Subverting the Algorithms

"Returning from CPH:DOX’s INTER:ACTIVE program, Lauren Wissot speaks with four innovators working at the frontiers of gaming and immersive work. This year’s 20th anniversary edition of CPH:DOX (March 15–26) was packed with celebratory gems, especially when it came to the radically assembled INTER:ACTIVE exhibition, curated by Mark Atkin. Here are talks with four of the exhibition’s artists, all workng in XR and games, about the boundary-pushing work they presented."

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“A Call to Action for Everybody To Preserve Their History Before It’s Gone”: Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker on The Stroll

Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s Sundance-premiering The Stroll is a beautifully and lovingly crafted time capsule of NYC’s Meatpacking District that mostly spans from Giuliani’s infamous “broken windows” reign of terror through Bloomberg’s post-9/11 “gentrification on steroids,” as one knowledgeable interviewee ruefully reflects (seconds after I coincidentally yelled those same words at my screener). Unsurprisingly, our billionaire mayor did indeed view unrestrained capitalism as the solution to every problem, including that of the “undesirable” communities — starving artists and sex workers — that called the neighborhood home. For me, the most revelatory aspect of this heartfelt walk down memory lane isn’t that it’s offered from the POV of the mostly Black trans sex workers (including director Lovell) who made their money working the area nicknamed “The Stroll,” but that the filmmakers were able to track down so many that both survived and thrived (at least a dozen, with some whose time went all the way back to the early ’80s, remarkably enough). Clear-eyed and unapologetic, this band of sisters somehow managed to avoid the fate of famous activist contemporaries like Marsha P. Johnson (whose body was found floating in the Hudson River in ‘92) and Sylvia Rivera (who died of complications from liver cancer in 2002 at age 51). Just prior to the film’s June 21 release on HBO, Filmmaker reached out to the co-directors to learn all about the process of using cinema to set the record on queer sex work history straight.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Realized That a Sauna Is Not Just for Cleaning the Body, but Also the Soul”: Anna Hints on Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

Debuting January 22 in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is an intimate look at a tradition that UNESCO has added to its “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” This might appear to be a heavy designation for a way to sweat out stress. Unless, of course, one happens to be South Estonian like director Anna Hints, who grew up with the knowledge that for centuries smoke saunas have also been a place of life (birth) and death. For the small group of women that have generously allowed Hints to serve as a cinematic fly-on-the-wall witness to a sacred space of power, smoke saunas also offer freedom and healing where one can bond through joyous laughter and traumatic confessions — with both one another and themselves. To learn more about this unusual project, Filmmaker reached out to Hints, the film’s equally unique director — also “scriptwriter and composer with a background in contemporary art, photography and experimental folk music” — whose bio additionally notes that they are an “active dumpster diver” that currently calls India their second home.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Filmmaker's 20 Most Read Posts of 2022

Well worth the end-of-year read! And not just because my interview, “We’re All Pornographers Now”: Juliet Bashore on Her 2K-Restored Kamikaze Hearts, was the top post of 2022. (Smart sex still sells.)

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers

Without a doubt one of the highlights of the 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival – and there were many, with this year’s red carpet attendees ranging from Kerry Condon, to Janelle Monáe, to Eddie Redmayne, to Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing recipient Ron Howard – was the Wonder Women: Producers panel, which took place at the light-filled Gutstein Gallery on a balmy October afternoon. Moderated as usual by industry vet Darrien Gipson, a specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the Executive Director of SAGindie, participants included English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey), English film producer Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks), manager and producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True), and indie icon and Killer Films founder Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol). Which meant that, including Gipson, half the panel were women of colour – split equally between sides of the pond – and representing multiple generations. Not a common sight on festival panels, let alone on industry boardrooms. Yet.

To read the rest visit Outtake magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Zarifa Ghafari, 'In Her Hands'

Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follows the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to come calling. (Though Hilary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, co-founders of HiddenLight Productions and the film’s EPs, did answer the call.) While still in her 20s, Zarifa Ghafari became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the youngest to ever hold that job. And she was appointed by the recently deposed President Ashraf Ghani to the leadership role — not in relatively tolerant Kabul, but in Maidan Shahr, in the conservative province of Wardak, where the Taliban have long had widespread support. Nevertheless, 2020’s International Woman of Courage, who would go on to survive three assassination attempts, seemed to be making her mark when the filmmakers started following her inspirational tale that very same year. But then a fateful decision in a faraway corridor of power was made that changed the course of the film — and Afghanistan’s history (yet again). Luckily, Ghafari managed to hold out in Kabul right up until its devastating fall — with the camera, surprisingly, continuing to roll. And fortunately for Documentary, the passionate advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan, who continues her activism from her new refuge in Germany, found time to serve as our November Doc Star of the Month. In Her Hands releases globally on Netflix on November 16.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers (the Christine Vachon Edition)

Moderated by Darrien Gipson, Executive Director of SAGindie, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival was a must-catch, mostly for two glaringly obvious reasons, with the first being the wide diversity of the participants. Alongside white Brits Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, perennial panelist and SCAD Savannah Film Festival Advisory Board member) and manager-producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True, and Sir Kenneth’s longtime rep), there was the English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), and American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey). Then there was the second reason — the presence of “grande dame” of indie film (per Gipson), Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol), who has been running her female-led Killer Films since the mid-’90s. In other words, Vachon had more than a panel’s worth of wisdom to dispense.

To learn more visit Filmmaker magazine.