Since IFP and Filmmaker began programming the reRun Theater in Brooklyn, we’ve been trying to bring audiences great films, but also do it in an interesting and different way whenever possible. One of the ideas that we came up with to bring a little variety to proceedings was our Secret Film Club, which kicks off tonight. In the next week, we’ll be playing 11 films over five different nights. The screenings will all be free. But we won’t be telling anyone what the films are. Cryptic clues will be distributed to give you something to go on, however, the first …

Another day, another bunch of clips from U.S. indies playing at Cannes. Above there is a quick snippet, featuring Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Renner, from James Gray’s period drama The Immigrant (previously called Lowlife). The Weinstein Company will be putting out the film (also starring Gray regular Joaquin Phoenix) later this year and, barring terrible reviews from Cannes critics, it should be a 2013 awards contender. Below are a teaser trailer and a clip from Jeremy Saulnier’s second feature, Blue Ruin, which looks incredibly compelling and has the potential to establish the director (who mostly plies his trade as a …

I sadly missed Calvin Reeder’s The Rambler when it played at Sundance this January, but the film is having a theatrical release starting June 7 (at the reRun Theater!) so I will be checking it out very soon. This first trailer for the film certainly has whetted my appetite even more, and confirms just how crazy and out there Reeder’s movie really is.

Two of the big U.S. films playing at Cannes this year — Alexander Payne’s black-and-white dramedy Nebraska and Jim Jarmusch’s vampire flick Only Lovers Left Alive — have both released clips today. Above, from Nebraska, father and son Bruce Dern and Will Forte are joined by a weaselly Stacy Keach, and below you can check out two short bursts from Jarmusch’s movie, featuring leads Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska and Anton Yelchin. We’ll have more on both films here on the Filmmaker website once they have screened on the Croisette.

Ari Folman’s excellent animated doc Waltz with Bashir was a hit at Cannes five years ago, and the Israeli director’s back on the Croisette this year with The Congress. The first trailer just hit and it looks like as bold and inventive a film as one would expect from Folman, a mixture of Body Mind Change Labs and Charlie Kaufman, but with animation in there too. I’m very interested to learn more once it premieres.

This morning the 10 projects selected for the 2013 IFP Documentary Labs were announced. All are works by first-time directors and have budgets of less than $1 million, and filmmakers are provided with an immersive mentorship experience to guide them through post-production and looking ahead to the festival circuit and beyond. The films selected include Sara Dosa’s doc on mushroom hunters, Roots and Webs, produced by Court 13′s Josh Penn, and David Thorpe’s Do I Sound Gay, which has How to Survive a Plague‘s Howard Gertler on board as producer. Spike Lee is the executive producer on Darius Clark Monroe’s Evolution of a …

When it replaced BAM’s season of Sundance favorites some years ago, BAMcinemaFest emerged as a stronger and much more Brooklyn-centric event, a true festival rather than just a Park City greatest hits package. This year, it bookends proceedings with festival favorites from two our “25 New Faces” of previous years, David Lowery’s gorgeous period outlaw drama Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, and Destin Cretton’s SXSW-winning social worker drama Short Term 12. Michael M. Bilandic’s artworld satire Hellaware — which was featured in our Summer 2012 article “The Shooting Parties” — is the sole world premiere, however the focus here is on local …

Steven Soderbergh has retired from movies — for now, at least. But while we wait for his HBO Liberace biopic to arrive, there’s a couple of recent things to remind us of his continuing greatness and furious productiveness. Firstly, his San Francisco Film Society keynote speech at the weekend drew a lot of attention for decrying the Hollywood system for destroying cinema. Via TOH, you can listen to the entire speech below. It’s a typically smart and thoughtful piece of oratory, and well worth a listen. And after that, why not start following the Bitchuation account on Twitter, where Soderbergh …

A quick public service announcement, in case you’re not aware that the deadlines for Independent Film Week — organized by IFP, the publisher of Filmmaker magazine — are quickly approaching. Here’s all the info you should need: Independent Film Week (September 15-19, 2013) is the oldest and largest forum in the U.S. for the discovery of new projects in development and new voices on the independent film scene. The Project Forum is a meetings-driven forum connecting filmmakers with producers, funders, distributors, broadcasters, sales agents, festival programmers, and more. The three sections of the Project Forum with open applications are: Emerging …

John Lurie has never allowed himself to be pinned down, let alone pigeon-holed. The multi-talented Lurie — this month the subject of a mini-retrospective at the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn — has been for many years a highly respected musician and composer, putting out records both as a solo artist and with his band the Lounge Lizards. In film, he has directed short films and music videos, composed numerous soundtracks, and been an actor in films by Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Down by Law), Wim Wenders (Paris Texas), Martin Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ) and David Lynch (Wild …