Govindini Murty – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Appreciating Classic Movies for Yourself: Why the TCM Classic Film Festival is Important

[The post below was featured today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Each spring, the TCM Classic Film Festival arrives in Hollywood, sparking pleasant reflections on what it is for a film to be considered “a classic.” This year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, running from April 28th to May 1, 2016, promises to be as memorable as the last six. The festival will feature appearances by Italian cinema legend Gina Lollobrigida, French New Wave icon Anna Karina, classic Hollywood star Eva Marie Saint, the premiere of the restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, a special live musical event of Carl Theodore Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and an opening night gala presentation of All the President’s Men.

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I and many cinema fans will no doubt be hoping that Anna Karina will be persuaded to reprise her soulful appreciation of The Passion Joan of Arc at the festival, as memorably captured in Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie. There will also be premieres of the restored prints of Gregory Peck’s The Keys of the Kingdom and Jennifer Jones’ The Song of Bernadette, along with exhibitions of movie memorabilia in Club TCM in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Ballroom (the site of the first Academy Awards). These and other delights await cinema fans who make the trek to Hollywood Boulevard over the last weekend in April.

And this brings me to why it’s important to celebrate and remember the classics.
Whether it’s a classic play by Shakespeare, a classic epic by Lady Murasaki, a classic painting by Titian, or a classic piece of music by Tchaikovsky, we appreciate classic works because they are the foundation of what it is to be civilized.

This is no less true of classic films, whether they be Metropolis, Cleopatra, Mildred Pierce, Ninotchka, All About Eve, Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers, 2001, The Seven Samurai, or Pather Panchali. All these works are the expressions of talented human beings and their personal experiences – and when such works reach an apex of artistry, they transcend time – they become “classic.” A classic work is not old – it is timeless.

And yet today, people are so caught up in the moment – so frantic to keep up with the accelerating pace of the digital age – that they routinely dismiss classic movies as being “out of touch” or not relevant to them. This couldn’t be more wrong. I think classic film is highly relevant – because any form of human expression that is excellent is relevant.

It’s odd that the more we store things in the expanded memory banks of our digital era – the more we forget. Vast quantities of data – including the digitized forms of countless classic movies, TV shows, radio dramas, musical works, paintings, photographs, works of literature, history, and science – are saved in the world’s online archives and are available to the public – and yet somehow, people are more ill-educated than ever. This is an interesting dichotomy. Why is this the case?

In some ways it recalls the transition from the oral age of Homer and the ancient bards to the literary age, when the invention of writing allowed stories to be written down for the first time. As soon as writing was invented, people’s memories of these old oral traditions were no longer needed – and they were rapidly forgotten. (Though, there are still tribal societies that preserve such oral traditions today). Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Appreciating Classic Movies for Yourself: Why the TCM Classic Film Festival is Important

LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Why Should Women Have a Voice in Sci-Fi? Introducing My Film UFO Diary

[The post below was featured today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Women have been the stars of many of our biggest sci-fi films recently – from Star Wars: The Force Awakens to The Hunger Games and Gravity. This has been a very welcome development – but we need more women behind the camera as creators of sci-fi, as well. We need the female equivalents of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron. But how do we do this, given the many obstacles in the way of women filmmakers?

There is an entire online industry of VFX-driven sci-fi shorts that are launching male filmmakers’ careers right now. If women are to direct and produce blockbuster sci-fi films, then we must also enter this arena of online sci-fi shorts.

I’d like to introduce you to my epic, women-led sci-fi short film UFO Diary, debuting today on Vimeo. UFO Diary is a sci-fi action-comedy about two Women’s Army Corps officers in WWII who fight off an alien invasion of Los Angeles. The film recreates a famous WWII air raid, is edited by Emmy Award-winner Mitch Danton, and features stunning VFX by artists from ILM, Weta Digital, and Digital Domain. UFO Diary was recently featured in the January issue of American Cinematographer.

UFO Diary is inspired by one of the most famous UFO incidents in history – the Great Los Angeles Air Raid of 1942. We’re releasing UFO Diary today to commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the Air Raid on February 25th.

