Interviews

When Russell Dreher set out to make his first full length film in 2006, he had no idea the roller coaster ride to completion would include unemployment, cancer, and drag queens. As the director of Slingbacks and Syrup, Dreher focused the story on the adventures of the documentary’s subjects, a “family” of comedic drag queens living in the rural state of Vermont.

From the bustling streets of Baghdad and the dreams of two Iraqi children -- a little boy who wants nothing more than a toy car and his teenage sister who desperately needs medicine -- come an unlikely Christmas story. Rich in the textural sounds, images, and characters of modern day Iraq, Raouf Zaki’s Santa Claus in Baghdad, a film shot in Massachusetts, tells a story that crosses ethnic and religious lines in a resounding message of hope and understanding.

If ever there were a prime example of what a person can do with a camera, the help of a few friends, and a lot of perseverance and determination, 28-year-old filmmaker Tze Chun is it. Over the past six years, he has steadily plotted and followed a career path that has enabled him to progress from an undergraduate student in film studies to an accomplished writer/director with nine feature-length screenplays, 12 short films -- and recently, his first feature -- under his belt. “Prolific” is one word that could be used to describe him. “Focused” is another.

Heath Eiden, director and co-producer of Dean and Me: Roadshow of an American Primary, loaded up his car and followed Vermont Governor Howard Dean on the campaign trail for the 2004 presidency. It was only patriotic, says Eiden. He laughs as he admits this, knowing that, especially lately, it’s a loaded word: a reality that attests to the timely release of his film. After six years of fulfilling his patriotic duty, from poring over footage to struggling to find the money to finish the piece, the documentary is finally complete.

In an era when the failings of our credit and mortgage system have led to an international crisis not seen since the Great Depression, the sunny Leave it to Beaver mythology of the post-WWII American family and its idyllic lifestyle seems but a distant dream. And yet the fantasy of the nuclear family happily dwelling in their suburban tract houses dominated the American cultural and psychic landscape for at least two generations. Cindy Kleine’s Phyllis and Harold is one of several early 21st century films to confront this mythology head on.

Viewers erupted in applause after a Saturday afternoon screening of Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  Alcott may be a local legend but so are her recent biographers, filmmakers Harriet Reisen and Nancy Porter, and this crowd showed their admiration.  Reisen and Porter took the stage and graciously thanked the audience for supporting a project that has been “simmering for a while.”  read more...

He’s been to more than 1,000 MLB games, 500 NHL games and 500 NBA games plus 35 Nascar races.  And he’s never once sat behind a post, in the nosebleed section or next to an obnoxious drunk with BO, cheering for the Yankees.  His name is Michael Porta and he is a camera operator/technician for remote television broadcasts.

Between SD, HD, HDV, cassettes, film, and hard drives, there are a myriad of creative options to be explored with today’s cameras.  Whether shooting for television on a Panasonic DVX100, teaching the finer points of Internet and community journalism with the Flip Mino, or grappling with the challenges of working with the RED camera, documentary producer George Kachadorian, Cambridge Community Television’s Colin Rhinesmith, and feature filmmaker Lorre Fritchy discuss the cameras they’ve put to the test. 

In New England, you can’t turn the corner without running into a member of Red Sox Nation.  They are a loyal bunch.  But they’ve got nothing on Hartford Whalers fans, according to filmmaker Kevin Massicotte.  “It’s more like the Rocky Horror Picture Show crowd.” 

Despite growing up as an avid fan of Ingmar Bergman, Richard Kane never considered film a career pursuit.  He was passionate about things as varied as theater, law, and politics, so he assumed those interests would lead him to law school.  It wasn’t until his sister got a job with a documentary film company in New York that he saw film as a viable plan.  Following a brief period as a journalist in San Diego, he began two years of graduate studies in film at Temple University. 

Two phrases lingered with me after my meeting with Lowell
filmmaker James Higgins. The first was “you have to have an obsession with
images” and the second was “it’s tricky to shoot a film with a still camera.” 
Indeed, the former and the latter collide in four short films that Higgins has
produced since 2006.  In a distinctive technique Higgins calls “stop motion,”
these shorts combine ethereal movement, light, and sound, with themes and stories
about gangs, abuse, addiction and alienation. 

Filmmakers with feature ambitions are urged to take note of
what many were told in film school, depending upon the caliber of the school,
often repetitively to ad nauseam: “The script is the most important aspect of
the project.”  

Marriage Makes a Word of Difference presents
testimony from six gay Connecticut couples in their struggle to convince
lawmakers and neighbors alike that providing gay couples with anything less than
the word "marriage" is precisely that: less than.  Compelled to use her video
camera as a tool for social justice, director Francine Rzeznik (that's "zhezhnik,"
folks) donated the majority of her time and resources to fast track the project
in less than 10 months to influence legislators ruling on "civil unions" vs.

“Could I get your full street address so I can just plug it
into my GPS?”   

Dingle and Dell sounds like the name of a comedy team from
the old Catskills circuit, but Carol Dingle and Diana Dell write screenplays
together.  Their screenplays are the latest collaboration in a friendship that
began during the Vietnam War when both worked for the USO.  Along the way, they
ran an ad agency together for a decade.  Their script, My Name Is Anna Busch,
was optioned recently by Lamont T. Cain and Reserve Entertainment Group.  They
are currently finishing their 10th screenplay.

