Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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“The Green Wave” | writer-director, Ali Samadi Ahadi
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 3:00 pm — Holiday Village Cinema IV] Well the biggest surprise was, that it worked out! Really! Just imagine: Our goal was to make a film about a country we were not able to travel to anymore, about an event which had taken place in the past. Without having proper footage, we decided to produce 42 minutes of animation and mix them with real footage we got from 250 different cameras and cell phones. And all of that, from financing to finalizing the film within 10 months! That is a challenge I would say. And […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011 -
“THE SALESMAN” | writer-director, Sebastien Pilote
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Egyptian Theatre] Before I started to shoot my first feature, my experience had been working alone or with a very small crew, two or three people — that’s all. That was the key that gave me the versatility and more importantly, the freedom I need when I shoot, because I like to switch quickly to get the unknown, to go for the unscripted… to react fast for the bonus that cinema gives more often then we think. So I was worried and a little anxious about how I would react when working […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011 -
“CONNECTED: AN AUTOBLOGOGRAPHY ABOUT LOVE, DEATH & TECHNOLOGY” | co-writer-director, Tiffany Shlain
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Temple Theatre] When I set out to make Connected, the original tagline was A Declaration of Interdependence. I set out to make an insightful/funny/provocative film that looks at what it means to be connected in the 21st century by exploring the history of interdependence and how it has changed over time. That was my pitch, that was our focus, that’s the film I thought I was going to make. At one point, we had an 80-minute rough cut and I watched it in one sitting (one rarely gets to do that on […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 20, 2011 -
“POSITION AMONG THE STARS” | co-writer-director, Leonard Retel Helmrich
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 21, 12:00 pm — Screening Room Sundance Resort, Sundance] As a filmmaker you often hear the term “Kill your darlings” in order to make the story line of your film clear. The darling scenes are often scenes that reveal a poetic feeling, more than facts. Often I saw rough material of colleagues’ potentially beautiful poetic documentaries. But in the editing many of these films were demolished because too many darlings were killed. The story lines became clear but the poetry was gone. In other words, the facts were clear but the feelings were gone. For Position […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 19, 2011 -
“REBIRTH” | director, Jim Whitaker
[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 -
“INCENDIES” | co-writer-director, Denis Villeneuve
[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 -
“THE GUARD” | writer-director, John Michael McDonagh
[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 -
“PROJECT NIM” | director, James Marsh
[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 -
“PARIAH” | writer-director, Dee Rees
[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 -
New Model Army
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 25, 2010
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.
