A conversation with the directors of The Atomic States of America

Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce directed the recent documentary The Atomic States of America. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012 and continues to run the festival circuit. I loved the film when I saw it at the Montclair International Film Festival. Its next stop is at the Seattle International Film Festival, playing at the Harvard Exit Theater June 7th and June 8th. More information can be found on the film's Facebook page, located here.

Aaron Katz's Cold Weather

Aaron Katz has experienced festival and critical success for his first two feature films, Dance Party USA and Quiet City, primarily coming out of the South by Southwest Film Festival’s affinity for so-called mumblecore filmmakers.  (The New York Times wrote an excellent piece a few years ago about this film movement.  Generally speaking, mumblecore is--in addition to being an obsession of mine--a contemporary approach to indie filmmaking with a focus on character development and spending as little money during production as possible.) Like Andrew Bujalski or Joe Swanberg, mumblecore’s other major players, Katz creates features that are grouped in this movement.  His newest film Cold Weather, which premiered at SXSW this year to positive reviews, both draws and deviates from mumblecore traditions while maintaining a playful relationship with genre and style.

Cold Weather is about a young man who moves in with his older sister in Portland, Oregon, and gets caught up in a good old-fashioned mystery: missing person, stolen capital, tire slashing, the whole nine yards.  The protagonist, Doug, is a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes and the film is inspired considerably by the detective genre.  Against this backdrop, though, the movie maintains many mumblecore characteristics.  Small moments of connection between characters, mundane conversations, and an obvious low-budget stylistic approach connect Cold Weather to Katz’s other films.

A Chat with Mike Luciano, director of the recent The Pains of Being Pure At Heart music video

Mike Luciano is a young up-and-coming director who recently graduated from Northeastern University and moved to Brooklyn. He first did a video for the band Twin Sister and and then successfully moved on to The Pains of Being Pure At Heart's video for "Heart In Your Heartbreak." You can find all of Luciano's work, including the new Pains music video, at his website City on Film. 

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart are an indie pop band that has exploded over their first two albums. They've been honored by prestigious music blog Pitchfork with the tag "Best New Music" on both of their albums. Their first album, which is self-titled, came out in February 2009 to excellent critical reception, drawing comparisons to My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division and The Smiths. Their new release, Belong, came out on March 29, 2011, to equally favorable reviews.

You can find out more about the band at their official website. 

Who are your influences as a director?

For music videos, I still swear by my Palm Pictures DVD box set of Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham videos, which are sort of a crash course in some of the best music videos ever made.

For film, I mostly love directors with specific visions whose films are marked with a distinct voice that is unmistakably theirs. Following the careers of those kinds of directors is most exciting and inspiring to me, especially those who find the difficult balance between being ‘funny’ without necessarily being ‘comedies’, like Todd Solondz and Wes Anderson. Others are ‘favorites’ that I can’t ever imagine making a movie similar to – nutso, European geniuses like Michael Haneke or Gaspar Noe, who’s films I can’t get enough of.  I love Richard Linklater, Eric Rohmer as well, among many others.  

An interview with Oscar winning writer/director Shaun Tan, on his animated short The Lost Thing

This Q+A is co-presented with the event NUFEC presents: A Short Film Showcase.

The film screened at this short film event, where it was discussed in-depth. I’d like to credit all the attendees for their participation, as many of these questions were inspired by (or straight up stolen from) the discussion.

Attendees included (but are not limited to):

Scott Carpenter, Hayley Dennis, Eric Evje, Emily Fisler, Jonny Glassman, Stephanie Morgan, Marcus Nero, Lauren Penizotto, Sid Phanis, Eliza Rosenberry, Grace Rosinsi, Jessica Sanchez, Robyn S, Kate Vatter, and Andrew Wood.

If you were there and are not on the list, please let me know (my memory is faulty, it was a month ago)!

NUFEC is Northeastern University’s film club, which meets Wednesday nights to watch a short film, a feature film, and discuss both. I’m currently the Vice President of this club and will try and bring many more awesome events like this short film showcase!

The Lost Thing is the 2010 film adaptation of Shaun’s own 2000 book of the same name. Shaun has written and illustrated 5 books, and illustrated an additional 10. One of his more recent books, The Arrival, is being worked into a film, which Shaun will discuss below (**note to NEU students, this book is in the library on display in “The Hub”).

The Lost Thing film is a 15-minute animated short, which is directed by both Shaun and Andrew Ruhemann. It was the Best Animated Short Oscar in 2011 (for the year of 2010), and was nominated for the 2011 Huge Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form. You can watch the trailer for The Lost Thing and read more about Shaun Tan on his interactive and visual website, http://www.shauntan.net/. You can also buy the film for just $2 on iTunes… I promise it’s a small purchase well worth it.

First, let’s start with some of your history. How has your life informed this specific story? Did you draw any events or characters straight from experience or is this all fantasy?

That’s a big question, as I imagine that so much of my life does go into this story, in both a conscious and subconscious way. To pick out some specific examples: as a child I was very much into collecting and labeling things, and from my teens to my twenties I was very introverted. In fact, I spent far too much of my youth in a room, drawing and writing! I also had bad posture (still do a bit), and many other features that you see in the main character of the film and original book. Part of the idea behind ‘The Lost Thing’ has to do with overcoming introversion, but it’s also based on memories of our family’s first cat, a stray that nobody wanted. We didn’t necessarily want a kid (well, secretly us kids did), but there really were no other options for this animal. The ‘feeding scene’ in the back shed reminds me of how we got this cat to like us, enough to not want to run away.

An interview with Dean Fleischer-Camp, director of Marcel the Shell with Shoes on

Marcel the Shell with Shoes on is about an eccentric “univalve mollusk shell with one eye and pink shoes (Wikipedia)” that walks us through a few aspects of his daily life in the form of “rough cut footage from an in-progress documentary (Wikipedia).”

The film had its official premiere at AFI Fest 2010, where it went on to win Best Animated Short. A few months later it played in competition at Sundance 2011.

You can find the film on the director’s official website here or on Youtube

where it has over 9 million views.

Director Dean Fleischer-Camp and the film’s writer / voice actor (/Dean's girlfriend) Jenny Slate are currently writing a "Marcel" themed children's book called Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Things About Me that will be released on November 1, 2011.

You can also find Dean at his Twitter. I also recommend following Jenny at her Twitter account.

1. What were some of your influences on this film, and/or what are some of your
favorite films in general?
Typically my favorite movies are movies that are funny but wouldn't be categorized as "comedies." Jonathan Demme, Aki Kaurismäki, Milos Forman, Jacques Tati, and Roy Andersson are some of my favorites. Hollywood these days is all about shoehorning this movie to be just like that (previously successful) movie, so it means there are a lot less comedies with real intelligence, integrity, heart, etc. The Coen Bros & Paul Thomas Anderson I think still manage to make really funny, meaningful films within the mainstream. I guess their movies aren't really considered hilarious by most people, but they are! e.g. There's a scene in Magnolia where William H. Macy accidentally drives his car really slowly into a 7-11 and I die laughing literally every time I watch it. Of course, other parts of that movie are so heavy intense they will make you crumple. The last time I watched it was in June and I got diarrhea.

Marcel was a little project Jenny & I made quickly and for fun, so dedicating too much serious thought to its INFLUENCES might be a mistake. That said, a few people have told me it *feels* sort of like a Nick Park film and that's an incredibly flattering comparison which I am obviously quick to accept and then bandy about on every blog that asks.