Carlos by

Carlos consists of three vignettes, three windows into the life of a struggling art student.  I made the film as my final video project for a college class on narrative filmmaking. The film stars my best friend Carlos Diaz, and my grandmother, Margaret Kavoussi. Carlos is entirely autobiographical – I majored in Studio Art at a small, isolated liberal arts college.  I spent a great deal of time there frustrated, insecure, and alone, typically in my studio, and there were days when the only person I’d speak to would be via the phone or internet.  Carlos is my attempt to show the beauty of a nuanced “artist” life.

Hiding in Plain Sight by

tina turner robinson

During a trip home to my native Memphis a few years ago, I was introduced to the photography of Jack Robinson. A gay Southerner whose meteoric rise in the 1960s and 70s was followed by a quarter-century of near-total obscurity, Robinson’s story immediately intrigued me, as did his unlikely rediscovery. During the last 25 years of his life, Robinson worked as an artist in a stained-glass studio, living alone in a Midtown Memphis high-rise and battling depression. He never shared with his employer or neighbors his glamorous past as a photographer of some of the most celebrated personalities of the twentieth-century. It wasn’t until many days after his death in 1997 that his employer ventured into his apartment and discovered an actual treasure chest of Robinson’s images—thousands of them. His work is now archived in a downtown gallery that bears his name.

A native of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Robinson honed his camera skills in the early 1950s, documenting bohemian gay life in New Orleans’ French Quarter. A regular of Dixie’s Bar on Bourbon Street, a watering hole known for its literary clientele (Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal among them), Robinson documented the city’s gay cultural scene, and its involvement in Mardi Gras. His depictions of gay men in costume and in various states of drunken frivolity captured at the same time the joy and freedom that the French Quarter afforded as a reprieve from the repressive South.

More…

Kiss and Tell: Marialy Rivas and Alicia Rodriguez by

IMG_0495

Marialy Rivas’ debut film Young and Wild (2012) premiered at Sundance and received the World Cinema Screenwriting Award. We got the opportunity to talk with Marialy Rivas and Alicia Rodriguez, the lead actor from Young and Wild, about their experiences at Sundance, their upbringings in Chile, and their times in New York. Marialy and Alicia will also be at the NewFest Closing Night screening of Young and Wild, tonight on July 31st.

Daniela (Alicia Rodriguez) wakes up on an anonymous naked man after a wild night. First, she masturbates. Then, she presses ignore on her cell phone to reject her mother’s third consecutive call. And finally, she rushes to her Evangelical church service. Marialy Rivas’ Sundance Award Winning film, YOUNG AND WILD (2012), depicts the life of a Chilean teenager caught between her Evangelical upbringing and hormone-driven, blossoming body.

More…

Good Odds for “My Best Day”: Interview with Director Erin Greenwell by

my best day high res still

My Best Day may be named after a (fictional) racehorse, but this new film by director Erin Greenwell has little need for luck to come out ahead of the pack. With a cast of quirky yet relatable characters and bittersweet comedic moments, My Best Day delivers a familiar small town slice of Americana while still retaining a unique voice all its own.

More…

FOUR: Interview with Director Joshua Sanchez by

wendell pierce

Fresh off its ensemble award for “Best Performance” at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Brooklyn-based Joshua Sanchez’s debut feature, FOUR, makes its New York premiere this Friday, July 27 as the opening night film for the newly revamped NewFest. The film is spare and elegant, with a real feel for how endless summer-time suburban sprawl seems to extend and exacerbate emotional longing. It’s anchored by Pearce’s excellent performance as Joe, a middle-aged married man on an internet date with a teenage boy. He’s confident, thoughtful, and at times completely repellant, yet always compelling and human.

Adapted from Obie-winning playwright Christopher Shinn’s 1998 play, Four tells the story of four different characters faced with conflicting desires and unexpected emotions on the fourth of July. A white teenage boy, June (Emory Cohen, TV’s Smash), meets up with a married, middle-aged black man, Joe (The Wire’s Wendell Pearce), whose confident mantras and sloganeering are seductive and unsettling in their certainty. Meanwhile, Joe’s daughter, Abigayle (Aja Naomi King) finds herself drawn to the clever Latino basketball player named Dexter (E.J. Bonilla).

