Film

Go ahead. Take a step closer to the edge. Don’t be afraid to look down. That dizzying sensation you’re experiencing is the same one you’ll get from peering into Sunshine Superman, a history of the extreme adventure sport of BASE jumping. The film is a testament to the past and modern-day devotees of this death-defying—and sometimes failing—sport.

David Tedeschi has been making documentaries with Martin Scorsese for the past six years, which is less than a tenth of the history their most recent subject can claim. The 50 Year Argument investigates the culture and debates that have sprung up around the New York Review of Books during that history, featuring an impressive interview line-up of past and present-day contributors using new and archival footage.

Making a short film can be a thankless job. Screening options are few, and the chances for financing even fewer. Audiences aren’t trained to consume content that may conclude in as little as five minutes, though the Internet is changing attention spans and offering more ways to get shorts seen. That’s good news for today’s short filmmakers, and those new methods of distribution were one of the topics discussed at the Q&A panel following the New York Film Festival’s Shorts programs.

The film Jauja is in some ways a microcosm of star Viggo Mortenson’s life. The American actor heavily identifies with his Danish ancestry, and he spent many of his childhood years living in Argentina where Jauja is set.

Let’s return to the best of the next filmmakers, the talented up-and-comers who screened their short films at the 52nd New York Film Festival this past October. In our last article, we talked about the challenges that short-film creators can face, especially in terms of financing and distribution. More insight came to us on just how those financial limits can produce burdens such as limited locations and the pool of actors a director can choose from. But our interviews and the panelists’ answers at the Q&A session after the screenings show how inventive filmmakers milk their limits to produce fresh inspiration.