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In this episode, filmmaker Sophy Romvari talks about how she uses film to explore grief, the up and downsides of making a personal film, and the dangers of youth culture.

Guest Bio: Sophy Romvari (she/her) is a Canadian filmmaker based in Toronto, whose critically acclaimed short films premiered at festivals such as TIFF, True/False, Hot Docs, and Sheffield. Her short documentary Still Processing (2020) premiered at TIFF before touring festivals worldwide. Still Processing premiered online through MUBI and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. She is currently in development for her first feature film.

Time Codes:

1:00 - Sophy's First Film Memories and How Sophy Became a Filmmaker

7:00 -  Exploring Film To Process Lived Experiences, How Style is Driven by Instincts and Limitations, and What It Means to Make Personal Films

13:23 - Inserting Performance in Documentary

17:00 - Sharing Haunting Experiences with Men, It's Unfortunate Timeliness and Not Viewing it as a Horror Film in Pumpkin Movie

28:50 - Centering Animals, Barbara Streisand, and Discovering Grief in Norman Norman

36:45 - Getting Into an Emotional State, Grasping Memory, The Family Traits Sophy Carries, and What is Considered to Be a Feature in Still Processing

47:50 - Seeking Desire and Connections, Interrogate Becca's Intentions with the movie, Sophy Entering the Story, and Deserving or Earning Companionship in It's What Each Person Needs

59:00 - Sophy's Recommendation: Allan King's A Married Couple

Show Notes:

Pumpkin Movie

Trailers for Norman Norman, Still Processing, and It's What Each Person Needs

Sophy's website

Film Comment's Best Shorts of 2022

Sophy's tweeting Still Processing is a feature

In this episode, artist-scholar Jessica Bardsley speaks with Edward Frumkin about fictionalizing her lived experiences, working with archival materials, incorporating borrowed sources into a new story, critiquing Hollywood, and the composition of the human brain and the earth.

Guest Bio: 

Jessica Bardsley (she/her) is an artist-scholar. Her interdisciplinary research takes an ecological approach to film and media within the global context of contemporary art. In addition to her work as a scholar, she is also an ecofeminist filmmaker. Her films have screened at top festivals like CPH:DOX, Visions du Réel, EMAF, Hot Docs, RIDM, True/False, and on the Criterion Channel. She is the recipient of various awards, including a Princess Grace Award, Grand Prize at 25FPS, the Eileen Maitland Award at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Best Short Film at Punto de Vista, and numerous Film Study Center fellowships. Her research and writing have been supported by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies.

Time Codes:

1:05 - Jessica's Path to Working in Video

3:55 - Balancing Written Scholarship with Creative Works and Making Autofiction Stories

13:00 - Stealing and Following Impulses in The Blazing World

29:50 - Exploring the Ecology of the Earth and Attachment in The Making and the Unmaking of the Earth

38:45 - Rewriting Endings and Searching for Solace in Goodbye Thelma 

50:00 - Dissecting the Power of Sleep towards the Human Mind in Life Without Dreams

1:06:00 - Jessica's Recommendations: The Hunger by Tony Scott, Daughters of Darkness by Harry Kumel, and The Hole by Tsai Ming-liang

Show Notes:

Life Without Dreams Trailer

Excerpts of The Blazing World, The Making and Unmaking of the Earth, and Goodbye Thelma

In this episode, filmmaker Lydia Cornett speaks with Edward about rhythmic choreography in her work, ethnographical and observational approaches to filmmaking, and making films without a specific agenda.

Guest Bio:

Lydia Cornett is a filmmaker based between Columbus, Ohio and Brooklyn, NY. As a former musician turned filmmaker, she makes work that unites the restraint of observational storytelling with the physicality and connective qualities she associates with music-making. Her work has screened at BAMCinemaFest, Sheffield DocFest, AFI Docs, AspenShortsFest, Hamptons International Film Festival, and DOC NYC, where she received a Special Jury Mention for her film Yves & Variation. She was awarded fellowships to the Jacob Burns Film Center’s Creative Culture program and the UnionDocs’ Collaborative Studio, and she has received support from the Tribeca Film Institute, IF/Then Shorts, the Princess Grace Foundation, and the NYC Women's Fund for Media, Music and Theatre. Her work has been distributed and featured by The New Yorker, PBS (POV and Reel South) Nowness, and Vimeo Staff Picks.

Time Codes:

1:00 - Lydia's First Film Memory and Filmmaking Path

8:45 - Presenting Yves's multifaceted life and Collaborating With Yves in Yves & Variation

18:25 - Exploring Tenderness and Care in Bug Farm

28:15 - The Pleasures of Waiting, Humanizing Voting, and Witnessing the Absurdity in Party Line

41:30 - Tackling Labor, Rhythmic Choreography, and Connecting Meat Processing to Human Bodies in Fleshwork

51:55 - Lydia's Recommendation: Bombay Beach by Alma Har'el

Show Notes:

Bug Farm and Yves & Variation

Party Line and Fleshwork Information

In this episode, filmmaker and dancer Sarah Friedland shares how dance choreography correlates with film directing, the status of people’s ideologies through body gesture and movement, and working with professional and non-professional performers. Finally in today's concluding thought, Edward talks about lines.

