Few artists march to the beat of their very own drum as proudly as Rick Alverson. The Virginia-based filmmaker is thought for his unapologetically bleak explorations of matters that may be humorous in different contexts, just like the Neil Hamburger tragedy “Leisure” and the Tim Heidecker drama “The Comedy,” making use of his singular, uncompromising voice to every challenge. And now, he desires to show the subsequent era of filmmakers methods to do the identical factor with their very own voices.
Alverson and musician Emilie Rex just lately launched the Little Valley College, an arts schooling neighborhood within the Allegheny Highlands of Virginia. IndieWire can solely reveal the college’s first main program: a sequence of two on-line filmmaking workshops hosted by Man Maddin, the director of provocative movies like “My Winnipeg,” “The Saddest Music within the World” and “Rumors,” and Carlos Reygadas, the acclaimed Mexican arthouse director behind movies like “Submit Tenebras Lux,” “Japón,” and “Silent Gentle.”
Every filmmaker will host a four-week on-line course, which is able to meet twice weekly. Every week will encompass a chat given by the filmmaker, an train designed to stimulate creativity, and shared time for the scholars to current their work and assist one another.
An official synopsis of this system describes it in phrases that may doubtless delight followers of the three filmmakers. “Within the new irregular — the place local weather chaos, hovering inequality, neofascism, and runaway synthetic intelligence outline an more and more dystopian current — Little Valley College asks: What’s the function of artwork? Artists have lengthy been beholden to the calls for of a shopper product pipeline, designed primarily to extract consideration and maximize worth. The digital workshops deal with artwork issues and course of as a way of disrupting this dynamic.”
Maddin will host the primary workshop, at present scheduled to run from September 7-28. Reygadas’ workshop will happen in February 2026. Each workshops can be carried out on-line (although the Little Valley College finally plans to develop into in-person applications) and can be found to college students wherever on the planet at any stage of their creative growth.
The workshops are priced at $165 for 4 weeks, with pre-registration accessible for $150 till August 8. Extra info might be discovered right here.
Watch a trainer for Maddin’s workshop, which he’s calling “Fruits of Frustration,” under.
