The Director Interviews

WERNER HERZOG, BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

2009-11-18T09:52:00.001-05:00

Forty-plus years into a still-vital, ever-proliferating filmmaking career, Werner Herzog has aged gracefully into the role of the sage adventurer, still fearlessly exploring the terrain between documentary and fiction as well as the vanishing point between charismatic eccentricity and full-blown psychosis. Born in Munich, raised in the Bavarian Alps, and lumped early on with other avatars of the New German Cinema, Herzog has ceaselessly chronicled the obsessions of dreamers and renegades both real (God’s Angry Man) and imagined (Stroszek, The Wild Blue Yonder), as well as social outcasts whose quest for ecstatic truth leads to madness, self-destruction, or sometimes, in the case of Grizzly Man’s Timothy Treadwell, both. There are those who...

DAVID SIEGEL AND SCOTT MCGEHEE, UNCERTAINTY

2009-11-11T12:01:00.008-05:00

If one had only a single adjective with which to describe the body of work that directing team David Siegel and Scott McGehee have crafted over the past decade and a half, cerebral immediately jumps to mind. Since their debut film Suture (1993), an austere, black and white thriller starring Dennis Haysbert that took Toronto and Sundance by storm, they have often found it difficult to get their peculiar brand of thoughtful, idea driven filmmaking off the ground. Even if it was far from experimental hijinks of a Hollis Frampton or Kenneth Anger, the fact that the original Suture VHS and DVD boxes from MGM were packaged as "Avant-Garde Cinema" surely didn't help the film find the audience it should have. After The Deep End (2001), a...

CHRIS SMITH, COLLAPSE

2009-11-04T12:14:00.003-05:00

Ex-LAPD Detective, investigative journalist, 9/11 truther, foreteller of the coming apocalypse --- these are just some of the roles Michael C. Ruppert has inhabited in his fascinating life, one that versatile filmmaker Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) has chosen to examine in his newest film Collapse. It is a return to documentary films for Smith, who has oscillated between disparate narrative and documentary work with a rare deftness. His most recent film The Pool (2007), a naturalistic narrative which Smith photographed himself, tracks a rural teenager working in a Panjim hotel to support his family who becomes obsessed with a swimming pool in the opulent Goan hills and the mysterious family who owns it. His newest picture...

TI WEST, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL

2009-10-30T12:16:00.000-04:00

As a genre that's all about keeping the audience on its toes, the horror movie naturally needs a regular injection of fresh talent, and writer-director Ti West is the latest to give it a shot in the arm. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1980, West spent his adolescence watching as many movies as he could catch on TV or rent from his local video store. Though he made stop motion movies with his G.I. Joe action figures, he didn't give much serious thought to filmmaking until he decided to make a short film to indicate to colleges that he had more to offer than his grades suggested. He ended up at New York's School of the Visual Arts studying film production and was introduced by one of his professors, director Kelly Reichardt, to low budget...

PETER GREENAWAY, REMBRANDT'S J'ACCUSE

2009-10-21T12:12:00.000-04:00

It is not uncommon to describe filmmakers as “true artists,” however in the case of Peter Greenaway it is literally the case that he brings an artist's sensibility to work on the big screen. Born in Newport, Wales, in 1942, Greenaway grew up in London and studied to be a painter at the city's Walthamstow College of Art. In the late 60s, Greenaway began to explore his fascination with cinema, embarking on a series of documentary short films which he continued throughout the 1970s that set out to capture the peculiarities of the world (or the world from a peculiar standpoint). He made his feature debut in 1980 with the faux-documentary The Falls, about the victims of an unspecified disaster, but first made an impact with The Draughtsman's...

SEBASTIAN SILVA, THE MAID

2009-10-16T12:37:00.001-04:00

CATALINA SAAVEDRA IN DIRECTOR SEBASTIAN SILVA'S THE MAID. COURTESY ELEPHANT EYE FILMS. Sebastián Silva could seemingly make a career out of a variety of creative pursuits, however at the moment it is on filmmaking that he is focusing all his attention. Silva was born in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in 1979, and grew up attending a Catholic school in the city. Though from a young age it was clear that he had a talent for art, after finishing high school he went to study film at the Escuela de Cine in Santiago. After a year, however, he quit to move to Montreal to learn animation. Since then, Silva has been constantly busy with a range of projects. He had a gallery show of his drawings while working as a shoe salesman, and later another...

NICOLAS WINDING REFN, BRONSON

2009-10-09T18:32:00.001-04:00

TOM HARDY AS THE EPONYMOUS LEAD IN WRITER_DIRECTOR NICOLAS WINDING REFN'S BRONSON. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. At a time when Danish cinema boasts a large number of first rate directors, Nicolas Winding Refn stands out among his peers for his raw talent and ambition. The son of filmmaker Anders Refn, Refn was born in Copenhagen in 1970 but spent much of his teenage years living in New York, which had a great impact on his cinematic sensibility. He started film school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but was expelled for throwing a desk at a wall, one of a number of incidents that got him the nickname “Enfant Sauvage,” or “wild child.” He was accepted by the Danish Film School but dropped out before his studies had even begun....

