My Happy Family (Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß, 2017)Movements: Filmmaker Interviews the editors March 2017 Movements: Filmmaker Interviews Issue 82 This issue we are proud to include a number of interviews with filmmakers from around the world, practicing within a range of different cultural and industrial contexts. These conversations have been loosely gathered under the umbrella heading Movements to emphasise the notion of change, shifts, and other dynamics that have played a part in the career of this diverse range of artists, a theme that runs throughout. At Senses of Cinema we pride ourselves on the vigorous critical approaches our writers employ in their reflections on film not only different and historical contexts. But as this selection of absorbing interviews suggests, sometimes nothing cuts quite to the chase as fast and as effectively as thoughtful, robust one-on-one engagement between critic and creator. Isabella McNeill and Christopher Brown respectively interview two very different filmmakers – Rachel Perkins and Cheng Yu-Chieh – not only about their careers more broadly, but about how they have worked towards bringing to light the plight of two distinct Indigenous groups in the Australian film Jasper Jones (2017) and the Taiwanese Wawa No Cidal (2015) respectively. Amir Ganjavie interviews French director Bruno Dumont about his 2016 film Slack Bay, continuing that directors foray into the generic terrain of comedy (standing in contrast to the more sombre tone of much of his previous work). Kamran Rastegar talks to the British- Moroccan filmmaker Tala Hadid about her 2014 film The Narrow Frame of Midnight, with particular attention paid to notions of identity in regards to migration and place. Tomáš Hudák speaks with Spanish director Jaime Rosales about the different fluid approaches to filmmaking that have marked his impressive career (both formally and thematically), and Brigitta Wagner interviews Nana & Simon, the German-based filmmakers whose Georgia-set film My Happy Family has just premiered at Sundance, and explores the colossal societal shifts around the life of a Georgian woman following her simple decision to make her life happier. We hope you enjoy reading about the creative processes of these filmmakers, in their own words!