In the early hours of February 25th, 1942, a mysterious, unidentified flying object appeared in the skies over Los Angeles. The Army fired a massive barrage of 1400 shells into the night sky – but nothing was shot down, and no wreckage was ever recovered. The incident was witnessed by over 100,000 Angelenos, but remains unexplained to this day.

2016-02-22-1456137526-7881730-GovindiniMurtyUFODiarycamera.jpg — Govindini Murty as Captain Diana Ravello in “UFO Diary.”

Making a film about the Great LA Air Raid was a colorful adventure in itself. In addition to producing UFO Diary, I also played the lead role of Captain Diana Ravello, a tough WAC captain and former Caltech rocket engineer. Playing Captain Diana involved me climbing over tanks and half-tracks, firing anti-aircraft guns in the middle of simulated WWII combat, getting my hearing blasted by machine-gun fire, and being swallowed up in massive dust clouds from tanks as I ran around a WWII-era fort. It was a great experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

During all this, I also collaborated on every aspect of the film – from story concept to cinematography to editing – with my filmmaking partner, Jason Apuzzo, the writer-director of UFO Diary. Jason is my husband and one of the most supportive people I know of women in film. We were united in wanting to make a WWII movie with women in the lead roles because we both wanted to tell a WWII story from a fresh perspective.

Producing UFO Diary also meant wrangling a cast of over one hundred WWII actors – including some pretty salty military vets (who were my favorites) – and hiring and supervising everyone on the crew, VFX, and post-production teams.

I’m excited now to be sharing UFO Diary with you, in part to show that women filmmakers can make sci-fi shorts as spectacular and technically-challenging as any male filmmaker out there. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Why Should Women Have a Voice in Sci-Fi? Introducing My Film UFO Diary

On Being Inspired by Classic Movies at the TCM Classic Film Festival

[Editor’s Note: An updated version of this post appears today at The Huffington Post]

By Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. What makes something a classic? It’s a question worth asking as Hollywood devotes ever more of its resources to remaking movies, TV shows, and comic books from the past as the majority of our movie content today. Not that we mind the odd sequel (we’re definitely looking forward to Spectre and Star Wars) – but 2015 will see an unprecedented number of sequels and remakes, including new installments in the Mad Max, Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, Terminator, Avengers, and Fast and Furious franchises.

If you want a break and would like to see some movies that are truly unrepeatable and non-franchisable, we suggest you check out the upcoming 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival, returning to historic Hollywood from March 26^th to March 29^th, 2015. It’s a marvelous chance to see some of the world’s classic movies the way they were meant to be seen: on the big screen, and often with their original creators in attendance.

Shirley Jones 2 — Shirley Jones and guests at the TCM Classic Film Festival.

The classic movies shown at the TCM Classic Film Festival are inspiring because they are the result of what can be called “first-order,” direct personal experience. They are not self-referential mash-ups of other people’s work, but are original art works created by some of the cinema’s greatest talents during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The festival is one of the last opportunities our generation will have to encounter first-hand some of Hollywood’s classic film artists – and it’s an opportunity to be very thankful for.

At the 2014 TCM Classic Film Festival, for example, we had the chance to attend the red carpet at the Chinese Theatre and chat with such Golden Age movie stars as Maureen O’Hara, Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, Shirley Jones, Margaret O’Brien, and George Chakiris. Each of them was charming, gracious, and ready with a witty quip – though none had more quips than legendary funnyman Mel Brooks – who we saw being interviewed by Robert Osborne in the lobby of the Roosevelt Hotel. Continue reading On Being Inspired by Classic Movies at the TCM Classic Film Festival

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Music Made by People, not Algorithms: a DVD Review of Frank

[Editor’s note: the post below appears today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. We’re told that in our digital future music will be created by computer algorithms. But could an algorithm make music anywhere near as weird and wonderful as Frank? Frank is the titular character of Lenny Abrahamson’s touching and funny new black-comedy Frank, an ode to the irreplaceable nature of quirky, individual human creativity.

