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On the Scene: At the Pre-Party and Screening of National Geographic’s “The Space Race”

by Julia Mazza August 21, 2023
written by Julia Mazza

The Central Park Conservancy, in partnership with National Geographic, kicked off their 20th Annual Central Park Conservancy Film Festival on Tuesday, August 15th with a screening of National Geographic’s The Space Race.

A pre-screening reception took place across the street at Central Park’s premier restaurant, The Tavern Green, just right across the street where the screening would later take place in Sheep Meadow. Among the guests in attendance were directors Lisa Cortés and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, along with NASA astronaut Leland Melvin, who not only shared his insights and experiences in the film, but also served as one of the doc’s producers. Enjoying a selection of charcuterie and small bites, along with a pasta bar and a wine bar, guests mingled as a jazz band played in the back.

Attendees were then directed to head over to Sheep Meadow to a private viewing area to watch The Space Race on an inflatable screen. Each guest received a National Geographic swag bag with a waterproof blanket and a selection of sustainable and plant-based snacks to enjoy during the film.

The Space Race, which made its official premiere at the Tribeca Festival back in June, was an eye-opening deep-dive into the history of Black Americans in NASA, and the unjust barriers they had to overcome that, ultimately, prevented some trailblazers, such as Captain Ed Dwight, from taking part in our country’s earliest space missions. Yet, it came with much satisfaction to hear everyone cheer for Nichelle Nichols (who passed away in July of last year) as the film featured a PSA in which the Star Trek star spoke to everyone, including “minorities and women alike,” to apply to NASA. “Now is YOUR time,” she said, giving the brilliant minds she had already inspired as Lt. Nyota Uhura the push they needed to shoot for their dreams.

Thanks to a documentary like The Space Race, every Black astronaut who answered that call, and those who paved the way for them to find their place in NASA, now have their legacy cemented in the stars—where future astronauts can look up to them in awe.

August 21, 2023 0 comment
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‘20 Days in Mariupol’ Review: A nerve-wracking, harrowing documentary chronicling war for residents in Ukraine’s port city

by Astrid Zhang July 16, 2023
written by Astrid Zhang

NEW YORK, NY – There are three people who have been single handedly responsible for capturing the harrowing experience in Mariupol in the early days of its siege in February 2022: Associated Press journalists Mstyslav Chernov and his team, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko.

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July 16, 2023 0 comment
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Film

Ondi Timoner on her latest film and film career

by Richard Schertzer July 14, 2023
written by Richard Schertzer

I was able to sit down and talk with Ondi Timoner, the director of her very personal documentary “Last Flight Home” about her father accepting his own inevitable demise.

Richard: So, how did you start in the filmmaking industry?

Ondi: So I didn’t, really, consciously decide to become a filmmaker. I just sort of picked up a camera. I was a junior in college and I was curious to ask people questions and I started to realize that holding a camera, they gave me really interesting answers. And so my brother and my roommate and I were driving across the country, from, we went to college at the time at Yale and we were driving to the west coast and then back over a spring break and, I brought a little camera along and we went into, you know, convenience stores along the way to buy a soda or a bag of chips or so. And I would ask people, you know, what they feared the most or what made them happy or what they thought of gays in the military because that was actually a, an issue at the time in the, in 1992 when this was. And, and they, and, and I swear, people just gave such interesting answers and all these conversations started happening and I realized that the camera was sort of a bridge, you know, into people’s hearts and minds. And by my senior year at Yale, I would only take classes with the teacher or professor who would let me make a film instead of write a paper. because I learned so much more that way. And I took this one class called transgressive women in American culture and went into women’s prisons to ask them about their experience.

And when I would drive out with the tapes and, and the camera on the back of the car, I felt like I was freeing some part of them from inside the prison walls. Like I had so many of my own prejudices and preconceived notions sort of dissolved in those rooms. And I realized the power of filmmaking, not only to, you know, really upend anything you think, you know, and give you a much more nuanced, truthful and authentic experience, but also to communicate that, right?

