Joshua Encinias
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Articles by Joshua Encinias
Werner Herzog visits Santa Fe to discuss the globe’s beasts and beauty
“I’ve been wrong so many times,” says Werner Herzog. Take Aguirre, the Wrath of God, his 1972 classic where 450 monkeys swarm a raft amid their Amazonian search for El Dorado. “It’s very strange how intense the bestiary is in my films,” he tells Pasatiempo. “Why that is, I don’t know.” The director is hesitant to explain the recurring animal presence in his work. In conversation, he is precise and only says what he can justify or what he wholeheartedly believes.
Unmasking Musk: A filmmaker takes on the world's richest man
Elon Musk wouldn’t sit for an interview, so Alex Gibney built him a chair. It is a gamer’s chair, and it sits at the center of Musk, Gibney’s new documentary about the world’s first trillionaire . His team asked Musk to take part, and he answered on X with an insult: “Gibney is a douche.” Without Musk, Gibney needed another way to put the entrepreneur’s voice on screen. Musk has said that reality may be a simulation, so Gibney staged a simulated interview.
Don’t Dream It, See It
By Joshua Encinias The cast of “The Rocky Horror Show” have spent weeks learning it’s just a step to the right. Their director, Justin Gaylard, first saw the film version (“The Rocky Horror Picture Show”) in ninth grade, at the infamous midnight showings in Pensacola’s Silver Screen Theater. He wasn’t old enough to be there, but one Halloween, some upperclassmen told Gaylard he was coming with them. “Silver Screen never really cared,” he says.
Meet the gentle buffalo with a killer role in a debut short film at SFiFF
”HE could pull away and run off anytime he wanted, but he’s just good-minded,” Clint Mortenson says of Clyde, his pet buffalo. In Buff, a 15-minute short making its New Mexico premiere at the Santa Fe International Film Festival, Clyde plays against type as a captive buffalo called a killer by his owner. The short follows Joss, played by Jena Malone (Contact, The Hunger Games franchise), as she treks across the Southwest. During her journey, Joss frees the buffalo and frees herself in the process.
Blaxploitation icon Pam Grier is finally getting her due, giving credit to horses, heritage, and hardcore fans
When Bless This Mess asked Pam Grier to come in for meetings, she told them she had chores. She plowed a field that morning, before a car took her to Century City in Los Angeles. “I had leather gloves in my back pocket, a little dust on my denim, hat and boots, and I was sitting in the lobby,” she tells Pasatiempo. She was early, as she always is.
Three directors on shooting shorts with more ambition than money, and the doors an Oscar-qualifying festival can open
The people who make short films know the math. “It’s amazing how viable and thriving it is because there’s no money in it,” says David Ferrier, whose animated short Beyond Measure plays at the Santa Fe International Film Festival this year.
The New Mexican short film that taught Stanley Kubrick to burn his outtakes
Before he had clout in Hollywood, Stanley Kubrick was just a photographer forced to sell away his creative control. Seventy-five years after Flying Padre hit screens, The Complete Kubrick, a landmark new box set from the Criterion Collection, is resurrecting the rare New Mexico documentary that taught Kubrick never to leave his legacy in someone else’s hands.
Santa Fe’s marquee film festival stakes its biggest claim yet
With a downtown small enough to walk across in 20 minutes, Santa Fe holds more art house screens within a few blocks of each other than most towns can boast in an entire zip code. The city’s film culture is anchored by a community that has spent years building a reputation for taste over scale. The Santa Fe International Film Festival sits at the center of that reputation, and this year it runs for six days, from Wednesday, October 14, to October 19.
A Deeply Human “Frankenstein”
By Joshua Encinias Inside Pensacola Ballet’s third-floor rehearsal studio, Gonzalo Galguera is teaching his new ballet’s final scene to company performers. In the scene, Victor Frankenstein is beside his dying father, and his Creature stands over both men. Before asking his dancers to move, Galguera talks them through what it means to lose a parent. “For me, death is something intimate,” he says. He compares it to birth.
Albuquerque's Guild Cinema turns 60, running on trust, emails, and patrons who won't let the doors close
Keif Henley leads with a movie few people have heard of, and he’s right to: the whole point of the Guild Cinema, as it turns 60 this year, is to introduce things you couldn’t find anywhere else. “Häxan is from 1922,” he says. “It’s kind of amazing for 1922.” It’s a docu-fiction hybrid about the history of witchcraft that doesn’t turn up at a multiplex. Henley programmed it anyway, bringing in musician Daniel Donato to perform a live score. The screening nearly sold out.
