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Jack Dunphy is a writer, filmmaker, animator, actor and podcaster. His shorts have played in festivals around the world and his latest, Bob’s Funeral, won Best Nonfiction Short Film at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. As an actor, he starred in Peter Vack’s Assholes and Caveh Zahedi’s legendary, unfinished, 24-hour retelling of Joyce’s Ulysses. He can soon be seen in Paradise and Lunch, the new film from Jordan Tetwesky and Joshua Pikovsky, and Anything That Moves from Alex Phillips. His wonderful new podcast, Revelations with Jack Dunphy, in which he talks about his struggles with addiction and mental illness with […]

The post “It Might Not Be Perfect, But I Am Not Lying To You”: Jack Dunphy, Back To One, Episode 317 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Jack Dunphy is a writer, filmmaker, animator, actor and podcaster. His shorts have played in festivals around the world and his latest, Bob’s Funeral, won Best Nonfiction Short Film at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. As an actor, he starred in Peter Vack’s Assholes and Caveh Zahedi’s legendary, unfinished, 24-hour retelling of Joyce’s Ulysses. He can soon be seen in Paradise and Lunch, the new film from Jordan Tetwesky and Joshua Pikovsky, and Anything That Moves from Alex Phillips. His wonderful new podcast, Revelations with Jack Dunphy, in which he talks about his struggles with addiction and mental illness with […]

The post “It Might Not Be Perfect, But I Am Not Lying To You”: Jack Dunphy, Back To One, Episode 317 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Christmas movies are a thing on their own. They tend to be heartwarming dramedies akin to slice-of-life movies that make us emotional but also offer us a sense of warmth and comfort. Centred around the year-end festival, these movies often speak about the spirit of togetherness and are drenched in a cosy, celebratory spirit of the festival. From Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ to Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’, we have seen the festival bringing people together, literally or emotionally. Tyler Taormina’s ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ is the latest, charming addition to this list that uses its big ensemble to offer a time capsule to a a bygone era.

While Christmas is a cause for celebration, it may not be the same for everyone everywhere. Some may cherish getting together and sharing the same space with their families. For some, it can be pitch-perfect like...

Grieving comes in many guises. In Courtney Stephens’ Invention, speculative fiction blends with personal history to explore the ways we process death. The subject is Callie Hernandez, an actress and filmmaker whose father died of a Covid-related illness in 2021. There’s much archival footage of the man, mostly television recordings from his times as a kind of telemarketer for new-age healing methods, but Stephens and Hernandez go one further, suggesting an alternative timeline. In this ersatz world, a patent for an electromagnetic healing device is left to her in her father’s will. No categorization does the film justice: it’s about death and mourning, of course, but it’s just as interested in people’s susceptibility to conspiracy.

Invention begins with Hernandez going through the most mundane posthumous rituals. She meets with her father’s lawyer, who informs her about the patent; then later meets his associates, some of...

Each winter, we invite Notebook contributors to take part in our unique twist on the year-end poll. Rather than tally their favorite new releases from the year, they’re asked to creatively pair a new release with an older film they watched for the first time that year: a “fantasy double feature.” We’re delighted by the range of responses this year; this year’s doubles offer up inspired combinations of moving-image art that might otherwise slip through the cracks.We invite you to plunge into this collective viewing scrapbook, which captures our writers at their most imaginative, adventurous, and thoughtful—maybe it'll motivate you to test some of these out (or come up with your own) over the holidays.We hope you enjoy the read, and find our sixteenth year appropriately sweet!{{notebook_form}}Paul AttardNEW: Skinamarink + Old: Room Film 1973Homebound horror films shrouded in darkness, ones that transform...

"Paul T. Goldman" is one of the strangest TV shows I've ever seen.

Jason Woliner, the director of "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm," has been working to bring Paul's story to the screen for the past decade, originally envisioning it as a movie but ultimately extending it into a six-episode series on Peacock. Since the rise of streaming, many shows have felt as if they were designed by an algorithm and stretched out with the sole intention of keeping viewers engaged with a platform for as long as possible. Not this one. 

Watching "Paul T. Goldman" is an immersive dive into the psyche of an eccentric man with a bonkers life story, and the way Woliner chose to tell that story is endlessly fascinating: He mixes familiar documentary language with dramatic recreations of scenes from a screenplay Paul wrote based on his own self-published memoir, starring Paul playing himself. The result is...

