Future Unknown: A Conversation with Brett Story

Photo courtesy of Grasshopper Film 

By Lindsay Brayton

Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. The Hottest August is her third documentary feature and screens exclusively at BAM Nov 15—27.

Meet the Projection Team That Keeps BAMcinemaFest Rolling

Mike Katz, Head Projectionist

By Sam Polcer

The film festival The New Yorker called “The city’s best independent showcase” is in full swing, which makes Mike Katz, who has been the Head Projectionist here at BAM since the cinemas opened in 1998, along with Jesse Green, our Cinema Technical Manager, currently two of the busiest men in show business. We thought we’d make their day even more complicated by sneaking into their submarine-like lair to ask them a couple questions about the unique challenges posed by such a unique cinema experience. (You’re welcome, guys.)

BAMcinemaFest 2018

Madeline’s Madeline. Photo courtesy of Visit Films.

June 2018 sees the 10th edition of BAMcinemaFest, an essential selection of new American independent cinema from emerging and established filmmakers. The annual festival, which originally began as a partnership with the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, has blossomed into a force of its own, with critics describing it as “the best barometer of the climate of independent filmmaking in America” (The Village Voice).

Remembering Robin Holland

Robin Holland. Photo courtesy the artist.

BAMcinemaFest pays tribute to photographer Robin Holland, who passed away early in 2018. Holland was a prolific and respected portrait photographer whose subjects included American and international independent filmmakers, award-winning actors, musicians and composers, dancers, artists, and more. Her work was featured on the Sundance Channel and at George Eastman House, MoMA PS1, the Berlin Film Festival, and New York Film Festival. From 2013 to 2017, Holland donated her time and incredible talent to BAM as the official portrait photographer for BAMcinemaFest. View her work at BAMcinemaFest, below.

Portraits and Process: BAMcinemaFest 2017

The 9th annual BAMcinemaFest kicks off tonight with the New York premiere of Aaron Katz's Gemini in the BAM Harvey Theater at 7:30pm. Earlier this season, BAM had the pleasure of partnering with photographer Robin Holland to create a series of portraits depicting this year's filmmakers. During the shoot, we asked each director a series of short questions about process, inspiration and this year's festival. Their answers follow:

Photo © Robin Holland

Lauren Wolkstein & Christopher Radcliff

The Strange Ones

1. Describe your film in three words:

Lauren: Atmospheric road mystery.

Chris: Sad-boy-secrets.

2. What movie(s) made you want to become a filmmaker?
L: Blue Velvet is one of many for me.

C: I honestly don't remember.

3. What film(s) are you looking forward to seeing at this year's festival?

L: A Ghost Story.

C: Golden Exits. Also we both really want to see I Am Another You for a second time.

2017 BAMcinemaFest

Marjorie Prime. Photo: FilmRise

By Maureen Masters

In just nine years, BAMcinemaFest has established itself as a leading American independent film festival. With an annual slate of around 30 New York premieres of features, documentaries, and shorts, plus special events like the 25th anniversary of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 2014, and 2015’s 20th anniversary cast reunion of Larry Clark’s Kids, the festival provides an invaluable platform for emerging artists and holds an important place in the Brooklyn film community, making it an ideal hometown premiere spot for New York and Brooklyn-based filmmakers. Plus, films don’t get lost in the shuffle at BAMcinemaFest with the tightly curated selection screening only at two venues on the BAM campus (the BAM Rose Cinemas and the Harvey Theater) during the 12-day festival, from June 14 to 25.