The Main Streams: A look at fall's worthy season returns along with a few fresh starts and twists
Fall’s television season looks as sequel, prequel, and reboot-heavy as the box office. Slow Horses returns for a sixth season after building one of streaming’s steadiest spy shows. The Traitors relaunches with an entirely new cast of non-celebrities under the title New Blood, while Yellowjackets comes to a bloody conclusion.
A fall guide to this season's theatrical releases, from family dramas to monsters of all proportions
Fall movie season is running on ghosts. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman step back into Practical Magic 2 after 28 years. Tony Gilroy directs a feature film for the first time since 2012 with Behemoth!. And Mike Leigh, who at 83 is battling an autoimmune disease called myositis, made what he says will be his last film, Tender Loving Care. Elsewhere, from the realms of the Cannes and Venice film festivals, a Palme d’Or winner, Fjord, follows a Romanian family undone by a Norwegian investigation.
Filmmakers behind ‘Watching Mr. Pearson’ present a novel view of dementia
Dillon Bentlage spent a Sunday afternoon in late April 2024 pacing around his apartment. “I was so stressed, and didn’t know how to handle it,” he says. The contracts were signed, the locations were locked, and he was eight weeks out from directing his first feature film. But at the moment, he no longer had a lead actor. But he had started out with an idea.
Director Adam Wingard conjures New Mexico's ghosts in A24’s ‘Onslaught’
Adam Wingard can see Zorro Ranch down the road. The house that Wingard (director of The Guest, Godzilla vs. Kong) used for his new film Onslaught sits close enough to Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch that it is visible from set. He’s returned to this stretch of desert at different times in his career. Now, with A24’s support, he’s back to tell a story about government malfeasance that’s stranger than fiction.
Two women, one invisible world: The Emmy-nominated New Mexican artisans behind ‘Pluribus’
A gutted Barnes & Noble. A dead mall in Albuquerque. It’s 2008, and Ashley Michelle Marsh is standing on a movie set for the first time. The future set director watches as art director Chris Spellman fills the empty bookstore with shelves and signage for the Seth Rogen movie Observe and Report (2009). By the time they’re done, it looks like the store was never closed. “That really expanded my horizons,” Marsh says. “I came from theater.
The Potter Behind Pensacola’s Newest Art Night
By Joshua Encinias Gretchen Paux digs her own clay. “I pull out the larger chunks of earth, rocks and sticks,” she says. “Then I take that clay and turn it into a functional piece or a sculptural piece just straight out of the earth.” She finds it along local riverbanks and mixes her own glazes from ash out of local wood-burning kilns. The wood she burns changes everything about the finished piece.
The 'maniacal' Santa Fe puppeteer behind horror film 'Buddy'
Puppeteer Devon Hawkes Ludlow was on a film set in Atlanta when the animatronics froze. The crew had robot suits rigged up for an unreleased George R.R. Martin production, and they stopped working mid-shoot. Ludlow didn’t know it, but a line producer on set watched him fix the malfunction with ease. Months later, that producer recommended him for a job building puppets for a new horror film called Buddy.
'It Ends' and more
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Inside Letterboxd’s Unlikely Distribution Pipeline: How ‘It Ends’ and Other Gems Found Their Way to a Deal Original
The film festival system used to be the most direct route to distribution for a film like Alexander Ullom’s “It Ends.” In recent years, however, it’s seemed like that road had simply closed. Sundance hosted 90-plus films and episodic series this year. A dozen came in with distribution already lined up. The other 80 or so had to find buyers on the ground, and most of them didn’t move until spring, some as late as April and May. Some deals are still happening, even now.