A fresh new voice in nonfiction filmmaking, Ahsen Nadeem never intended to make the doc that became “Crows Are White” as deeply, disarmingly personal as it turned out, but in re-centering the focus on himself, he arrived at a much more honest movie. Approaching the subject in the vulnerable, open-book tradition of cine-essayists Ross McElwee (“Sherman’s March”) or Caveh Zahedi (“I Am a Sex Addict”), Nadeem, who was raised Muslim in Saudi Arabia, works through why he found himself so conflicted about his religious upbringing, as well as how to break the news to his parents that he intended to marry a non-Muslim woman. The result is an introspective — and at times uncomfortably irreverent — journey for both him and the audience.

Nadeem’s original intention was to investigate the “marathon monks” of Mount Hiei, Japan, who seek spiritual enlightenment by walking a repetitive course known as the kaihōgyō, equivalent to the circumference of the Earth,...

As always, this year’s Oscar nominees for documentary short subject is a compelling roster of incisive journalistic portraits of urgent world issues. Topics covered this year include the housing crisis, life in present day Afghanistan, a pioneering Black woman athlete, a deaf high school, and bullying. In a marked shift from previous years, the 2022 films skew heavily towards more human stories with strong narrative leanings. None of the hard-hitting investigative pieces from the shortlist, like contenders from Laura Poitras and Field of Vision, made the cut. Unsurprisingly at this point, awards dominator Netflix came out ahead, with three films on the list: “Audible,” “Lead Me Home,” and “Three Songs for Benazir.”

“Audible” follows a deaf high school footballer and his classmates throughout their senior year, and is directed by Matt Ogens and Geoff McLean and counts deaf actor and model Nyle Dimarco as a producer. Netflix also has Pedro...

Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have long flourished as creative partners, no better witnessed than in the “Before” trilogy beginning in the 1990s and running through 2013. Next, it looks like the duo will reunite for a project about Transcendentalism in the 19th century. During a recent telethon to raise money for director Caveh Zahedi’s “The Show About the Show,” Linklater stopped by and gave a little detail on what to expect from this upcoming film (or TV series).

“Ethan has been blabbing about this lately,” Linklater said. “I’ve been working on this since 1989. I got to know the writer Robert Richardson before he died. I grew up going with my dad to the Emerson Unitarian church. There’s been a lot of scholarship about that period. So many women from that era have been overlooked. It’s hard to make a movie about historical figures who aren’t military or political figures.

Each week I write a free Filmmaker newsletter that’s normally not published on this site. Letters range from links and recommendations to longer-form pieces and article first passes. Here’s a newsletter that was sent out June 18 that received a lot of response. With Caveh Zahedi finishing his Kickstarter campaign with a 24-hour telethon, and Jaime Grijalba’s Ruiz Diaries continuing, I thought I’d post it here. You can subscribe to the Filmmaker newsletter at the link. — Sm I’ve recently been spending time each day with Raúl Ruiz and Caveh Zahedi. Not literally, of course — Raúl died in 2011, […]

The post From the Filmmaker Newsletter: Spending Time with Raúl Ruiz and Caveh Zahedi first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore, he tried and failed to convince his father and half-brother to do ecstasy with him in a hotel room. In I Am A Sex Addict, he recounted his addiction to prostitutes and the destruction that wrought on his romantic life. In The Sheik and I, he made an enemy of the Sheik of Sharjah and the film was subsequently banned in the United Arab Emirates. But Caveh Zahedi, the prolific cult filmmaker known for deeply personal documentaries that have been championed by everyone from Lena Dunham to Richard Linklater, reached unknown levels of depravity and self-destruction with The Show About the Show.

Its first season, which aired in 2015, started as a mind-boggling self-reflexive exercise wherein each episode chronicled the making of the previous episode using documentary footage and reenactments but eventually—particularly in its second season—devolved into a perversely entertaining documentation of his marriage’s dissolution.

Pacho Velez’s breakthrough documentary “Manakamana,” which he co-directed, consists entirely of people (and goats) riding a cable car up and down a Nepalese mountain. So while he might not seem like the most natural candidate to make a light-hearted documentary about internet dating, “Searchers” dismantles that dumb assumption from its very first shot. Velez is fascinated by how people perform the idea of themselves, whether they’re crammed into a gondola suspended hundreds of feet above a wild valley or swiping through Tinder on their bed in Brooklyn.

