Interviews
Text interviews
2012
Radu Muntean: Three’s a crowd
Q&A report
As Tuesday, After Christmas comes to DVD, Carmen Gray talked to its Romanian director about its subtle probing of marriage and morality
Tangerine dreams: Yto Barrada
Moroccan artist Yto Barrada tells Ian Francis about her double life running a renovated Tangier cinema
Saura’s flamenco flights Q&A report
Carlos Saura’s 1980s ‘flamenco trilogy’, now released in a set of bare-bones DVDs, constitutes some of the boldest dance films ever made. As Mar Diestro-Dópido reports, on a recent visit to London the director provided all the background you need
Lech Majewski: still life with movement
Polish visual artist and filmmaker Lech Majewski talks to Basia Lewandowska Cummings about Bruegel Suite, part of his Moving Walls installation, why he abandoned art school for film school – and why art cannot save us
The great dictator: Simon Bright on Mugabe, mobs and moral defiance
Zimbabwean activist Simon Bright risked imprisonment and torture to make Robert Mugabe… What Happened?. He tells Tom Harrad about filming post-colonial corruption from the inside
Keeping the faith: Alice Rohrwacher’s Corpo Celeste
The Italian writer-director’s dreamily mysterious feature debut explores a teenage girl’s relationship to God and belief. Rohrwacher tells Tom Dawson why she’s happier posing questions than offering answers
Anima anime: Suzan Pitt’s wild psyches
From the Eraserhead-twinned Asparagus to her new Visitation, Suzan Pitt has animated the subconscious with the life of the cosmos. On the eve of a European tour, she talks to Laura Allsop
Controlling the story:
Michael Winterbottom on fiction, observation and Trishna
For his 20th film in 17 years – and third Thomas Hardy adaptation – Michael Winterbottom took Tess of the D’Urbervilles to modern-day India. Filming begets filming, he tells Nick Roddick
King or pawn? On the trail of Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Director Cyril Tuschi tells Thomas Dawson how he set about documenting the world’s once-wealthiest prisoner of conscience
Ordinary indecent paedophile: Markus Schleinzer’s Michael
Echoing the real-life cases of Josef Fritzl and Wolfgang Priklopil, Michael is a portrait of a child kidnapper that refuses sensationalism and sentimentality. Its writer-director Markus Schleinzer talks to Thomas Dawson
Tatsumi sensei: Eric Khoo on animating the master of ‘gekiga’ comic art
Sam Davies talks to Singaporean filmmaker Eric Khoo about moving from live-action to animation with his new film Tatsumi, an adaptation of the profoundly pessimistic stories of Japanese comic-book artist Tatsumi Yoshihiro
Theo Angelopoulos: the sweep of history
The features of Theo Angelopoulos have defined a contemplative style of European filmmaking that’s as instantly recognisable as it has been influential. As the Greek director’s complete back catalogue is issued on DVD, he talks to David Jenkins
2011
The Viennale’s Hans Hurch:
“I sleep with a gun under my pillow”
The festival directors
The curator of the much-admired Viennale festival talks to Kieron Corless
Ghosts of Christmas past:
M.R. James, Lawrence Gordon Clark and ‘A Ghost Story for Christmas’
Simon Farquhar remembers the principles of Christmas horror with its small-screen master, Lawrence Gordon Clark
Michael Shannon: trouble in mind
For years Michael Shannon has been building a reputation as an intense, risk-taking actor on stage and in supporting roles. But his compelling turn as the dream-haunted everyman in Take Shelter proves he can carry a movie. Nick Pinkerton talks to him
Feminism Russian style? Angelina Nikonova’s Twilight Portrait
Carmen Gray talks to the director of a striking rape-revenge drama that isn’t
No moss gathered: Nicholas Ray’s
We Can’t Go Home Again
Four decades after the great Hollywood rebel took up a teaching post, his class experiment and swansong We Can’t Go Home Again has finally been ‘completed’ by his widow Susan. She talks to Demetrios Matheou
On Ken Loach
Antonia Bird, Luc Dardenne, Tony Hibbert, Peter Kosminsky and Jimmy McGovern pay tribute to the director’s work over a career spanning almost half a century
The body politic:
Pablo Larraín on Post Mortem
The Chilean writer-director’s follow-up to Tony Manero is the equally creepy Post Mortem, exploring Pinochet’s 1973 coup through the eyes of a high-level mortuary assistant. He talks to Demetrios Matheou
Pere Portabella: from Buñuel to Lorca
Mar Diestro-Dópido talks to an elusive Catalan film legend
Blood lines:
Denis Villeneuve on Incendies
The French-Canadian filmmaker talks local secrets and Middle Eastern tragedies with Tom Dawson
Baltimore real:
Matthew Porterfield on Putty Hill
Kieron Corless talks to the second-time filmmaker about his close-to-home, collaborative working methods
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun:
A Screaming Man
Himself a victim of the long-running civil war in Chad, director Haroun examines the turmoil in his native land via A Screaming Man, an austere and compelling story of fatherhood. He talks to Suzy Gillett
What time is it where?
