Tea with sg

Jalena @jalena.kl and her team of Writer/director @crystalkayiza + producer @britfry just won Sundance shorts Jury price for their short film Rest Stop, and we’ll have the pleasure of screening it this Friday March 24th @reunion @arri_rental. Rest Stop is Jalena‘s first producorial dip into narrative, but is a documentary filmmaker in her own right with multiple shorts out and a feature coming soon years in the making. We talk a lot about the filmmaking journey today, as Jalena has been through programs with Jacob Burns, Sundance, Tribeca and more. She’s really an example of how the system today can succeed. Come see us this Friday in NYC! https://reunion3242023.splashthat.com

Ben Brewer @brewerfilms has had a nice year so far. A Folded Ocean, his new short, premiered at Sundance and will show March 24th @reunion @arri_rental, and Everything Everywhere All at Once, which he did VFX for, won every award ever. He was also featured on @lecinemaclub, a beautifully curated site with one film a week curated by Marie Louise Khondji. We're both grads of the same era of Emerson College, along with what's become now a really strong group of indie filmmakers like Daniels Scheinert and Kwan and Vanishing Angle's Jim Cummings and Ben Wiessner (amongst LOTS more, but that's just who we mentioned here). Something was in the dirty Boston water around 2006-2010. Hope to see everyone Friday. https://reunion3242023.splashthat.com

Tiger Ji is an NYC based filmmaker by way of Hong Kong. We’re going to show his latest short Death & Ramen @reunion March 20 @alamonyc @drafthouse. It stars comedian Bobby Lee and Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones. Prior to that he made Wuhan Driver, a slice of what became for some Asians in America during Covid. It reminds me a lot of the post September 11th American Islamaphobia. Death & Ramen is more personal and universal, something anyone can relate to. He tells how he put it together and what’s next. Young filmmakers figuring out how to get things made and out to the world. https://reunion3202023.splashthat.com/

Emma Swider @ispysvvi is a filmmaker and editor I met through Beth B (recently on the show and retrospective'd at Metrograph) at our Lydia Lunch screening a few years ago. She's sent me a few of her shorts, including the much more robust The Marinn Company, but it was really this short montage she made that got me. We're going to screen All for You on March 20th at Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan @Reunion. We talk about the kind of tactics she uses to get these really important points across, and how without them, men in particular can often speak of the concepts without really understanding the impact of their words. I'm excited for the reaction from the audience next week. This is one of those times where it's fun to film the audience. https://reunion3202023.splashthat.com

Joe Meyerson @josephsamuelmeyerson ‘s first short film Out Patient will show @reunion @alamonyc @drafthouse Lower Manhattan on March 20. We talk about what it takes to put together a movie like this in the burgeoning stages of a career, particularly how to cast and deal with actors. We also talk a lot about what it’s like to be a straight white cis guy making movies today at all, but particularly about other white guys. https://reunion3242023.splashthat.com

Leah Shore @leahsh0re is a filmmaker and multimedia artist known for live action and animation work. We're going to show one of their animated films and another live action x animation short on March 20th at Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan @reunion. Leah recently made a really fun short in advance of the Nitehawk Shorts Fest. Come see us next week! https://reunion3202023.splashthat.com

Rachid Hami just showed his second feature POUR LA FRANCE (For My Country) at Film at Lincoln Center's Rendezvous with French Cinema. He explains in this episode why the title changes from 'For France' to 'For My Country' in the US. Toward the end is the most striking point to me about assimilation vs. integration. We speak of our upbringings, his being French by way of Algeria (as portrayed in the film) and mine being a New York Jew. The story told is about his real life family, done as a character study less than an indictment of the system. We talk a lot about that point. It's a movie, about people, with style...not an article or textbook in visual form. There's a significant divide between France and US in how we treat topics like this in the arts. I hope we take notes. Sufganiyot thanks to Orwashers. https://www.filmlinc.org/films/for-my-country/

Beth B is an NYC arts legend returning Friday for a retrospective at Metrograph. I was at her previous retrospective at MoMa, and we showed her Lydia Lunch documentary at my place last year. That hang was amazing, the crowd kept Beth and Lydia talking for longer than the film runtime and nobody left. She's got incredible stories from my favorite era of NYC arts and a beautiful personal arc to show for it. It's nice to be able to receive her perspective on something that a lot of other people can't figure out their way to reconcile or get past or get over or move on from. Downtown NYC arts scenes of today should take notes! Special shouts to Kino Lorber. See her this weekend at Metrograph: https://metrograph.com/category/bethb/

Eugene Kotlyarenko, Lea Rose Sebastianis, Nate Wilson, Morgan Krantz collaborated to create The Straightball, which we’ll show on Thursday February 16 @reunion. This is like a film school episode in a way, and also kinda heartwarming friendship tale. Eugene had a retrospective in Toronto, and Nate and Lea tell us of the vibrant film community who came out. That turned into hangs, and eventually collaboration. It’s a cool walk through of how things can come together. Take notes, do it yourself!! @madabouteug @brainbarf_for_jamstown @morgankrantz @topsecretbadboy https://reunion2162023.splashthat.com

Lucy McKendrick @lucy_elizabeth_mckendrick premieres her short film Fuck Me Richard @sxsw in March and will show some of her work @reunion this week on February 16th At Wonderland Dreams. We actually had a long tea hang the other day which we aimed to post but because of the subject matter of Lucy’s film, we both got super raw and went in depth on a lot of topics that we decided to let disappear into the ether. We talked about trolls. About our shared anxiety. About covid zoom acting classes. Fuck Me Richard really engages hard with a lot of this. I think this chat that I’m posting now synthesizes our longer rambly emotional chat a lot better. Hope you enjoy and hope to see y’all Thursday. https://reunion2162023.splashthat.com