Like these people were trapped inside prison. And we had one portrayal of them on late night television as like these crazy violent women. And I was meeting a whole different type of woman. usually someone who was driving the getaway car, usually involved in a nonviolent crime, you know, a mother, a daughter, someone’s sister. And, and so by driving out with the tapes, it was like alchemy, it was like freeing their souls and their stories, you know, to be outside of an otherwise invisible parallel universe that we fund with our tax paying dollars. So that was it. I mean, that was like 30 years ago and I haven’t looked back since, to be honest and back then there was no career, there was no industry in documentary filmmaking. I in fact applied to NYU and UCLA film schools coming out of Yale and I won the film prize at Yale.

I even won like the first ever prize for film that Yale had ever given out. They had no production facilities back then. All I could do was make my films at a public access station. And, but anyway, I wanted to be a documentary filmmaker and, and so I applied saying that to these film schools and I was rejected by the film schools. I couldn’t get in.

So now when I speak at those film schools, they often ask me, you know, what do you think of film school? And I think I don’t really know because I didn’t go to film school. But I do think that not being in film school allowed me to develop my own original style, you know, which I think you can kind of see in all my films a little bit.

Richard: What made you want to make a documentary like Last Flight Home? That was so obviously very personal to you.

Ondi: That one, you know, was more of an unconscious effort. I mean, sometimes I go and set out to make these films and sometimes these films almost set out for me to make them, you know, and it’s the other way around this one, like, like dig and we live in public, all of them, all three of those, they were just kind of bigger than I was. They were just kind of, they were, it’s almost like the film was meant to be made and I kind of came along and made it.

In this case, my father was dying and I didn’t expect it even though I should because he was 92. But we don’t talk about death and dying in our society very much, you know. And, and so I was just kind of in this denial about it. And when he said I really need to go, I panicked and I just didn’t want to forget another word. He said when we found out that there was medical aid dying in California and that he had the right to die.

I was happy to be able to help him, you know, move on to perhaps a better place, but at least to be free of his body, which he was, had been trapped in, you know, he’d been paralyzed for 40 years. So I was happy that there was a solution to him lying there for years or who knows how long with his terminal illness until it killed him. You know, as soon as he could make that choice, he had such power and agency.

It was like when returned to his sales and he was empowered again to be funny and present and happy because he knew that on this certain day, March 3rd, 2021 he could take his life and that we were gonna support him in that. And so that’s changed the course of my life. But at that moment, I was just a daughter sort of panicking, you know, it was like my favorite person in the world and I just didn’t want to forget anything that he said because I can’t really remember him from

before. I was 10 when he had that accidental stroke that paralyzed him. I, I just, my brain kind of blocks it out. I think. So, I think it was really a very deep urge. I had not to forget him. And I went to a therapist and I asked her, you know, if this was appropriate and I said, my dad’s terminally ill, he’s coming home from the hospital. He’s gonna start a 15 day waiting period in hospice.

And I feel like I need to set up cameras and I thought she’d say that it was terribly inappropriate. But instead she’s like, if you think you should film, you should film. So I called my father and he, to my surprise said, I instinctively know you’re on the right track and then he never let the cameras be turned off the whole time. And he was just, he knew what I was doing more than I knew what I was doing.

But at some point along those lines, you know, I came to realize that this was the most profound and important and greatest learning experience of my life and that it was incumbent upon me to share it. And that if I didn’t share it, I wasn’t honoring the work that I’ve been doing for 30 years, which is, you know, to go out with a camera and learn and then come back and share edit together what I’ve learned and then share it with an audience and that’s what I needed to do with this and getting my sister and her family on board for that was more challenging because nobody expected that we were making a documentary. They all kind of believed me that I was just filming him because that’s what I thought. But I did film it like a documentary because I’m a documentary filmmaker. So luckily I got good sound and, you know, I had four cameras going and when, when I, when I realized Oh my God, this is a film, by then, I had the material, I had 500 hours of footage to share. So I made up, I guess the movie is 100 and 100 and four minutes. So from 500 hours, which is not a crazy ratio. If you look at my other films, some of my films are like thousands of hours of footage down to a feature. So, wow. Yeah.

Richard: Who are some of your greatest inspirations when you’re doing documentary filmmaking?

