Authors — Alicia Van Couvering
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Carlen Altman
Carlen Altman is strictly low-brow. She loves Leslie Nielsen, Ja Rule and Weekend At Bernie’s; she runs a jewelry company that stocks Jewish Rosaries (jewishrosaries.com); and was seduced into performing by the success of her first public access show, Sunday Night Live, which ran on the campus channel of SUNY-Binghamton College. “It got taken off the air because we did this skit about a rape clinic, which did not go over well,” says Altman. “It was a competitive rape group, like who had been raped the most times… It was funny though.” Born and raised in New York, Altman’s parents […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jul 17, 2011 -
Second Life
For Miranda July’s second feature film, THE FUTURE, the performance artist and director mixes humor, fantasy and psychodrama to explore the anxieties of adulthood.
by Alicia Van Couvering on Mar 22, 2011 -
RAGE AND SCREAMING IN SOUTH TEXAS: LADIES TAKE OVER AT SXSW
There are at least ten narrative films at SXSW this year directed by women — twice as many as last year. At first glance, they share almost nothing in common. There’s a campy ‘50s-inspired vampire romp My Sucky Teenage Romance, by the 18-year-old Emily Hagins, and Small Beautifully Moving Parts by a pair of married adult women co-directors (each married, not to each other), Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson, about a pregnant woman so fascinated by electronic gadgets that she can’t begin to face the organic reality of having her baby. Some films feature male protagonists (No Matter […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Mar 16, 2011 -
AROUND AUSTIN : MONDAY MORNING
So much pork, so much sitting in dark cold rooms! The first grand weekend of SXSW 2011 was, for me at least, rather subdued. Individual films threw little parties and then there were some big ragers, and there is as ever that old sense of uber-community. But it was a slow burn feeling of familiar faces colored by a succession of new friends, all incredibly nervous for their premieres, all getting drunk later in parking lots. But just when you think you have party fatigue, something like this happens: An army brigade of cuties! Yes, readers, an army brigade on […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Mar 14, 2011 -
Janet Pierson on the Films — and Crowds — of SXSW
Six weeks before the festival, every hotel room in downtown Austin was booked solid. Badges were already selling out a month prior, and, in the last few weeks, LAX-AUS flights have become almost impossible to come by. Last year the festival was, by all accounts, over-crowded — press and industry felt needlessly constrained by the impossibility of special access to screenings, and complaints of line cutting were all over Twitter. Pierson and her staff took all of these criticisms hard. In the wake of the grumblings, there are new and bigger theatres (the renovated State Theatre, next to the Paramount; […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Mar 9, 2011 -
JUST LIKE THE U.N., BUT DIFFERENT: ROTTERDAM PRODUCER LABS
Sometimes you wind up in a place where you do not have something that everyone else has. So it was being a young American producer at the Rotterdam Cinemart Labs, straight off the plane from Sundance. Think: Independent Film Model Congress. I and my fellow American, Billy Mulligan, found ourselves on Day One in a “Speed Dating” scenario, spending five minutes each with our new international producer friends. From this and the subsequent wine-fueled dinner, I understood quickly that for all the different backgrounds and accents (Bosnian-inflected Scotch English being the prize winner in this department), we were all quite […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Feb 6, 2011 -
“SILENT HOUSE,” “TERRI” & “ON THE ICE” PRODUCER LYNETTE HOWELL
Originally printed in our Fall 2010 issue, we asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space. Lynette Howell has three titles in this year’s Sundance: Chris Kentis & Laura Lau’s Silent House, Azazel Jacob’s Terri and Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On The Ice. How to pay oneself a salary, maintain an office and employ assistants? And embrace risky projects? For Lynette Howell the answer is staying in constant motion. Raised in working class Liverpool, Lynette Howell decided to drop her British accent after just a few […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 25, 2011 -
35 Is The New 25, 40 Is Basically 50: The Next Gen Crisis Of Indie Film
To grow up or not to grow up? Three days into Sundance, three very different films have asked this same question. Bellflower, The Future and The Lie are all, nominally, about the same thing: white people in Los Angeles, unsure of their relationship, trying to reconcile their adulthood with their self-image. Surely these topics – who am I? who should I be with? — are not new to cinema, but their prevalence in the films here at Sundance and in recent American indies can sometimes overwhelm. Last year’s The Freebie, for instance, followed a Los Angeles couple on a journey […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 23, 2011 -
CULT COINCIDENCE? OR SUNDANCE TRUTH REVEALED
There are four films at Sundance that venture, at least nominally, into the world of cults. Cult recovery (MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE), cult membership (HIGHER GROUND), cult discovery (THE SOUND OF MY VOICE), and cult leadership (RED STATE.) But as the crowds swell in Park City, as bus load after bus load of excited devotees alight, something is clear: there are an awful lot of identical grey sweaters, blue lanyards, knit hats and striped scarves. Together but alone, the committed stand in line for days, freezing cold, blind with hope.
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 21, 2011 -
PROGRAMMER INTERVIEW: NEW LANDSCAPE FOR NEW FRONTIERS
Sundance programmer Shari Frilot watches all kinds of films for the festival each year, but she spends much of the her time smoking out the best, strangest, most relevant work for the New Frontiers section. Call it new media or transmedia or video-internet-3D film art; the best work in the section is indescribable. Until this year, New Frontiers was packed into a cavernous space inside the lower level of a shopping mall on Main Street. This year, they’re moving to the Miners Hospital, across from the Library. “Every year people would say, ‘Wait, where was New Frontiers?’ I missed that!’ […]
by Alicia Van Couvering on Jan 20, 2011