By focusing his camera on the faces of 30 (or so) app users as they peruse the digital meat market and reflect on their perfect match, Velez allows their phones to become as much of a looking glass as they are a portal. The result of his little experiment is that flirts with modern ironies and asks timeless questions (“u up?”) in...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSElaine May by Brigitte LacombeWe're thrilled to hear that Elaine May is set to direct her first narrative feature in 30 years. The film, entitled Crackpot, will star Dakota Johnson. "We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan, which has some extreme complex character arcs, and after months of research, we decided on James Dean," says filmmaker Anton Ernst. A filmmaking duo has acquired the rights to use the image of James Dean in a forthcoming war drama.Recommended VIEWINGPaul Thomas Anderson's collaboration with the American pop-rock band Haim continue with this music video for their latest single "Now I'm In It." Recommended READINGRitwik Ghatak As New York's Lincoln Center begins a retrospective on the films of Ritwik Ghatak, critic Shiv Kotecha provides an essential overview of Ghatak's...

With Rick Alverson’s Filmmaker-recommended The Mountain opening today in theaters, we’re debuting this edition of Not Getting Stoned with Caveh featuring the Virginia-based auteur and his blissed-out interlocutor, Caveh Zahedi. Re the “not,” Alverson disdains pot smoke, allowing Zahedi to puff in his presence but not exhale. Topics discussed: why filmmakers talk about financing all the time, whether cinema produces a physiological response in our bodies that can’t be adequately described in words, and how Alverson thinks about his own filmography.

With Rick Alverson’s Filmmaker-recommended The Mountain opening today in theaters, we’re debuting this edition of Not Getting Stoned with Caveh featuring the Virginia-based auteur and his blissed-out interlocutor, Caveh Zahedi. Re the “not,” Alverson disdains pot smoke, allowing Zahedi to puff in his presence but not exhale. Topics discussed: why filmmakers talk about financing all the time, whether cinema produces a physiological response in our bodies that can’t be adequately described in words, and how Alverson thinks about his own filmography.

I first was introduced to the incredible talents of Emmy Harrington on the set of Caveh Zahedi’s The Show About The Show, where she plays “Slut Machine,” and witnessed, first hand, her ability to adapt to all types of run-and-gun shooting environments and unorthodox directing styles and deliver a great performance take after take. You can also see her work in shows like High Maintenance and Jessica Jones, and an award-winning film she wrote, directed, and stars in — Two Little Bitches — is currently making the festival circuit. I sat down with her a couple of days after directing […]...

I first was introduced to the incredible talents of Emmy Harrington on the set of Caveh Zahedi’s The Show About The Show, where she plays “Slut Machine,” and witnessed, first hand, her ability to adapt to all types of run-and-gun shooting environments and unorthodox directing styles and deliver a great performance take after take. You can also see her work in shows like High Maintenance and Jessica Jones, and an award-winning film she wrote, directed, and stars in — Two Little Bitches — is currently making the festival circuit. I sat down with her a couple of days after directing […]...

Lindsay Burdge is one of the bravest and best actors working in indie film this decade. Her breakout role in Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher brought her raves for her intense performance of destructive obsession. Bold choices continued in movies like Nathan Silver’s Thirst Street, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, and Joe Swanberg’s Netflix show Easy. Now she’s taken on the role of Mandy, in the long-awaited second season of Caveh Zahedi’s acclaimed The Show About The Show, after the real Mandy (Zahedi’s wife) left the show mid-production. She talks about the unique experience of working with Zahedi under these conditions, how […]...

Lindsay Burdge is one of the bravest and best actors working in indie film this decade. Her breakout role in Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher brought her raves for her intense performance of destructive obsession. Bold choices continued in movies like Nathan Silver’s Thirst Street, Karyn Kusama’s The Invitation, and Joe Swanberg’s Netflix show Easy. Now she’s taken on the role of Mandy, in the long-awaited second season of Caveh Zahedi’s acclaimed The Show About The Show, after the real Mandy (Zahedi’s wife) left the show mid-production. She talks about the unique experience of working with Zahedi under these conditions, how […]...

