Something terrible happened in Cambodia about 30 years ago. But exactly what that was has been lost. The “Killing Fields” movie and the survivor literature have created a powerful but now rather formulaic evocation of a place and time of terror. I kept hearing this phrase of George Eliot’s rattling round my head: ‘that roar which lies on the other side of silence.’ I wanted to hear the roar.

I felt it necessary to get, somehow, to the epicenter of the storm that engulfed the country. If you could, as it were, get past the corpses and survivor accounts to the people who were actually causing the deaths, then you might learn something more profound about violence and what it is to be human.

When I first went to Phnom Penh in 2006, I planned to make a film about the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge as they awaited trial for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Tyler Maddox-Simms returns from a several-year hiatus to write and direct “Love Chronicles: Secrets Revealed.”
 
“Love Chronicles,” the romantic dramedy that Tyler Maddox-Simms wrote and directed in 2003, was first envisioned as a novel. “I started writing a book called ‘Love Chronicles,’ which I still haven’t completed,” she explains. When she found the project too time-consuming to finish, she decided to tell the story in a screenplay instead, structuring short romantic “vignettes” around Los Angeles radio station KLUV.

Seven years later, the cast has changed — Ving Rhames, Mike Epps and Vivica A. Fox have stepped into new roles — but the premise is the same. The unique and agile format allows Maddox-Simms to address several significant themes — including infidelity, unemployment, police harassment, gang violence, drugs, prostitution and faith — in a short amount of time. “Chronicles, like affairs of the heart, they don’t end,” she says. “As a writer, I wanted to touch base on some of those issues.”

As a result of one small act, we became witness to a fierce debate over civil and human rights in small-town America. Neither of us went to film school; we didn't know anybody in the industry; we didn't even own a camera. But we soon realized that if we did not shine a light on and try to illuminate the basis for the controversy, it would simply pass away into history’s ether, and the discrimination and intimidation we had witnessed would continue to reign undocumented and unopposed.

It all started 14 years ago when we met at a National Gay and Lesbian Task Force event. Joe was involved in human rights work with an NGO, and Dean was a molecular biologist and author. Discovering a shared passion for both pick-up basketball and social justice, we became teammates and friends. Over time, friendship blossomed into romance, and in 2004 we officially tied the knot in Vancouver, Canada.

It was a simple question: “Why aren’t there more lesbian films out there?” And “Elena Undone” came into being as the result of my falling in love after a fair four decades on the planet — really, truly, madly in love with my partner, Marina Rice Bader, (also executive producer), who asked it.

“Well,” I responded, with a wry sense of compassion (and, yes, patronizing cynicism) — after all, she had been straight all her life, had no insight into the labyrinthian dysfunctionality of the lesbian nation nor the especially harsh economic feasibility, politics and vicious scarcity issues as they applied to “lesbian cinema.” The harsh truth about the “new distribution paradigm for this niche category” is that to make any money at all you can shoot these “niche” films only at budgets of 250,000 or less, and when you’re playing in that price range (ours was “or less”), you’re working at the lowest common denominator.

First-time filmmaker Angela Ismailos sits down with “Great Directors” and reignites one’s passion for film.

Almost everyone who ends up working in the film industry — whether as a filmmaker, a studio employee or a journalist — is a movie buff, a cinephile who at some point encountered Cinema with a capital “C.” Angela Ismailos, director of the documentary “Great Directors,” probably experienced this moment at a younger age than most.

Greek in ancestry, Ismailos is of a different era. Classically beautiful with platinum blonde hair and wearing an elegant sundress with wedge heels, she harks back to 1960s Europe, the filmmaking period she so admires. Her father introduced her to film: Renoir, Eisenstein, Bergman, Pasolini, Antonioni, De Sica and Cocteau. “He was my cinema professor,” she says. Her studies began when she was age 10 or 11. “The first film I ever watched was film noir, and I was amazed how a silent movie can touch you without even words.”

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner share that they are still learning about the popular characters they play.

“My character has changed incredibly,” says Lautner. “In the first film, he was just a normal, easygoing guy. In 'New Moon' he begins to change, and in 'Eclipse' he's much more mature.”

Stewart feels that her character, too, has changed the most in this third installment of the series. “In the first [film], Bella abandoned herself to the unknown and lived a dream, a fantasy. But at a certain point she must grow up, face reality.” It’s an important change, she points out.

And it comes as the love triangle between Bella, Jacob and Edward takes on new life, Stewart explains. “In this episode, Bella finally comes to a crucial realization — also because she is soon to be married — opening her eyes and seeing her best friend as someone who can offer her something more.”

In “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse,” Chaske Spencer reprises his role as Sam, introduced in last year’s “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” “I like to figure out characters and situations … try and find myself in the role,” Spencer says of his acting style in the deep and slightly raspy voice that perhaps made him a natural choice for the older and more mature Sam.

In addition to his role in the “Twilight” saga, Spencer appeared in the 2003 movie “DreamKeeper” and Steven Spielberg’s 2005 television miniseries “Into the West,” playing Native-American characters in both. In fact, nearly all his roles, “Twilight” series included, have been Native-American characters.

“All I was allowed to play before were Native Americans,” says Spencer, a Lakota Sioux, who added that he is just now being offered roles that are not Native-American-specific. While there are not many Native-American actors working in Hollywood, there are even fewer roles available, making competition all the more intense.

“Dog Sweat” is unique in that it shows how young Iranians really live. Yes, there are restrictions, but young people have such vitality that they live the way they want despite restrictions. Because Iranian films are normally censored, we took great risk and shot the whole film underground. Some people have claimed that we wanted to insult or challenge the government, but that is not the case; we are just filmmakers who wanted to give voice to a new generation of Iranians and celebrate their vitality.

It is almost shocking to think of Iranian teenagers as preoccupied by sex, parties and social status. Why haven’t we seen these images before? This is because Iranian media, which is controlled by a religious fundamentalist government, allows only images of a nation of pious believers. The Western media, which is preoccupied with the threat that Iran poses for the West, compounds this by never showing what lies beneath the veil.

Though the film is a frothy confection, the filmmakers were aware of the serious history of alchemy and how it’s marketed for today’s audiences. Three of the main players behind the “National Treasure” movies — director Jon Turteltaub, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Nicolas Cage — reunited to reimagine the iconic “Fantasia” segment in which Mickey Mouse allows his magic powers to get away from him. With their history (Cage and Turteltaub even attended Beverly Hills High School together — so they go way back — and when they both auditioned for the high-school production of “Our Town,” Turteltaub actually beat out the future Oscar winner for the lead; Cage was relegated to the role of Constable Warren), the three have a chemistry that is one component of the magic of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” So when they gathered in the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills on a soft summer day to discuss the film, there was an easy rapport between them.

“Vlast (Power)” was never intended as an expression of advocacy for or against any individual or cause. In fact, the moment of deciding to organize a project pivoting around the life of Mikhail Khodorkovsky arose as he was well on his way to becoming the richest man in Russia, controlling of one of that country’s largest oil companies — a point at which there was little or no reason for advocacy of any kind. That his circumstances then devolved to the point of long-term incarceration and loss of his business empire as he became, arguably, Russia’s state enemy #1 only further substantiated his role as an inadvertent bellwether of what was to come in Russia and created a greater impetus for telling the story. And, in simply documenting the progression of which Khodorkovsky is emblematic, “Vlast” necessarily became an exposition on the absence of the rule of law and the creeping return of totalitarianism in Russia.