Director Kyoko Miyake talks Tokyo Idols, how the girls stay safe, and how the inherent sexism in this subculture isn’t that different from life in the West.
World Cinema
Under-the-radar non-English language filmmakers talk about their artistic processes.
HotDocs interview: Vaishali Sinha talks Ask the Sexpert and India’s answer to Dr. Sue
Ask the Sexpert follows Indian sex expert Dr. Watsa as he navigates the debate about sex education, his patients, and his fans, in this doc from Vaishali Sinha.
HotDocs: In Still Tomorrow, a woman finds freedom through her bestselling poetry
When Yu Xinhua’s Tumblr poem went viral, it gave her a new lease on life as a famous poet and eventually, a divorced woman, in Jian Fan’s documentary Still Tomorrow
Olivier Assayas on Personal Shopper, filming text messages
Olivier Assayas discusses the visual and aural aesthetic of Personal Shopper and how he shot that impressive texting set piece. This is an excerpt of the interview which appears in our case study on Personal Shopper in the ebook Beyond Empowertainment: Feminist Horror and The Struggle for Female Agency, which is available for purchase here.
Writer-director Selma Vilhunen talks Little Wing
Finnish writer-director Selma Vilhunen discusses her feature debut, Little Wing, dysfunctional families, and working with child actors.
Director Ramona Diaz talks Motherland and life in the maternity ward
Documentarian Ramona Diaz discusses the making of Motherland and how she got real, emotional access to her subjects during their stay at the maternity ward.