Ekanayake’s DIY Filmmaker blog has been one of the top blogs for indies promoting multi-ethnic filmmaking, new talent, and self-sufficiency as a useful practice for indie filmmakers. He spoke with Film Threat as he continues to promote his latest work.
German director and intellectual provocateur Werner Herzog finds someone smarter in the room than he is with this laudatory profile of retired head of state Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, who from 1985 to 1992...
Drawing loosely from the lives of the Soviet rock musicians Viktor Tsoi and Mike Naumenko, “Leto” plays less like a biopic than a loving compilation of fictionalized, fan-inspired notes.
“The Lavender Scare” is the title of a new documentary about this “Red Scare” era assault on a vulnerable minority. It’s a film built around the letters and public pronouncements of a pioneer, a reluctant but combative, persistent and successful leader in this fight.
Fans of classic war stories and aerial action are in for a unique and stirring mix of audio and visuals in Erik Nelson’s “The Cold Blue.” The handsome, lovingly reconstructed, if brief, documentary is based on unearthed footage shot by director William Wyler for his 1944 documentary “The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress.”
The sensuality that Mayfair and Chananun Chotrungroj, the director of photography, create around May is seductive, and also unnerving. “The Third Wife” presents a tableau of injustice — a male-dominated hierarchy that directly oppresses women and brings collateral misery to some men as well — from a perspective that feels both compassionate and detached.
Back in the 1950s and 60s, New York’s Greenwich Village played a role in establishing the counterculture with its vibrant scene of anti-establishment beat poetry and folk music. That renegade spirit is still very much alive among a new generation of New York base protest singers and poets.
On its surface, David Modigliani’s “Running With Beto” is an inside account of that campaign — reminiscent of Albert Maysles’ “Primary” or Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s more recent “The War Room” — tracing the Democratic congressman from early speaking engagements where barely two dozen people showed up to his status as a nationally recognized hero and poster boy for the “blue wave” that swept the country during the 2018 midterm elections.
Far more than simply “The Longest Yard” with hoops, the remarkable “Q Ball” serves as a potent illustration of the redemptive powers of team camaraderie.
