Ex Machina

Written & Directed by Alex Garland / Produced by Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich / Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno, Oscar Isaac / Music by Ben Salisbury, Geoff Barrow / Cinematography Rob Hardy / Edited by Mark Day



"Now I am become death, the destroyer of the worlds"
- Robert Oppenheimer quoting from the Bhagavad Gita (BhG.XI.32)

The Fault in Our Stars

Written by John Green (book)
Screenplay by Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber
Directed by Josh Boone
Performances by Shailene Woodley & Ansel Elgort

“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Jim Gianopulos

USC School of Cinematic Arts 2014 Commencement Speech

A pretty smart guy once said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” That was Albert Einstein. Your questions will become the stories you’ll tell, because ultimately, filmmaking is story telling. And stories are told by people with a sense of wonder, a desire to explore new ways of looking at the world, to relate to what’s there and to explore what others don’t see. The best filmmakers I know are always the most curious. They’re travelers, readers, lovers of art and food and music, of new experiences. They’re the explorers, the searchers, the inventors. [...]

You’ve been given a great education in the art of story telling—the best in the world. And now you are being given a great opportunity to use your acquired skills to tell new stories in new ways. The questions you ask through your stories can be incredibly powerful. They can change the way people think and feel, alter the way they see themselves and others. If you assemble the right images and right words, sound, and music you can make something that changes the world through the boundless potential of creativity. And it all starts with the questions you ask. - J.G.

Jorge Luis Borges

"You think you are alone, and as the years go by, if the stars are on your side, you may discover, that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you'll never get to know, but who love you."
-Jorge Luis Borges

Breaking Bad

Created by Vince Gilligan
Starring: Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitte, Bob Odenkirk, Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, Laura Fraser, Jesse Plemons
Writers: Vince Gilligan, Thomas Schnauz, Peter Gould, Moira Walley-Beckett, George Mastras, John Shiban, Sam Catlin, Gennifer Hutchison, Patty Lin

"I've come to realize that much of what I teach my students applies not only to what goes on in the classroom, but in life also. It's not as crazy as it sounds. You see, technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change: Electrons change their energy levels. Molecules change their bonds. Elements combine and change into compounds. But that's all of life, right? It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution, dissolution. Just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then transformation. It's fascinating really. It's a shame so many of us never take time to consider its implications." -- Walter White

"I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass." -- Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

The Road

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy



photo by Tim Flach

La Strada

Directed by Federico Fellini
Written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, & Ennio Flaiano
Starring Anthony Quinn & Giulietta Masina





“If that pebble is useless, then so are the stars.”

Ryan Coogler

Story Teller
film director and screenwriter

"Being a filmmaker is about being a storyteller. [...] I think that storytelling is really the way that human beings have as a tool to trigger empathy for somebody that you don't know. [...] Cinema is a format of telling a story that is so immersive that it works like no other medium and through that storytelling process, human beings are able to connect with other people that they never would have come in contact with in their entire lives--that's why storytelling is so important." from Sundance.org

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Oscar Grant mural in Oakland, CA. Photo by flickr.com/eliziao
Fruitvale Station

Fish Tank

Written and Directed by Andrea Arnold
Starring Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender
Cinematography Robbie Ryan
Editing by Nicolas Chaudeurge
Produced by Nick Laws, Kees Kasander / (Executive) Christine Langan, David M. Thompson

Harmony Korine

"I think people will lose the film as soon as they start trying to figure out my logic or what I'm doing or while they're watching it start to dissect metaphors... I'm not really so interested in it working on a purely cerebral level. I'm much more concerned with it on an emotional level and that you leave feeling a certain way." - H.K.

(photo by Ari Marcopoulos)




"I've been wanting to make a movie in this way for a while, I'd been playing with this type of structure and this thing is more like a liquid narrative, where time is more free, jumping forwards and backwards.. and the movie was more meant to mimic a drug experience, it was more like a ride or physical experience than anything.. almost more like micro scenes, things that were very quick and then extended and looped in some ways. Maybe the movie is more musical or experiential than it is traditionally narrative, so it's like a stew or a chemical reaction, you put all these things, you start to put locations and characters in one place and then shake it up and you document the explosion. [...] You set up a movie and you tell yourself that anything can happen--I do at least--I don't go in saying this is a right movie or this is a wrong movie, I go in with like there's this big margin that's undefined and that to me is what's exciting." -H.K.
(..replacing plot lines and expected narrative tropes with intuitively arranged “experiential moments”)

"There's not actually a lot of dialogue in the movie, I didn't want to make a movie with too much talking, I started to feel like sometimes words get in the way. I wanted to make a movie that worked also in an experiential way, just like something that was a physical experience, a movie that would almost like go through you in a physical way. [A lot of the best moments come from setting up a situation, a place, and seeing where they take it.] Improvising--I was never to fond of the word, it's something else..it's like the real world and we're just pushing it."

"You create this world. They're actors right, and they inhabit this world. And I say from the very beginning, there's no right or wrong. I say you just become part of it, you're fearless. It's not you, it's you, but it's not you. Nothing you do, there's no mistakes, it's all perfect. Directing to me starts even before you get to the set. Directing is fluid.. it's an abstract thing. It's not really done in only purely in the moment, it's an idea that you plant before, it's a location that you show, it's a whisper in someone's ear.. It's a free form thing."