Alex Ross Perry, writer/director of the highly recommended and in-theaters Her Smell, is the guest in this latest installment of filmmaker Caveh Zahedi’s self-explanatory interview show,(Not) Getting Stoned with Caveh. As is the case with the show as well as its sister series, Getting Stoned with Caveh, Zahedi takes a few hits before drawing out his subjects in conversation. Here, the totally straight Perry discusses with Zahedi subjects ranging from small talk at parties to sociability to cinephilia in general. And, oh yeah, at the instigation of a cinematographer friend, Zahedi varies his practice here, switching from his usual two-camera […]...

Alex Ross Perry, writer/director of the highly recommended and in-theaters Her Smell, is the guest in this latest installment of filmmaker Caveh Zahedi’s self-explanatory interview show,(Not) Getting Stoned with Caveh. As is the case with the show as well as its sister series, Getting Stoned with Caveh, Zahedi takes a few hits before drawing out his subjects in conversation. Here, the totally straight Perry discusses with Zahedi subjects ranging from small talk at parties to sociability to cinephilia in general. And, oh yeah, at the instigation of a cinematographer friend, Zahedi varies his practice here, switching from his usual two-camera […]...

‪Denis Lavant‬ on Hannah Gross (Susan) and Tye Sheridan (Andy) in Rick Alverson's The Mountain: "A great love story." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Denis Lavant, having just come back from Upstate New York where he was working on Rick Alverson's The Mountain, starring Jeff Goldblum with Hannah Gross (Michael Almereyda's Marjorie Prime) playing his daughter and Tye Sheridan (Alexandre Moors's The Yellow Birds) her boyfriend, spoke with me about his first experience in making a Us feature film.

A Leos Carax and Emmanuel Bourdieu favourite, Denis Lavant, plays a "spirit man, a shaman" in Alverson's latest endeavour, co-written with Person to Person director Dustin Guy Defa (Caveh Zahedi's The Show About The Show) and Colm O'Leary (The Comedy).

Denis Lavant on the cast of The Mountain: "My daughter is named Hannah Gross, who is Canadian and the Dr. Fiennes is the great actor Jeff Goldblum.

At the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, TV is invading the schedule in a whole new way. The Park City film fest has previously dabbled in what’s possible on the small screen, but this year marks the launch of the Indie Episodics section — which will spotlight TV pilots that mostly lack mainstream distribution.

The selections include “America to Me,” a new docu-series by “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James; as well as “The Mortified Guide,” a screen adaptation of the popular stage show “Mortified,” spotlighting the most embarrassing true stories of adolescence. There’s also “This Close,” showcasing star/creators Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern (both of whom are deaf), and “Franchesca,” featuring digital star and “The Nightly Show” writer/contributor Franchesca Ramsey.

This marks a major change for Sundance, and a renewed commitment to independent television. While Sundance has featured TV programming since the premiere of “Top of the Lake” in...

“Creep 2” barely gets to the end of the first act before Mark Duplass stands naked in front of the camera with a dopey grin on his face. It’s not the actor-director’s first rodeo (he also bared all on HBO’s “Togetherness”), but it’s an unusual decision in the context of goofy found footage horror-comedy, not to mention a sequel to one. That should give you an indication of the peculiar ambitions of this microbudget franchise, which takes the familiar mold of privileged white guy problems and turns them into a nightmare.

Patrick Brice’s 2014 Blumhouse-produced “Creep” stood out from the Paranormal Activities of the world in that the monster was essentially a variation on the Duplassian doofus he’s played in countless freewheeling comedies since he and his brother Jay’s breakthrough directorial debut “The Puffy Chair.” In “Creep,” he spent most of the movie as...

"You never know who you might meet next..." The Orchard has revealed the first trailer for the horror film Creep 2, a sequel to the cult indie horror hit Creep from a few years ago. This time the film follows a video artist looking for subjects who drives to a remote house in the forest to meet a man who claims to be a serial killer. But after agreeing to spend the day with him, she soon realizes she made a deadly mistake. Starring prominent writer/director/actor Mark Duplass, from the first film, as well as Desiree Akhavan, Karan Soni, and Caveh Zahedi. Fans of the first film have been patiently awaiting this first trailer, as the film is scheduled for VOD release in October. Will it be any good? Get a first look below and tell us what you think. Here's the first official trailer for Patrick Brice's Creep 2,...

The heart of Paris beats for film industry in June. Industry Week is the professional part of the Champs-Elysées Film Festival.

The submissions for Us in Progress are now open till August 15th here.

