There's no reason you can't be playful and serious at the same time. Made last year as part of Futurestates series of short videos, Ramin Bahrani's Plastic Bag can now be watched for free online. This
This is the second part of a two-part interview. Part one can be found here. *** IGNATIY VISHNEVETSKY: In writings about your films, versimillitude tends to get emphasized. A "documentary" aspect
Ramin Bahrani speaks clearly and assertively. He knows what he wants; even more admirably, he seems to know exactly why he wants it. He can easily go on at length about a subject, but never lapses into
Sure, the idea that directors are always authors is a big ol' fallacy. What's true, though, is that, in the traditional system of commercial filmmaking, the director is presented with the greatest
Andrew Bujalski's one of the most distinctive directors of drama to emerge in the last decade. The elements that define his work are instantly recognizable: the abrupt starts and stops (those words seem
Maurice Schérer, born in either Tulle or Nancy, a former schoolteacher, a gaunt face with an odd lip. A notoriously private man who was in his late 40s before he found any sort of success, and then
Serge Daney once said that there were two types of filmmakers: those that believe that everything has already been filmed and they are only making variations on pre-existing ideas, and those that understand
Everything happens in the first ten minutes of Ali. All of cinema, as it now stands, could be represented in that medley—its editing is the history of editing, its images an overview of cinematography
Above: Abel Ferrara directs Bijou Phillips on the set of Chelsea on the Rocks. If you think of Chelsea on the Rocks, the new movie by Abel Ferrara, as an “informative documentary,” then it probably
If you're going to talk about cinema at present, even if you're not talking very thoroughly, it's inevitable that Yu Lik-wai's work, if not his name, will come up. If anyone's got answers about the present
At its weakest moments, A Single Man feels like an advertisement for some non-existent film also called A Single Man—a long, long trailer for a serious drama with literary origins. The images
Persecution may very well be Patrice Chéreau's most abrasive film. That's saying a lot. After the Cannes-ready provocations of Queen Margot, Chéreau directed Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, the