Ondi: Well, all the great verite filmmakers of the sixties are probably my favorites just because great observational filmmaking, ver filmmaking is the, the most powerful I think form of filmmaking period if it can be done, right? Because what it does is it takes the audience and invites them into the room without any mediation or narration to really observe what’s going on there, you know.

And that’s a hard thing to do, especially these days with the amount of consciousness we have around cameras and social media and, you know, everybody is just constantly thinking, thinking about what they can post, you know, and so it’s not the same as even when I began, people were a lot more innocent about cameras, but now it’s a different story.

But I think to this day, you know, the D A Penny Bakers, the rapper Drew, you know, I won the Robert Andrew Award for excellence and observational filmmaking in November from DOC NYC. And I was literally, I was blown away. I was so honored because, you know, their films, these are the first films I ever saw documentaries I ever saw were, you know, primary, his film Primary.

That was amazing. Or Ricky Leacock films, D A Penny Baker’s films. you know, don’t look back on Bob Dylan. That was a great, great film. And so, you know, my, I think my most powerful films actually have a good deal of verite in them. I mean, Last Flight Home is almost all purely verri few, a few interviews, but basically you’re in the room, you know, and that’s what people say is that they can actually transpose their own families onto our family.

And it’s such a powerful experience to just be invited to be at my father’s bedside and to be part of the Timoner family, you know, and I think dig does that. It takes you into the lives of these two bands, you know, where we live in public, takes you into the bunker into, you know, to be in that place for 30 days with these people who have given up all of their rights just to be where it matters at the turn of the millennium and have subjected themselves to this social experiment and you’re kind of in there, you know, right in there and a lot of my films do that. So, yeah, I’d say those are the most, if I hadn’t seen it, I don’t know if I would have known to do it, you know, I don’t really look at other films to influence my work. I kind of look at the subject of the work. So if I’m making a film about someone, the style of the film will come from that or from that experience, it won’t come from other films that I’m studying.

You know, I have a much more pure relationship with my subject and that’s how I make my films. So, but these, these verite films early on without them, I don’t know where I’d be.

Richard: OK. So I, I know that you’re working on a project about the disruption of finance as according to your Wikipedia page.

Ondi: It should be updated because that film is premiered at South by Southwest in March. It’s called the New Americans. And it’s coming out, I believe in the fall or winter or, or right at New Year’s somewhere around then. And I’m not able to disclose who’s putting it out yet, but it’s playing the festival circuit, it played Mountain Film just recently, Dallas Milwaukee.

Next stop that I’m making with the film is Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. Fantastic Festival. I cannot not recommend it high, more, highly fantastic festival. If you can go Richard, you should. And it’s in Birmingham, Alabama. It’s a great regional festival like I have three films. They are playing this year because of the 25th anniversary and they’re huge fans of Dig.

So they’re playing Dig, they’re playing Last Flight Home because that’s where I did the secret screening to test it. when it was a very, very rough cut years ago before the Sundance premiere before the Tell You eye premiere. I did a secret screening for 100 people there under no title with without my name, to see what, whether it was too personal or whether it was appropriate to, to share.

And, and so I’m bringing the final version back and then also the New Americans is playing there and also the Woodstock Film Festival in New York is playing. So those are the, those are the next places it’s playing. But, it’s a crazy film. I mean, it’s all about memes and the internet and if you’ve seen my movie, we live in public, it’s sort of the part two of that. It’s really looking at technology’s impact on our, on our minds, on our society, on our politics, on our finances.

And the way that we’re organizing and it’s, it’s both really positive and really negative. because the internet, like all of the most powerful things is a double edged sword. It’s equally the greatest invention of our lifetime and also what might bring us down. So, or I should say tech virtual technology, including A. I.?

Richard: What do you enjoy most about your work? And what do you enjoy least about it?

Ondi: That’s a good question. I like that. My favorite aspect is how much I learn, from the people and the subjects I delve into. It’s almost like my camera’s a diving bell and it just takes me so deep into whatever the topic is usually way far beneath the headlines to a much more three dimensional, four dimensional eight dimensional truth, you know, almost like a prism.

