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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Interviews
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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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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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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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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