Authors — Filmmaker Staff

“CEDAR RAPIDS” | director, Miguel Arteta

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:45 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest and most exciting surprise about making Cedar Rapids was how beautifully our well-known cast blended in with our lesser-known cast. The film is about the unlikely friendship between four insurance agents at an annual convention. Three of the actors are well-known to the public — Ed Helms, John C. Reilly and Anne Heche — and the fourth is an amazing character actor from New York, Isiah Whitlock Jr. Although Isiah is known for his great performance as Senator Clay Davis in the TV series The Wire and his […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“CRIME AFTER CRIME” | director, Yoav Potash

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Temple Theatre] Making Crime After Crime was full of surprises — which in a way is not so surprising because at least on the surface the film is a legal thriller, a genre that is built on suspense, intrigue and discovery. These aspects of the genre were made all the more unpredictable because the film is a vérité documentary: I was tracking the battle to free Deborah Peagler from prison as her case unfolded so no one knew exactly how it would turn out. Sure enough, clues, twists and turns emerged that […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“ELITE SQUAD 2: THE ENEMY WITHIN” | director, Jose Padilha

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:45 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within was a very challenging project as it was coming two years after a very successful predecessor. The first movie (The Elite Squad) I had made about the Rio de Janeiro Elite Squad became very popular and won the Golden Bear Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival. So everyone was thinking that following up on this film was a mistake. How could we possibly make a film about the same subject matter and have the same impact? My attitude was to forget about […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“THE WOMAN” | co-writer-director, Lucy McKee

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 11:30 pm — Library Center Theatre] The biggest surprise surrounding and involving our film The Woman is how shocked people are by it. When you make a film, you live with it day in and day out for months and years. You get intimate with it. You get used to it. It becomes a dear and familiar friend. Once you’re comfortable enough with it, you share it and the audience response is never exactly how you pictured it. It’s always so much more. I’ve shown this film privately to very few people in preparation for […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“FAMILY PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE” | writer-director, Julia Ivanova

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 9:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] My film is about 17 biracial Ukrainian orphans, mostly teenagers, and the woman who has been their foster mother for years despite all the hardships, be they financial or caused by the racist society that surrounds them. Before going on the first shoot, I had no doubts that Olga, the foster mother, can only be a saint. Unfortunately the biggest surprise was the realization that her need for power and control is really the foundation of the family and the motivation for her to become a legal guardian […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“AN AFRICAN ELECTION” | co-writer-director, Jarreth Merz

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] The biggest puzzle to me was that the majority of Black Africa was celebrating 50 years of independence when we had the idea for the film An African Election and that nobody saw the potential of looking into where Africa stood after 50 years of its rebirth. The project was brushed aside as being interesting but unrealistic. Meanwhile people were talking about the silver bullet and all the failures associated with the Dark Continent. Nobody wanted to invest, and even cultural institutions whose mission statements were to preserve […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“LITTLE BIRDS” | writer-director, Elgin James

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:45 pm — Library Center Theatre] I thought the hardest part, at least emotionally, would be bleeding it all out on paper when I wrote the script. Little did I know the truly raw part hadn’t even begun. Working with actors is like falling head over heels in love — a dizzying rush to learn everything there is about each other. Just a little window of time to build enough trust to take a gigantic leap of faith. Before making Little Birds I’d always thought it was an actor’s job to show up, turn on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“BECOMING CHAZ” | co-director, Fenton Bailey

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 8:30 pm — Prospector Square Theatre] Chaz [Bono] showed us that changing one’s gender is an extraordinary thing to do in the true sense of the word; it takes tremendous bravery and courage and a willingness to lose everything. If only we all possessed these qualities the world could be such a different place.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“PAGE ONE: A YEAR INSIDE THE NEW YORK TIMES” | co-writer-director, Andrew Rossi

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:00 pm — Temple Theatre] In April, I went to the newsroom at the Times with my camera, ready to film. This had been my routine for the past few months–I’d show up, not sure what story the reporters on the Media Desk would be covering that day, and attempt to be a fly on the wall. When I arrived, “a former hacker with a whistleblower website” –whom we now know as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks–had posted a [chilling] video of a U.S. military helicopter shooting down two journalists and several Iraqi civilians. Reuters had […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011
“RED STATE” | writer-director, Kevin Smith

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday, Jan. 23, 6:30 pm — Eccles Theatre] When we unmasked the Bog Monster and it turned out to be old man Whithers, we were literally dumbfounded. Why? Because he OWNS the allegedly haunted amusement park. We should’ve seen it.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 23, 2011

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