Inside Letterboxd’s Unlikely Distribution Pipeline: How ‘It Ends’ and Other Gems Found Their Way to a Deal
11 hours ago A major cultural and religious festival celebrating women and the Virgin Mary in northern Ethiopia has been cancelled in Mekelle, the main city in the Tigray region, over fears it may be targeted in drone attacks. The focal point of Ashenda festival, which traditionally draws thousands of young …
Go with gravity: Screenwriter James V. Hart fought Hollywood for 20 years, and won by letting go
A young man in bell bottoms sits across the desk from a Warner Bros. executive, waiting to hear whether his script has a future. It’s the early 1970s, and the executive points out the window at a wall around the studio lot. “That wall’s there to keep people like you out,” he says. Decades later, screenwriter James V. Hart (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Hook) walked past the wall again, this time on a Writers Guild picket line.
Director Fernando Eimbcke uses the lay of the land in Las Cruces for his gritty new coming-of-age drama
Production designer Lorus Allen didn’t build the neon sign glowing over Tommy’s Roller Rink. He brought it back to life. The sign atop Tommy’s, which opened in Las Cruces in 1954 and closed in 2005, had been dark since the mid-1990s. Rather than swap it for LED strips, Allen and city commissioners tracked down the original builder to learn how the wiring worked. They fixed it, and now the city lights it up once or twice a month, leaving it running all night.
Brady Corbet Looks Back on ‘Mysterious Skin,’ Which He Knew Was Destined to Be an ‘Important Movie’ Original
Few films get banned in multiple countries and then, twenty years later, become the subject of theories as how they might have influenced a later Steven Spielberg movie. “Mysterious Skin” has managed to do both. Gregg Araki’s 2004 adaptation of Scott Heim’s novel is back in a new 4K restoration this month.
Santa Fe's Video Library is a cinematic unicorn on the digital streaming landscape
On a Friday afternoon in Santa Fe’s historic district, a line forms at the counter of Video Library. There’s no barcode scanner, no computer logging what anyone rents. Just Lisa Harris, a stack of index cards, and 45 years of movie memories standing between the shelves and the door. Video Library, known to regulars simply as “the Vid,” is the oldest continuously operating video rental store in America and, by Harris’ own count, the oldest still-functioning video rental store in the world.
Director Hirokazu Koreeda on joy, process, and why he’s 'curious' about AI’s feelings
While Hollywood argues over whether AI will replace artists, Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda is asking a more disturbing question: What happens when it replaces the people we’ve lost? His latest film, Sheep in the Box, which debuted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May, examines technology not as an industry threat, but as a convenient detour around the unbearable fact of death. Koreeda traces the premise to recent headline-making experiments across Asia.
Self-proclaimed world's oldest video store turns 45 as die-hard cinemaniacs return to old school media
On a Friday afternoon in Santa Fe’s historic district, a line forms at the counter of Video Library. There’s no barcode scanner, no computer logging what anyone rents. Just Lisa Harris, a stack of index cards, and 45 years of movie memories standing between the shelves and the door. Video Library, known to regulars simply as “the Vid,” is the oldest continuously operating video rental store in America and, by Harris’ own count, the oldest still-functioning video rental store in the world.
More Than Nostalgia
By Joshua Encinias Filmmaker Steven Spielberg and composer John Williams have worked together for fifty years. This summer, the Saenger Theatre is celebrating that partnership over five weeks with “The Sound & The Story”—a summer screening series featuring one film from each decade the pair has made movies together. Every week, a local organist will play selections from Williams’ scores an hour before the screenings.
Pete Sands hid a family secret inside his Emmy-nominated children's series, 'Navajo Highways'
Pete Sands (Diné) didn’t set out to make a hit children’s show — he was trying to free something he’d carried since childhood. Navajo Highways, the FNX (First Nations Experience) Original puppet series Sands created, writes, directs, and performs in, now reaches more than 84 million households and has earned two regional Pacific Southwest Chapter Emmy nominations (which will be presented at an awards gala on Saturday, June 27, in La Jolla, California).
New E. Jean Carroll documentary goes beyond the courtroom, revealing layers of her life no one knew
Roger Ailes had a habit of telling women on his staff to give him a twirl so he could look them over. E. Jean Carroll beat him to it. “Roger, give me a twirl,” she would say, and watch him blush. Then she would walk away laughing. Ailes produced Ask E. Jean, a talk show on America’s Talking, the network he built for NBC before launching Fox News. On the show, Carroll would dispense advice to other women with brash, unapologetic authority.
