Interview: Garrett Bradley, Fox and Rob Rich on their award-winning documentary "Time"

by Murtada Elfadl 

Fox and Rob Rich in a shot from the film

This year’s documentary sensation is Time, now streaming on Amazon Prime, a film that announces the arrival of Garrett Bradley as an accomplished filmmaker. Telling the decades spanning story of Fox Rich, an entrepreneur and abolitionist who spent almost 20 years fighting for the release of her husband Rob Rich out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola. He has been given a 60 year sentence for a robbery they both committed in a moment of desperation. Talk about punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.

The film’s 2020 journey of accolades started at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where Bradley won the Best Director award in the Documentary feature competition. Since then it has played the Toronto and New York film festivals and is now available to screen on Amazon. And it is absolutely my favorite film of 2020.

The film is a mix of Fox’s video diaries that she recorded over the years with insight into the last couple of years of her family’s story shot by Bradley. That was not the original concept. After ending the shoot Fox gave Bradley a treasure of archival footage that she had shot through the years. Bradley changed direction and incorporated Fox’s footage. Recently I had the chance to speak to the Riches and Bradley over zoom and I started the conversation at this juncture asking Fox why she gave Bradley her video diaries.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity... 

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Mira Sorvino Pt 2: A Mini Retrospective

By Nathaniel R

Mira Sorvino in MIghty Aphrodite (1995)

After interviewing Mira Sorvino about her new projects, the Emmy hopeful Hollywood and two recent indies, our conversation drifted back over her whole career. 

For fun, we asked her to program her own mini three or four film retrospective by naming her favourite projects. She acknowledged immediately that Mighty Aphrodite (1995) would be selected for any retrospective since it was her Oscar-winning role, but she wanted to shine the light on lesser-known titles. "I fall in love with every project," she noted, as that three or four film group kept growing and becam eight titles in our conversation. She might have changed the list on another day but here were the titles she hoped people would rediscover or see for the first time that she's very fond of.  How many how these have you seen? 

BARCELONA (1994)
"One of my first movies, shot in Spain. It's beautiful and fun."

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Mira Sorvino Pt 1: On "Hollywood," "Badland" and "Waterlily Jaguar"

Sorvino in Waterlily Jaguarby Nathaniel R

The actress Mira Sorvino has been on our screens both large and small for nearly 30 years now. In the past few years the headlines came for speaking out about sexual harassment and her political activism. Now, with Ryan Murphy's Hollywood campaigning for Emmy nominations, and two recent indies available to stream (Badland and Waterlily Jaguar), the focus is back where it originally began: her acting. We talked to her recently about her newest roles.

She can currently be seen as the co-lead of Melora Walters' Waterlily Jaguar. "It's a really interesting art film about the complicated end of a relationship" she says describing the drama about an alcoholic novelist and his wife. While the movie is anguished by nature, Sorvino is a canny enough entertainer to know just when to liven the mood without betraying the tone, in this case with heartbreakingly forced cheer.

But among her recent projects it's Ryan Murphy's high profile mini-series Hollywood which has reminded the most people of her gift. Even, in a neat life-imitating-art parallel, of her Oscar win...

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Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson on the Vulnerability of Theater Acting

by Murtada Elfadl

Lupita Nyong'o and Zainab Jah in "Eclipsed"

We continue the conversation between Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson from the Sundance 2020 film Farewell Amor, that we started yesterday. Both actresses have worked on stage and in film and today they're speaking to what diffrentiates the experiences. Jah also tells us about the time she co-starred on Broadway in 2016 with Lupita Nyong’o in Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, about five Liberian women and their tale of survival near the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s.

The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity...

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Interview: Eliza Hittman on 'Never Rarely Sometimes Always'

by Murtada Elfadl

The first great movie of 2020 has arrived. Visceral, exquisite and artfully rigorous Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always drops the audience into the experience of two teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania. Faced with an unintended pregnancy and a lack of local support, Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) embark across state lines to New York City on a fraught journey trying to secure an abortion. The performances from newcomers Flanignan and Ryder are stunning in their simplicity and authenticity and Hittman reaches new heights with her assured filmmaking no matter what you thought of her previous films, Beach Rats (2017) and It Felt Like Love (2013). The movie won raves at this year's Sundance and won the Grand Jury Prize, or 2nd place, at the Berlinale last month.

Ryder, Hittman and Flanigan at the Berlinale

We recently met with Hittman in New York. [This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.] 

Murtada Elfadl: Congratulations on the film. I saw it at Sundance. I really loved it. It's great.I wanted to ask you first about working with the actors. I hear Sidney Flanagan has never acted before and Talia Ryder has maybe done a couple of things,

Eliza Hittman: Stage. She's done musical theater.

They are amazing. I was flabbergasted by these performances. I read about your casting process, but can you talk about working with them on set, how did you manage to get these performances out of them?

We had a day and a half to prepare and to rehearse.

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