Lockdown film school

With #LockdownFilmSchool, we’re trying to connect the film community during trying times, while also highlighting the work of some of our favourite film artists. The “school” will convene every Sunday, and beforehand we’ll send you “homework” (a watchlist of amazing movies).

How Lockdown Film School Works

You sign up (it’s completely free), then each Sunday at 5pm ET, we’ll invite you to an hour-long Zoom call. There, we will facilitate a discussion between two brilliant filmmakers in the same field, and you can ask them questions in real time.

Sunday, June 7 5 p.m. ET: Directing

A conversation between writer-directors Madeleine Olnek (Wild Nights with Emily) and Anne Émond (Jeune Juliette, Nelly, Our Loved Ones)

Madeleine Olnek is a New York City-based playwright and filmmaker. Her third feature, Wild Nights with Emily (2018), was funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, premiered at SXSW, and is a comedy drama about Emily Dickinson. Olnek also directed The Foxy Merkins (2013) and Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011), both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Anne Émond is a Montreal-based screenwriter and director. Her third feature, Nelly (2016), was freely adapted from the life and work of Québécois writer Nelly Arcan. Émond has also written and directed the features Nuit #1, Our Loved Ones (2015), and Jeune Juliette (2019). Her first three films were selected for Canada’s Top Ten, and she has received multiple nominations at the Canadian Screen Awards, most recently for the screenplay for Jeune Juliette.

Both Wild Nights with Emily (released in 2019) and Jeune Juliette were selected for Seventh Row’s list of the best films of the year.

Watch the stream on YouTube here.

Sunday, June 14 5 p.m. ET: Directing

A conversation between writer-directors Philippe Falardeau (My Internship in Canada, Monsieur Lazhar) and Mina Shum (Meditation Park). Falardeau has made many features set in Quebec, while Shum’s films tend to be set in Vancouver. Both directors have made several films about the Canadian immigration experience.

Philippe Falardeau is a Quebec-based screenwriter and director whose latest film, My Salinger Year (2020), was the opening night gala at the 2020 Berlinale. His feature Monsieur Lazhar (2011) was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, and won Genie awards for direction and adapted screenplay. His political satire My Internship in Canada (2016) was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for original screenplay and was one of Canada’s Top Ten films. His other Canadian features include Falardeau has also directed several features in the US, including The Good Lie (2013), Chuck (2016), and My Salinger Year (2019).

Mina Shum was born in Hong Kong, raised in Canada, and is based in Vancouver. Shum has directed multiple feature films: Double Happiness (1994), Drive, She Said (1997), Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002), the documentary Ninth Floor (2015), and Meditation Park (2017). She has also directed for television, including for October Faction (2020), Murdoch Mysteries (2019). Double Happiness won the Best Canadian Feature Special Jury Citation at the Toronto International Film Festival, Ninth Floor was one of Canada’s Top Ten films, and Shum has been nominated for multiple Genie Awards.

Watch the stream on YouTube here.

Sunday, June 21 5 p.m. ET: Production design

A conversation between production designers Suzie Davies (Peterloo, Mr Turner, On Chesil Beach) and Stéphane Collonge (The Souvenir, Exhibition, God’s Own Country).

Starting as a model maker and sculptor in the ’90s, and then and Art Director on and off camera, Suzie has now been working as a production designer on TV and film since 2005. She was nominated for an Oscar for production design on Mr Turner and has since re-collaborated with Mike Leigh on Peterloo, for which she was nominated for a British Independent Film Award. Seventh Row first interviewed Davies about her work on On Chesil Beach, and an in-depth interview with her on her work with Mike Leigh appears in our ebook Peterloo in process: A Mike Leigh collaboration.

Stéphane Collonge is a production designer and costume designer, perhaps best known for his ongoing collaboration with Joanna Hogg. He served in both roles for Hogg’s first three features, Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010), and Exhibition (2013), and served as the production designer on The Souvenir (2019), for which he was nominated for a British Independent Film Award, and The Souvenir Part II (2020). He has also served as the production designer for My Brother the Devil (2012), God’s Own Country (2017), and most recently, the BBC mini-series Trigonometry (2020). An in-depth interview with Collonge about his decade-spanning collaboration with Joanna Hogg appears in our ebook Tour of Memories: The creative process behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir.

Past events

Sunday, May 24 5 p.m. ET: Low-budget filmmaking

Sunday, May 17 4 p.m. ET: Costume design

Sunday May 10 at 5 p.m. ET: On cinematography

Sunday May 3 at 5 p.m. ET: Nonfiction filmmaking

 A conversation between creative nonfiction filmmakers Penny Lane (Hail Satan?, Nuts!, The Pain of Others) and Carol Nguyen (SXSW award winner No Crying at the Dinner Table).

About the speakers

Penny Lane

Penny Lane is a creative nonfiction filmmaker whose work has gained prominence in recent years with works such as Nuts! and Hail Satan? She has a knack for approaching outlandish subject matter (The Satanic Temple, the strange and possibly psychosomatic illness Morgellons) in a humane and sincere manner. Her work is discussed in Seventh Row’s ebook on modern documentary cinema, In their own words: Documentary masters. Several of Lane’s films are streaming on Vimeo for free during the pandemic.

Carol Nguyen

Carol Nguyen is a young, emerging Canadian filmmaker. Her latest short film, No Crying at the Dinner Table, premiered at TIFF in 2019 and recently won the prize for Best Documentary Short at the SXSW Film Festival. The film is an intimate, personal documentary in which Nguyen interviews her parents and her sister about their own family trauma. No Crying at the Dinner Table is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime in the US as part of the SXSW Collection. Read Seventh Row’s 2019 interview with Carol Nguyen on making No Crying at the Dinner Table.

FAQs