And I really like to take the audience on that journey and share what I’ve learned with them. But I think my favorite part is making the film. Last week I was in a hospice, the only hospice for the homeless in America. And I’m filming a, I’m making a film there. That’s what it should say on my page. If my wikipedia was updated, feel free to update it, Richard because I know you have special skills.

The movie is called the In Between All Caps. And it’s named after a place called the In between I and in between. And it’s a place where the homeless can go to either recover from surgery where they would normally be infected or unable to continue living on the streets. or they go there to die in, in a dignified manner with a loving face and not alone and in a bed and every major city in America should have one of these.

And I’ve just learned so much from the compassion, the, the care, the treatment, the people, the residents. I filmed a veteran dying last week, you know, in this place. And I was, you know, I was rocked for days by it, but I just learned a lot on a deep level, not the kind of stuff you can get from a book, you know. So, ok, so that’s what I love the most.

Oh, yeah. And what do I not like? What do I not like the most? It’s so hard, it is so hard being a documentary filmmaker. There’s an article right now as we speak about how there’s a, there’s a crisis in the documentary filmmaking world because the things that we film take such a psychological toll and we have to be really, really have the fortitude, mentally or the health, you know, the stability to really handle a lot of what it is that we’re documenting.

It’s very, very intense stuff. So there’s that aspect to it. And I think the articles in the Hollywood reporter, let’s see. Let me tell you the name of the article it is. give me one second it is. Yep. Take your time. The documentary film industry is in crisis, the unspoken traumas of the filmmaking community. I believe it’s in the holiday reporter, if you want to see it. But anyway, there’s that and then there’s just the hours the competition that the competition for, and I mean, I’m not competitive. I’m like off right now to go host a screening of colleagues of mine work that’s coming out on HBOMax’s 24 hour decade of popular music because I think the film is so great. And I host all the nonfiction films that the Directors Guild of America.

And I used to have a talk show that you can see on the internet if you’re interested in documentary film called Byod Bring Your Own doc. in which I interview a different colleague every week for hundreds of episodes from 2011 to 2016. I did this. So I’m, I’m really a person who loves to kind of spread the word about my, my film, my fellow filmmakers work and I love the community that we have.

But I it is really a competitive field now and you know, there’s a lot of fear and competition and competition for awards and it’s all built around awards and it’s, it’s all very exhausting, I guess is the word really what I wanna do is just make my movies if that makes sense. Right. Yeah, the industry is what I don’t like that much but I work my way.

I manage, you know, I’m, I, I’m not complaining. I really, I get to do pretty much whatever I want to do, but that’s just because I just go do it. Usually I just go make my movies. I find funding along the way. Sometimes I take a job but mostly I just go and make my own films. and then I sell them or I get funding along the way. So I’m not one of these people who’s always like looking for a job per se.

That’s just how I’ve always worked. I don’t mind. I mean, please call me and hire me for a job, but I, but I’m not gonna wait for the phone to ring to go make a movie if that makes sense. Right? Like I have a couple of movies going right now and then I have a script about my father and that whole experience that I’m trying to make into a scripted film, you know, because I do those as well. I would recommend Maplethorpe, the director’s cut, on Amazon if you want to see a scripted film of mine, Maplethorpe.

Richard: So where do you think your career is gonna go in the next 5 to 10 years?

Ondi: It’s a great question. I really never think like that. I never got into this thinking, oh, I’m gonna do this one day or I’m gonna win this or, you know, I just was filming and then I looked at this, I had like hundreds of tapes when I was making dig and my then boyfriend said to me, what do you, what do you do? You know, what do you want to do with your career?

And I was like, when you see all those tapes, I just wanna put them on one tape. So my thing is always just like, doing whatever the project is that I’m doing and then it leads to the next thing, just organically, you know, I don’t know. I hope I will make last flight home, the scripted version, which was called a stroke of genius. and I would really, really love to tell that story because the last flight home, you see a little bit of my dad’s career, you don’t really get to go into what it is to start an airline, you know, in the seventies and the great rise and fall that happened there with the stroke and the impact it had on our family and all of that. And, so I’ve written a script over the last eight years. In fact, those are the pages you see on his bed. And, that would be my dream is to make that film. But, in the meantime, I have a film about my sister, and this project she’s doing in Brooklyn and I have this film the in between that I’m gonna make. And, I also have a film about a I, that I’ve been making for a few years that I hope to finish called soulmate. So I have plenty of films to keep me very busy. But what do I expect? I expect more, more, you know, that I’ll make more films and probably hopefully balance it out with living a little bit more too. because I, I mean, doubling up on last flight home and the New Americans at the same time was exhausting. And so I’m due for a little bit of balancing right now, taking things a little bit more. one at a time if I can?