ANTONIO CAMPOS, AFTERSCHOOL

2009-10-02T22:16:00.001-04:00

EZRA MILLER IN WRITER-DIRECTOR ANTONIO CAMPOS' AFTERSCHOOL. COURTESY IFC FILMS. To call Antonio Campos a precocious talent would be to understate his abilities. Amazingly, the 26-year-old writer director, a native of New York City, has already spent half of his young life making films. Campos directed his debut short, Puberty (1997), at the age of 13 as part of a New York Film Academy program, and over the course of his teens made numerous shorts – both fiction and documentary – including First Kiss (2001), Pandora (2002) and Who's Your Daddy? (2004). At 21, he had his short film Buy It Now (2005) play at the Cannes Film Festival Cinefondation (where it won the top prize), and in the process established a longstanding relationship with...

MICHAEL ALMEREYDA, PARADISE

2009-09-24T08:01:00.003-04:00

A STILL FROM DIRECTOR MICHAEL ALMEREYDA'S PARADISE. COURTESY POST FACTORY FILMS. As he himself puts it, writer-director Michael Almereyda loves to make movies like a fighter likes to brawl, and over the course of his directorial career he has sought out an intriguing variety of creative challenges. Born in 1959 in Overland Park, Kansas, Almereyda spent his formative years in the Los Angeles area, where he discovered cinema and became a voracious moviegoer. Almereyda attended Harvard as an art history student, but dropped out in order to pursue his film career. He made his debut with the short film A Hero of Our Time (1985), and in 1989 directed his first feature Twister, a rural comedy about an oddball family in Kansas. Another Girl...

BOB BYINGTON, HARMONY AND ME

2009-09-18T17:05:00.001-04:00

JUSTIN RICE IN WRITER-DIRECTOR BOB BYINGTON'S HARMONY AND ME. COURTESY HARMONY AND ME, LLC. From Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez to Bryan Poyser and the Zellner brothers, Austin is a hotbed of gifted directors, and Bob Byington now emerges from there as another talent to be reckoned with. A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Byington studied at UC-Santa Cruz before going to graduate school at the University of Texas, where he used his American Studies major to indulge his newfound love for the movies. In 1995, he cut his teeth as a production assistant on the indie hit The Last Supper, and the next year wrote and directed his feature debut Shameless, about an Austin-set, Generation X love triangle. His next film, Olympia, the story of a...

JOE BERLINGER, CRUDE

2009-09-09T17:18:00.002-04:00

A STILL FROM DIRECTOR JOE BERLINGER'S CRUDE. COURTESY FIRST RUN FEATURES. Joe Berlinger is a filmmaker who makes documentaries that tell important stories with integrity, while still always entertaining his audiences. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1961, Berlinger studied English and German at Colgate University, and got his first taste of the movie business while working on TV commercials at an advertising agency in Frankfurt. After deciding he wanted to make films, he moved to New York City, where he got a job working for the Maysles brothers. Berlinger’s first foray into directing was the documentary short Outrageous Taxi Stories (1989), and he made his feature debut in 1992 with Brother’s Keeper, a non-fiction film about a man...

ALEXIS DOS SANTOS, UNMADE BEDS

2009-09-02T11:27:00.001-04:00

FERNANDO TIELVE AND DÉBORAH FRANÇOIS IN WRITER-DIRECTOR ALEXIS DOS SANTOS' UNMADE BEDS. COURTESY IFC FILMS. If there's a restlessness to the filmmaking of Alexis Dos Santos, you only have to look at the background of the young Argentinian writer-director to understand why. Born in Buenos Aires, Dos Santos relocated with his family to a small village in Patagonia when he was eight. He returned to the capital city to study Architecture at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, then moved on to study acting, and finally settled on filmmaking as his vocation. After completing his undergraduate studies at the Universidad del Cine, he moved to Barcelona for a screenwriting course, and then on to London, where he studied under Stephen Frears in the...

ROBERT SIEGEL, BIG FAN

2009-08-28T17:14:00.001-04:00

PATTON OSWALT IN WRITER-DIRECTOR ROBERT SIEGEL'S BIG FAN. COURTESY FIRST INDEPENDENT PICTURES. For someone who says his main creative motivation is boredom, Robert Siegel has done rather well for himself. Born and raised in the Long Island town of Merrick, Siegel graduated from the University of Michigan 1993 with a B.A. in History, after which he followed his then-girlfriend to Madison, Wisconsin, where she was studying for a PhD. In addition to working for the local newspaper and volunteering at Madison's public radio station, Siegel started writing for a small satirical rag that was given away free in the town's coffee shops, The Onion. In 1996, he became editor-in-chief and began masterminding a major expansion of the paper, putting...

