KUCI: Film School

Family Squares / Film School Radio interview with Director Stephanie Laing

FAMILY SQUARES drops us into the dysfunctional world of the Worths. When Grandma Mabel dies suddenly, they must set aside their differences and come together. Mayhem quickly ensues as long buried family secrets bubble to the surface with a shocking revelation. But, as they begin to find their way back to each other, they soon realize that while you can’t choose your family, you can choose to be friends with them. FAMILY SQUARES features an all-star cast the includes; Ann Dowd (Hereditary), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Judy Greer (Archer), Billy Magnussen (No Time To Die), Margo Martindale (August: Osage County), Sam Richardson (Veep), Timothy Simons (Veep), June Squibb (Nebraska), Casey Wilson (Saturday Night Live), Scott MacArthur (Halloween Kills), Zoë Chao (Love Life), Jessica Miesel (The Resident), Maclaren Laing (Eastbound & Down), and Henry Winkler (Happy Days). Director and co-writer Stephanie Laing (Veep) joins us to talk about her boisterous, poignant, funny, heartfelt, recognizable and loving look at a family mournfully undergoing a stress test during a pandemic in a Zoom-centric new world order.
For updates and screenings go to: screenmediafilms.net/Family-Squares

Dear Mr. Brody / Film School Radio interview with Director Keith Maitland

Dear Mr. Brody begins in January 1970 with a hippie-millionaire Michael Brody Jr., 21-year-old heir to a margarine fortune, announcing to the world that he would personally usher in a new era of peace and love by giving away his $25-million inheritance to anyone in need. In a frenzied few weeks, Brody and his young wife, Renee, ignited a psychedelic spiral of events. Instant celebrities, the Brody’s were mobbed by the public, scrutinized by the press, and overwhelmed by the crush of personal letters responding to this extraordinary offer. Fifty years later, an enormous cache of these letters are discovered—unopened. In this riveting follow-up to his acclaimed TOWER, award-winning director Keith Maitland reveals the incredible story of Michael Brody Jr.—and the countless struggling Americans who sought his help—to create a deeply moving meditation on desire, need, philanthropy, and love. Director Keith Maitland (Tower, A Song for You: The Austin City Limits Story) join’s for a conversation on this extraordinary starburst of a “happening” that revealed the pain and struggle of ordinary people who saw the Mr. Brody as hope.
 
To find out more go to: greenwichentertainment.com/film/dear-mr-brody

Help / film School Radio interview with Director Marc Munden

HELP is the riveting story of a struggling young woman, Sarah, played by Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), who is smart, but has never fit in, not in education and not in work. Her family told her she'd never amount to anything but she unexpectedly finds her calling as a carer at Bright Sky Homes. Sarah has a special talent for connecting with the residents, including one in particular, 47-year-old Tony, played by Stephen Graham (Boiling Point). Tony's Young Onset Alzheimer's has left him living out his days in care as his mind slowly deteriorates. His illness causes periods of confusion and violent outbursts, which the other members of staff can't handle, but with Sarah he begins to build a real bond. Sarah's success at managing Tony and the other patients helps build her confidence and restore her self-belief. Then March 2020 hits and everything Sarah has achieved is thrown into doubt with the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic. She and her colleagues tirelessly fight tooth and nail, ill-equipped, poorly prepared, and seemingly left helpless by the powers that be. A determined Sarah goes to extraordinary lengths to protect those in her care, whose conditions make their suffering and isolation all the more traumatic. But the staff's unwavering commitment, compassion and heroic efforts can only do so much, and Sarah is pushed into a dark corner and desperately looks for a way out. Director Marc Munden stops by to talk about working with the HELP writer Jack Thorne on this and other projects, enlisting a superb cast of gifted actors, led by Jodie Comer, Stephen Graham, Ian Hart and Cathy Tyson, to tell a timely and timeless story of compassion and finding the courage to face down the deadly chaos of an unfathomable pandemic and institutional neglect.
For news and updates go to: mubi.com/films/help-2021-marc-munden
To watch HELP go to: acorn.tv

