Montclair State University, Film Program
Visiting Filmmakers Coordinator: Roberta Friedman 973-655-7282
TUESDAYS from 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Location: University Hall, Rm 1040 (unless otherwise noted)
open to all – admission free
6-Feb Jem Cohen
Jem Cohen is a New York-based film and video maker known for his blending of media formats (16mm, Super 8, video) and collaborations with music artists. Cohen has made two feature-length documentaries, and has worked with musicians including Sparklehorse, Blonde Redhead, R.E.M., Elliott Smith, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Miracle Legion, Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, Vic Chesnutt, Stephen Vitiello, and Gil Shaham with the Orpheus Orchestra.
Cohen’s most well-known work is the 1999 experimental documentary Instrument, a portrait of the D.C.-punk band Fugazi that was ten years in the making. Another popular work is the portrait Benjamin Smoke, a film about the life of the frontman of the Atlanta, Georgia band Smoke, who died of AIDS shortly before the film’s completion.
13-Feb Linda Hattendorf
Fresh from her European Film Festival tour, Hattendorf presents her film “The Cats of Mirikitani.” winner of the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. This is her directorial debut. As an editor in the New York documentary community for over a decade, her editing work has been aired on PBS, A&E, and Sundance Channel, as well as in festivals and theatrical venues
20-Feb Yevgeniy Yufit
Yevgeny Yufit is a film director, photographer and painter known as the founder of the art movement called necro-realism where he uses elements of horror & science fiction cinema and combines them with the bleakest aspects of neo-realism to examine humanity’s relationship with death and decay. He was a member of Russia’s Parallel Cinema movement, which sought to make films which were aesthetically at odds with the state-run film industry. In the early 1980’s he established his own film studio Mzhalala Film where he made several short films.
His most famous films are probably his 1985 short, The Woodcutter, and his first feature, 1992’s Father, Santa Claus Is Dead.
27-Feb Christine Vachon
Producer, Author, and founder of KILLER FILMS, Vachon is one of the few producers to have had a major impact on the 90’s independent film scene. Her name has been associated in particular with a number of the gay and lesbian independent films of that decade, an association that began when she produced her first film, Todd Haynes’ Poison, in 1991. Her recent book, “Shooting to Kill: How an Independent Producer Blasts Through the Barriers to Make Movies That Matter,” tells it all.
A few of her films include: Todd Haynes’ “Velvet Goldmine,” “Safe” and “Poison,” Tom Kalin’s “Swoon,” Rose Troche’s “Go Fish,” Larry Clark’s “Kids,” Mary Harron’s “I Shot Andy Warhol,” Todd Solondz’ “Happiness,” and “Boys Don’t Cry” by Kimberly Peirce
6-Mar Laurie Collyer
Laurie Collyer, New Jersey native, is the director/scriptwriter of “SherryBaby” the story of Sherry Swanson who returns home to New Jersey after serving a three year prison sentence. The film stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, just nominated for a Golden Globe. Collyer was nominated for a Director’s Guild of America Award for Nuyorican Dream less than a year after she completed the graduate film program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The documentary premiered in competition at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.
In October 2000, HBO broadcast it as part of the Cinemax Reel Life series.
20-Mar Jake Mahaffy
Jake Mahaffy was recognized as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine, and he has been awarded grants from Creative Capital and the Guggenheim Foundation. He was selected as the inaugural Lynn Auerbach Screenwriting Fellow by the Sundance Institute.
Jake Mahaffy’s WAR is one of those works that French critics sometimes term a ‘UFO’ – a film that comes out of nowhere, or comes direct and unmediated from its director’s unconscious. Working over four years without a crew and no sound, Mahaffy shot the film himself on a hand-cranked camera – accounting for some evocative flickers and variations of light and speed – then added a dense soundtrack of voice-overs, background noise and cacophonous radio.
27-Mar Bruce Sinofsky
Bruce Sinofsky, an Award-winning documentary film director, began his career in 1977 at Maysles Films (the “direct cinema” producers of such fare as “Salesman” (1969) and “Gimme Shelter” (1970),. Within a year, he had worked his way up to associate producer, working on such projects as the Christo documentary “Running Fence” (1978). As Senior Editor for Maysles, he worked on commercials and feature films until 1991, when he and Joe Berlinger formed their own production company, Creative Thinking International. Their first production was the jointly produced, directed and edited Brother’s Keeper, which after a slow start, became the most successful self-distributed documentary to date. Their other work includes Paradise Lost, and Some Kind of Monster.
3-Apr Tami Gold
Tami Gold, partner in AndersonGold Films, launched her career in the Newsreel Film Collective of the anti-Vietnam War movement at the age of 20 and has since produced and directed over 20 films about controversial or often ignored subjects. Her work has appeared at the Sundance Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Institute’s International Film Festival, the Whitney Museum among other venues AndersonGold Films, through their films and supporting web sites, seeks to broaden and deepen discussion and awareness about the critical issues affecting diverse communities throughout the world.
10-Apr Matt Mochary
FAVELA RISING documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson’s grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever. Winner of the Emerging Filmmaker Award Tribeca Film Festival 2006.
17-Apr Lloyd Kaufman
Lloyd Kaufman is an American film director, producer, and documentarian. He is the president and founder of Troma Entertainment, the oldest continually operating fully independent movie studio in the world. Since 1974, Troma has produced, acquired and distributed more than one thousand feature films from all regions of the globe and in all genres. Best known for the Toxic Avenger, Troma has helped bring to the world the best and brightest talents in entertainment, ranging from master Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki to American humorists Matt Stone and Trey Parker (“South Park”). He is also author of the book Make Your Own Damn Movie.
24-Apr TBD
If you want to suggest an artist for next semester contact:
Prof. Tony Pemberton @ The Dept of Art and Design
973-655-7200
Film@montclair.edu