Ricky D’Ambrose
Directing
Biography
Ricky D'Ambrose (born September 1, 1987, USA) is an Independent Spirit Award-winning writer and director in New York. His second feature, The Cathedral, had its world premiere at the 78th Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at Sundance. The film was nominated for Best Film at the 2022 Gotham Awards. His short films and first feature, Notes on an Appearance, have screened at festivals internationally, including Berlin, Rotterdam, Vienna, the New York Film Festival, and New Directors/New Films. In 2017, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, as well as one of the decade's Best New Filmmakers by Richard Brody of the New Yorker magazine. As a critic, he has contributed to The Nation, Filmmaker, n+1, MUBI, and Film Quarterly.
Known For
An only child's meditative, impressionistic account of an American family's rise and fall over two decades.
The Cathedral
This hypnotic work of contemporary cinematic modernism—something like Robert Bresson in Park Slope, but not exactly—concerns a young man apartment-sitting for friends as talk of a plane crash ominously lingers in the air.
Six Cents in the Pocket
A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.
Notes on an Appearance
An American director, hired by German television to make a film about 9/11, re-stages a controversial photograph taken along the Brooklyn waterfront soon after the collapse of the World Trade Center.
The Sky Is Clear and Blue Today
Interview with the director of "Traveling Light" (2011) about her work as a filmmaker, critic, and programmer.
Gina Telaroli
The director of "Li'l Quinquin" discusses his filmmaking.
Bruno Dumont
An American art collector’s estate plans to build a glass house that will permanently memorialize the collector’s many prints and paintings. The spot selected—several acres of undeveloped parkland in upstate New York—was the site of a young woman’s murder, the circumstances of which have been exploited for political purposes by the founder of a far-right populist party called National Advance.
Object Lessons, or: What Happened Whitsunday
Interview with the Belgian director discussing her films from the 1970s and her mother’s influence on her work.
Chantal Akerman
Interview with Dustin Guy Defa. Recorded in New York City, March 2017.
Dustin Guy Defa
An applauded New York intellectual hires a young archivist to whitewash her late psychologist father's reputation by eliminating a forbidding, potentially incriminating paper trail.
Spiral Jetty
Interview with filmmaker and critic Dan Sallitt. Recorded July 2013.
Dan Sallitt
An anonymous young man appears unexpectedly in the Brooklyn apartment of a young couple, promising the two graduate students a more authentic, less insular lifestyle with him in Berlin.
The Stranger
Interview with filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. Recorded February 2014.
Matías Piñeiro
Twenty-seven members have voted "aye," eleven members have voted "no."
Roll Call
Interview with filmmaker Alex Ross Perry.
Alex Ross Perry
In a city afflicted by a series of increasingly violent protests, a dying young man is visited in his apartment by a refugee, a political radical, and a priest.
Pilgrims
Interview with filmmaker Nathan Silver. Recorded September 2013.
Nathan Silver
Interview with a group of indie filmmakers—Alexander Carver, Benjamin Crotty, Daniel Schmidt.