TED K / Film School Radio interview with Director Tony Stone

TED K immerses us into the addled world of Ted Kaczynski, living a life of almost complete seclusion in a simple wooden cabin in the mountains of Montana. But then this former university professor, who despises modern society and its faith in technology, becomes radicalized. What begins with local acts of sabotage, ends with deadly bomb attacks. To the outside world, Kaczynski becomes known as the Unabomber. Based on Ted Kaczynski’s diaries and writings, and his infamous “manifesto” director Tony Stone takes the viewer on an intimate and infuriating kaleidoscopic true crime journey into the life of one of America’s most complex and eccentric killers. TED K features a tour-de-force performance from Sharlto Copley who portrays the complexity of this unique outsider, raging at the forces of both the inescapable technological society that plagues him and his own inner demons. Director, writer, producer and editor Tony Stone (Severed Ways, Peter and the Farm) joins us for a conversation on what attracted him to telling this story from the Unabomber’s point-of-view, filming on the property where Kaczynski’s infamous cabin once stood and the importance of Sharlto Copley brilliantly blending together Kaczynski’s self deluding righteousness with the arbitrary ruthlessness he directed at his hapless victims.
For news and updates go to: superltd.com/films/ted-k
To watch in a theatre go: superltd.com/films/ted-k#drive-ins
For more about Tony Stone go to: heathenfilms.com
Go to: sharltocopley.com

ICAHN: The Restless Billionaire / Film School Radio interview with Director Bruce David Klein

ICAHN: THE RESTLESS BILLIONAIRE, explores the fascinating contradictions at the heart of the famed financier, Carl Icahn. Amassing close to $20 billion dollars over the last half century and at the forefront of some of the most legendary business deals of our times, Icahn, often referred to as the “Lone Wolf of Wall Street,” is a feared negotiator and master strategist in the art of corporate takeovers and investments. A polarizing figure described as both an activist investor and a ruthless corporate raider, Icahn rose from modest beginnings in Queens to become one of the richest men in the world, embodying the American Dream, whose impact on companies, products, CEOs, stock markets, and capitalism itself is vast. Yet, he openly criticizes corporate excess and the huge wealth inequality gap. In his own words and with commentary from family members, journalists, and fellow titans of industry, ICAHN: THE RESTLESS BILLIONAIRE probes Icahn’s humble roots, his business acumen, and his obsessive drive to stay atop America’s corporate hierarchy. Director Bruce David Klein (The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened) joins us for a conversation on how one of America’s highest profile capitalist was shaped by the complex relationship he had with his parents, anti-semitism, and how his poker playing skills helped inform the way he approached the high stakes world of corporate mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, and buyouts on his way to becoming an icon of American business.
For updates and screenings go to: hbo.com/icahn-the-restless-billionaire
ICAHN: THE RESTLESS BILLIONAIRE debuts TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15 (9:00-10:45 p.m. ET/PT) on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s America / Film School Radio interview with Director Joy Davenport

FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA is an illuminating and exhilarating look at one of our most compelling civil rights leaders. Through rare footage and recordings, some not seen or heard in half a century, FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA tells her story — and that of America — more than four decades after her death. The directorial debut of Joy Davenport and the brainchild of Monica Land, FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA offers photos, documents, performances and sources, some unearthed by family members, to a new generation of audiences called upon to take up the mantle of preserving American democracy. Fifteen years in the making, FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA presents the daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers’ passion and commitment to voting rights and economic justice and her rise to national prominence. The film captures Hamer’s resistance as she works to register Black voters, runs for Congress, fights for economic opportunity in her home state and more — all while government leaders, the media and even her civil rights peers tried to silence her. FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA was produced by Hamer’s great-niece Monica Land and Selena Lauterer. Director Joy Davenport joins us for a conversation on this captivating portrait of one of the civil rights era’s preeminent icons through her own speeches, interviews and songs follows Hamer’s life from the cotton fields of Mississippi to the halls of Congress.
Find out more at: fannielouhamersamerica.com
Watch Fannie Lou Hamer's Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Speech | 1964 DNC Convention

