomit machine

MM – If you could cast Donald Trump for a scene in your movie, what use would you make of him?

MB – Oh.. [very disappointed]. I would quit moviemaking. I don’t know.

At this point the Skype call mysteriously disconnects. I must have been Donald Trump snooping on DMovies. Eventually Maysa manages to get in touch again and continues the interview.

MB – I had some time to think better my answer. I would make a sequel of The Human Centipede (Tom Six, 2010).

MM – I don’t get it. Can you explain?

MB – Hummm. This guy plans to surgically join his victims by sewing together their mouths and anuses, all in a row.

MM – You live in Austin but your film was shot in Portland, Oregon. Would you film in the UK? Your black sense of humour is quite British, with a touch of sarcasm.

MB – I would looove to film in the UK. Yeah, probably I would. And now that you mentioned I will try hard.

MM – Finally, do you feel your next movie will be easier or do you feel the pressure of a Sundance winner?

MB – Oh, I haven’t even thought of that. I believe it helps that people are aware of who you are. I don’t have to convince them as much but I would not say that it is easy. I still have to justify the expense of everything and build the team!