BAMcinématek’s Best of 2015

Once again, the BAMcinématek staff indulges in its annual bout of list-making. And there's much to love: 2015 was an embarrassment of riches, both in the wealth of stellar new releases (several of which played on our screens) and the city's endless font of repertory discoveries. Here's the cream of our crop:

OUT 1: Noli me Tangere, Jacques Rivette

About Last Night: Kids 20th Anniversary at BAMcinemaFest

Chloë Sevigny, Leo Fitzpatrick, Rosario Dawson, Larry Clark, and Harmony Korine. Photo: © GODLIS

Last night, members of the cast and crew of Larry Clark's controversial film Kids reunited at BAM for a special 20th Anniversary screening, part of BAMcinemaFest 2015. It was the first time in over fifteen years that Clark, writer Harmony Korine, and actors Chloë Sevigny, Rosario Dawson, and Leo Fitzpatrick, as well as many other former "kids" who appeared in the film, were in the same room together, and the first time in a while that they—and much of the audience—had watched the raw, vérité portrait of urban adolescence.

Following the screening, which featured Clark's absolutely pristine personal 35mm print of the film, critic Eric Hynes (Rolling Stone, The New York Times) led a Q&A with Clark, Korine, Sevigny, Dawson, Fitzpatrick, producer Cary Woods, and distribution executive Eamonn Bowles. Here are some excerpts from their conversation:

2015 BAMcinemaFest—Note from the Curators

The End of the Tour. Photo: A24 Films

This year marks the seventh annual BAMcinemaFest as well as the second year with our current programming team. We were so proud of last year’s festival: Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, our opening night film, went all the way to the Oscars, and The Village Voice and am New York named BAMcinemaFest the Best Film Festival in New York—a huge honor in a landscape of some of the most prestigious festivals in the country. After six months of work on our seventh edition, we’re thrilled to finally share our slate of over 35 premieres, repertory rediscoveries, and special events that encompass some of the most thematically and formally daring work in contemporary American independent cinema.

For the first time ever, we have a BAMcinemaFest alumnus kicking off the festival—on June 17 in the Howard Gilman Opera House, James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now, 2013) returns for the New York premiere of The End of the Tour, a moving elegy to late literary master David Foster Wallace. Showing a returning filmmaker’s work on opening night is an exciting milestone and a testament to the festival’s growth alongside the artists we have championed. We’re pleased to have four more BAMcinemaFest alumni represented in the 2015 main slate, including Todd Rohal (The Catechism Cataclysm, 2011), Jem Cohen (Museum Hours, 2013), Sebastián Silva (Crystal Fairy, 2013), and Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel, 2011), the director of this year’s centerpiece, Queen of Earth.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Joe Callander (Life After Death)

"As impossible to pin down as it is to stop talking about" (Moving Image Source), BAMcinemaFest alum Joe Callander's debut feature Life After Death charts the life of a directionless young Rwandan receiving aid from a charity-minded Christian couple in the US. Lacing this powerful depiction of life in Rwanda post-genocide with touches of wry comedy, Callander delivers one of the most unique and unexpected documentaries of the year. He spoke with us about his inspirations and the audacious and complicated tone of the film.

What films have served as inspiration in your work?

When I first started to really focus on making questionable life choices in pursuing documentary filmmaking back in 2008, I happened to see Jennifer Venditti's Billy the Kid. That film served as a kind of blazing beacon on a distant but not unreachable hill. It's a wonderful portrait of a character at the margins of society, which is the type of story I was trying to tell at the time. You need those films that get you thinking, "There is an audience for the type of film I want to make. I can do this. It's possible." Also, the Fishing With John TV series that aired on HBO back in the 90s affirmed for me that it's O.K. to get a little strange with documentary storytelling.

Beyond that, Burden of Dreams, American Movie, the films of Werner Herzog, and the word-movies of Mark Twain have inspired me immensely.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (L for Leisure)

Filmmaking duo Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn's second narrative feature follows a group of friends as they jet-set from one international locale to another on various breaks from grad school. Set in the early '90s and shot on 16mm film, L for Leisure is a throwback celebration of vacation at its laziest and sunniest. We checked in with Lev and Whitney to learn more about the four-year process of making the film, its incredible original soundtrack (released on cassette, in true '90s form), and their own vacations.

What are some creative and logistical challenges you faced while working on L for Leisure?

