Category: long live cinema

NYC Bike Ride through COVID-19 Quarantine – 03.21.2020

long live cinema

Please note. As of recording, “outside activity” (walk, run, bike) while staying 6ft away from people is allowed under NYC’s quarantine guidance.

Otherwise please STAY HOME and do your part to stop the spread. It’ll save lives. Whether you’re young, middle, or old! With symptoms or without.

I’m sharing this video provide an non-editorialized window into life in NYC. Even though empty streets are freaky, it’s heartening that people are collectively changing their behavior to stop this virus. Tough times, but we’ll get through this. Hopefully more connected to and supportive of each other.

This bike ride started in South Brooklyn then across the Brooklyn Bridge, up to Times Square, back south and across the Williamsburg Bridge. Neighborhoods noted throughout.

Pizza the Musical

long live cinema

Pizza the Musical is a short film I created and directed for The Museum of Pizza – a monthlong popup exhibition in Brooklyn, NY. I wrote the piece in collaboration with maestro Sarah Fiete who also composed the music.

In this divided world, I wanted to bring people together around the greatest thing ever. Pizza: The Great Unifier. From kings to peasants, everybody loves a good slice. Despite it’s universal appeal, pizza preferences vary greatly from person to person. And goodness can pizza opinions get passionate! What style is best? — New York? Detroit? Chicago deep dish? What’s the proper way to eat a slice? Fork and knife or folded in half? — Or perhaps the most divisive issue of all: Does Pineapple have ANY place on a pizza?

Pizza the Musical sets about to answer these questions. And shows the world how “we’re all just one pizza in a pan.”

Directed by – Anthony Clune

Written by – Anthony Clune and Sarah Fiete

Music Composed by – Sarah Fiete

Instrumentals / Sound Design – Eric Tait

STARRING

Alexis Ijeoma Nwokoji – New York City Pizza

Alexandra Doman – Detroit Style Pizza

Patrick Tombs – Margherita Slice

Isaac Ryckeghem – Chicago Deep Dish Pizza

Olivia Greco – Pizza Statue of Liberty

CREW

Cory Fraiman-Lott – Director of Photography

Harold Erkins – Assistant Camera Production

Jason Leinwand – Production Design / Costumes

Oliver Ignatius – Sound Recordist

Alana Salvano – Makeup Artist

Lava River Cave – BEND, OR

long live cinema

Sound on. This underground hike was extremely worthwhile. If you’re ever in the highdesert of central Oregon check it out. You can hike a mile down a cavernous tube carved by molten magma thousands and thousands of years ago. It’s pitch dark so you rent powerful lanterns to look at the rocks and contemplate geologic time and your relationship to the planet.

http://www.oregon.com/attractions/lava-river-cave

https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/deschutes/recarea/?recid=38396

SOUTHERN SEAPLANE: Save Our Coast Tour

long live cinema

Here’s some GoPro Footage I shot last spring in New Orleans, Louisiana. We head south for open water and perform a touch and go.

Captain Lyle Panepinto mounts the camera to the wing of his Cesna 185 Skywagon and shares some thoughts about the history of Southern Louisiana’s coastal crisis.

Captain Lyle has been flying since the early 1970s and has witnessed the coast change drastically in that time.

I highly recommend a visit to Southern Seaplane for their “Save Our Coast” tour. It’s thrilling and educational. This video doesn’t do it justice. But still, hope you enjoy.

Foggy Rainy Mermaid Parade

long live cinema

Here’s a little something I shot last summer. A rainy start kept the crowd thin, but was naturally no hindrance for the mermaids and sea creatures on parade at Coney Island, Brooklyn, USA. The wet weather did however diminish the mortal human crowd size. Joe aka the “Brooklyn Yeti” observed the intimate environment fostered a vibe that felt closer to the Mermaid Parades of yore.

All the creativity, individuality and diversity on display made me feel pride in my city, my country, and left me wondering why can’t every day be like the Mermaid Parade?

Shape of Water Q&A with Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Richard Jenkins and Miles Dale @ Telluride Film Festival 2017

long live cinema

I shot this Q&A on a GoPro after a screening of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water at this year’s Telluride Film Festival. The great Alejandro González Iñárritu moderates a discussion with del Toro as well as actor Richard Jenkins and producer Miles Dale. Telluride Film Festival co-director Julie Huntsinger introduces the film, Q&A follows.

Del Toro explains how the The Shape of Water, at its core, is about people who are invisible. And what happens when they take back the power.

I suggest you see the film BEFORE you watch this, so nothing gets spoiled. It’s touching, suspenseful, fun, thought provoking. Everything a movie should be.

-apc

 

Guillermo del Toro The Shape of Water Poster

Werner Herzog Q&A with Joshua Oppenheimer @ Telluride Film Festival 2017

long live cinema

I shot this clip of film director Joshua Oppenheimer introducing a screening of Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Start Small (1970) at the Telluride Film Festival 2017.  What follows is the uncut Q&A with Werner after the screening. Pardon the occasional camera jostling and noise.

Werner reflects on the creation of this singularly disturbing masterpiece and around the stupidity of chickens. Herzog reassures the audience that his subjects are always treated like royalty after one questioner expresses concern about exploitation of his actors. Enjoy one of the GOATS talk shop!

Here are Joshua Oppenheimer’s Telluride Program notes about Even Dwarfs Start Small (1970) Herzog’s second feature film. (Check out Telluride Film Festivals 2017 Program here)

“This is why I became a filmmaker—and the most haunting work of cinema ever created. An institution set amid volcanic wastes is taken over by its inmates. All of them are dwarfs. So is the warden, who’s held hostage. He keeps a hostage of his own, another dwarf, a strategy to protect himself from the inmates’ wrath. The structures of power—furniture, telephones, cars—are scaled for full-sized adults, dwarfing everybody. Werner Herzog’s second feature is perhaps the most profound vision ever conjured of how bureaucracy corrupts the human impulse for liberation. A taboo is violated early on: inmates kill a pig suckling its litter, and from then on the rules that keep us human are jettisoned. Dark impulses, lurking in us all, take over. These are dream images that leave you with a metallic taste in the mouth and a ringing in the ears.”

-Joshua Oppenheimer

Joshua is the documentarian behind the masterpieces The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence. Josh was Telluride’s guest director this year, which means he curated a program of films that he felt could help us grapple with our current societal moment.

As an aspiring filmmaker, I’ve been struggling with a fundamental question: Does the cinema matter? Or is it just a comfy escape – a chance to unplug, unwind, and disassociate from a broken world?

Among the other films Oppenheimer presented at Telluride include: Salaam Cinema (1995), Hotel of the Stars (1981), and Titicut Follies (1967). These three documentaries are not easy to watch, but you still ought to seek them out. They give us a glimpse into the absurdity of authority and the redeeming power of empathy.

After watching them, I left with a renewed faith that, yes, cinema IS important. In fact, it may be the key to understanding the modern world – for over a hundred years filmmakers have been leaving us clues. The cinema is not merely a modern art form, but a modern language unto itself. And it’s helping us learn from our past and imagine a more humane and beautiful future.

So in a world of NETFLIX AND CHILL let us proclaim LONG LIVE CINEMA!

-apc