The vinyl LP, with its shimmering grooves, has been fetishized by filmmakers since the needle dropped in the first shot of The Grand Illusion. In the first installment of her new column, Digging in Cloudland, critic Miriam Bale traces the presence of what Eddie Vedder once called “the black circle” in recent cinema.

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In the latest installment of Digging in Cloudland, critic Miriam Bale discusses Ade’s Everyone Else, Lang’s Moonfleet and the elusive quality of cinematic greatness.

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In the first of a series of conversations with La Di Da Film Festival filmmakers, Amy Seimetz and Craig Zobel discuss gender dynamics in their features, Sun Don’t Shine and Compliance.

Two of this year’s breakthrough films, Craig Zobel’s psycho-sexual thiller Compliance and Amy Seimetz’s color noir Sun Don’t Shine, share much in common. Both are genre movies filmed in tight spaces, while also adhering to a very tight code of restrictions of form. Each film plays exactly within the rules of the genre while pushing against those boundaries, revealing the experimental indie roots of both filmmakers by just how far they push while staying within those identifiable lines. Zobel previously directed Great World of Sound while Seimetz produced Alison Bagnall’s The Dish and the Spoon and acted in Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture and Joe Swanberg’s Silver Bullets, among others.

It turns out that both filmmakers have known each other for years; they met, in fact, through Seimetz’s former roommate Pat Healy, who plays the mysterious prank caller who drives the plot in Zobel’s Compliance. And while their films have been screening on the festival circuit this year, the two filmmakers have been having passionate conversations about gender as it plays out in various ways in their work.

This is the first in a series of conversations with filmmakers participating in the La Di Da Film Festival. Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine will screen at 92YTribeca on Saturday, September 15 at 9 pm. Craig Zobel’s Compliance is in wide release now.

Craig Zobel Even before we made both of our movies, we sat down and had coffee and talked about—

Amy Seimetz —I think we sat down for beers? (laughter)

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