Authors — Nick Dawson
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Mohammad Gorjestani’s “25 New Faces” Tour Photo Diary
Last November, three short filmmakers from our 2013 “25 New Faces” hit the road for a special traveling screening series, sponsored by ARRI and Sony Creative, with myself in tow. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (Needle), Mohammad Gorjestani (Refuge) and Scott Blake (Surveyor) played their films in six Midwest cities across six days, with myself in tow as Q&A moderator/tour manager/nanny. It was a unique and extremely memorable experience to be part of the tour, and you can now get an inkling of what went on at that time by checking out Gorjestani’s just-posted photo diary on Exposure, which is well worth your time.
by Nick Dawson on Feb 5, 2014 -
“25 New Faces” Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair Launch Latest High Maintenance Episode, “Matilda”
Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair, from 2013 crop of “25 New Faces,” have just debuted the latest episode of their awesome and very funny web series High Maintenance. “Matilda” deviates a little from the usual rules of the show as Sinclair’s unnamed pot dealer is for the first time the central figure in the story, and the action extends beyond its usual environs of New York City. For regular watchers of the show, there are also some welcome return appearances by notable characters from previous episodes; to say more would only be ruining things…
by Nick Dawson on Feb 5, 2014 -
True/False Film Fest Announces Innovative “Pay the Artists!” Program
Today, the True/False Film Fest‘s Paul Sturtz and David Wilson announced the launch of their organization’s innovative (and highly laudable) “Pay the Artists!” program. The heads of the 10-year-old Columbia, MO-based festival (which runs February 27 – March 2), initiated the patronage program as a way of helping to sustain the documentary film ecosystem, and this year will be offering $450 to the filmmaking teams who attend the festival. (T/F already covers travel, accommodation and food expenses.) It is Sturtz and Wilson’s hope that in the next few years, this amount will increase to $1,000. There has long been a […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 4, 2014 -
Eastern Oregon Film Festival 2014 to Host Filmmaker Showcase
The Eastern Oregon Film Festival, which runs from February 20 to 22 in La Grande, OR, is one of those great regional film festivals that you feel lucky to stumble upon. Brandon Harris attended EOFF last year and called it a “hidden gem” in his report. This year, co-director of programming Ian Clark, who was one of our “25 New Faces” back in 2012, graciously invited Filmmaker to program a showcase, which will feature Eddie Mullins’ droll slacker comedy Doomsdays (a 2013 Best Film Not Playing selection) and “Qasim,” the latest episode from High Maintenance by our 2013 “New Faces” Katja Blichfeld […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 31, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: David Michôd’s The Rover
The awesome upstarts at A24 Films made three smart pickups at Sundance (Obvious Child, Laggies and Life After Beth), and have a pretty formidable slate of films upcoming include Denis Villenueve’s Enemy, Steven Knight’s Locke, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin and, maybe most excitingly, David Michôd’s The Rover. The follow-up to the superlative Animal Kingdom, this outback thriller looks to be a departure from the urban crime drama of the Australian director’s feature debut. (According to A24, the plot is as follows: “10 years following the collapse of society, a man will go to any lengths to take back the one thing that still matters to him.”) In […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 29, 2014 -
Richard Shepard
Richard Shepard is back, not that you necessarily noticed he was away. Shepard is one of the most (unfairly) ignored of American independent directors. Maybe it’s because he was in “movie jail” after his debut feature flopped in 1991, or that he’s worked a lot in TV (recently helming episodes of Girls), or that he is very self-deprecating. (The New York City-based filmmaker’s official bio says that his most recent narrative feature, 2007’s The Hunting Party, “won no awards, made barely any money, but is the number one illegally ripped DVD in the Balkans.”) Shepard escaped movie jail with 2005’s […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 17, 2014 -
Mumbai Masala
The way Ritesh Batra tells it, he used to be not very good at his job. The Indian-born writer/director had studied in the U.S. as an undergrad and ended up working at the financial consulting firm Deloitte, but though he “had a business background of sorts, I was a terrible, terrible consultant,” Batra says. “They call it ‘sitting on the bench,’ when you’re a bad consultant and they don’t want to send you to clients. I quit because I didn’t want to do something I was bad at all my life.” Batra, born and raised in India, had always wanted […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 17, 2014 -
Lionsgate and CNN Films Buy Dinosaur 13 in First Doc Pickup of Sundance 2014
Dinosaur 13, the opening night film in the doc competition section, just became the first non-fiction acquisition of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. In a deal brokered by the film’s sales agent, Josh Braun of Submarine, Lionsgate and CNN Films bought North American rights for the buzz doc, which chronicles the real-life drama following the discovery in 1990 of the remains of “Sue,” the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found. Dinosaur 13 will play theatrically through Lionsgate before having a TV premiere through CNN. The beautifully shot Dinosaur 13 had a lot of interest going into the fest, but […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 17, 2014 -
Win a Copy of James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now
James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now, one of the most beloved films of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and a summer counter-programming hit, is out today on Blu-ray and DVD. Writing about the movie in this magazine, Scott Macaulay wrote, “Shot widescreen in Ponsoldt’s hometown of Athens, Ga., The Spectacular Now is a wonderfully nuanced tale of two young people falling in love, as well as an honest drama about life choices and the fight to transcend failures that in the haze of adolescence only seem inevitable. Scott Neustadter and Mike Weber’s script is directed with heart by Ponsoldt, and lead actors Miles Teller […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 14, 2014 -
Pickups for Gondry’s Mood Indigo, Berninger’s Mistaken for Strangers and Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces
In a busy Monday for acquisitions, Michel Gondry’s romance Mood Indigo, Tom Berninger’s doc on The National, Mistaken for Strangers, and Daniel Patrick Carbone’s indie favorite Hide Your Smiling Faces all found homes with theatrical distributors. Drafthouse Films snapped up Indigo, which stars Audrey Tatou and Romain Duris and has a certain Amelie vibe to it. The film premiered at Karlovy Vary last year rather than one of the big fall fests, so it’s maybe not surprising that an emerging distributor like Drafthouse has picked up the film rather than a bigger and more established outfits. Drafthouse boss Tim League said of the purchase, “Not since Amelie have […]
by Nick Dawson on Jan 13, 2014