LUCRECIA MARTEL, THE HEADLESS WOMAN

2009-08-19T10:23:00.002-04:00

MARÍA ONETTO IN DIRECTOR LUCRECIA MARTEL'S THE HEADLESS WOMAN. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING. Over the course of the past decade, Lucrecia Martel has established herself as one of the most gifted and original filmmakers around. The Argentine auteur was born in Salta, a city in the northwest of Argentina, in 1966, and spent her teenage years capturing much of her family's daily life on film. In 1986, she studied Communication Science and had stints at two film schools, Avellaneda Experimental, studying animation, and the National Experimentation Filmmaking School in Buenos Aires. However because she never finished her film studies (one of those schools shut down due to lack of funds), she ultimately completed her cinematic education on her...

ROBERT STONE, EARTH DAYS

2009-08-14T10:25:00.001-04:00

1970S ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVISTS IN DIRECTOR ROBERT STONE'S EARTH DAYS. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. Robert Stone may not be the most famous documentarian, but he is one of the most accomplished and important non-fiction directors working today. The son of eminent British historian Lawrence Stone, Stone was born in England in 1958, but grew up in both the U.S. and Europe after his father left Oxford University to teach at Princeton in 1960. Stone studied history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1980, and thereafter spent seven years turning the subject of his thesis project, the U.S. nuclear tests on the island of Bikini, into the documentary Radio Bikini (1987). The film was Oscar nominated for Best Documentary Feature,...

ANDREW BUJALSKI, BEESWAX

2009-08-07T22:14:00.001-04:00

MAGGIE HATCHER, TILLY HATCHER AND ALEX KARPOVSKY IN WRITER-DIRECTOR ANDREW BUJALSKI'S BEESWAX. COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Every film movement has its (sometimes reluctant) leader or trendsetter, and in the case of mumblecore, that person is Andrew Bujalski. The soft-spoken writer-director and sometime actor was born in 1977 in Boston, where both his parents worked in business. His mother had previously been an artist, and Bujalski seemed to inherit her more creative inclinations, which lead him to study film at Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. Bujalski was particularly fortunate to have the legendary Belgian filmmaker Chantal Ackerman as his thesis adviser, who helped him find the lead actress for his thesis film,...

JEAN-PIERRE AND LUC DARDENNE, LORNA'S SILENCE

2009-07-31T15:17:00.001-04:00

ARTA DOBROSHI IN LUC AND JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE'S LORNA'S SILENCE. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. From Auguste and Louis Lumière onwards, filmmaking partnerships with last names like Coen, Duplass, Hughes, Maysles, Polish, Quay, Wachowski, Taviani, Zellner and Zucker – just to name a few – have been proving that siblings and cinema go well together, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are certainly no exceptions. The Belgian filmmakers, born in Liège in 1951 and 1954 respectively, have been making films as a duo since 1975, when they formed the production company Dérives. After a decade of making documentaries, they shifted to doc-style fiction filmmaking with Falsch (1986), but it was not until La Promesse, about a slum landlord, his son...

ARMANDO IANNUCCI, IN THE LOOP

2009-07-24T15:16:00.001-04:00

PETER CAPALDI AND JAMES GANDOLFINI IN DIRECTOR ARMANDO IANNUCCI'S IN THE LOOP. COURTESY IFC FILMS. Scottish writer-director Armando Iannucci has made a slow and steady progression toward becoming a film director. The Glasgow-born Italian Scot originally was planning to become a priest (like Martin Scorsese) but the lure of the entertainment world won out over the less glamorous prospect of a life of piety and celibacy. Iannucci attended the University of Glasgow then studied English at Oxford University, where he discovered his passion for comedy. He next got a job as a radio producer on comedy shows for the BBC, and by the early 90s he was working on the iconic sketch show Week Ending and had created both the edgy faux newscast On the...

EILEEN YAGHOOBIAN, DIED YOUNG, STAYED PRETTY

2009-07-17T15:54:00.001-04:00

POSTER ARTIST ROB JONES IN DIRECTOR EILEEN YAGHOOBIAN'S DIED YOUNG, STAYED PRETTY. COURTESY NOROTOMO PRODUCTIONS INC. Eileen Yaghoobian, as she puts it, loves making pictures, and over the years, the Iranian-born, Canadian-based artist and filmmaker has put her energies into doing that in a number of different ways. She first discovered her creative impulse as a fresh-faced teenager when she saw Antonioni's Blow Up and was inspired to take up photography. She then earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where she gained experience in filmmaking, 3D animation and theatre as well as photography. For many years, she was best known for her photography, particularly her grid pieces which composited thematically...

