Cinemad

Kevin Everson makes a film a day. Not really, but his intense work ethic has resulted in tons of shorts and six feature films. Working in his own way with 16mm, video and long takes, he films African-American culture through daily family life. Creating a portraiture of people and their surroundings, Everson concentrates on the formal design of image and sound. But he also adds in sports, love and gambling - he's got insight to people. Instead of focusing on giant events and melodrama, he looks at what makes the seconds and minutes of our lives go by, with a subtle humanist touch and with some humor. When you watch his films you might get stuck on what's on the surface. To hear him speak shows you the other layers you don't want to miss. His new feature is THE ISLAND OF ST. MATTHEWS and will show at the Los Angeles Film Festival this June, 2013.

The super talented Toby Huss is modest. Don't let him fool you. From his time as Artie the Strongest Man in the World in "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" to all his voice work for Mike Judge, he's made a lot of people laugh. He also has a great live Variety Show in Los Angeles as the singing character Rudy Casoni, and a Funny or Die series as Brad Logan. We talk about doing voices and working as a character, and then Huss gets deep about humanity as we talk about his photography and his role as the fascinating Clyde Sukeforth in the new Jackie Robinson film "42."

We go deep, deep into Jeff Krulik’s mind. If you’ve barely heard of him, you know HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT (1986), an incredible time capsule of Judas Priest fans waiting to see a show. If you’ve pushed below the surface, you might know him capturing unusual celebrity personalities like Freddie Blassie or Ernest Borgnine. Keep descending and you’ll get to his great portraits of interesting outsiders. We go to the bottom of his mind where the monsters live and talk about his new project LED ZEPPELIN PLAYED HERE. Regardless of which Krulik films you’ve seen, you’ve got to spend some time at his YouTube page and JeffKrulik.com.

Ross Novie has been an A.D. (Assistant Director) for almost two decades now, known as the “go-to TV comedy A.D.” or “if you want to film in Africa talk to him.” He worked on Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and more shows and movies with a bunch of people you’ve heard of. He’s destroyed things, cued a volcano and keeps the air conditioning on. He has made a ton of short films too, plus he directed, co-wrote and produced a show called Secret Girlfriend on Comedy Central. We talk about what he does, fame, and try to see if he has any dirt on people so we could bleep out names.

Rick Alverson’s new film THE COMEDY is not necessarily a comedy. Depending on your limits for satire, many scenes will make you laugh while you might be cringing or even angry at other scenes. As we follow 30-something Swanson (Tim Heidecker) in his privileged yet aimless leisurely days, the ante gets upped when he stands to inherit his Father’s estate. Forced with the first major change in life, he and his friends (among them Eric Wareheim, LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy and comedian Gregg Turkington a.k.a. Neil Hamburger) strive for connection and an understanding of the world – not by hip, gleeful emoting but through testing the limits of society and common taste with possible punishment at every turn. It’s a strong, timely film. Cinemad talks with Alverson about making the film and testing audiences for the right reasons.

Recorded in April, we catch up with Sam Green right after his first performance of THE LOVE SONG OF R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER at the San Francisco Int'l Film Festival. Now (August 2012) Green is about to go on tour with Yo La Tengo to perform the show in other cities. LOVE SONG is an exciting new type of cinema, with the writer/director Green live on stage speaking in front of onscreen stills and videos, as Yo La Tengo is next to him, performing the film's soundtrack. A follow-up, at least in style, to Green's UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS from 2010 - we talk about this new pursuit of form for Green as well as his recent short film about Esperanto, THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

In this accidental ode to Drunk History, Cinemad sits down at the Creative Capital retreat with filmmakers Cam Archer (sober), Braden King (drunk) and Deborah Stratman (drunk) to talk about film, audiences, erasing art, and parking lot power. We were in between a party and a bathroom, and the mics themselves sound drunk by the end, so, yeah…. sorry about that.

All at once a filmmaker, archivist, culture jammer, exhibitor, teacher and underground film historian, Craig Baldwin is one of the pillars of the experimental film world. As a filmmaker, his landmark TRIBULATION 99 (1991) is a calculated frenzy of reworked found footage layered with every conspiracy theory ever made forming a pitch-perfect statement of our times. He hasn’t slowed down since, making four more features, a DVD label and running Other Cinema in San Francisco's Mission District. A screening room with an eclectic lineup programmed by Baldwin of beautiful art films and important political works, OC finds the fringes of film and embraces them. We talk about filmmaking and how to get unusual cinema to the masses.

Filmmaker Vanessa Renwick takes the term "do-it-yourself" seriously. She has made films since the early 1980s, and we mean made them: writing, filming, editing, and even processing the film by hand. 30 years and films and videos later, she has created portraits of people, life and landscapes, with great images and strong ideas, both fun and insightful. We talk about her movies and longtime hometown of Portland, but more about hitchhiking and wolves.

Rooftop Films is a non-profit organization doing shows every summer in New York and Brooklyn on rooftops and in other interesting outdoor settings, since 1997. But they go beyond showing old classics and push the programming to include tons of shorts, new indie films and experimental works, plus providing filmmaking funds, coordinating youth media education, and renting equipment at low cost to artists. Founder and Artistic Director Mark Elijah Rosenberg and Program Director Dan Nuxoll talk about what Rooftop does and why, and previews this year's series of films.