This label includes the Us in Progress (USiP) and Les Arc Film Fesstival’s team presenting the Paris Coproduction Village and La Residence de la Cinefondation which welcomes a dozen young directors who come to Paris to work on their first or second fiction feature project for 4 and 1/2 months. All together, they offer 24 film projects at different stages, from development to post production. More than 200 professionals from the industry, producers, international sellers, distributors, etc. are welcomed.

This year Us in Progress broke out. It has become a top event for discovering American independent cinema not only for the Europeans invited to attend, but for Americans who find themselves in Paris for the event or who even...

Caveh Zahedi: "I think honesty is the most subversive thing you can do in this world." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

An episode spoofing Spike Jonze and Viceland with Emmy Harrington as "Slut Machine" from Caveh Zahedi's spine-chilling The Show About The Show was a highlight of this year's Tribeca Film Festival N.O.W. Showcase.

Person to Person director Dustin Guy Defa (in Matías Piñeiro's Hermia & Helena), Eléonore Hendricks (Peter Brunner's To the Night with Caleb Landry Jones), Alex Karpovsky (Jess Bond's Rosy with Stacy Martin), Kentucker Audley (Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma and Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again), Sam Stillman, editor Peter Rinaldi, Applesauce director Onur Tukel and his cinematographer Jason Banker, Amanda Field, and even IndieWire's Eric Kohn have been seduced by the creator to play themselves or others.

"I feel that way about all my films, not just this one. I think they're all a perfect expression of me.

This year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, better known as Laff if you’re fun, has unveiled its full slate of 2017 offerings, including new offerings from Vincent Grashaw, Leena Pendharkar, Hong Sangsoo, Lea Thompson and many more. The slate includes 48 feature films, 51 short films, 15 high school short films and 10 short episodic works representing 32 countries. The festival’s five competitions feature 37 World Premieres, 2 International Premieres and 9 North American Premieres. Across the competition categories, 42% of the films are directed by women and 40% are directed by people of color.

“Our competitions reflect who Film Independent is as an organization,” said La Film Festival Director Jennifer Cochis. “Within each section you’ll find discovery, diversity, and promising talent both in front of and behind the camera.” Programming Director Roya Rastegar added, “The films curated for the 2017 competition reflect the changing political climate’s impact on emerging independent filmmakers, who are compelled to tell stories about the power of conviction,...

The days are getting longer and the nights are getting warmer, which means that we're edging ever closer to this year's La Film Festival. Taking place June 14th–22nd, the La Film Festival's 2017 competition lineup has been unveiled, and of particular interest for genre fans is the Nightfall section, which includes Colin Minihan's It Stains the Sands Red, Julius Ramsay's Midnighters, and Amanda Evans' Serpent.

Press Release: Los Angeles (May 9, 2017)— Today the La Film Festival, produced by Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards, unveiled the official U.S. Fiction, Documentary, World Fiction, La Muse and Nightfall sections. The 2017 La Film Festival will screen a diverse slate of feature films, shorts and episodic series, along with programs such as Coffee Talks and Future Filmmakers Showcase. The La Film Festival takes place June 14 – June 22, 2017 headquartered at ArcLight Cinemas Culver City, with additional screenings at ArcLight Hollywood,...

Oren Moverman's Time Out of Mind and The Dinner star Richard Gere Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The Tribeca Film Festival will open this Wednesday, April 19, with the World Premiere of Clive Davis: The Soundtrack Of Our Lives at Radio City Music Hall, followed by performances with Aretha Franklin, Jennifer Hudson, and Earth, Wind & Fire. A transformative Cate Blanchett in Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto; Sandy Chronopoulos's exposé on Zac Posen, featuring Lola Kirke, André Leon Talley, Stella Schnabel, Paz de la Huerta, Claire Danes and Naomi Campbell in House of Z; Richard Gere (Joseph Cedar's Norman: The Moderate Rise And Tragic Fall Of A New York Fixer), Laura Linney, Steve Coogan and Rebecca Hall in Oren Moverman's The Dinner; Rachel Israel's Keep The Change with Brandon Polansky and Samantha Elisofon are four of this year's feature highlights.

An episode spoofing Spike Jonze and Viceland with Emmy Harrington...

The Tribeca Film Festival announced programming today for its N.O.W. (New Online Works) section, an inspired array of established and emerging creators who are pushing the boundaries of online storytelling.