Richard: Ok. And last question, do you have any advice for young upcoming filmmakers like myself?

Ondi: Go do it, go make your film find something that you find interesting that you think others will find important or relevant even years from now and something that you find interesting enough that you want to spend a couple of years focusing on it and with documentary, you can go do it, make sure you have good sound, you can always replace the visuals, but you cannot capture the sound again if it’s live and happening in front of you.

So make sure you have a good microphone and and go, you know, go make a film like if you, if that’s what you wanna do, no one’s gonna just, you know, it’s like it wasn’t like I could show up in Hollywood with the sign and say I want to be a filmmaker and somebody would give me a job, you know, I just went and made movies and that’s how I got to be successful and to be where I’m, I’ve now made 10 features and hundreds of shorts, you know, I just went and made them. Sometimes I needed funding a lot of funding and then I would go and find that. But first before you find it, you’ve got to prove it, you know, so go shoot something and make a sizzle and then you could find funding, you know. But if you sit around and you write, you know, write it again, rewrite and rewrite a proposal on your computer in your bedroom, nobody’s gonna give you the funding. So get out there and do it. Well, that’s good advice and learn to edit and edit what you do so that you know what you need to shoot no better guide than being an editor to know what to do in the field. Because you’ll go, you’ll sit there and you’ll edit and you’ll be like, oh my God, I’m missing this, this, this, this and this and the next time you go out there you’ll actually capture those things.

So learn to edit. I edit a lot of my own films, usually co edit with someone else. just because it’s very, very hard long work, but I love it. The art is a documentary is a lot in the editing room. I usually joke editing is 70%. But shooting is also 70%. So if you want to be a documentary filmmaker, you need to be ready to give 100 and 40% beautiful.

 

July 14, 2023 0 comment
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SIFF 2023 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Blake Leeper, Einar Thorsteinsson, Anton Einarsson, Brian Leong and Jóhann Stefansson

by Ranya Salvant July 6, 2023
written by Ranya Salvant

During the Seattle International Film Festival final weekend, Blake Leeper and his team share what they accomplished by working together on ABLED.

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July 6, 2023 0 comment
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Directors and producers of Lakota Nation vs. United States
EntertainmentFilmThe Latest

The quest to reclaim land and retell American history in ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’

by Astrid Zhang June 30, 2023
written by Astrid Zhang

A handful of scenes from the visually breathtaking and poignant feature film ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ lure the viewer into the vast Midwestern expanse known as the Black Hills: horseback riders galloping in a circle in slow motion on top of a grassy plain, a berry pink, almost crimson, withering sun, and a 1953 Technicolor clip of a white couple expressing their longing for the geographic region.

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June 30, 2023 0 comment
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Last Flight Home: Timoner hits documentary gold!

by Richard Schertzer June 15, 2023
written by Richard Schertzer

Pain, sadness, loss and regret all encompass this absorbing tale of life and death in acclaimed documentarian Ondi Timoner’s newest piece of work entitled “Last Flight Home”, where she explores the sad and tear-jerking death of her late father and venture capitalist Eli Timoner.

Eli Timoner was born in New York after his family emigrated from Russia to the states. Later in his life, Timoner and his wife Lisa had three children named Ondi, Rachel and David. He was a loving father but died in March 2021 of his own accord with the help of the End of Life Option Act, which is legal under the California law. 

The film has a certain nostalgic sense that remains enduring for all to see. Its emotional magnitude allows audience members to be immersed into the fabula of the narrative. The film is a great look at the final hours of Eli Timoner and how he spent them with his family.

 

 

This may be Timoner’s magnum opus as it is probably her most personal in her filmography. The film’s heart-felt and sensitive take on an equally sensitive topic seems to be a lot larger than life in more ways than one.