Christian Marclay’s The Clock
A 24-hour montage of film clips showing the measurement of time, Christian Marclay’s The Clock has hooked viewers in London and New York. He talks to Jonathan Romney
Out of the darkness: Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams
As his first 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams reaches our screens, Werner Herzog talks to Samuel Wigley about primitive man, albino crocodiles and the ethics of 3D
At home (and away) with Agnès Varda
Free-spirited grande dame of the cinema and now gallery, Agnès Varda can’t stop moving, gleaning, probing. “We are millions,” she tells Daniel Trilling, welcoming him into her living home of cinema
How they did love: Emmanuel Laurent on Godard and Truffaut
The director of Two in the Wave talks to Tom Dawson about his portrait of the bitterly broken friendship at the heart of the French New Wave
Looking at the rubber duck:
Nicolas Roeg on François Truffaut
Nicolas Roeg talks to Richard Combs about working with François Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451, in the Winter 1984/85 issue of Sight & Sound
Desperate Optimists: power to the public
As their ‘Civic Life’ project goes on tour, the filmmaking duo tell Sophie Mayer about their radically communitarian brand of cinema
Peter Mullan: Glasgow belongs to me
Peter Mullan is already well known as one of Britain’s most intense screen actors. But with Neds he cements his reputation as a director whose commitment to emotional truth transcends social realism. By Demetrios Matheou
2010
Young Journalism Competition 2010: Diego Luna on filming Abel
A nine-year-old psychiatric ward veteran bids to replace his absent father in Diego Luna’s serio-comic second directorial feature. Our Young Journalism Competition winner Alex Dudok de Wit interviews him
Carlos: Olivier Assayas
An epic biopic of legendary terrorist Carlos marks a change of pace for Olivier Assayas. By David Thompson
Tim Hetherington: Restrepo
A soldier’s-eye portrait of the war in Afghanistan, Sundance-winner Restrepo is another impressive documentary of the West’s recent conflicts in the East. Tom Dawson speaks to its photo-journalist co-director
Sarah Turner: Perestroika
A Siberian train travelogue to the end of the world, Perestroika combines elegy, reverie, lament and transformation. Its maker talks to Sophie Mayer
Restoration comedy:
Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy
Both a romantic comedy and a vehicle for Juliette Binoche, Certified Copy seems a departure for Abbas Kiarostami, but its playful ambiguity makes it very much his work. The Iranian director talks to Geoff Andrew
FrightFest preview: undead and kicking
Mark Pilkington interviews horror handmaiden and FrightFest founder Alan Jones
Muck and brass:
Bill Morrison and Jóhann Jóhannsson
The American filmmaker and Icelandic composer on The Miners’ Hymns, their archival take on colliery bands and the underground culture of Britain’s miners
Kurosawa on Kurosawa
The director whom Steven Spielberg once described as “the pictorial Shakespeare of our time” was famously reluctant to discuss his films, but he opened up to Donald Richie in an interview first published in Sight & Sound in 1964, extracts of which we reprint here
Street fighters
Isolation documents the experiences of demobbed UK servicemen as they drift into homelessness. Dylan Cave interviews its makers
Death in Hebden Bridge
First-time director Jez Lewis on investigating drug deaths and lost friends in his homecoming documentary Shed Your Tears and Walk Away
The Time That Remains: Elia Suleiman
The Palestinian’s latest film is a deadpan portrait of half a century of family life under the monotony of occupation. Ali Jafaar interviews the director, while Adania Shibli examines the film’s subtle simplicity.