Guest Bio:

Sarah Friedland (she/her) is a filmmaker and choreographer working at the intersection of moving images and moving bodies. Through hybrid, narrative, and experimental filmmaking, multi-channel video installation, and site-specific live dance performance, she stages and scripts bodies and cameras in concert with one another to elucidate and distill the undetected, embodied patterns of social life and the body politic. Facilitating a research process integrating found movements, gestures, and postures from cinema and archival footage, embodied memories, and contemporary dance languages, she choreographs through practices of interviewing, pre- and re-enactment, adaptation, and improvisational play, shaping dances with diverse communities of performers and movers—from professional dancers to cohorts of seniors and teenagers.

Her work has screened and been presented in numerous festivals and film spaces including New York Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Ann Arbor Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, BAMcinématek, Mubi, and Anthology Film Archives, in art spaces such as Performa19 Biennial, La MaMa Galleria, MoMA, Sharjah Art Foundation, MAM Rio, Nasher Museum, Wassaic Project, and Manifattura delle Arti (Bologna), and in dance spaces including the American Dance Festival and Dixon Place, among others. Her work has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Film at Lincoln Center, Dance Films Association, Art Factory International, NYSCA/Wave Farm, Rhode Island State Council of the Arts/NEA, Berlinale Talents, where she was one of 10 selected screenwriter/directors for the 2017 Script Station/Project Lab, and most recently by the Bronx Museum, where she was an AIM Emerging Artist Fellow in 2020.

Time Codes:

1:10 - Sarah's Film and Dance Upbringings

14:00 - Political Discourse and Imagery of Groups in Crowds

31:40 - Experimenting the Home Workout Video and Embodied Interviews in Home Exercises

46:18 - Choreography as an Intervention, Tackling School Shootings and Youth Futures in Drills

55:10 - Critiques on Institutional Form and Corporate Management in Trust Exercises

1:06:20 - Concluding Thought: Lines

Show Notes:

Crowds Excerpt and Trailer, Home Exercises Excerpt, Drills Trailer, and Trust Exercises Excerpt

In this episode, filmmaker and DJ Alex Ramirez-Mallis discusses the differences between making films and music, the theme of seeking liberty, and how to make filmmaking sustainable with Meerkat Media Collective. Finally in today's concluding thought, Edward shares some 

Guest Bio:

Alex Ramirez-Mallis (he/him) is a Cuban-American, Jewish filmmaker raised in New Hampshire now living in Brooklyn, NY. His films have been selected for multiple festivals internationally. His work has been distributed by PBS, Criterion, Roku, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Pitchfork, The Huffington Post, and Vimeo Staff Picks. His short documentary SHUT UP AND PAINT (2022) was awarded Grand Jury Prize at IFF Boston and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and was broadcast nationally on POV. Alex received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College (CUNY) and is an active member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and the Meerkat Media Collective.

Time Codes: 

1:03 - Alex's path to being a DJ and filmmaker

4:30 - Alex's dissecting the differences between making music and differences

9:30 - Exposing the politics of food waste in Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest

20:00 - Working in Cuba and exploring family heritage in La Noche Buena

33:14 - Following Brockhampton and showing their camaraderie in American Boyband

42:56 - Unveiling NYC's criminalization of dollar van drivers and the drivers' significance to the people in Flatbush! Flatbush!

55:30 - Making filmmaking sustainable with Meerkat Media Collective

1:03:02 - Alex's recommendation: The Territory

1:03:07 - Concluding Thought: reel print updates

Show Notes:

Alex's Website

Featured Works Available: American Boyband Series, La Noche Buena, and Spoils: Extraordinary Harvest

Flatbush! Flatbush! project page 

Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and Meerkat Media Collective group pages

In this episode, filmmaker Reid Davenport talks with Edward Frumkin (he/him) about his love of baseball, how his interest in filmmaking isn't necessarily related to telling stories, and how the personal is political. Finally in today's concluding thought, Edward talks about Q&As.

Guest Bio:

Reid Davenport (he/him) makes documentaries about disability from an overtly political perspective. His first feature film, I Didn't See You There, will be aired on PBS's POV on January 16, 2023, is nominated for Best Documentary at the Gotham Awards and won several awards at festivals such as Sundance, Full Frame, and SFFILM. Life After, produced by Multitude Films, will be released in early 2024. In 2020, Davenport was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Filmmakers Under 40.” His short film A Cerebral Game won the Artistic Vision Award at the 2016 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. It is distributed by New Day Films, along with his short documentaries Wheelchair Diaries and Ramped Up. Davenport’s work has been supported by Field of Vision, Catapult Film Fund, Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, XTR, ITVS, NBCUniversal, CNN, and Points North Institute, among others.

Davenport was a 2017 TED fellow and his work has been featured by outlets like NPR, PBS, The Washington Post, MSNBC, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. He holds an MFA in Documentary Film & Video from Stanford University and a BA in Journalism and Mass Communication from The George Washington University. Currently, Reid is a visiting professor in the film department at Pratt Institute and a member of Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities (FWD-DOC).

Time Codes:

0:45 - Reid's path to being a filmmaker

5:50 - Demystifying Independence and first-time filmmaking experience in Wheelchair Diaries

16:30 - Sharing his love of baseball in A Cerebral Game

25:00 - Presenting Unconventionality and Congruent Aesthtics in I Didn't See You There

42:25 - Exploring Autonomy and Medically-Assisted Suicide in Life After

49:20 - Reid's recommendation: Koyaanisqatsi

50:05 - Concluding Thought: Q&As

Show Notes:

Trailers for Wheelchair Diaries, A Cerebral Game, I Didn't See You There (IDSYT) without Audio Description and IDSYT with Audio Description

IDSYT Press Kit