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THINGS
WE LOST IN THE FIRE
European director Susanne Bier (director of the Academy Award
Nominated After the Wedding) makes her American directorial
debut with Things We Lost in the Fire. The film centers
around a recent widow played by Halle Berry (Catwoman)
and her two children dealing with the loss of the families
patriarch (played by David Duchovny). While grieving, Berry
invites her husband’s drug addled best friend (Benicio
Del Toro) to come live with the family while they both try
to put their separate lives back together, even if she never
understood why he and her husband were friends. What unfolds
is not just a common story about coping with loss but an examination
of what happens when people try and hold their worlds together,
even as it falls apart around them. The film treads dark territory,
but manages to take seemingly cliché ideas and turn
them on their head.
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WRISTCUTTERS:
A LOVE STORY
Imagine committing suicide and finding yourself living amongst
fellow suicide victims in a state of limbo (forget Dante's
Purgatorio) that resembles everyday reality, only slightly
worse. Wristcutters: A Love Story, directed by Goran
Dukic and adapted from a short story by Etgar Keret, is essentially
a creative spin on the road-trip genre with strange, supernatural
elements involved. Featuring a highly talented but largely
unrecognized group of actors led by Patrick Fugit (star of
Almost Famous) and supported by Shannyn Sossamon,
Shea Whigham, Tom Waits, Will Arnet and John Hawkes. It's
not so often a film comes along which forces old issues to
be examined under a new light, but Wristcutters does
just that. A word-of-mouth hit at Sundance, this film is a
darkened blend of comedy and drama in the most unorthodox
vein (no pun intended), a clear challenge to the increasingly-derivative
Hollywood standard.
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PLANET
MORE THAN PRICELESS
The Vancouver International
Film Festival closed out recently with a screening of
Pierre Salvadori’s new French farce staring Amelie darling
Audrey Tautou as a gold digger who hasset her sights on a
less then wealthy bartender thinking he is a rich suitor.
However, not everyone thought the film was Priceless.
Rob Nelson takes a look at the movie and what film walked
away from the fest with a hefty prize… |
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NYFF.45
#3
If you have yet to check out
the Filmmaker
Videos section of the site, you’ve been missing
out. Jamie Stuart's returns with his third installment from
the New York Film Festival, this time with I’m Not
There director Todd Haynes.
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A
DOCUMENTARY CHORUS
Independent Filmmakers Eric Byler and Annabel Park are putting
a new twist on documentaries, and they want your help. The
two have set up a YouTube
site where they post snippets of their latest project
on immigration, and they're asking for viewer feedback as
to where they should go next with the doc. Scott Macaulay
takes a look at the truly interactive process.
Read the complete stories at Filmmakermagazine's Blog... |
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IFP MARKET PROJECTS – SALES AND FINANCING UPDATE
IFP has announced a number of sales and financing deals which
took place at – or immediately following – this
year’s IFP Market.
Bari Pearlman sold US distribution
rights for her documentary feature Daughters of Wisdom
to Seventh Art Releasing. Danae Elon pre-sold her documentary
The Evil Tongue to Finnish public television. Canadian
public broadcaster CBC Newsworld announced that it made pre-sale
offers, and is currently in discussions with, three of this
year’s documentary works-in-progress, including Goold's
Gold by Tucker Capps and Ryan Sevy, Cornered by Eric
Drath, and If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation
Front, by Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman. Finally, San
Francisco-based Chicken & Egg Pictures has also awarded
completion grants of $10,000 each to three female documentary
filmmakers. The awarded projects included Dee Rees’s
Eventual Salvation, Luisa Dantas’s Land
of Opportunity: The New New Orleans, and Yolanda Pividal’s
Tijuana Nada Más
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FEEDING
FRENZY
From commercial crab fishing in Alaska, to learning how to become a filmmaker in
Peru, Aaron Woolf’s worldly experience makes him an ideal documentarian for PBS. His previous films — Dying to Leave: The Human Face of Global Trafficking, Greener Grass Cuba and Baseball and the United States — all aired on public television, but Woolf is proud to have his latest film, King Corn, get theatrical distribution.
To read the rest of this article, click here |
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