FERNANDO EIMBCKE, LAKE TAHOE

2009-07-10T20:41:00.001-04:00

DIEGO CATAÑO IN DIRECTOR FERNANDO EIMBCKE'S LAKE TAHOE. COURTESY FILM MOVEMENT. You only have to look at the work of a director like Fernando Eimbcke to see that there is a lot more to get excited about in Mexican cinema than just the so-called “Three Amigos,” Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu & Alfonso Cuarón. Born in Mexico City in 1970, Eimbcke studied film direction at the University Centre of Cinematographic Studies at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). During his time there, he made a handful of shorts, including the fiction films Sorry for the Inconvenience and Excuse Me? (both 1994) and two non-fiction titles, Reaching a Star (1993) and Not everything is Permanent (1996), the latter of which was...

AGNÈS VARDA, THE BEACHES OF AGNES

2009-07-01T15:13:00.004-04:00

DIRECTOR AGNÈS VARDA IN HER DOCUMENTARY THE BEACHES OF AGNES. COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. A member of the Nouvelle Vague as well as the Rive Gauche, iconic filmmaker Agnès Varda has built a 50-year career on her refusal to repeat herself or to be pigeon-holed. Born in 1928 of Greek and French parents in Brussels, Belgium, Varda was an Art History student at the Ecole de Louvre before becoming the official photographer for the prestigious Parisian theatre company Théâtre National Populaire. In 1954, she transitioned from photography into cinema with her first feature, La Pointe-courte, which placed Faulkner’s The Wild Palms in the context of a French fishing village, and consciously blurred the line between documentary and fiction. Varda...

HAVANA MARKING, AFGHAN STAR

2009-06-26T15:12:00.001-04:00

TALENT SHOW CONTESTANT LIMA SAHAR IN DIRECTOR HAVANA MARKING'S AFGHAN STAR. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. Following in the footsteps of such filmmakers as James Marsh (Man on Wire), Stephen Walker (Young@Heart) and Parvez Sharma (A Jihad For Love), Havana Marking is the latest director of a British TV-funded documentary to find her film in the theatrical spotlight Stateside. The intrepid director went to school in Dorset, England, before studying Anthropology at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Subsequently, she began working in documentary television, progressing from researcher through to producer, on shows as disparate as Himalaya with Michael Palin, the Gordon Ramsay studio cooking show The F Word, and...

TATIA ROSENTHAL, $9.99

2009-06-19T17:53:00.001-04:00

ALBERT (VOICED BY BARRY OTTO) AND THE ANGEL (VOICED BY GEOFFREY RUSH) IN DIRECTOR TATIA ROSENTHAL'S $9.99. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING. Being an independent filmmaker is difficult enough without adding the further challenges of animation, so it's always a pleasure to see the emergence of a visionary talent like Tatia Rosenthal. The Israeli writer-director and stop motion animator was born in Tel Aviv in 1971 and explored some very diverse avenues before deciding on her current profession: Rosenthal was in the Israeli Defense Force for two years, spent a period of time at medical school and then studied photography in Paris for a year. She finally found her niche while studying for a BFA in Film & Television at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts...

DARYL WEIN, SEX POSITIVE

2009-06-12T15:12:00.002-04:00

RICHARD BERKOWITZ IN DIRECTOR DARYL WEIN'S SEX POSITIVE. COURTESY REGENT RELEASING. Most young filmmakers quickly define themselves in terms of both their creative roles and genre specialties, however Daryl Wein has so far benefited from doing exactly the opposite. Born in Santa Monica in 1983, Wein grew up in Connecticut and commuted to auditions in New York City as he pursued a career as a child actor, mostly in commercials. At the same time, Wein's father's interest in chronicling their family life on home video lead the young thespian to become fascinated with being on the other side of the camera. At the age of 16, he made Life is a Train, a short film which won him an award at the International Young Filmmaker's Festival in New...

VEIKO ÕUNPUU, SÜGISBALL

2009-06-03T23:12:00.002-04:00

RAIN TOLK IN DIRECTOR VEIKO ÕUNPUU'S SÜGISBALL. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING. Artists' creativity is sometimes directly proportional to their life experience, and Estonian writer-director Veiko Õunpuu has more than enough to draw on. Õunpuu was born in 1972 on Saaremaa, the biggest island belonging to Estonia, and graduated from high school in 1990 just as the country was glimpsing independence due to the dissolution of the USSR. Over the next 10 years, Õunpuu had numerous identities: a tyre repair worker, an asylum seeker in Finland, a student at the Estonian Business School, a failed carpet salesman in Sweden, a driver on Hardi Volmer's Estonian movie All My Lenins, an advertising agency employee, a backpacker in Asia, and finally a...