Aaron Hillis | |
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| Occupation(s) | Film critic, writer, director, curator |
Aaron Hillis is an American writer, film critic, director, film festival programmer, and curator. [1] [2]
Aaron Hillis | |
|---|---|
| | |
| Occupation(s) | Film critic, writer, director, curator |
Aaron Hillis is an American writer, film critic, director, film festival programmer, and curator. [1] [2]
Hillis has been active in independent film, especially within the fields of indie festivals, exhibitions, indie film distribution and programming, [3] filmmaking, marketing, and journalism. [4] As a film journalist, he has written film reviews [5] and features articles and conducted hundreds of interviews with celebrities. He wrote, among others, for The Village Voice , Vice, Variety , Vanity Fair , LA Weekly , Indiewire , Filmmaker Magazine , GreenCine Daily (editor from 2009 to 2013), [6] and Spin . Furthermore, Hillis is a frequent moderator of panels in the indie film world. [7] [8] [9]
Between 2006 and 2009, Hillis was the vice-president of Benten Films, a boutique DVD label, founded by Andrew Grant. [10] [11] [12] Responsible for acquisitions, art direction, disc production and marketing, releases include Joe Swanberg's LOL (2006), Aaron Katz's Dance Party USA and Quiet City (2007), Matthias Glasner's The Free Will (2008).
In 2007, Hillis directed the documentary feature Fish Kill Flea (together with Brian M. Cassidy and Jennifer Loeber). [13] [14] The film premiered at SXSW [15] where it was praised by Premiere Magazine as "one of SXSW's pleasant surprises, with a great, early Errol Morris feel for American weirdness. (Premiere Magazine) and as "a wistful, thought-provoking rumination on the cost of progress. ( Film Threat ) gave a similarly positive review, calling it "a wistful, thought-provoking rumination on the cost of progress." [16]
Hillis is one of the programmers at Cucalorus Film Festival (in Wilmington, North Carolina), where he curates the "Convulsions" genre program since 2013. [17] [18]
Between 2012 and 2018, Hillis owned Video Free Brooklyn, a DVD and Blu-ray rental boutique. [19] [20] [21] [22] The store was awarded the title of "Best Video Store in NYC" on three occasions between 2012–2013, by Time Out NY , The Village Voice, The L Magazine . In 2016, Hillis sold the library to the Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn. [23] [24] The 2019 documentary At the Video Store by James Westby features a conversation with Hillis about his time as a video rental store owner.
Since 2020, Hillis has been curating and hosting "Playtime with Hillis," a Zoom screening series of rare cinema. Guests included Paul Schrader, Alice Cooper, Steve Buscemi, Rian Johnson, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Robert Townsend, Heather Matarazzo, Joe Dante, Robyn Hitchcock, Guinevere Turner, Alessandro Nivola, and band Sparks. [25]
Harry Jay Knowles is an American former film critic and writer known for his website Ain't It Cool News (AICN). Knowles was a member of the Austin Film Critics Association until he was removed in September 2017 "by a substantial majority vote" of the organization following allegations of sexual assault.
Michael Stephenson, known professionally as Michael Paul Stephenson, is an American filmmaker and actor. He is known for directing the critically acclaimed documentaries Best Worst Movie and The American Scream. Michael made his narrative feature debut with Girlfriend’s Day, starring Bob Odenkirk. Michael's latest film, Attack of the Murder Hornets, is an original documentary that he directed and produced for Discovery+. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America.
Augenblick Studios is an independent animation studio founded in 1999 by Aaron Augenblick, and located in Brooklyn, New York City. The company has created a wide array of animated shorts for television, film, and the Internet, with the target audience typically being adults. Their clients include Cartoon Network, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, the TED conference, PBS, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is an American cinema chain founded in 1997 in Austin, Texas, which is famous for serving dinner and drinks during the movie, as well as its strict policy of requiring its audiences to maintain proper cinema-going etiquette.
Aaron and Adam Nee, sometimes referred to as the Nee brothers, are an American filmmaking duo best known for their feature films The Last Romantic (2006), Band of Robbers (2015), and The Lost City (2022).
