Juno Temple & Jeremy Dozier Dress Up "Dirty Girl"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 09:45

Written by Brad Balfour

Despite a substantial effort to integrate gays into mainstream America, anti-homosexual violence continues for those who don't conform to this country's far-too-conservative mores. Though it's hard to believe that it continues, bullying still spurs teen suicides in a country charged by Tea Party extremism.

So first-time director Abe Sylvia used his juvenile experiences as a gay kid growing up in 1980s Norman, Oklahoma, as a starting point to inform us about his efforts to flee such attitudes. His debut feature, Dirty Girl, details a comedic search for identity and freedom which provides a context to illustrate the effect such repression has and how it stimulates the will to escape.

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Director Durkin Makes A Cultic Film Worthy of Award Noms

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 22:19

Written by Brad Balfour

Whether Sean Durkin wins at IFP's 2011 Gotham Awards for Breakthrough Director of The Year (held at Cipriani Wall Street, November 28th, 2011) or not, he enters this season's award cavalcade through his debut feature, Martha Marcy May Marlene (which is also nominated for best ensemble performance).

Launched at Sundance Film Festival 2011 and introduced to NYC audiences at this year's New York Film Festival, the film has garnered cultic interest for both its star, Elizabeth Olsen (herself a nominee tonight for breakthrough actor) and its young producer/director/writer.

MMMM's dark tone and horror film tropes makes it more than a character study of Martha (Olsen), a PTSD-afflicted escapee from an upstate New York cult.

Both the isolated farm scene of the cult and the seeming conventionality of her sister Lucy's vacation retreat that Martha returns to offers a similar feeling of solace and alienation for the near-catatonic Martha and audiences alike. Such a feeling lends an almost hallucinogenic vibe to this thriller-like, ominous tale

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Filmmaker Currier Explores an Unseen, Unheard African Community

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Monday, 24 October 2011 04:07

Written by Brad Balfour

Boy, did director Lavina Currier take on a challenge. Not only did she elect to direct the film Oka! in Africa, but she made it about a people, the Bayaka, and in a country, the Central African Republic, that are thoroughly unfamiliar with modern filmmaking.

Based on an unpublished book by an obscure author/musicologist with few veteran actors (Kris Marshall and Isaach de Bankolé) and a cast that includes indigenous tribespeople, the film defies conventional market strategies.

And that’s just the outline of this project’s unique nature.

After American musicologist Louis Sarno decided to live among a Bayaka Pygmy clan in the Central African Republic in the mid 1980s, he wrote a book chronicling his experiences, Song From The Forest, and recorded their music. Those recordings became Bayaka: The Extraordinary Music of the BaBenzl Pygmies (Ellipsis Arts), a two-CD/book package of never-before documented material.

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