‘Spa Night’ at 10: Andrew Ahn on Telling Queer Asian Stories, Sundance, and Hollywood’s Next Wave Original
This year marks a decade since “Spa Night,” the quiet, sweat-beaded debut that launched Andrew Ahn‘s career in 2016. He came through the Sundance Labs in the same era as Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao, both since minted as Oscar winners, back when the labs looked like the surest on-ramp in American independent film. A decade later, Ahn has four features to his name, directed episodes of “Bridgerton,” and a working philosophy that has quietly refused to age.
‘Spa Night’ at 10: Andrew Ahn on Telling Queer Asian Stories, Sundance, and Hollywood’s Next Wave
This year marks a decade since “Spa Night,” the quiet, sweat-beaded debut that launched Andrew Ahn‘s career in 2016. He came through the Sundance Labs in the same era as Ryan Coogler and Chloé Zhao, both since minted as Oscar winners, back when the labs looked like the surest on-ramp in American independent film. A decade later, Ahn has four features to his name, directed episodes of “Bridgerton,” and a working philosophy that has quietly refused to age.
'Georgia O'Keeffe: The Brightness of Light' paints a fresh portrait of the modernist painter
Chicago, 1908: A 21-year-old woman has been told her whole life she is destined for greatness. She lands a job making commercial art. Then she looks at what she’s actually drawing, decides it isn’t worth doing, and puts down her brush. She will not pick it up again, at least not seriously or with anything at stake, for four years. That’s not how Georgia O’Keeffe’s story usually begins.
Albuquerque Author Brian Jay Jones' Latest Book Explores the Difficult History of the U.S. Capitol
Here’s what nobody tells you about the Capitol Dome. Its cast iron was sitting on the lawn of the Capitol in the middle of the Civil War, and pigs kept wandering up to scratch themselves against it, scraping the paint off. The construction company finally told President Lincoln: Just let us put it up. You don’t even have to pay us. Our stuff is out here getting ruined by livestock. That’s the real story of why the Dome was finished.
'The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane' Documentary Explores a Musician's Fight for Civil Rights Over Fame
Maureen Gosling spent seven years filming Barbara Dane, a significant musician and activist by any measure, for her documentary The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane. In her life, singer-musician Dane performed with Louis Armstrong and co-founded Paredon Records in 1969 to release music from liberation movements in South America, Africa, Asia, and more.
Summer Movie Season Kicks in With Some Epic Options
This summer’s movie calendar is packed with genuine oddities, intimate dread, and high-wire gambles that could either redefine the blockbuster season or collapse into glorious ruin. Consider the range: A24 and Kane Parsons turn a furniture superstore into an infinite beige nightmare with Backrooms. Christopher Nolan takes on Homer’s ancient epic with The Odyssey. Michael Sarnoski reimagines Robin Hood as a rotting recluse in The Death of Robin Hood.
From Reimagined Classics to Immersive Escapism, These Summer Streamers are Worthy Watches
This summer’s television season marks a shift toward stylistic reinvention and high-concept spectacle. From the monochromatic grit of Spider-Noir, to the operatic rock-star energy of The Vampire Lestat, streamers are prioritizing immersive worlds that offer escapism without the typical emotional exhaustion. Beyond pure spectacle, the lineup dives into psychological dread.
Filmmaker Behind 'Muscle Beach' Puts his own Muscle Behind the Distribution of his Gritty Noir Project
A VHS tape sits on a shelf at filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s Chicago video store. There are only 25 copies in existence. Its plastic matches the film’s color palette, and each tape is hand-labeled. You can only buy them in person. The movie’s rarity is director Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman’s entire philosophy in physical form.
2026 Summer Movie Guide
By Joshua Encinias Forget beach reads. This summer belongs to the dark, the loud and the weird.
The Skeptic Behind the Year's Most Unsettling UAP Documentary
DOCUMENTARY The first time Michael Lazovsky drove to Jeremy Corbell’s house, he expected a performance. He had cold‑emailed the polarizing UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) journalist during a film school exercise. His school, the American Film Institute, required students to call three strangers every week. That call landed him a job editing Corbell’s podcast Weaponized. Lazovsky was a horror director.
'Surprise Me, God': How Silence Became Paul Williams’ Greatest Composition
He walks two miles. He weighs 125 pounds. And he’s 85 years old. On most mornings, just after sunrise, songwriter Paul Williams laces up a pair of walking shoes and heads out. He lives on a small lagoon in Huntington Harbour, a place he describes as “a little more sane” than the rest of Los Angeles County.
