About
Welcome to Filmwell, a daily updated blog interested in cinema off the beaten track, criticism at the margins of the great conversation, and how art points the way to (as Henry Miller says) “life more abundant.”
Filmwell participants:
Nathan Carter (contributing writer) – is a writer, editor and photographer for the University of Southern California, where he studied — among other things — medieval anti-papist screeds, the NFB, the structure of a good story, attic Greek, the danse macabre, obscure methods of stop-motion, and middle english blackletter. He tried working elsewhere after graduation, but he missed Doheny Memorial Library. He’s currently committed himself to a 50-film Netflix backlog of historically important films he missed minoring in animation. In the meantime, he treasures the work of visionaries like Norstein, Petrov and Miyazaki, that one good movie Don Bluth made, and yes, sometimes even Disney. You can see his other work, including art, design and religious essays at www.nkcarter.com. Like a good English major, he’s also working on the third draft of his novel.
Mike Hertenstein (staff writer) – oversees program planning for Flickerings and the Imaginarium, film programs at the annual Cornerstone Festival. He has written on film online and in print and led screenings for colleges, arts events and film groups. He contributed the introduction to the book Faith & Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema. Mike’s favorite directors are Roberto Rossellini and John Ford and his tastes range over that wide spectrum between, leaving room for little-discussed masterpieces like “Evil Roy Slade”.
M. Leary (co-editor) – is currently teaching Religious Studies at Fontbonne University, studies other people’s research at Washington University in St. Louis, and frequently publishes on film, the arts, and biblical studies in an array of magazines and journals. He is most recently a contributor to the Dictionary of the Bible and Western Culture, and co-editing a forthcoming volume for the Semeia series on theoretical and historical connections between film studies and biblical studies. While not watching anyone from Denis to Deren, he can be found rewinding either the railway scene in Stalker or the end of Bicylceran ad infinitum. Also on Twitter.
Jason Morehead (staff writer) – is a blogger, reviewer, and web designer living in Lincoln, Nebraska. When not pushing pixels around and cursing Internet Explorer, he writes about film, music, and other facets of pop culture for various sites including his own, Opus. He looks forward to the day when he can introduce his son to the joys of Andrei Tarkovksy, Hayao Miyazaki, and Jackie Chan.
Jeffrey Overstreet (co-editor) – is the author of “a memoir of dangerous moviegoing” called Through a Screen Darkly, and two fantasy novels – Auralia’s Colors and Cyndere’s Midnight. He blogs at LookingCloser.org. Each month he writes about foreign, independent, and overlooked movies at Christianity Today and Image. He received the 2007 Spiritus Award at the City of the Angels Film Festival. Favorite filmmakers: Kieslowski, Malick, PT Anderson, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Miyazaki, Brothers Dardennes & Coen, Brad Bird & Andrew Stanton. He’s the contributing editor for Seattle Pacific University’s award-winning Response magazine. When he’s not at SPU, or Seattle’s $3-ticket arthouse theater (the Crest), he’s probably lurking in Shoreline coffee shops. Also on Twitter and Facebook.
Ron Reed (staff writer) – is an actor and playwright who founded Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, Canada after graduating from CalArts in 1984. Currently at work on a book, 1000 Soul Food Movies: A Guide to Films with a Spiritual Flavour, he has written about the movies at Christianity Today, Arts & Faith, and at his blog, soulfoodmovies. If a man is known by the company he keeps, you’ll learn more than you want to know about Ron by watching Tender Mercies, Magnolia, Dogville, The Son, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Year Of Living Dangerously, The Shining, Ikiru and It’s A Wonderful Life.
M. S. Smith (contributing writer) – has professional training as an historian and currently teaches and researches as one, but he focuses a significant amount of his time and energy on watching, talking about, and writing about films, with interests ranging from post-war modernist cinema to contemporary international films and genre movies. His favorite filmmakers include Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, Yasuhiro Ozu, and Lucrecia Martel; his favorite film, on any given day, could be Hiroshima mon amour, Contempt, L’Eclisse, or The New World, although he has a soft spot for Get Shorty and B movies he’s occasionlly embarrassed to admit to liking. He currently writes about film, among other things, at Where the Stress Falls. His enthusiasm for film is actually exceeded by his interest in music, and, when not watching movies, he’s most likely listening to Miles Davis — loudly, and on headphones. Now on Twitter.
Alissa Wilkinson (staff writer) – is the founding editor of The Curator, the associate editor of Comment, and a staff member at International Arts Movement. She frequently publishes work on film, culture, and fine art in several magazines, including Paste and Christianity Today, and is roughly a thesis away from an M.A. in Humanities and Social Thought at NYU. Alissa loves very dark comedies made by Charlie Kaufman and the Coens, idiosyncratic French movies, and Waiting for Guffman. Her husband Tom works in film and television, and they live in Brooklyn.