Me and Joseph Brodsky
Animation master Andrey Khrzhanovsky talks to Nick Bradshaw about his adaptation of the exiled Russian poet’s childhood memoir Room and a Half
John Smith: of process and puns
The inimitable British movie artist who makes the mundane strange and the avant-garde funny
The deathly hallows
Artist Mat Collishaw on Armenian shrines, YouTube sheep sacrifices and his homage to the strange world of Sergei Parajanov
No Greater Love
Director Michael Whyte tells Tom Dawson about the need for patience when filming nuns in Notting Hill
The man who wasn’t there
Experimental film artist Morgan Fisher discusses his site-specific, anti-subjective and ‘irrational’ cinema with Melissa Gronlund
2009
Where there’s pomp: Cristian Muniu
The director of Tales from the Golden Age on the absurdities of life in Ceausescu’s Romania
Romantic setting: Jane Campion
The Bright Star director tells Nick James why she didn’t want to make just another 19th-century costume drama with her portrait of Keats in love
Young Journalism Competition 2009: Play away
Jamie Chadd, 18, from Blandford Forum, the joint winner of our Young Journalist Competition, talks to Andrew Kötting about film art, Ivul and life in the French tree-tops
Young Journalism Competition 2009: Grim up Norfolk
Kate Smith, 17, from Grimsby, the joint winner of our Young Journalist Competition, interviews Tom Harper about his debut feature The Scouting Book for Boys
Within a closed world: Jacques Audiard
The director talks to Ginette Vincendeau about his follow-up to The Beat That My Heart Skipped, prison drama A Prophet
Slow bloom: Joseph Strick’s Ulysses
Joseph Strick tells Henry K. Miller about his four-decade-long journey to bring James Joyce’s ‘unadaptable’ modernist masterpiece to the screen
Crossing the threshold: Pedro Costa
On the eve of a retrospective of his films in London, the Colossal Youth director discusses his career with Kieron Corless
On a wing and a lark: Shane Meadows
Nottingham’s favourite son talks to Nick Bradshaw about his improvised ‘five-day feature’ Le Donk and Scor-Zay-Zee
Days of gloury: Quentin Tarantino
After S&S covered the Cannes premiere of Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino took exception to our accusation of pastiche. He tells Ryan Gilbey why his new film is really all about language
Trastevere story: Gianni Di Gregorio
The co-writer of Gomorrah makes his directing debut with Mid-August Lunch, a raw yet lyrical portrait of “four old ladies in a flat”. Tom Dawson interviewed him
Stars in his eyes
David Lynch’s new music collaboration sees him use singing and photography in his continued exposing of the dark psyche of suburbia. He talks to James Bell
Video interviews
The Festival Directors:
London’s Sandra Hebron
The LFF director tells us about what brings a festival alive, the complementary roles of general and specialist festivals, and this year’s remarkably rich crop of British movies
The Festival Directors:
Locarno’s Olivier Père
The new director of the Locarno Film Festival tells us about the challenges ahead for cinema and cinephilia
The S&S video interview:
Warwick Thornton on Samson & Delilah
Warwick Thornton talks us through the use of space, music and ‘sexy dancing’ in the opening scenes of his Aboriginal love-on-the-run drama
Audio interviews
Les enfants terribles:
Gaspar Noé versus Harmony Korine
The directors of Enter the Void and Trash Humpers consider human sofas, women who punch themselves and fantasies of remaking Beverly Hills Cop 2