The Long and Strange Journey of the Documentary Netanyahu Doesn't Want you to See
When an interrogator tells Benjamin Netanyahu that calling a light off when it's on is a lie, the Israeli Prime Minister replies that it "could be a mistake." It's a moment from leaked police footage that director Alexis Bloom can't get past.
The Long and Strange Journey of the Documentary Netanahu Doesn't Want you to See
When an interrogator tells Benjamin Netanyahu that calling a light off when it's on is a lie, the Israeli Prime Minister replies that it "could be a mistake." It's a moment from leaked police footage that director Alexis Bloom can't get past.
Artist Jimmy Grashow Built a Cathedral to Exorcise a Lifetime of Fears
Jimmy Grashow kept a pencil in his hand until the end. For six decades, the Brooklyn-born artist built a career across gallery walls and museum collections, album covers, and more than a thousand publications. But he also spent that time learning to disguise his demons. As a child, he drew monsters. Art school taught him how to dress them up. Then, approaching 80, he received a commission. One that came without strings, allowing Grashow to create anything he could dream up.
Comedian, Actor, and Community Leader Steven Michael Quezada Breaking Barriers in Comedy and Film
Comedian, actor, and community leader Steven Michael Quezada is breaking barriers instead of bad In the pantheon of Breaking Bad characters, Steven Michael Quezada’s DEA Agent Steven “Gomie” Gomez stood apart. He was Hank Schrader’s (Dean Norris) loyal partner and the only by-the-books character who navigated the meth-fueled chaos of Albuquerque. “Gomie was the only character on the show that didn’t break bad,” Quezada says. It’s a fitting metaphor for the actor himself.
How an Ad Man Turned His Own Death Into a Comedy With a Message
André Ricciardi spent three decades perfecting the art of making strangers feel something. As a creative director in advertising, he crafted viral campaigns for Nike, eBay, and Pepsi, work that Fast Company once labeled “Terror Marketing” for its experimental, cutting-edge approach to pushing products. He knew exactly which buttons to push, which emotional levers to pull.
Craft: How Sam Bader Recreated the Shakers’ World for The Testament of Ann Lee
The Shaker sect portrayed in Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee saw labor as a form of worship —and believed that building a chair or a home could be like a prayer. So the film’s production designer, Sam Bader, tried to emulate their commitment to craft. Bader set out to physically immerse audiences in the spiritual journey of Mother Ann Lee, the founding leader of the group who is played in the film by Amanda Seyfried.
Craft: How Sam Bader Recreated the Shakers’ World for The Testament of Ann Lee
Searchlight Pictures The Shaker sect portrayed in Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee saw labor as a form of worship —and believed that building a chair or a home could be like a prayer. So the film’s production designer, Sam Bader, tried to emulate their commitment to craft. Bader set out to physically immerse audiences in the spiritual journey of Mother Ann Lee, the founding leader of the group who is played in the film by Amanda Seyfried.
Kaouther Ben Hania Brings the Tragedies of War in Gaza into Focus in Oscar Nominated Film
The actors didn’t know what they were about to hear. As they sat in a Tunisian office, retrofitted to resemble the Ramallah headquarters of the humanitarian organization called Palestinian Red Crescent, Oscar-nominated director Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters, The Man Who Sold His Skin) prepared them for the scene.
In Drew Kirsch’s ‘He Bled Neon,’ Albuquerque Becomes Sin City’s Shadow
Neon-drenched casinos. Elvis impersonators. The glittering Strip. It’s all notably absent from director Drew Kirsch’s Sin City-based debut feature film, He Bled Neon. And that’s exactly the point. “I deliberately avoided the Strip itself,” Kirsch says. “One of the original things that pulled me into the story was making a Vegas movie outside of the Strip.
Desert Dreamer Original
Two years after Jim Henson died in 1990, his family drove north through New Mexico searching for a spot he had once pointed out from the car — the pyramid-shaped hills near Taos where he’d said, according to Henson biographer Brian Jay Jones, “I really feel like that’s the place I’m supposed to be.” Henson had left no clear instructions for his remains. Only that he didn’t want to be buried, and the decision fell to his son John, whom Jones calls “the spiritual Henson.” Jane Henson stopped first.
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