Aaron Katz is an American independent filmmaker from Portland, Oregon.
Kim's Video and Music was a video and music retail store in the East Village of Manhattan, New York City, described as the "go-to place for rare selections" and "widely known among the cognoscenti of new, experimental and esoteric music and film". Its owner was Yongman Kim.
Bob and the Monster is a 2011 documentary film by Keirda Bahruth which profiles musician and drug counselor Bob Forrest.
Reconvergence is a 2012 documentary film directed by Edward Tyndall featuring the lives and views of four characters: naturalist Eustace Conway, scientist Preston Estep, historian Waite Rawls, and poet Caleb Whitaker. The film features a wide exploration of their views on history, memory, consciousness, and the changes wrought by technologies. The film screened at various American film festivals and was distributed by Mobius Films.
Myles Kane is an American film producer and wizard rock artist.
The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz is a 2014 American biographical documentary film about Aaron Swartz written, directed, and produced by Brian Knappenberger. The film premiered in the US Documentary Competition program category at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 20, 2014.
Geoff Marslett is an American film director, writer, producer, animator and actor. His early career started with the animated short Monkey vs. Robot which was distributed internationally by Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation on video and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation in theatres. More recently he directed several successful narrative feature films including MARS, as well as producing and acting in the experimental documentary Yakona. He appears onscreen in Josephine Decker's Thou Wast Mild and Lovely which was released theatrically in 2014. He currently resides in Austin, Texas and splits his time between filmmaking and teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Addicted to Fresno is a 2015 American dark comedy film directed by Jamie Babbit and written by Karey Dornetto. The film stars Natasha Lyonne and Judy Greer as two sisters that find themselves in trouble after housekeeper Shannon Jackson (Greer) accidentally kills a guest at the hotel employing her and younger sister Martha (Lyonne). The film had its world premiere on March 14, 2015, at South by Southwest. It was released in the United States on September 1, 2015, through video on demand, and was given a limited theatrical release on October 2, 2015, by Gravitas Ventures.
Marion Lipschutz is an American documentary producer, writer, and director. Lipschutz has directed and produced award-winning documentaries, including BEI BEI, The Education of Shelby Knox and Young Lakota.
Driftwood is an American independent film written and directed by Paul Taylor. The film had its world premiere at the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival where it was awarded the Grand Jury Prize for best narrative feature.
Factory 25 is a Brooklyn-based independent film distribution and production company, founded by Matt Grady in 2009.
Suki Hawley is an American indie filmmaker and a partner in the production and distribution company RUMUR. Either solo or with Michael Galinsky, she has directed low-budget fictional narratives but has mostly concentrated on documentaries in recent years.
Everybody's Everything is a 2019 documentary film about the life of American rapper and singer-songwriter Lil Peep. The film was directed by Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan, produced by Benjamin Soley and executive produced by Terrence Malick, Liza Womack and Sarah Stennett. It chronicles the life of Lil Peep from his childhood in Long Beach, NY through his meteoric rise in the underground scene and music industry, up to his death on November 15, 2017 at the age of 21. The film takes its title from one of Lil Peep's Instagram posts, which appeared the day before his death. “I just wanna be everybody's everything," he wrote. The documentary is described as a "humanistic portrait that seeks to understand an artist who attempted to be all things to all people."
The Cucalorus Film Festival is a film festival held annually in Wilmington, North Carolina. It is one of the largest film festivals in the U.S. South and recognized as a destination film festival for indie filmmakers. MovieMaker magazine recognizes it as "one of the coolest film festivals in the world", and "one of 50 film festivals worth the entry fee". The Brooks Institute named it one of the top ten film festivals in the nation.
Giant Pictures is an American independent film distribution company founded by Nick Savva and Jeff Stabenau with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. The company releases feature films, documentaries and series on streaming platforms, with an emphasis on flexibility and customization for filmmakers. Giant Pictures owns and operates specialty theatrical label, Drafthouse Films. Giant is the distribution and technology partner of the Tribeca Festival.
