[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 8:30 am — Prospect Square Theatre] The biggest surprise was how the scope of the film continued to evolve. When I had the idea to put the time-lapse cameras up it was in part to record the history of the site moving forward, and in part to create a time-lapse installation at a future museum at Ground Zero. However, after spending more time at Ground Zero and seeing first-hand the emotional and human toll, I decided I needed to capture the human dimension of the event through the subjects. As time went on, we realized that the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 2:15 pm — Prospector Square Theatre] Each film experience brings is own demon. Time was something I couldn’t afford on Incendies. I had the strong impression to destroy the script each shooting day. I was so angry one morning that I began to sabotage a sequence. Suddenly, on that precise moment, I realized, astonished, that I was making a film about how to stop anger’s cycles while being angry like a grizzly. I remember then, laughing a lot about myself, alone, on the Abu Zaytoun Hills, finding myself so childish. And I reshot the sequence. About filmmaking, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 20, 6:30 pm — Egyptian Theatre] The biggest surprise for me occurred during preproduction. There was a scene in the screenplay where the three villains rendezvous at an amusement park and discuss the day’s events while waiting to ride on a rollercoaster. The scene with the screwball nature of the film was set in an actual amusement park in a seaside town in County Galway, Ireland, our location for the shoot. However little did I know that when the rollercoaster is out of use (during the non-summer months) it is packed up and shipped off to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 20, 9:30 pm — Egyptian Theatre] When you embark on any historical documentary or film about events that have already run their course, the biggest prize you’re after is visual images and archive [materials] showing elements of your story. On Project Nim, which is the life story of a chimpanzee who was brought up like a human child, we knew from various contributors that there was going to be sufficient archive of the chimp to embark on the film but we didn’t know the extent of it. Often the biggest surprise on a film project is […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2011[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 20, 9:30 pm — Eccles Theatre] The biggest surprise associated with making Pariah came after watching the first rough cut when we discovered that this was not a “black lesbian” movie. We had fought this BRUTAL uphill battle in funding the film with financiers and investors balking at the story because it was “too small and specific” (which is code for “too black and too gay”). After we screened the first cut, one of our early advisors went so far as to describe it as “commercial.” We didn’t know whether to slap them or celebrate. After […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2011
Making a business out of independent film is harder than ever. But still, great films are being made. In this series of short profiles, Filmmaker asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space.
Lena Dunham and Caveh Zahedi are among a surprisingly small group of filmmakers who make themselves the subjects of their own films. Whether it’s a man dealing with his sexual urges (Zahedi’s I Am A Sex Addict) or a girl searching for her place in a post-collegiate world (Dunham’s Tiny Furniture), their sometimes painful honesty makes audiences both laugh and cringe. We had them sit down to talk about the joys, frustrations and creative rewards of making autobiographical films.
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 23, 2010
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Susan Youssef SUSAN YOUSSEF. At the IFP Narrative Lab, a mentor said of Susan Youssef’s first feature, Habibi Rasak Kharban (literally, “Darling, Something’s Wrong with Your Head”): “It’s a classic story, like Romeo and Juliet.” True, but the roots of Youssef’s story go back far further. The film is an adaptation of the 12th-century Sufi parable Majnun Layla, which was itself based on a 7th-century Arabic story. Over the years, the tragic tale of undying love between a woman and the wandering poet her family forbids her to marry has formed the basis for countless works of art, from Shakespeare’s […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 20, 2010Jason Byrne When we caught up with filmmaker Jason Byrne to include him in this year’s “25,” it was via e-mail from Tanzania. At the sa me time Byrne’s hypnotic experimental documentary Scrap Vessel winds its way along the festival circuit, he is working as an audio/visual archivist for the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. “Living in East Africa for the last two years has been a deeply rich experience, and this job has been fascinating but psychologically difficult at times, especially when listening to the many graphically explained testimonies from witnesses to the genocide,” he writes. Byrne has […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 20, 2010