Read More: Tribeca 2017 Set to Open With ‘Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives’ Premiere Event at Radio City Music Hall

Top-lining the section is the premiere of “Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock,” a documentary from the Oscar-nominated team of Josh Fox and James Spione and Executive Producer Shailene Woodley. The project is a collaboration with indigenous filmmaker Myron Dewey about the Native-led resistance against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Eli Roth’s Crypt TV will premiere “Monster Madness,” a series of several character shorts; and Op-Docs, The New York Times’ award-winning forum for short, opinionated documentaries, will screen three films at the Festival.

Read More: Tribeca 2017 Lineup: New Films From Alex Gibney, Azazel Jacobs and Laurie Simmons...

Welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly look at the new movies hitting theaters this weekend, as well as other cool events and things to check out. And if you're into box office and how movies might do, come play some of the box office games at EZ1 Productions including their new Pick 5 game!

This Past Weekend:

As expected, Legendary Pictures’ Kong: Skull Island won the weekend, and honestly, the Weekend Warrior’s original prediction of $61.6 million was pretty darn close to the movie’s opening weekend which ended up at $61 million. (Unfortunately, I chickened out on Thursday because my prediction was so much higher than all others and lowered it to $58 million, which was Still closer to than every other prediction last weekend.) Also, as expected (at least by me), Hugh Jackman’s Logan took a 2nd weekend tumble as has been the case with most X-Men movies,...

Aymar Jean Christian is part of the inaugural class of Peabody Fellows, distinguished media scholars who provide fresh perspectives and commentary on behalf of the Peabody Media Center, the outreach and media production arm of the prestigious awards program based at the University of Georgia. He is an assistant professor of communication studies at Northwestern University.

You know you’re a TV nerd when your most anticipated awards announcements are the Writers Guild Awards. TV is a writer’s medium. Every TV fan awaits the Emmys, and some even bother to care about the Golden Globes, but most don’t know the major Guilds give out statues to television producers.

Nerdier still, I’m most interested in the nominees almost nobody writes about: web original short form comedies and dramas.

So while you probably could not imagine my disappointment when the WGA released their nominees for original short-form new media this year,...

Of the seismic cultural shifts that occurred in 2016, Hollywood finally embracing web series may be a tiny victory. But try telling that to the creators (a more succinct term for the writer-director-producer-actors thriving in the medium) who have turned their scrappy little web series into big-budget television deals.

Like Issa Rae, creator of the long-running YouTube series “Awkward Black Girl,” who just received a Golden Globe nomination for her new HBO show, “Insecure,” a vibrant comedy that puts black women front and center.

Or Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, the married co-creators who successfully adapted their web series, “High Maintenance,” for HBO. The stoner comedy that raised the bar for online storytelling preserved its indie charm; the six episodes of elegantly-woven vignettes held true to the spirit of the first online episodes, as each revealed little surprises in the lives of believable characters.

Read More: The Best of 2016: IndieWire...

Factory 25 announced today the BricTV premiere of the comedy series “Dad Day” created by Craig Butta and James Mennella. The six-episode series marks the first narrative series produced by Factory 25 as well as the first series directed and staring Butta, whose previous acting credits include Alex Ross Perry’s “Listen Up Philip” and Charles Poekel’s “Christmas, Again.”

Read More: Factory 25 Acquires Wfmu Doc ‘Sex and Broadcasting’

The series follows Craig (Butta) and James (Artie Brennan) as they struggles with fatherhood and friendship in a continually gentrifying New York. The guys want James’ son Henry to be raised like an authentic New Yorker and each episode explores what exactly that means nowadays, and how to best instill local values in a place that doesn’t resemble your home anymore.

“Dad Day is a pure look at modern man in modern Brooklyn,” says director Alex Ross Perry. “Vulgar, sad and at times absurd,...

Sure, Waking Life is in some ways Linklater’s metaphysical remake of Slacker, exploding the Gen-x barriers thrown up around that landmark work and bringing it closer to a transcendent plane that he’s trying trying trying to reach, especially in this era, but never quite grasping. That’s what appeals to a lot of us about Linklater’s work, that it’s never quite there. His curiosity has to be bound by the physical demands of cinema. But this, this weird film, shot-on-digital and animated by rotoscope on computers, comes closest. Those formats mean it never really “existed” in any physical space. Produced at the dawn of the 21st century, it’s the perfect summation of a moment in time when thought and curiosity might be enough to carry civilization, when restless unease was the result of an economic boom and not certain doom, when the popular cinema could still be a little wily,...

