La Grande, Oregon, is the country’s largest fully enclosed valley and the second largest in the world. The geographical term for this is a continental depression, but there is absolutely nothing depressing about the incredible mountain views that dominate just about every conceivable vantage point in this quintessentially Western town. The same could be said for La Grande’s extraordinary Eastern Oregon Film Festival, which unspooled its fourth event in five years this past weekend. Captained by Christopher Jennings, who unlike many ambitious young locals has stayed in this former gold-mining, sugar-processing and lumber mill town of just over 13,000, the …

There’s been a lot going on with our current crop of 25 New Faces, so I thought I’d do a quick catchup of recent goings on. Firstly, four feature projects by 2012 alums are playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival: there’s a world premiere for Ornana’s first narrative feature, Euphonia, while Bassam Tariq and Omar Mullick’s evocative documentary These Birds Walk (a world premiere at True/False later this month), Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher (which was actually shot in Austin) and Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye’s archival doc Our Nixon will continue their fest circuit runs there. (Incidentally, Lane and …

The funny thing about film festivals is that there never seems to be enough time to talk about the films you’ve just seen. Distribution strategies, yes, industry gossip, most definitely, but the actual creative decisions and approaches involved in making the films themselves – barely! So the Grand Cinema’s mini-festival celebrating Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in Tacoma, WA, last month felt like a truly rare treat. Bringing together 14 of the actors and filmmakers or filmmaking teams on the list, including myself and Katherine Fairfax Wright, my directing partner on Call Me Kuchu, The Grand Cinema scheduled …

A few days ago, Scott posted on the blog about Julia Pott, one of our new crop of “25 New Faces,” putting her wonderful, latest short, Belly, online. (On that subject, you should also check out a really excellent article on Pott and Belly over at Motionographer.) Also now showcasing work online is another of this year’s “New Faces,” Ian Clark. Until August 13, you can watch Clark’s gorgeous 25-minute film Searching for Yellow (which I described in his “25 New Faces” profile as “hauntingly lovely, simultaneously intimate and expansive”) and his naturalistic 64-minute portrait of small-town life, Country Story. …