The Long Walk / Film School Radio interview with Director Mattie Do

THE LONG WALK follows an old scavenger living on the fringes of a near-future society exploits a ghostly companion’s ability to traverse time, hoping to prevent his mother’s suffering from a terminal illness. A deliberately paced story that burns with intensity and human emotion, THE LONG WALK is all at once a culturally rich ghost story, a grim near-future sci-fi, and mystery with life and death stakes that spans across decades. THE LONG WALK world premiered to great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival in the Giornate degli Autori section and was followed by praise out of the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s the third feature of Lao based director Mattie Do, whose career has been recognized by the Oldenburg International Film Festival and Locarno International Film Festival for her breakthrough work as Lao’s first and only woman filmmaker, and the only filmmaker of the country to work in the horror and fantastic genres. Director and Producer Mattie Do (Chanthaly, Dearest Sister) joins us for a conversation on the collaboration with screenwriter Christopher Larsen, finding a storytelling balance between sci-fi and drama in the context of Laos’ complex relationship with the outside world and its own unsettled social and political history.
For news and updates go to: thelongwalkfilm.com
In theaters starting February 18
Digital & Home Video starting March 1

Strawberry Mansion / Film School Radio interview with Co-directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney

STRAWBERRY MANSION takes us to 2035, where our dreams are no longer our own--they’re infused with product placement and auditors assess unpaid taxes on our most private reveries. Beleaguered taxman James Preble (Kentucker Audley) arrives at a run-down house in the countryside for a routine audit and encounters Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller), a lifelong dreamer who remains resolutely analog, circumventing the surveillance state with VHS tapes and homemade headgear. As Preble works his way through Bella’s archive of the unconscious, he begins to fall in love with visions of her younger self (Grace Glowicki). But all is not well in dreamland as dangerous family secrets and a rogue’s gallery of blue demons and fried chicken pitchmen threaten to set the lovers’ paradise ablaze. Can Preble and Bella escape from the modern, monetized dreamscape and find refuge in Strawberry Mansion? Co-directors and co-screenwriters Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney join us to talk about their fantastical and fantastically inventive and heartfelt film that is Pee-Wee’s Playhouse by way of Charlie Kaufman, and a splash of Harold and Maude whimsy.
Updates and screenings go to: strawberrymansionmovie.com
See it in a theatre: strawberrymansionmovie.com/tickets
Distributed by musicboxfilms.com/strawberry-mansion

A Banquet / Film School Radio interview with Director Ruth Paxton

A BANQUET Widowed mother Holly (Sienna Guillory) is radically tested when her teenage daughter Betsey (Jessica Alexander) experiences a profound enlightenment and insists that her body is no longer her own, but in service to a higher power. But despite her refusal to eat, Betsey loses no weight and gains a growing faith in her newfound and enigmatic sense of purpose. At first, her condition is suspected to be an act of adolescent rebellion or a psychological break. As her daughter’s personality is further subsumed by this affliction, Holly finds herself confronting the boundaries of her own beliefs and the repressed traumas of her past. In an agonizing dilemma, torn between love and fear, Holly is forced to confront the boundaries of her own beliefs. Combined with stylish photography pervaded by grotesque culinary close-ups and subtle forays into nightmarish surrealism, A BANQUET is a disquieting feast with images and ideas that leave a potent and lingering aftertaste. Director Ruth Paxton (Be Still My Beating Heart, Stay Awake, Pulse) stops by to talk about A BANQUET’s literary and cinematic inspiration, the exceptional cast of actors who help make the film resonate and the satisfaction that comes with completing her debut feature film.
For updates and screenings go to: abanquetmovie.com
In theatres February 18, go to: abanquetmovie.com/tickets

The Fabulous Filipino Brothers / Film School Radio interview with Director Dante Basco

THE FABULOUS FILIPINO BROTHERS consists of four vignettes that follows the lives, for better and worse of four brothers, as their Filipino American family prepares for the ultimate Filipino event, a wedding. A blue-collar family, they share the same house save one, the Golden Child. The Eldest Brother must secure his pride and position in the family by paying for the wedding, this leads him to revisiting his old life as a hustler to make ends meet. The Golden Child is stuck in The Philippines the day before the wedding and meets a lover from the past. The Youngest and most single connects with a new love... who may be his cousin, while The Middle Brother breaks out of a deep depression following the loss of a child using a dating app for the first time. Director, producer and co-writer Dante Basco stops by to talk about the joy of working with his brothers and sister as well as extended family, filming their home town of Pittsburg California and telling a universal story of love family, finding your way and connecting with one another.
For news, screenings and updates fo to: beacons.ai/fabfilipinobros
You can also visit: 1091 fabulous-filipino-brothers