All of my fantasies about meeting and talking to Anna Karina have been set in France, at her home, under constant worry of arrest, having just knocked on her door without an invitation. I ask her questions and she answers them all with tears in her eyes: "What was it like to act for Jean-Luc Godard, the man you loved, even when you were fighting like cats and dogs, even when he broke your heart? And how, in God's good name, did you manage to create performances that never age, that show no sign of origin, no influence, that absolutely confound me in the best possible way? How did you do it?” These fantasies found nourishment in the assumption that the icon of the French New Wave was fairly reclusive, not wanting to be bothered, certainly not wanting to talk anymore about those films, that time, that man. So imagine...

The new issue of Lola features work by the late Peter von Bagh and on Max Ophüls, Terrence Malick, Aoyama Shinji, Wang Bing and more. And the new issue of Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema focuses on Portuguese cinema and the work of Manoel de Olivera, Pedro Costa, Paolo Rocha and António Reis. Also in today's roundup: Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss 70mm and more, plus interviews with Caveh Zahedi and Charles Poekel, early word on new projects by Christopher Nolan and Hirokazu Koreeda, best-of-2015 lists from Jonathan Rosenbaum and others, a review of David Thomson's new book, How to Watch a Movie—and more. » - David Hudson...

The new issue of Lola features work by the late Peter von Bagh and on Max Ophüls, Terrence Malick, Aoyama Shinji, Wang Bing and more. And the new issue of Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema focuses on Portuguese cinema and the work of Manoel de Olivera, Pedro Costa, Paolo Rocha and António Reis. Also in today's roundup: Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson discuss 70mm and more, plus interviews with Caveh Zahedi and Charles Poekel, early word on new projects by Christopher Nolan and Hirokazu Koreeda, best-of-2015 lists from Jonathan Rosenbaum and others, a review of David Thomson's new book, How to Watch a Movie—and more. » - David Hudson...

For more than two decades, Caveh Zahedi has been exploring his neuroses and desires in awkward, provocative detail. From his first feature "A Little Stiff" through 2005's "I Am a Sex Addict," the film diarist has proved to be an amusingly off-beat guide to his own life. That tendency may very well reach its apotheosis with "The Show About the Show," the irreverent meta web series that Zahedi launched this fall on the Brooklyn-based cable TV and digital network Bric TV. Read More: Why Comedian Chris Gethard, Public Access Alumni, Thinks Talk Shows Are All About the Games Now As the title implies, "The Show About the Show" remains within the confines of its meta premise, tracking its wayward protagonist as he pitches the program to a baffled Bric executive named Aziz (portrayed with a hilarious deadpan by filmmaker Dustin Defa). Zahedi's ensuing adventure finds him shooting a sex scene...

This week's most recent and presumably final announcements of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival lineup, a hefty list of titles that included narrative and documentary premieres as well as 72 short films, provided a lot to sift through. As usual, several names familiar to anyone keeping tabs on contemporary American cinema stand out. New movies from Ira Sachs ("Little Men"), Kelly Reichardt ("Certain Women") and Todd Solondz ("Wiener-Dog") are both expected and welcome reminders that some of this country's best working filmmakers show no signs of giving up. Read More: 9 Hidden Gems from the 2016 Sundance Lineup But they're only one part of the story. Dig deeper into these latest lists and a lot of other promising variables stand out. Here's a look at a few of them. "Bob Dylan Hates Me"Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi tends to push buttons in his work (most memorably in recent years with "The Sheik and I") but more than that,...

The Sundance Film Festival, whose 2016 edition runs from January 21 through 31, has announced lineups for its Competitions and Next program, the 10th anniversary edition of New Frontier, and given us a sneak peek at the Midnight section. Today, the festival has added short films by Sebastian Silva, Aj Schnack, Terence Nance, Caveh Zahedi, Bryce Dallas Howard, Don McKellar, Jason Reitman and many more, 72 in all. We've got the complete list with synopses. » - David Hudson...

The Sundance Film Festival, whose 2016 edition runs from January 21 through 31, has announced lineups for its Competitions and Next program, the 10th anniversary edition of New Frontier, and given us a sneak peek at the Midnight section. Today, the festival has added short films by Sebastian Silva, Aj Schnack, Terence Nance, Caveh Zahedi, Bryce Dallas Howard, Don McKellar, Jason Reitman and many more, 72 in all. We've got the complete list with synopses. » - David Hudson...