In planning L for Leisure we tried to design a film that would take advantage of our extremely limited means. We knew it would take a very long time to make, and we knew working with friends and lots of non-actors meant that we couldn’t expect everyone to make it to every shoot—let alone keep their haircuts consistent for years. Locations fell through, new ones (like Iceland) suddenly became parts of the film. L for Leisure almost describes the shape of all the surprises and setbacks we ran into. And it’s cool. We couldn’t have possibly planned for the movie to develop the way it did.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Jason Giamprieto (Whiffed Out)

by Nathan Gelgud

Jason Giampietro and I are old pals: we met over a decade ago through a mutual friend, and we hit it off when we started talking about filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder because he had a VHS of In a Year of 13 Moons on his coffee table. We stayed friends through a shared love of movies and the New York Knicks.

This is the second year in a row that BAMcinemaFest has featured a short by Giampietro. Last year we screened The Sun Thief, in which I had a very small part. (Watch it here.) Whiffed Out is a funny short movie about a guy who gets stuck watching a bike for his neighbor, who never returns to take it off his hands. Giampietro follows the bike as it changes hands and a small group of East Village eccentrics clash over its true ownership. It’s a great snapshot of a downtown New York summer and the few people left over from the bygone era of the neighborhood’s edgy glory.

I interviewed Giampietro through an on-line chat. After telling me a funny story about having seen Knicks owner James Dolan leaving Lincoln Center the night before (Giampietro shouted at him to do fans a favor and sell the team), we talked about his new short, other good bike movies, and Warren Oates.

Nathan Gelgud: For the purposes of this chat, I was thinking about other bike movies. And of course the big one, Bicycle Thief.

Jason Giampietro: Yes, there was also the Dardenne brothers movie, The Kid with a Bike. And Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Three Times. The first shot in that is a long shot of a guy riding a bike. What other bike movies are there?

NG: It’s not really a bike movie, but there's Mars Blackmon in She's Gotta Have It.

JG: Yeah, he appears with the bike in Nora Darling’s apartment, and I was thinking about that—if she would have been worried that his bike would be filthy. I think that’s my favorite Spike movie because it's got an openness to all the characters. Except maybe the actor guy.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Tony Gerber (The Notorious Mr. Bout)

To US law enforcers, Viktor Bout is an arms smuggler with intent to harm US military personnel. To his family and friends, he is a hard-working businessman trying to provide for his family in post-Communist Russia. To movie audiences worldwide, he is the rumored real-life inspiration for Nicholas Cage's character in Lord of War. To skeptics, he is the scapegoat of an overzealous, over-reaching fight against terrorism in the post-911 United States.

To present these complicated and contradictory viewpoints, directors Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin sorted through hundreds of hours of home videos that Viktor Bout enthusiastically shot throughout his peripatetic life, and intercut them with interviews conducted with journalists, attorneys, and investigators to make the documentary The Notorious Mr. Bout, which has its New York premiere at BAMcinemaFest this Wednesday. We spoke to Tony Gerber about the film and the festival.        

What films have served as inspiration in your work?

Carol Reed's The Third Man and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Young Jean Lee (Here Come the Girls)

The New York Times has dubbed her “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation.” Of course, that was before she recorded an album of original songs (with guest appearances by Laurie Anderson, Kathleen Hanna, and David Byrne) or started in on what seems to be the first of a few film experiments. Award-winning playwright Young Jean Lee is bringing her short Here Come the Girls to BAM Rose Cinemas this Monday, and we caught up with her after a European tour to talk about it.

You've said that you start a play by asking, "What's the last thing in the world I'd ever want to make?" Does the same apply to your non-theater work?

Not really, although the two films I've made so far both play around with the idea of doing things "wrong" in a way that is similar to my theater work. Here Come the Girls was commissioned by the performance group Findlay/Sandsmark as part of their project, "biograph- last year was pretty//shitty." Joe was the star of their show, so I wrote a script in which I was making a documentary about him without regard for any kind of filmmaker boundaries or decency. My second short, A Meaning Full Life, was written by a 15-year-old high school kid from the Bronx. His teacher, a friend of mine, sent me the script and I immediately fell in love with it because it was so over-the-top in its earnestness. As it was written to be a play, it was extremely uncinematic, in addition to being full of grammatical mistakes, and we shot and edited it to make it even less cinematic, without fixing or changing anything in the text, and trying to keep all the emotional honesty. The result is pretty riveting so far (we're in the middle of editing it).

