Little White Lies

Released 10 APRIL Jim Jarmusch’s latest film shifts seamlessly from its opening logos to its first self-owned visual. Strands and particles of light drift by in an empty frame, twinkling like dust in front of an active film projector. As they continue to glimmer and flicker, we become aware that we are moving – skylines and telephone poles glimpsed faintly through a window. The image fades away again. It’s a sequence that evokes a specific and surreal childhood memory – of sitting in your parents’ car late at night at the tail-end of a long ride, your eyes seemingly shut – every now and then stealing a half-open glance at where you are in your journey. When you feel the car lurch to a halt, you slump back in your seat…

Jim Jarmusch’s first feature film, 1980’s Permanent Vacation, begins with what we recognise as sounds from the street: the rhythm of boots on pavement, the drone of vehicles, a saxophone riff being played by a street performer. As the opening shots of Manhattan unfold, we notice that the sounds and images are related but out of sync. The busker is playing a different song; there’s a crowd of people on the sidewalk but we can only hear one set of footsteps. Later in the film, Jarmusch’s own score is dominated by a sinister loop of church bells haunting the protagonist – a childhood memory turned into a nightmare. We’re unsure what is real and what is stylised; the objective is made subjective in the filmmaker’s hands. Over 45 years later,…

Sometimes the process of building a screen performance involves more than merely reciting words off of script in the aid of bringing a story to life. You’ve got to go through the looking glass and attempt to chime with the sensibility of the director and perhaps pinpoint what it is that makes their work unique. All cinema is worldbuilding in its own way, and when an actor’s number is called and it’s time for them to visit this new place, then they have to know the rules and they have to act accordingly. Over the years, Jim Jarmusch has surrounded himself with like-minded cohorts, and his genius as a director comes down to his ability to attain tonal consistency across a back catalogue of features, documentaries and shorts that hop…

How this industrious costume designer added subtle poetry to the everyday in her creations for Father Mother Sister Brother. Catherine George has been riding high in the film industry for much of the 21st century, counting Lynne Ramsay and Bong Joon-ho among her regular collaborators. Father Mother Sister Brother is her fourth collaboration with Jim Jarmusch, following Paterson, The Dead Don’t Die and a short but sweet stint on his anthology film Coffee and Cigarettes. LWLies: I understand that Tilda Swinton had some involvement in connecting you with Jim? George: Yeah, I think it was from multiple sources, but Tilda was probably the main connection. We’d worked together on We Need to Talk About Kevin, and that’s where I first met her. From there, director Bong saw that movie and…

Everyone thinks that Frederick Elmes’ first job as a cinematographer was on David Lynch’s hallucinatory 1977 film Eraserhead, but that would be forgetting the early documentary short, Street Scenes (1970), which he made with Martin Scorsese. He is one of the most important and respected technicians working in the film world right now, and it feels entirely appropriate that he counts Jim Jarmusch as one of his closest artistic collaborators, having first worked together on 1991’s Night on Earth. For Father Mother Sister Brother, he shot the first, Father, in the US with Adam Driver, Tom Waits and Mayim Bialik. LWLies: I saw an interview where you talked about working with David Lynch and that when he when you talk to him about a scene, he’s interested in the mood…

COINS 1 PLAY dime or two nickels 3 PLAYS quarter 7 PLAYS half dollar ARTIST ROSTER Mark Asch Leonardo Goi Brianna Zigler Clarisse Loughrey Isaac Feldberg Carol Grant Jake Cole Willow Catelyn Maclay Kambole Campbell Jourdain Searles David Jenkins Lucy Peters INTRODUCTION: PERMANENT VACATION Itinerant hipsters, decaying landscapes, luxury vintage autos, high-beam quiffs and classic jazz music. All the ingredients were there in Jim Jarmusch’s no wave studentfilm debut, and it would not be long until he managed to adjust the levels to achieve the wistful deadpan perfection that would become a trademark of screen work. The 1980 film Permanent Vacation is often dismissed as a bit of formative juvenalia, an example of a filmmaker failing so he can learn and then coming back stronger in later work. Yet aside from being…