Red Rocket
I was given the opportunity to write about any American indie film for the new “21st Century Film Essentials” series from UT Press. I chose The Florida Project (2017) because I believe that Sean Baker is simply one of the best indie filmmakers working today. The chance to study the film in-depth has only given […]
Sean Baker Book: The Florida Project
Sean Baker's latest film Red Rocket opens in LA and NYC this weekend, so you might imagine how busy he is at the moment. Yet he found the time to post a video about my recently published book on The Florida Project from the University of Texas Press on Twitter and Facebook. Check it out […]
Best Independent Films of 2012
My best film list always appears in February, but I’m late this year, mainly because, even though I saw a streamed version of Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet, I wanted to see it again in 35 mm. It played at our Cinematheque only last Friday. Yet, that issue aside, it’s been a hard year for […]
Starlet
Starlet, Sean Baker’s fourth feature, is his most successful to date. Baker’s last two films, Take Out (2004) and Prince of Broadway (2008), took an ethnographic approach toward their subjects. Take Out (co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou) delves into the world of Asian illegal immigrants by focusing on a home delivery person indebted to loan sharks, […]
Prince of Broadway
Sean Baker has to be one of the most underrated young American indie filmmakers working today. After Four Letter Words (2000), he reinvented himself with two stellar features, namely Take Out (2004), which took years to screen theatrically, and Prince of Broadway (2010), which actually came out a couple of years ago. It played at […]