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Amanda Rose Wilder (Approaching the Elephant)

Filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder’s first feature is already drawing comparisons with Truffaut’s Wild Child for its shimmering black-and-white images and raw portrayal of kid culture. A documentary seven years in the making about the Teddy McArdle Free School in New Jersey, Approaching the Elephant has launched both Wilder’s career and her relationship with one of the film’s main characters, Alex Khost. We talked a bit about both.

What films have served as inspiration for your work?

The Dardennes' Le Fils. All Maysles and Wiseman films. Babenco’s Pixote.

BAMcinemaFest 2014: Q&A with Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan (For the Plasma)

Grafting sci-fi mystique and lo-fi melancholia into one surprisingly intimate drama is no mean feat. But filmmakers Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan have done just that, creating a gorgeously shot 16mm feature that’s getting its world premiere at BAMcinemaFest. We chatted briefly with the directors of For the Plasma to get a glimpse at their process.

For the Plasma. Courtesy the filmmakers

What films have served as inspiration in your work?

Bingham Bryant: Innumerable inspirations, but three models: Raúl Ruiz’s The Territory, Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Charisma, and Ermanno Olmi’s The Scavengers. Very different films that have their individual significance to us, but all ones that move modernism out of the cities and into settings usually monopolized by naturalism.

Kyle Molzan: I think of Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse, Raúl Ruiz's The Territory, and Susumu Hani's A Tale of Africa. The ambiance of the conspiracy plot was definitely indebted to Ruiz's movie. In terms of framing and color we were indebted to Nestor Almendros, and Eric Rohmer's patient explanations felt right as well. A Tale of Africa is a film built out of the accumulation of beautiful things, and I think Tom Lloyd’s role in our film has some similarities to Jimmy Stewart’s in Hani's film.

BAMcinemaFest: Q&A with Ignatiy Vishnevetsky (Ellie Lumme)

Described by director-editor-cinematographer Ignatiy Vishnevetsky as a "supernatural genre piece with all the supernatural parts removed," the 40-minute mind-bender Ellie Lumme follows its twentysomething heroine as she struggles to fend off the advances of an overbearing man. Made on a shoestring budget, the film announces Russian-born Chicago resident Vishnevetsky—who, at the age of 24, was the youngest host on Roger Ebert Presents At The Movies—as a bold new voice in independent cinema.

Ellie Lumme. Courtesy the filmmaker

What films have served as inspiration in your work?

Going in, I thought of Ellie Lumme as a ‘30s movie in digital drag. That certainly informed the blocking and the camera movements. Our main lens—the “Frankenstein”—had a cheap adapter screwed on the front to create a softer image with more aberrations and an oilier texture. The movie I thought of the most was a Pre-Code flick called Her Man, directed by Tay Garnett in 1930. It stars Helen Twelvetrees as a Havana bar girl (read: hooker) who wants to escape her knife-throwing pimp and run off with a sailor. Garnett isn’t a big name nowadays (he’s best known for directing the 1946 version of The Postman Always Rings Twice), but he does some really striking stuff with off-screen action and choreographed camera movements in Her Man. Plus, it’s got a great sense of gauzy, scuzzy atmosphere.

BAMcinemaFest: Q&A with Tim Sutton (Memphis)

BAMcinemaFest alum and Brooklyn resident Tim Sutton returns to the festival with a stunning portrait of Memphis and its mythology, developed through the Venice Biennale Cinema College lab program. Starring the underground singer-songwriter Willis Earl Beal in a role with semi-autobiographical elements, Memphis showcases Sutton’s unique visual style and immersive approach to filmmaking. We were thrilled to speak with him again about his work.

What drew you to choosing Memphis as the heart of your film?