AD Calvo will let you borrow a great scary story to tell
around the campfire this summer, and you’ll find it in his latest feature film,
The Other Side of The Tracks.  It’s the story of a man haunted by visions
after the tragic death of his girlfriend 10 years earlier.  His best friend
tries to help him move on, while a mysterious new woman captures his attention. 
 

Even her name sounds American Indian: Anne Makepeace,
evocative of the legendary and eloquent Peacemaker, founder of the Iroquois
Confederacy.  It certainly must have had immediate appeal to the selection
committee of the Guggenheim Foundation, which recently awarded her a grant in
support of their mandate to “the cause of better international understanding.” 
Their monies, along with support from the Sundance Documentary Fund and a
year-long Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, will allow Makepeace to focus on her

I asked Patrick Jerome, the director and founder of the Boston International
Film Festival (BIFF) and the writer/producer/director/editor of many music
videos and independent movies, what was the inspiration that set him down the
long and winding road to filmmaking. Jerome sat back in his chair and exhaled,
recalling his youth in Haiti. He couldn’t remember the name of the movie, he
said, but he was 12-years old and it starred Clint Eastwood.

Former Improper Bostonian and Boston Herald film critic
Paul Sherman has been keeping busy.  This month he releases
his
self-published Big Screen Boston: From Mystery Street to The
Departed and Beyond, an exhaustive compilation of 250
motion pictures shot in the city.

Kate Feiffer’s professional background ranges from serving
as associate producer of the PBS/Frontline Red Flag over Tibet, writing a
humor column for Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, to authoring children’s
books, including one in collaboration with her father, well-known illustrator
Jules Feiffer, among other projects.  Matzo & Mistletoe explores what it
means to be Jewish in America when you don’t practice the religion.  Feiffer
intertwines interviews with family, friends, and fellow Martha’s Vineyard

He may be reluctant to give himself a title, but Scott Masterson spearheaded and facilitated the distinctly structured, and distinctly Boston feature film, Twelve.  It’s composed of 12 segments shot in and named for the 12 months of the year.  The directors include Masterson (January), Seanbaker Carter (February), Andy McCarthy (March), Garth Donovan (April), Luke Poling (May), Noah Lydiard (June), Megan Summers (July), Brynmore Williams (August), Joan Meister (September), Marc Colucci (October), Jared Goodman read more...

In my view, complaints about a film misrepresenting the
source on which it is based miss the point.  Once a writer sells the material
and agrees to no longer be involved, the product is beyond his domain.  He might
as well sit back and enjoy the show, just like any other spectator. 

In 1970, Herschell Gordon Lewis released The Wizard of Gore, about a cabaret-style musician who cuts up women on stage as part of his act.  In the original, the women turn out to be fine. Then 24 hours later they die in the way they were killed on stage.  Kasten’s version takes place in a post-punk downtown LA, where the gruesome "illusions" of Montag the Magnificent prompt a journalist to take a closer look.  The film stars Crispin Glover, Kip Perdue, Jeffrey Combs, Bijou Phillips, Brad Dourif, and features read more...

The hidden legacy of Katrina Browne’s wealthy, influential, politically-connected Rhode Island DeWolf ancestors is that they were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.  This knowledge exploded into Browne’s life nine years ago when she discovered that from 1769 to 1820, the DeWolfs became wealthy by trafficking in human beings.   

The frozen ground is crackling under our feet and the raised beds are sleeping under a light blanket of snow as Patti Moreno shows me around her garden.  She lifts the plastic dome (actually a recycled skylight) on top of one of the beds and vibrant green leaves greet the eye.  “We had some greens from here last night,” she says casually, as if everyone’s lawn contains such a treasure during the winter in New England.  The area we are standing in is on the side of Moreno’s house in the city of Boston.  It contains four raised read more...

Since 1999, Filmmakers from all over the world have sent
their films to the small Boston neighborhood of Roxbury to be shown in what has
become the largest film festival in New England to showcase films by or about
people of color.  

Johannes Wiebus was raised in Munich, Germany, before moving to London and then to New York City in 2000.  After living in “The City” as he calls it, for five years, he and his wife Kathleen O’Heron decided that it was time to pick up stakes and make a “little bit of a life change.”   She was an editor and he was a producer, so they decided to try working together.  Realizing that living in the city would limit their editing space, and despite adoration for NYC, they surmised that it wasn’t sensible to start a production read more...

Jami Brandli is a storyteller.  She launches into the tale of trekking with her husband and writing partner Brian Polak from the East Coast to the West, and from the classroom to the writers’ room, without missing a beat.  

The Axe in the Attic opens six months after Katrina hit and the levees breached and flooded New Orleans.  During their 60-day road trip down South, New England filmmakers Lucia Small and Ed Pincus interviewed evacuees living in FEMA trailers or with relatives in new cities.  No talking heads or experts appear in the film.  Each survivor simply looks at the camera and talks plainly about their losses.