Interviews
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Interview: Kristian Levring, ‘The Salvation’
Kristian Levring looks like one of the characters in his new film The Salvation (2014) – a distinct face, long dark hair, you could imagine him taking out someone with a rusty Victorian sniper. But the Danish director, who lives in North London, is more the intellectual than the aggro marksman, a former Dogme 95…
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Interview: Viggo Mortensen on new film ‘Jauja’
“I’ve been doing this for a year,” Viggo Mortensen chuckles when we ask him if he’s been talking to journalists all day. It’s an honest and easy response that typifies the candour and natural charm that the New York-born, Danish-American actor exudes whenever he’s speaking about his films with the press or anyone else. In…
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Glasgow 2015: Ann Hui on new film ‘The Golden Era’
Ann Hui’s voice is an uncommon one in world cinema. Probably the most acclaimed of the Hong Kong New Wave directors, Hui began her career in the late 1970s in a film industry then dominated by kung fu movies. She continued to make films in Hong Kong for over thirty years, striking an almost impossible…
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Interview: Peter Strickland, ‘The Duke of Burgundy’
“It’s a love story, really,” says Peter Strickland when we caught up with him in London late last year and asked him to tell us about his latest film, The Duke of Burgundy (2014), a wonderfully kinky exploration of a sadomasochistic relationship. “It’s a domestic drama that has fallen out of the hands of a…
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Interview: Jessica Hausner on new film ‘Amour Fou’
With the release of her fourth feature film in 13 years Jessica Hausner continues the current flow of quietly antagonistic Austrian auteurs speaking truth against the powerful constructs of a bourgeois society that eats its own for sport and pleasure. After the success of 2009’s Lourdes she returns with Amour Fou (2014), a look at…
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Interview: Rocky Morton, ‘Super Mario Bros.’
The name Rocky Morton may not be instantly familiar with many of today’s film fans, but in the late 1980s he was the co-creator (along with Annabel Jankel) of the cutting edge and hugely popular transatlantic satirical television series, Max Headroom (1987-1988). Martin and Jankel went on to co-direct Denis Quaid and Meg Ryan in…
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Interview: Bruno Dumont on his ‘Camille Claudel 1915’
French director Bruno Dumont’s Camille Claudel 1915 (2013), which premièred at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, sees Juliette Binoche take the lead as the famous French artist and lover of Auguste Rodin. The main thrust of Dumont’s latest sees Camille placed by her brother, the Catholic poet Paul Claudel (Jean-Luc Vincent), in a remote mental…
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Interview: Ken Loach, Paul Laverty on ‘Jimmy’s Hall’
When Ken Loach’s Jimmy’s Hall (2014) premièred at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, there were murmurings that after fifty years of executing his own Loachian brand of social realism, the director had opted for a softer approach. When we spoke to Loach and his longtime screenwriting partner Paul Laverty, their reaction suggests this may not…
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Interview: Jia Zhangke discusses ‘A Touch of Sin’
‘Violent’ and ‘controversial’ are provocative terms that don’t seem to faze Jia Zhangke when talking about his latest film, A Touch of Sin (2013) (on DVD and Blu-ray this week). But the ex-breakdancer turned prolific Chinese filmmaker has a relaxed air about him. He greeted us for this interview with a friendly “Hello” in English.…
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Interview: Kelly Reichardt on her radical ‘Night Moves’
Kelly Reichardt’s career has thus far seen a string of characters interacting – for better or worse – with the natural landscapes of the Pacific northwest. Whether they be settlers in the mid-19th century or two guys on a weekend road trip, Oregon in particular has proved both a comfort and an obstacle for her…