Jack Dunphy, a co-writer on Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven and a frequent collaborator of Caveh Zahedi, is currently raising funds for his first feature, Living With Others, on Kickstarter. To celebrate crossing his initial goal, Dunphy has released his animated, Sundance-selected short Serenity online. Living With Others, which just added Zahedi as an executive producer, will blend live action and animation, and Dunphy had the following to say about his choice: I’m punctuating the movie with animation because it makes it easier for me to communicate difficult thoughts and emotions. Subconscious hang-ups are brought to the surface when I animate, and that helps me realize […]...

Jack Dunphy, a co-writer on Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven and a frequent collaborator of Caveh Zahedi, is currently raising funds for his first feature, Living With Others, on Kickstarter. To celebrate crossing his initial goal, Dunphy has released his animated, Sundance-selected short Serenity online. Living With Others, which just added Zahedi as an executive producer, will blend live action and animation, and Dunphy had the following to say about his choice: I’m punctuating the movie with animation because it makes it easier for me to communicate difficult thoughts and emotions. Subconscious hang-ups are brought to the surface when I animate, and that helps me realize […]...

We've gathered in one entry links to interviews with Alejandro Jodorowsky, Peter Bogdanovich, Jean-Claude Carrière, Claire Denis, Gaspar Noé, Roy Andersson, Catherine Breillat, Isaach de Bankolé, Hu Jie, Jason Segel, Samantha Fuller, Joshua Safdie and Ben Safdie and their Heaven Knows What star, Arielle Holmes, Bill Plympton, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Caveh Zahedi, Desiree Akhavan, Judd Apatow, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Bob Byington, André Gregory and Wallace Shawn and the team behind Results, Andrew Bujalski, Guy Pearce and Kevin Corrigan. » - David Hudson...

We've gathered in one entry links to interviews with Alejandro Jodorowsky, Peter Bogdanovich, Jean-Claude Carrière, Claire Denis, Gaspar Noé, Roy Andersson, Catherine Breillat, Isaach de Bankolé, Hu Jie, Jason Segel, Samantha Fuller, Joshua Safdie and Ben Safdie and their Heaven Knows What star, Arielle Holmes, Bill Plympton, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Caveh Zahedi, Desiree Akhavan, Judd Apatow, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, Bob Byington, André Gregory and Wallace Shawn and the team behind Results, Andrew Bujalski, Guy Pearce and Kevin Corrigan. » - David Hudson...

Read More: Was Caveh Zahedi "Blacklisted" By Thom Powers? It's More Complicated Than That Anyone familiar with the idiosyncratic "Holy Moment" section in Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" will recall the wide-eyed character talking about film's ability to capture "God incarnate." But there's a lot more to the man at the center of that scene. Director Caveh Zahedi's personal, button-pushing projects have been infused with his energetic personality since 1990's "A Little Stiff," his first feature, in which he explores his attraction to a UCLA student. Over the years, Zahedi's filmography has chronicled many outrageous moments in his life, from 2003's "Tripping With Caveh," in which he took mushrooms with Wil Oldham, to 2012's "The Sheik and I," a meditation on free speech that followed Zahedi's ill-fated assignment to produce a subversive project for a Middle Eastern art festival. For years, Zahedi's work has been...

Factory 25’s long awaited Caveh Zahedi box set is now accepting pre-orders and on the verge of shipping. From Filmmaker’s print edition, here’s Peter Rinaldi on the mammoth release. DVD is not dead. It’s the new vinyl. Unconvinced? Perhaps a six DVD set of an important and influential American director’s films, most of which have never been released on video, will change your mind. Factory 25’s “Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi” might be the most comprehensive collection of an independent filmmaker’s work available in one set: five feature films, over two dozen shorts, a feature-length series […]...

Factory 25’s long awaited Caveh Zahedi box set is now accepting pre-orders and on the verge of shipping. From Filmmaker’s print edition, here’s Peter Rinaldi on the mammoth release. DVD is not dead. It’s the new vinyl. Unconvinced? Perhaps a six DVD set of an important and influential American director’s films, most of which have never been released on video, will change your mind. Factory 25’s “Digging My Own Grave: The Films of Caveh Zahedi” might be the most comprehensive collection of an independent filmmaker’s work available in one set: five feature films, over two dozen shorts, a feature-length series […]...