Coming out on DVD/Blu-ray December 9th, Frank premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to rave reviews. The movie is inspired by the true story of Chris Sievey, a British musician and comedian who performed wearing a large paper-mâché head under the pseudonym Frank Sidebottom.

If you’re seeking a cinematic antidote to our flattened-out, Big Data, crowd-sourced, mass conformist digital age, then take the time to see Frank. Frank is a paean to true creativity – the kind of creativity that can only come from an individual.

Frank stars Michael Fassbender as the eponymous musician – a mysterious, wildly talented singer-songwriter who wears a large paper-mâché head over his face at all times. Frank is supported in his musical efforts by a medley of eccentric band mates; these include nerdy keyboardist Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), surly theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and troubled band manager Don (Scoot McNairy).

The story is told from the point of view of Jon (Domhnall Gleeson), a would-be keyboardist and song-writer who spends his days searching for poetic inspiration in his quiet seaside town, while posting random updates on social media about what sandwiches he’s eaten, his humdrum home life, and so forth.

One day while staring blankly out at the ocean, Jon witnesses a man being rescued from an attempted drowning. It turns out the man is the keyboardist for an avant-garde band with the unpronounceable name of “The Soronprfbs.” Jon meets the band’s manager Don (Scoot McNairy) and is invited to play with the band that night.

Jon is enthralled by the chaotic creativity of the band – so different from his own dull existence- and in particular by the manic, oddly compelling performance of Frank, a figure wearing a large, round head with blank, staring eyes and a goofy, painted-on smile. Jon seems to make the right impression on Frank, and so Frank invites Jon to join the band at a remote country house in Ireland to record their next album.

Jon is over the moon with joy, convinced that being in close proximity to musical genius will finally unleash his own creativity. However he soon learns that the other band members are suspicious of him – especially Clara – because they think that he’s a mediocrity only out to exploit Frank’s talent.

Unbeknownst to them, Jon is also secretly videotaping the band’s offbeat practice sessions (in which they find inspiration in things as diverse as bird calls, pouring water, and slamming doors) and uploading them to social media, gaining them an online following. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Music Made by People, not Algorithms: a DVD Review of Frank

LFM’s Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Double and the Christmas Holidays

[Editor’s note: the post below appeared this weekend at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo. Do you feel like you’re turning into a different person over the holidays? How about your fellow citizens – do they appear to be morphing into unrecognizable automata? The holidays can do that to you – especially in Los Angeles. It’s a time when people get consumed with travel schedules, holiday parties, frenzied “gifting,” and trying to keep up with the Kardashians – and forget to act like real human beings.

Just this past week we saw a grown man bark at a Starbucks barista because his eggnog latte wasn’t hot enough, soccer moms body-check each other grabbing at Target discount wreaths, and senior citizens hydroplane in a Mercedes while trying to grab a parking spot at a rainy mall.

Fellow citizens, enough is enough. Get some perspective – before you become ersatz human beings even your nearest and dearest wouldn’t recognize.

This is where indie cinema can offer some timely lessons on the perils of modern dehumanization. One of our favorite films at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year was The Double, starring Jesse Eisenberg and written and directed by Richard Ayoade. Currently out on DVD and VOD, the film is one of the smartest adaptations yet of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Double, the seminal novella of modern alienation.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Simon James, a meek office drone toiling away in a retro-futuristic dystopia of grimy office buildings and gray apartment flats. The bleak settings owe much to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and George Orwell’s 1984, while Simon’s character recalls Anthony Perkins’ persecuted office worker in Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial.

The hapless, ineffectual Simon loves a fellow office worker, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska), but he is completely unable to assert himself with her or with his co-workers – indeed, at times he is barely able to make it out of the office elevator. For this he is treated as if he is of little more consequence than the paint on the dingy office walls.

A wrench is thrown in the works one day when Simon is introduced to a new co-worker: a fellow named James Simon (also played by Eisenberg) who strangely enough, looks exactly like him. In personality, however, James is the opposite of Simon – smooth, assertive, full of charm and slick maneuvering. In short order, James takes credit for Simon’s work, double-crosses him with his boss, and starts putting moves on the lovely Hannah before Simon’s horrified eyes.

