Filmmaking

Jane Fonda is joining forces with more than 500 celebrities and Hollywood heavyweights to defend free speech. The membership roll already includes scores of famous actors like Jamie Lee Curtis, Viola Davis, Whoopi Goldberg, Pedro Pascal, Natalie Portman and Michael Keaton. Successful directors like Spike Lee and Ben Stiller have signed on, along with singer […]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s eagerly awaited new film, One Battle After Another, hits Australian screens tomorrow. The action-political thriller is Anderson’s first film in four years, and his first collaboration with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is also noteworthy because of Anderson’s decision to shoot on VistaVision, a high-resolution format from the 1950s that’s making a […]

Over the course of an illustrious film career which began in 1960, Robert Redford starred in more than 50 films and directed nine. He was nominated for an Oscar four times, won best director for his debut Ordinary People in 1980, and received an honorary Oscar for his contribution to the film industry in 2001. […]

Carrie, published in 1974 and adapted by screenwriter Lawrence Cohen for Brian De Palma’s 1976 film, is generally cited as Stephen King’s first novel. His actual first novel, The Long Walk, was written some seven years earlier, but published after Carrie in 1979 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. The Long Walk is a gripping first […]

First it was referred to as a “mysterious illness.” Later it was called “gay cancer,” “gay plague” and “GRID,” an acronym for gay-related immune deficiency. Most egregiously, some called it “4H disease” – shorthand for “homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs and Haitians,” the populations most afflicted in the early days. While these names were ultimately replaced […]

African filmmakers have long faced challenges in securing wide-scale distribution for their films. In this context, digital platforms such as Netflix and YouTube have been hailed as bringing huge new opportunities. This optimism in filmmaking resonates with the hype digital technologies more generally have had in Africa. They have been seen to offer almost unlimited […]

Film festivals are unique cultural institutions, spaces to see diverse films by local and global filmmakers and an important market for distributors. These films are often difficult to see, or even know about, outside of festival circuits. Festivals are also answerable to funders and to different stakeholders’ interests. Cancellations of planned films raise questions about […]

The collapse of classical Hollywood’s studio system in the 1960s mirrored much of America’s cultural and political uncertainties at the time. The assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement and the escalating Vietnam war provided a background that destabilised the optimism with which the decade began. It’s not surprising that […]

The collapse of classical Hollywood’s studio system in the 1960s mirrored much of America’s cultural and political uncertainties at the time. The assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement and the escalating Vietnam war provided a background that destabilised the optimism with which the decade began. It’s not surprising that […]

Iranian director Jafar Panahi has spent his career turning barriers into creative inspiration. Working under travel bans, house arrests and periodic detention, he had made powerful films that show everyday life in Iran through quiet moments, daily struggles, and small talk on streets under surveillance. He shows people who are restricted by repressive rules, yet […]