It seems impossible to watch and not get teary-eyed with such emotion as we see Eli come to terms with his inevitable demise that his family are unable to stop no matter how hard they try. 

This film is a true testament to love and appreciation for those in your lives that love you the most because it is painfully obvious that tomorrow is never promised and we only have a certain amount of time to spend with the ones we love. 

 

June 15, 2023 0 comment
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EntertainmentFilmThe Latest

Patricia Field is the Happiest Color in New Tribeca Festival Doc (INTERVIEW)

by Julia Mazza June 14, 2023
written by Julia Mazza

“I like your combination—it’s down my alley,” quips Patricia Field to Nadia Tulin in one of the early moments of Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field, premiering at the 2023 Tribeca Festival.

“I like mixing patterns” says Nadia, as she settles in before the kick-off meeting to discuss the costuming for season two of the STARZ original series Run the World, where she serves as the show’s assistant costume designer. 

“I never knew that about you.” Patricia says, as she pours herself a glass of her favorite Chianti. “It’s the color—they could be different colors, but they have to be happy together,” she adds. “As long as the colors work together, you could f*** around with the patterns.”

For Patricia Field, the idea behind finding colors that are “happy together” is also a personal philosophy that follows her as she lives and works. It offers an explanation for how she selects the projects she chooses to work on.

“Because I like happy.” she says boldly, flashing a smile. “I don’t like miserable.”

Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Patricia Field and director Michael Selditch to discuss the documentary’s themes of “finding happy,” Pat’s personal memory of Billie Holliday, and her creative process as a consulting costume designer (a title she made up herself.) Check it out:

 

So, in the documentary you touch on the idea of finding colors and patterns that are happy together—would you be able to tell me more about that philosophy? 

Well, it’s just about when you see something and it gives you pleasure—it’s totally positive. And creativity is something I can spot in a split second. 

I recently worked on a TV show called “Run the World” and it was kind of billed to me as a Black “Sex and the City”—four girlfriends and so on. It’s on STARZ network. I was like, “I’ll take it,” because, in my opinion, when I see the Black girls, they care for themselves much better. You do [gesturing to my outfit], but a lot of the white girls don’t. The Black girls they care about how they look, so when I was offered this job I was like. “Great, I want to do this.” 

I love working with the Black kids because, maybe, I think that they feel as though…I mean, of course it’s their talent, but I feel as though they have to like, try harder. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it’s about their consciousness of themselves, and, you know, outdoing it in a beautiful way.

Exactly—you’re able to explore a culture that you’ve never really explored before in storytelling. Can you tell me more about what you did to explore [Black culture?]

Well, I tell you, I went to Flushing High School and it was a very mixed biracial neighborhood, or high school I should say, and also in my mom’s business, she employed young African-American men in her dry cleaning business. They were pressers and so on. That was part of my growing up, and I really had a very, let’s say, mixed upbringing culturally. You know, from Greek Grandmom, to my Mama who’s a business gal, my friends, and so on.

I’ll tell you an interesting story. One of my Black girlfriends, her mom was a radio broadcaster, and her studio was up in Harlem. And we went up there, occasionally—it was Clyde, and Patty, and me. We went up there and my friend’s mom was interviewing on her radio show: Billie. Holiday. I was a big jazz fan. And I was sitting there on the floor, and Billie Holiday was up there on the mic singing, and I’ll always remember that. 

That’s such an amazing memory. 

Yeah, it was an amazing experience. It really was.

You strike me as somewhat of a “rule breaker” in fashion—are there any rules you find yourself following when you style outfits?

Well, the main rule is that I stay away from trendy. It’s more a creative experience, a give-and-take of my point-of-view and the actor’s. It’s a combined experience and I think that’s basically how I operate. Of course, you know, the actor also has their points-of-view and that’s to be respected because they’re the ones who are in front of the camera and they have to feel good.  

Michael, what was it about Patricia’s life and work that drew you to create the documentary and tell her story? 

Well, after meeting her, I was very drawn to her and I was always familiar with her work for a long time. I remember myself coming to her store when I moved to New York in the mid-80s, and so I was always familiar with her. But it wasn’t until I met her that I really thought, “Wow, there’s a really fascinating person here that deserves to have her story told.”  

