Interviews

Matt Gallagher

Matt Gallagher’s latest doc­u­mentary Grinders (review) just premiered at Hot Docs. I spoke to him about the film and about his own time as a strug­gling poker player on Toronto’s under­ground circuit.

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SXSW Festival Programmer Jarod Neece

I met Jarod Neece back in September, where he was the incred­ibly gra­cious host of a really swell SXSW party at TIFF. He was so gra­cious that he also agreed to an inter­view, right in the midst of the pre-SXSW maelstrom.

The 2011 edi­tion of the South by Southwest Film Festival takes place in Austin, Texas, from March 11th through the 20th. If you’re going to be there, say Howdy!

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Sundance Shorts Programmer Jon Korn

I met Sundance shorts pro­grammer Jon Korn back in the summer, when he was in town for the Worldwide Short Film Festival. He was a sur­prise bonus guest when I inter­viewed Wholphin editor Brent Hoff (which you can read here), and at the time, I made him promise to submit to a more formal inter­view. Six months later, here it is.

The timing is actu­ally great because Sundance just recently announced their full slate of shorts pro­gram­ming, and so Jon might just have a breather for a few short weeks. We con­ducted this exchange over email in mid-December 2010. The Sundance Film Festival runs from January 20–30, 2011.

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Wholphin Editor Brent Hoff

I’m a huge fan of Wholphin, a quarterly DVD filled with short films pub­lished by the fine folks behind McSweeney’s and The Believer magazines. It’s one of the chief reasons why my appre­ci­ation for short films con­tinues to grow. So I was delighted to dis­cover that Wholphin’s founder and editor Brent Hoff would be in Toronto to attend the Worldwide Short Film Festival. He gra­ciously agreed to talk with me about the “magazine” and his pas­sionate belief that films should be free to be just the right length. Extra credit for sit­ting down with me after spending 4.5 hours in the hot sun watching the Blue Jays win a 15-inning nailbiter.

An added bonus was the pres­ence of Sundance Film Festival shorts pro­grammer Jon Korn, who pipes in now and then. I’ve actu­ally been prom­ised a fuller inter­view with Jon soon so look for that in the weeks or months to come.

Special thanks to AJ Schnack for granting per­mis­sion to use his photo of Brent enjoying him­self at the 2008 True/False Film Festival.

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Andrew James and Joshua Ligairi
Cleanflix has a number of fest­ival screen­ings coming up in the coming months. Catch the film at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, and at Cinequest in San Jose, California.

My first film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival was Cleanflix (review), a doc­u­mentary which explored the issues sur­rounding the sale and rental of edited ver­sions of R-rated movies to obser­vant Mormons in Utah. I knew that after seeing the film, I wanted to ask the cre­ators many more ques­tions than they could have fielded during the post-screening Q&A. So, thanks to David Magdael and Margot Hardy from TC:DM Associates, I was able to sit down for half an hour with the cre­ators of the film during what must have been a very hectic week for them. In addi­tion to co-directors Andrew James (on the left in the pic­ture above) and Joshua Ligairi (on the right), we were also joined by pro­ducer Amber Bollinger.

Since the inter­view deals with some plot points in the film, it really makes sense to read my review first.

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