While Ethel, Rory Kennedy’s portrait of her mom, widow of dad Bobby, might have made a splash at Sundance, it’s not the only descendant-directed doc about a member of political royalty to have played the fest circuit this year. With California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, director Sascha Rice and her sister, executive producer Hilary Armstrong – both of them daughters of former California State Treasurer Kathleen Brown – have chosen to bring to the screen the story of their grandpa, the late Governor Pat Brown. Nicknamed the “Architect of the Golden State,” the two-term governor had a slew […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 7, 2012“Open-air cinema as a means to an end,” is how Caspar Sonnen, the driving force behind IDFA DocLab summed up the vision for the Open Air Film Festival Amsterdam (a.k.a. Pluk de Nacht), the summertime tradition he co-founded back in 2003, when I last chatted with him over coffee at Two For Joy in Frederiksplein. He went on to explain that all the film schools and Netflix DVDs in the world can’t capture the magic of cinema like a single collective movie experience can. “Our organizational structure is that of a block party,” he added. Interestingly, this indie movie evangelist […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 21, 2012Two days is not nearly enough time to cover the Woods Hole Film Festival, which started as a “one day, one hour” event over two decades ago, and now for eight days takes over this tiny idyllic town on the Cape, otherwise known for its world famous Oceanographic Institution, and where the moneyed can catch a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Luckily, I used my 48 hours wisely, hopping from venue to quaint venue – including the Lillie Auditorium at the Marine Biological Laboratory, the 120-seat Woods Hole Community Hall, and the 70-seat Old Woods Hole Fire Station – and taking […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 7, 2012Though Aurora Guerrero made Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list in 2006, the director behind this year’s Sundance-premiering, award-winning Mosquita y Mari – which most recently took both Outstanding First U.S. Dramatic Feature Film, as well as Outstanding Actress in a U.S. Dramatic Feature Film for its lead Fenessa Pineda, at Outfest – was a welcome new face to me when I caught the film earlier this year. A tale of two Chicanas coming of age in working-class L.A., Guerrero’s feature debut is breathtaking in its understatement, less your typical “queer flick” than a continuation of the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Aug 1, 2012Falling under the umbrella of the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University, and still run by its original founder Alan Inkles (whose praises I’ll sing a bit later), the Stony Brook Film Festival is a breath of fresh Long Island air in a sea of desperate-to-please fests. Now in its 17th year, the event runs like a well-oiled machine – with screenings starting promptly on time and technical glitches nonexistent – yet feels more like a 10-day family retreat, complete with marina lodgings in nearby Port Jefferson. It’s also one of the warmest, most accommodating festivals I’ve […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 31, 2012It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 15 years since filmmaker Chris Eyre burst onto the indie scene with 1998’s Smoke Signals, based on a short story by fellow Native American Sherman Alexie, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Native Canadian Gary Farmer (probably best known for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man). Since then the Portland homeboy has seamlessly shifted from the big screen, to PBS fare, to franchise TV and back again, most recently with Hide Away, an existential drama featuring Josh Lucas and James Cromwell. Earlier this year, Chris was tapped for an entirely different gig, chairing the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 12, 2012I first met writer/director K. Lorrel Manning and actor/producer Michael Cuomo at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival, where we found ourselves the fish-out-of-water New Yorkers in a sea full of Southwest cinephiles. Their SXSW 2011 (sold out) hit Happy New Year is grounded in star Cuomo’s nuanced portrayal of a fictional outsider named Cole Lewis, a sergeant who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and now finds himself battling demons both mental and physical in the psych ward of a veterans hospital. I spoke with the two about their veterans outreach effort, Indiegogo versus Kickstarter, and the best […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 11, 2012The strength of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is also its weakness. This year’s 23rd edition boasts 16 doc and fiction flicks from 12 countries – yet most fall firmly in the category of solid ITVS fare (in fact, only three are narrative features). Like with the agribusiness detailed in Micha X. Peled’s Bitter Seeds, about the epidemic of farmer suicides in India, variety is often an illusion – especially when U.S. or U.S. co-productions are in the majority. This is another way of saying that, yes, the chances of seeing a stinker at HRWFF are slim, but there’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 7, 2012The “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” campaign in the northern California city that’s been host to the Santa Cruz Film Festival for nearly a dozen years now seems more than a cheap ploy to sell bumper stickers (though the one that read “You’re just jealous because the voices are talking to me” probably captures the essence of the place even better). It’s a serious – and controversial – plea to retain a way of life. For Santa Cruz is nothing if not, well, weird. So exotic, in fact, that SCFF should probably qualify as a foreign film festival showcasing American flicks […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 29, 2012As a writer and filmmaker just beginning to branch out into indie festival programming, I’ve been looking for an excuse to chat with Mark Elijah Rosenberg for quite some time. The man behind the granddaddy of open-air cinema (hard to believe Rooftop Films is now in its 16th year!) has seen his DIY endeavor expand from avant-garde shorts shown on a roof above his humble apartment to Academy Awards-destined features screened in diverse outdoor venues throughout NYC’s boroughs (and beyond). But what’s most impressive to me is that he’s managed to accomplish all this while staying firmly grounded in his […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 10, 2012