To me, Memphis is a place quite literally on the edge of the world, the creator and possessor of its own myth and folklore. It is both extremely rich and stunningly poor, both cursed and blessed—with the history of many kings but, at the same time, has grass growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk on the edge of town. The place is named for an ancient Egyptian city and remains, today, both ghost town and vortex of spirituality and creativity. That's what I wanted to ruminate on and further illustrate—to explore a place that feels like a forgotten Eden, not some tourist’s idea of blues, but real blues. I think in many ways it takes someone from the outside to know how to do that. A fresh eye. Not a stranger's take on it, but a humble observation of all the glory and loneliness that the city has acquired over all these years.

The Road to BAMcinemaFest: A Conversation with the Curators

With the sixth annual BAMcinemaFest ready to launch tomorrow, we sat down with the team behind this year's program to discuss the changing face of the festival, the landscape of American independent cinema, and Brooklyn as a destination for filmgoers.

Participants: Gabriele Caroti (Director of BAMcinématek), Nellie Killian and David Reilly (Programmers), Ryan Werner (Programmer at Large)

How do you think the landscape of independent film has changed since BAMcinemaFest began in 2009?

Gabriele: I think the change has less to do with the films being made than with the state of exhibition. Six years doesn’t feel like a long time, but the rise of streaming has had a huge influence on the way people experience cinema.

David: It makes the experience of seeing a film premiere on the big screen, in a sold out house, feel even more unique and valuable. For so many films that end up with a VOD-only release, there is very little opportunity for audiences to see them on the big screen, the way they were meant to be seen. We’re excited to have so many films in the festival that don’t yet have distribution or may go the non-theatrical route, as this may be New Yorkers' only opportunity to see them in a theatrical setting.

Ryan: Because the cost of production is so much lower now, the independent film landscape can be kind of a mixed bag because you get so many movies being made, including a lot of movies that aren’t very good. But now people can also make very personal films without feeling they have to appeal to a wide audience.

Nellie: It's not only cheaper to make a film, but also because of the Internet, filmmakers can make something with full confidence that at least some people will see it, without fear that there won't be anybody there to unspool the reels. The means exist to get the film out there, it’s just about cultivating an audience.

BAMcinemaFest Brooklyn Map

by Andrew Chan

We've finally arrived at the closing night of the fifth annual BAMcinemaFest, so it seems like a perfect time to express how proud we are to have showcased such a diverse array of Brooklyn talent and to have been hailed by The L Magazine as a "hometown festival." So many of the filmmakers who were a part of our line-up this year have called BAM their favorite local movie theater and have packed our festival screenings with family, friends, and collaborators. While a handful of films took place in various locations in Brooklyn (It Felt Like Love and Mother of George among them), we've mapped out where these local filmmakers call home to give you a visual representation of the exciting creative community residing in our borough.

Hover over the map below and click on the white dots for Q&As with the different Brooklyn filmmakers.

AFTER TILLER
Directors Lana Wilson & Martha Shane
Lana lives in Ditmas Park

AFTER TILLER
Directors Lana Wilson & Martha Shane
Martha lives in Prospect Heights

MOTHER OF GEORGE
Director Andrew Dosunmu
Lives in Downtown Brooklyn

CRYSTAL FAIRY
Director Sebastien Silva
Lives in Fort Greene

WHITE REINDEER
Director Zach Clark
Lives in Greenpoint

WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL
Director Ben Nabors
Lives in Greenpoint

NEWLYWEEDS
Director Shaka King
Lives in Bed Stuy/Bushwick

NORTHERN LIGHT
Director Nick Bentgen
and Producer Lisa Kjerulff
Live in Crown Heights

THESE BIRDS WALK
Director Omar Mullick
Lives in Fort Greene
(co-director Bassam Tariq lives in Queens)

IT FELT LIKE LOVE
Director Eliza Hittman
Lives in Gravesend

REMOTE AREA MEDICAL
Directors Jeff Reichert & Farihah Zaman
Live in Park Slope