You know, I think that was it, but when I watch Pat’s work even now, even all the way through from way back in “Sex and the City” till now in “Emily in Paris” and “Run the World,” there’s a really fascinating consistency there and it’s a perspective of Pat’s that seems so unique to other people’s perspective. Whether it’s, you know, the mixing of high and low, or it’s the mixing of crazy patterns that most people would never think about mixing, it feels still very specific to Pat and that’s fascinating to me.

I love how you explore the idea that [Pat] looks for colors and patterns that are happy together, but you also explore how she finds happiness in her life and putting that into her work. Can you tell me a bit more about how you explored that?

Well, you know, when you’re making a documentary there’s so much of it that you have to feed off of your subject and that was coming from Pat. And I was just like, “give me more, give me more, give me more.”

That’s just how Pat works and so, you know, in a sense it was easy to lean on that when you’re in post-, to lean on those parts that I found fascinating but they all came from Pat. I didn’t tell her to be happy. 

Pat interjects: “My first experience with you was that swimming pool in Chelsea, because you asked me what I do for exercise. I’m not a big exerciser, when I do I like swimming and you put me in the swimming pool! And it was like ‘wow, this is cool!’”

Michael responds: “It’s still to me an extension of, that you [Pat] never stop—that you’re running around and you’re busy and you’re doing a million things, and to me that was a really fun visual way to show the audience without telling the audience, like, “look at this woman, she’s running here, she’s at Bergdorf’s, she’s swimming. 

To me, it was this unspoken way of showing the energy that you [gesturing to Pat] have. Everything that I’m doing in the doc came from what I’m observing from Pat.”

Speaking of keeping busy, Pat, you mentioned in the documentary that you don’t seek out projects that are sad or depressing—what else do you look for in a project when you’re deciding to work on it? 

Basically, a project that has an optimism and I relate to optimism as opposed to pessimism. Because I relate to it, I can get into and enjoy it. And when I’m enjoying it, I’m producing creatively. 

If I wasn’t enjoying it, I couldn’t do it, because I don’t associate with it—I have to associate with it. It’s a part of just, being honest. 

You’re so good at making colors pop in your work whether it’s “Emily in Paris,” or “Sex and the City,” or another project that you’ve worked on, but you’re also very good at helping guide a narrative with clothes. 

I always think about when I watch “The Devil Wears Prada,” how you could turn the sound off and you can still tell where Andi [played by Anne Hathaway] is in her career by just looking at what she’s wearing. Can you tell me more about how you use clothes to guide a narrative?

Well, of course, the first thing is the script. It’s not just a free-for-all, and you just gonna put people in nice clothes or whatever. It has to make sense to the person that is watching and viewing it. 

Then comes, of course, the actor. Their style, their comfort level, because they need to be feeling positive about themselves in front of the camera. And it’s my responsibility to learn and get to know them so that I can provide what they feel good in.

One last question—what do you hope filmgoers at the Tribeca Film Festival take away from the documentary when they see it?   

Pat: [contemplating] What do I hope from this documentary? I never thought of it that way, but I hope they enjoy it.

Michael: I hope that the doc makes people feel good. I think it’s fun to watch and you know, especially if people are nostalgic for some of the work that Pat has done. It’s a fun thing to revisit those projects, so, you know, I hope it’s a feel-good doc.

“Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field,” directed by Michael Selditch, will be making its premiere at the 2023 Tribeca Film festival; you can find the showtimes for screenings of the film here.

June 14, 2023 0 comment
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“Richland” Tribeca Review: An Enriching Watch

by Dano Nissen June 13, 2023
written by Dano Nissen

Richland has all the trappings of a picturesque American small town.

It has diners, high school football, town parades and a smattering of hometown heroes and their kids and their kids’ kids. All this rests on contaminated land, from improper nuclear waste storage from the power plant that has driven the economy for the past half century. As it happens, the plant supplied plutonium for the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.

Director Irene Lusztig’s documentary “Richland” takes a look at the legacy of the nuclear history in the eponymous town.

