Producer Matthew Greenfield, whose credits include Miguel Arteta’s features Star Maps, Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl and this year’s Sundance-bound The Motel recently became the Associate Director of the Feature Film Program at Sundance Institute, but he emailed the other day to tell us about his new non-film venture. He and writer Laurence Dumortier have launched Cloverfield Press, “a boutique publishing house dedicated to bringing new literary and artistic voices to a discerning public.” Graphic design is an important component of the press’s mission statement: “We hope to create books as visually beautiful as they are intellectually and emotionally …

Essential NYC weblog The Gothamist has posted this interview with actor, former therapist and filmmaker Robert Margolis. It’s part of the site’s series of pieces on interesting New Yorkers who aren’t necessarily household names but whose life and work reflect deeply on the city we at Filmmaker live and work in. Margolis’s latest film is a “faux documentary following the trials and tribulations of the fictional Robert Margolis, an actor, a pretty bad one at that, living on the fringe, trying to balance the demands and practicalities of every day life with his dream of becoming a successful actor.” From …

Chicago-based critic Ray Pride has appeared many times in Filmmaker‘s pages, but now readers can catch a daily — or, if the first week’s posts are any indication, near-hourly — dose of Pride in his new Movie City Indie blog up at the ever-growing web empire that is Movie City News. Pride’s links-scouting is already impeccable. So far he’s posted links regarding the firing of Buenos Aires Film Festival head Edgardo (Quintin) Antin, Robert Altman directing an opera based on The Wedding, Isabelle Huppert on making a new Cimino film based on an Andre Malraux novel, and Alexander Payne on …

On Monday, December 13 at 8pm, Liev Schreiber, Molly Shannon, Rosie Perez and Alec Baldwin will participate in a one-night-only benefit reading of holiday stories written by the self-deprecating humorist David Sedaris at Studio 54 (254 West 54th Street). Liev Schreiber will read “Dinah, the Christmas Whore,” Molly Shannon will read “Christmas Means Giving,” Rosie Perez will read “Six to Eight Black Men,” and Alec Baldwin will read “Based Upon a True Story.” All proceeds from the staged reading will benefit the children’s literacy charity, Everybody Wins. Advance tickets $25 tickets available at boxofficetickets.com or by phone at 800-494-TIXS. $30 …

Richard Kern will be signing copies of his new book SOFT on Thursday, December 9 from 6-8 p.m. at Feature Inc. — where Kern’s photographs are on display through December 11 — followed by an after party co-hosted by Universe, a division of Rizzoli, and index magazine at the Happy Ending Lounge, at which Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore will d.j.

Alexander Paynes’s Sideways (Fox Searchlight) took the prize for Best Feature at last night’s IFP Gotham Awards, beating out Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees, Primer and Before Sunset. (Earlier this week Sideways — which the National Board of Review yesterday named one of 2004′s Top Ten Films — also garnered six nominations for the IFP Los Angeles’s Independent Spirit Awards, which will take place in Santa Monica on February 26.) Jonathan Demme’s The Agronomist, about the murder of the Haitian journalist and activist Jean Dominique, was awarded Best Documentary at the annual IFP New York gala. …

The Sundance Institute today announced the Opening Night film and complete lineup of feature films screening in the Premieres, American Spectrum, Frontier, Park City at Midnight, Special Screenings, and Sundance Collection categories of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. According to a press release received today, “The Film Festival opens on January 20 in Park City with the World Premiere of Happy Endings, written and directed by Don Roos and starring Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Tom Arnold. ‘A discussion of American values is at the forefront of many of the films this year, and the humor and compassion with which …

The IFP Los Angeles has announced the nominees for the 2005 Independent Spirit Awards, which will be held in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica on Saturday, February 26. “Hosted annually on the Saturday before the Oscars, the IFP Independent Spirit Awards is the yin to the Oscars’ yang — a celebration honoring filmmakers of independent vision. Televised in millions of homes and covered internationally, the Independent Spirit Awards program has become the vanguard event in independent film, recognizing the achievements of independent filmmakers and promoting independent film to a wider audience.” Films vying for Best Feature this …

The Sundance Film Festival (January 20-30) have announced the lineup of this year’s Documentary and Dramatic competitions, as well as the films selected to compete in the World Cinema Documentary and Dramatic competitions. Among the 60 films in the lineup announced today are 42 world premieres, 9 North American premieres and 9 U.S. premieres. According to Todd McCarthy in today’s Variety: Of the 16 pictures selected for Dramatic Competition from the 761 American narrative features submitted, the festival’s director Geoffrey Gilmore said, “I have never been more excited about a competition lineup than I am this year. The level of …

According to a press release received today, “Simmons Lathan Media Group (SLMG), a leading producer and distributor of media content with an urban/hip-hop theme, and the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts today announced the creation of the Alumni Def Filmmaker Award, a competition for developing a narrative or documentary feature film with an urban/hip-hop theme. The contest, open to filmmakers from the Kanbar Institute who have graduated within the past five years, provides for production funding for up to $300,000 for a feature film project and up $150,000 for a …