Joshua Sanchez grew up in Houston, TX and graduated from Columbia University’s MFA Film Program. His previous shorts, INSIDE/Out and Kill or Be Killed, screened at festivals worldwide.

Among other things, Four is notable for a refreshingly frank sex scene between Pearce and Cohen.  Like Sanchez’s ongoing Screentests series of short video portraits,  it’s a movie with a rare, unassuming emotional intelligence and lack of moral judgement.

KTLO: How were the screenings in Los Angeles and San Francisco?

It was great. It couldn’t have been better, really. The screenings were all great and the audiences were really enthusiastic and seemed to really enjoy the film and get it. In San Francisco and LA, it was really like there were two different audiences, but they were both very enthusiastic. In San Francisco, we played at the Castro Theatre, which was really incredible. It’s like a big old movie theatre in the middle of the Castro that was just a really nice place to play, and the audiences there are always very lively and opinionated, so it was fun to play there.

More…

Happy Birthday Father by

Happy Birthday Father

For my father’s 58th birthday, we went upstate. The weekend prior, we went to Governor’s Island for Father’s Day. This video combines our two weekends, focusing on my dad’s interaction with himself and reaction to others. Even though I have watched my dad my whole life, filming him gives me a different perspective. His minute, fleeting actions become permanent when recorded on video, making it possible for me to examine him more thoroughly. Knowing my father just as long as I have known myself, it is hard to comprehend that he is getting older, just like it is hard for me to understand my own aging. Viewing him through a lens allows me to see age by taking him out of context and giving me a more objective perspective, as a stranger would observe him. Filming humans is a different approach to experiencing them than the traditional lens-less, real-time perspective. It also passes the time.

 

Interview with Script Supervisor Veronica Lupu by

Veronica Lupu

On Keep the Lights On, script supervisor Veronica Lupu played a crucial part in translating an elliptical script, set over ten years, into a movie that could be deciphered by an audience.

Lupu started working as a “script girl” in Romania in the early 70’s before moving to New York in the 1980’s. She worked with some of the top-Romanian directors at the time, including Radu Gabrea and Geo Saizescu, and it’s clear she has a a rich understanding of cinema history. Her American credits include We Own the Night (2007), Enchanted (2007), and previously with Ira Sachs on  Forty Shades of Blue (2005). She also serves on the board of the Local 161, a production union that includes script supervisors.

When we met, Veronica was in pre-production on the Katie Holmes-vehicle, Molly (this took place before it became her divorce/defection was publicized). Her pre-production binder is is one of the most incredibly organized I’ve ever seen.

What is a script supervisor?

Someone who is in charge of continuity of the movie. The movie is being done in little pieces – it’s not done in the consecutive order according to the script. So the script supervisor is the one who makes sure that when these pieces will be put together, everything has to match.

And it’s not just narrative, it’s also performance related.

Everything! Camera angles…the right dialogue…wardrobe, everything matches from the scene you shot previously two weeks ago and is continuous in the story.
More…

The Fagettes: Hair, ‘Tude, and Guitar by

fagettes featured image

Love it or hate it, the name of Boston-based punk band “The Fagettes” is sure to start a conversation.

And that’s exactly the reaction they’re going for.

Formed in 2010 by Melanie Bernier and Ryan Major, The Fagettes have already stirred up plenty of buzz in the Boston underground music scene and beyond. Their catchy, lo-fi rock sound and retro style may call back to the ’60s and ’70s, but The Fagettes’s unique fun and flair is all their own.

More…

My Father, My Boyfriend, and Their Admirer by

KTLO 010256;14

An introduction to the males I’ve been spending the most time with this summer: my father in the suburbs and my boyfriend in the city. This video is a condensed portrait of the two characters and places. You will be seeing more of my father and boyfriend as I document them through the summer, hoping to present their simple tasks in a way that reveals more about them.