Pierce under the facade of many towns in America and you’ll find a radioactive underbelly. There are unsavory and complex histories to contend with, dominating industries with questionable practices and deep ideological rifts between its denizens. So this isn’t a film just about a nuclear town. It captures a disturbance felt all over the country. Its subject town’s focal point, uranium enrichment, happens to be a great metaphor: it brings energy, death, destruction, longevity, decay, prosperity, blight, advancement, regress. You can use that array of terms for plenty of institutions that backbone the history of many towns in this country.

Richland carries baggage that sounds familiar to many places. Beyond the scope of nuclear debate, there are salient moments to today’s public conversation writ large. For example, high schoolers and their parents debate the appropriateness of having a mushroom cloud mascot for their school team “The Bombers.”

The film captures so well the universal essence of small industry town life. And it gives breath to all its nuances and perspectives by letting its inhabitants speak for themselves. We’re not subjected to lectures from proselytizing pro or anti nuclear talking heads. Instead, we sit down at a diner table or a high school quad or living room and hear what people have to say about Richland, until we get an illuminating mosaic of thoughtful positions and the people behind them.

“Richland” premiered at Tribeca Film Festival June 11.

June 13, 2023 0 comment
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EntertainmentFilmThe Latest

Film Review: “Personality Crisis: One Night Only”

by Ethan Singh April 15, 2023
written by Ethan Singh

Life is what we make of it. We’re all bound to experience the strange, the wonderful, the fear-inducing, and breathtaking moments of brevity that redefine our persona, characteristics, and outlook for the next few million breaths we take. What makes a documentary, specifically one whose subject matter is a particular person, so beautiful, is that it takes the time to examine those moments in an attempt to retell, relive, and analyze the minute and the gravity-defining moments that culminated to make a human existence. This one that I’ve just seen, “Personality Crisis: One Night Only”, is one of those good ones that make you really think of life in those terms.

The film follows David Johansen on the night of his 70th birthday as he performs live at the Carlyle in New York. With each song he sings, he flashes back to a moment in his life that stood out to him. Unlike the typical documentarian trope of looking back at the ‘little moment that would actually change everything’, each flashback was just a look back at a moment that David himself remembered and found endearing. It’s such a misnomer or mistake in thinking to believe that the moments we would remember the most are the peaks, the rises, and the falls of our life. It’s always been the little things and it’ll always be the little things.

David Johansen makes such an interesting subject matter to demonstrate this because he himself, as part of the famed and much respected New York Dollsand other great acts, was on the forefront as one of the pioneers of the punk movement. Despite all of that, he tended to remember the small anecdotes, such as funny missed opportunities, unorthodox occupations he held, and the strange characters he met along the way.

This documentary doesn’t feel like many others. Somewhat understandably so as it had Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi helming this operation. Both had witnessed David live one night at that Carlyle and as Martin recollected, he said to David in the most Hollywood of New York things to say “What do you want to do? Let’s shoot it! Let’s make a movie! … What’s it going to be about? The soul of the cabaret act itself? Well, let’s shoot that and let’s begin.”. I love that this was the moment of conception for this film as, just like the film itself, it started off as something small as ‘we gotta get a camera on it and see where this goes’.

At two hours long, the film does drag quite a bit. It does capture a large majority of a live performance that David would give and approximately 50% of the movie, if not more, is just devoted to live music. This is what Scorsese intended to do anyhow. After the film screened, he said “We decided at that point to shoot a concert for history… They’re all experiments guys, that’s what [it] is”. Still, unless you’re a big fan of David Johansen or his alter ego Buster Poindexter, I would imagine that you’d find yourself checking your watch at some point. It makes for a great background piece for a New York party or as a historical look into old New York and for those reasons, I think it’s definitely worth a watch, even in passing on streaming.

April 15, 2023 0 comment
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FeaturedFilmThe Latest

On the Scene: National Geographic premieres newest documentary “Wild Life” at the Museum of Modern Art

by Bianca Brutus April 14, 2023
written by Bianca Brutus

On Tuesday, “Wild Life” premiered in New York to a packed crowd at the Museum of Modern Art.

Continue Reading

April 14, 2023 0 comment
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