Making matters worse, no one seems to notice the striking similarity between Simon and James – something that infuriates poor Simon. James taunts Simon by stealing more and more of his life, eventually driving Simon to take desperate measures before a final, surreal denouement. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty & Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Double and the Christmas Holidays

LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking With Director Steven Knight About His Innovative and Enthralling Film Locke

[Editor’s Note: the post below appeared this week at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Locke may just be one of the best films of 2014. Superbly written and directed by Steven Knight and featuring a dazzling performance by Tom Hardy, Locke is a must-see for anyone who believes that human character is still the most compelling subject of the cinema. I saw Locke earlier this year when it played to rave reviews at Sundance, and spoke with Knight about his innovative and deeply personal film which is expanding this week to theaters nationwide.

In the film, Tom Hardy plays construction engineer Ivan Locke, a man who takes as much pride in the firm foundations of his buildings as he does in his unshakeable code of personal responsibility. One night, Locke leaves a construction job to drive from Birmingham to London to fulfill a mysterious promise. Along the way, he makes and receives a series of wrenching phone calls that bring his sense of personal duty into conflict with everyone and everything he loves.

I’m a big fan of films that use new digital tools to experiment with the traditional structure of the movies. , Locke succeeds at being both formally inventive and emotionally gripping. The entire movie, with the brief exception of the opening and closing shots, takes place in the interior of a car and features only one actor on-screen, Tom Hardy. At the Sundance premiere of Locke, director Steven Knight told me that he and his talented team used Red digital cameras to shoot the film continuously from beginning to end each night, like a stage play.

Stripped down to the bare essentials as a result, Locke focuses on what matters most: character, emotion, and story. The film proves that even in the contemporary cinema, with its obsession with surface visual effects, movies can still delve below the surface and capture something essential about human nature in much the same way literature can.

In Locke this is largely done through the power of the close-up. In the best movies, the close-up serves to bring emotional transparency to a film, whereby the candor of an actor and the attentiveness of a director work together to draw out the inner life of a character onto the big screen. And it’s there on the big screen that the human face takes on mythic qualities, elevating specific human experiences into universal truths. On the big screen there’s no place to hide as an actor – but if one is as talented as Tom Hardy, one doesn’t need to. Hardy sensitively pulls off Ivan Locke’s volatile and heartbreaking mixture of machismo, passion, humor, anger, and doubt – depicting Locke like a bear trapped in a cage of his own making.

I spoke with Steven Knight (Academy Award nominated screenwriter for Dirty Pretty Things) at the Sundance premiere of Locke and asked him how he pulled off such a technically complicated and emotionally wrenching film. The interview has been edited for length.

GM: I’d like to ask you about the innovative way you made the film. Why did you choose to do such a tight character study and film it in these continuous takes? Tell me about your process.

SK: I just finished making a film with Jason Statham the conventional way [2013’s Redemption]. And two things occurred. One was: anything we shot from the car at night was beautiful, and I thought the thing to do would be to make an installation of that – make it as a piece of art with just the moving traffic patterns.

And then, I also asked the question of myself: the basic task here is to get a lot of people into a room, turn the lights off, and get them to look at a screen for 90 minutes. That’s the basic job you’re doing. [But] are there other ways of doing it? So I thought that maybe that beautiful frame of the moving road could be the theater. And … it would need to be one man, and if you’re going to get one man, it better be Tom Hardy. So I approached him and I said I want you to do a play, effectively. I want to shoot it as a play, but in the environment of a car. He was really keen, read the script and the next weekend we were shooting it. The whole point all the way through was to shoot it in sequence so that it’s an actor’s performance. Don’t split it up, don’t turn it into a conventional way of shooting it. And I think the rewards are immense, because the actors feel like they are in control of their own performances. Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty at The Huffington Post: Talking With Director Steven Knight About His Innovative and Enthralling Film Locke