"I don't think this is representative of like, all teenagers. I just think like, this is a small segment. But at the same time it's like I think this is taking place everywhere. I do think that kids are living like this wherever you go, even in rural areas across America, middle America, anywhere. Like even here in France, we invited some 15-year-old skateboard kids from the beach to see the movie, and afterwards they went, like, 'Dis ees my favorite movie. Dis ees my life.'" - H.K. at 21, as told to Roger Ebert


(sources: wiki, vice, toronto film festival press conference)

De Nadie

Directed by Tin Dirdamal

...la gente de la Patrona

If you were given $10 million to be used for moviemaking, how would you spend it?

There is this idea that with video format, films are now democratized. That practically anyone can grab their camera and tell what they want. I believe this is not so. Immigrants do not have access to making their own movies, indigenous people don't either. So media and films are still controlled by the ones who have the money. With $10 million dollars I would buy cameras and give free workshops to several marginal groups in order for them to tell their own stories, in order to try to revert who gets to tell the stories.

- Tin Dirdamal (interview by Indiewire 1/21/06)

Nabil

House of Sand and Fog

Directed by Vadim Perelman
Screenplay by Shawn Lawrence Otto and Vadim Perelman
Based on the novel "House of Sand and Fog" by Andre Dubus III
Starring Jennifer Connelly, Ben Kingsley, Shohreh Aghdashloo
Cinematography by Roger Deakins
Editing by Lisa Zeno Churgin
Produced by Vadim Perelman and Michael London

"It's so rare to find a movie that doesn't take sides. Conflict is said to be the basis of popular fiction, and yet here is a film that seizes us with its first scene and never lets go, and we feel sympathy all the way through for everyone in it. To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie understands them and their flaws. Like great fiction, "House of Sand and Fog" sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them.
[...] A plot is about things that happen. A story is about people who behave. To admire a story you must be willing to listen to the people and observe them"
- Roger Ebert (quoted from his review; 12/26/11)

Thomas Newman

Composer

"I remember a teacher once asked me, what makes music sad? What a brilliant question. His answer was, it takes on the physical qualities of something sad. Meaning if it's sad, a melody will move in step-wise manner. It will tend to be slower as you are when you're sad; it takes on the physical characteristics of an emotional state. Something in the music rings and carries you back to a memory you have that elicits a feeling. I guess what's wonderful about music is that it's utterly abstract and yet has a great kind of sinuous, subjective emotional reaction. I like the idea that music can be dimensional, that it's not necessarily playing what's there."
- Thomas Newman

"I call [Thomas Newman's] style minimal, he does a lot with sustains and atmospheres and pinpoint notes and chords which are just so effective..." Bill Bernstein (Music Editor)

La Haine

Written & Directed by Mathieu Kassovitz / Cinematography by Pierre Aïm / Editing by Mathieu Kassovitz and Scott Stevenson / Produced by Christophe Rossignon / Starring Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui

"C’est l’histoire d’un homme qui tombe d’un immeuble de cinquante étages. Le mec, au fur et à mesure de sa chute se répète sans cesse pour se rassurer : jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien, jusqu’ici tout va bien. Mais l'important c’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage."

Mathieu Kassovitz: "You don't have to be political to make a film like HATE, you can talk about society through the human perspective, something that everyone can understand. I'm not a politician; I'm lucky to be a filmmaker and to be able to express myself through the films I make."(interview from: ThingReviews NYC 2/9/96, author: Ryan Deussing)

King of Devil's Island

(2010) Written by Dennis Magnusson / Directed by Marius Holst / Cinematography John Andreas Andersen / Editing by Michal Leszczylowski / Produced by Karin Julsrud

based on true events that occurred at Bastøy Prison in Norway in 1915...

Why did you choose to make a film based on a true story? To me a story that has some root in reality is fascinating. This story was interesting, because it was not yet exposed. It is an interesting historical event, since these themes play along and are still relevant today; when evil things are done, who is the bad guy? Is the evil character the one that beats up the kids? Or the responsibility lies higher up with the governor, who allows this to happen? Bastøy is the micro cosmos of what is still happening nowadays. You could take the scandals of the catholic church or Guantánamo Bay and the same kind of themes are still there.
- Marius Holst (interviewed by Zowi Vermeire)

Midnight Cowboy

(1969)
Directed by John Schlesinger / Screenplay by Waldo Salt / Based on the novel "Midnight Cowboy" by James Leo Herlihy / Editing by Hugh A. Robertson / Starring Dustin Hoffman & Jon Voight / Produced by Jerome Hellman / Music by John Barry / Cinematography by Adam Holender / Distributed by United Artists

"If most of my films have anything in common it's an interest in human relationships, particularly the more extraordinary and difficult kinds. I find the struggle of characters against the odds terribly interesting. I don't think I could possibly do a film about some sort of brave hero, some Errol Flynn winning the Battle of the Bulge . . . I'd rather do films about smaller people, outcasts." - John Schlesinger

Words to the World

LittleGiantWorks.com

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN

Story by Hubert Selby, Jr. "There is more humanity in a prostitute trying to truly love, if only for a moment, than in all the slow-motion romantic fantasies in the world." - Roger Ebert

Until the Quiet Comes

Short Film by Kahlil Joseph
Music by Flying Lotus