“The project began as an experiment with my best friend and partner in crime, Sara Parker Faxon. We wanted to explore the dynamic between two people confronting each other about something and talking through it - something both of us struggled with. Kind of like a therapy appointment sans therapist.”
Read More“I’m a Korean American filmmaker from New York and Atlanta. I’ve always been interested in and obsessed with movies since I was a child. I ended up attending NYU Tisch for undergrad, where I first started filmmaking. Then I spent time freelance directing and assistant directing in South Korea before enrolling in grad school for film at Columbia.”
Read More“My mom is an actress and I remember once she was depressed about not getting a part. I was six years old and vowed to become a filmmaker so I could put her in movies which would win her an Oscar. I really wanted her to win.”
Read More“I wanted to make a short about COVID that didn't mention COVID -- something about lockdown, since it was such a unique and mind-bending experience. But I also, just personally, dislike seeing any kind of media about COVID right now. I don't need more reality, I want escapism and surreality.”
Read More“We were in the heat and heart of lockdown and I had had a short cancel two days before the city shut down. I was feeling really itchy to exercise some creative muscles and since I couldn’t get on set I decided to do something from my house. I thought it would be fun if I made something like that viral video of the woman peeing while on a Zoom call, an unfortunate side effect of our new lives.”
Read More“I wanted to play with the idea of using noir styling for the moments when Hannah Alline's character was hoping to look cool or sensual, and then juxtapose those with the awkwardness of real life. Every teenager wants to look cool, and then struggles with how they actually appear in the world; that feeling seems even more amplified by an Amish upbringing.”
Read More“It was based on of those days you’d look back on and remember as one of the worst days of your life. I was in Upstate New York moving my life out of college and into an apartment for the summer. Having moved alone a dozen times and lived in too many temporary situations, I had this itch to figure out a way incorporate this nomadic period of time into a story.”
Read More“We had been having several conversations about the murder of George Floyd in the U.S. and how this reignited the debate on racism in Dutch society. We felt a strong urge to create a short film about this, in which we would recreate some of our own conversations we had with our friends and colleagues.”
Read More“I was born in Santa Monica, CA, the only child to two Iranian immigrants, who armed me with watercolor paints and crayons. As soon as I learned to read and write, I was creating little stories with illustrations. In the second grade, I decided that I would grow up to be an artist.”
Read More“I'm Puerto Rican/Cuban currently based in NYC. I was first introduced to filmmaking in high school when watching films that, for me, really broke the mold of how movies were "supposed to be", mostly from watching films by Malick, Tarkovsky, and Godfrey Reggio.”
Read More“I'm a comedian and a longtime fan of comedic films. Zoolander is, dare I say, legendary. I've had film-like ideas in my mind for a long time and I've always wanted to create something that brought those visions to life. Break Up, Baby is my first time making that happen. Very wild and exciting to see this thing I dreamed up a few years ago outside of my head.”
Read More“The idea was to capture that very bountiful, generous atmosphere of late-summer/early-fall that I was feeling in the air at the time. September is so luscious and plentiful, yet there’s the creeping melancholy that it’s slipping away before your eyes. I just wanted to capture that.”
Read More:This project is loosely based on an event that occurred in high school when three boys were arrested for placing pipe bombs in people’s mailboxes. Luckily, no one was hurt that day, but our film plays out a world where someone was. This provided a really wonderful structure to explore the social pressures I experienced growing up in Arkansas around masculinity, vulnerability and spiritual questioning.”
Read More“The original spark came from scrolling through the Indeed job boards for ‘video editor’ and coming across an ad to be the editor of a mukbang youtube channel. I thought for a while about the process of editing two or three of these videos every week, and used that as a jumping off point to imagine a character driven to extremes through the constant influence of mukbang montage.”
Read More“The initial idea of the project was to create something super personal and to capture the feeling of growing up where I grew up. The central focus of my childhood was basketball, everybody in my neighborhood played basketball religiously and were known in the area for the court that lay smack dab in the middle of it.”
Read More“The biggest challenge I faced while making Waterfall was my own mental blocks I didn't realize I created AND believed. I held onto this narrative that I needed x amount of years under my belt to make a film and to study however amount of years to be considered a film director. This ultimately became my biggest asset because I allowed myself to trust the process and let go of rules or formulas.”
Read More“Originally, I was purely obsessed with acting. That became my gateway drug into filmmaking. Over time I became annoyed with the idea that I had to rely on so many external factors to be cast in a film, so I decided to just learn how to make my own.”
Read More“I think it’s something that a lot of people struggle with - how to be there for others. It’s certainly something I need to improve on, the noise scene is actually based on something I do. But I also think it’s funny - why do we struggle with something as simple as listening?”
Read More“I wanted to work on a story about a little girl who dreams about having an adventure, travels to an unseen world and explores on her own. I have been brought up in a traditional Indian household and I had been internalizing these ideas a lot at the time. Around the same time I heard ‘Northern Belle’ by Kori Pop, a canadian singer and loved it.”
Read More“I think the very first idea for this project was to make this quasi-docu style film about a Nigerian family in Australia. It was my grad film for uni and our resources were relatively limited… One of the main inspirations was the misrepresentation in the Australian media of what it means to be African-Australian. Blackwood is a response to that.”
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