Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Power Up Festival Features Work Crossing Art and Technology
HP has joined forces with presenting partner Made in New York Media Center by IFP (Filmmaker‘s publisher) to present Power Up, a five-day festival of new work and discussions centering around technology and creativity. Of particular interest to Filmmaker readers are events feature 25 New Faces Jessica Oreck and Andrew S. Allen; Paul Trillo’s short, A Truncated Story of Infinity, recently featured at Filmmaker; and a screening of director and Film Fatales founder Leah Meyerhoff’s debut feature, I Believe in Unicorns. Other notable events include an discussion on architecture with Daniel Libeskind and a panel on the VFX of James […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 24, 2014 -
Frances Bodomo and Afronauts Added to 25 New Faces at IFC Center
We’re happy to confirm one last short film and director for tonight’s “25 New Faces” program at the IFC Center in New York. Frances Bodomo will screen her extraordinary Afronauts and discuss it afterwards. In my piece on Bodomo for 25 New Faces, I wrote: Her following short, Afronauts — which she’s now turning into a feature — is an even bolder success, a hallucinatory fusion of history, science, political critique, and imaginative fantasy. Inspired by a true story, it’s about the short-lived Zambia space program, that African country’s real attempt to beat the U.S. into outer space. On the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2014 -
43 Takeaways from Sundance Artist Services Day at the IFP Filmmaker Conference
“The most important task is to make great movies,” said Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam at the start of Thursday’s Artist Services Workshop at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference. “All this talk about audiences is meaningless unless you have something in your heart you want to get out there.” However, Putnam’s comments were not to construe that filmmakers shouldn’t think about the rapidly changing world of distribution, marketing and audience building. As Putnam went on to say, it is “easier, less expensive to make a movie, but no easier to find an audience. There is a volume of movies and a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2014 -
Film as Sushi: :: kogonada on Chris Marker, Criterion and the Art of the Film Essay
As part of our screening of short films by the 2014 25 New Faces at the IFC Center tonight will be two works by :: kogonada, the somewhat mysterious, Nashville-based film essayist whose works have scored hundreds of thousands of views on Vimeo and other platforms. Whether he’s assessing hand gestures in the work of Robert Bresson, one-point perspective in the films of Stanley Kubrick or pinpointing the salient characteristics of neorealism, :: kogonada brings a precision, delicacy and poetry to film studies. At the IFC Center tonight he’ll be screening his essay on narrative in the work of Steven […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 22, 2014 -
Five Questions for In the Morning Writer/Director Nefertite Nguvu
Nefertite Nguvu, whose works include two well-received shorts and a ten-part web series on female emcees, The Road to U.N.I.T.Y., makes her dramatic feature debut with In the Morning, premiering tonight at the Urbanworld Film Festival. “In The Morning,” the film’s website describes, “is about love and transitions. It examines the complexities of love from the perspective of three women in the midst of some hard won self-transformation. It’s a mood piece that weaves together three stories about personal growth and the power of choice and action.” Below, we ask Nguvu about films set in one day, Brooklyn and working […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2014 -
Come See 25 New Faces Screen and Talk at the IFC Center on Monday Night
Filmmaker‘s annual 25 New Face screening night at the IFC Center takes place next Monday, September 22 at 8:00 PM in New York City. We’ve got an especially strong line-up this year, including never-before-seen short films, and four filmmakers will join me after for a panel discussion on the art, economics and distribution of short film filmmaking. Here’s the program: Charlotte Glynn’s Immaculate Reception. “Rarely have the complexities and disappointments of young masculine sexuality been so deftly portrayed,” wrote Brandon Harris in his 25 New Face write-up of Glynn and her Rust Belt-set, coming-of-age tale that turns on Franco Harris’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 19, 2014 -
Filmmaker Announces Curated Indiegogo Partner Page
With our friends at Indiegogo Filmmaker has just launched a new partner page on the crowdfunding site. Featuring our curated selection of film (and possibly other) projects you should be taking a look at, the page will be updated frequently with new picks. If you have an Indiegogo project you’d like us to consider, you can email me at scott AT filmmakermagazine.com, and please put the words “Indiegogo Project” in the subject line. Currently up on the site are three projects we’ve supported, one of which just launched. That film is Jake Mahaffy’s Free in Deed, currently in post. Published […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2014 -
Laura Poitras’s CITIZENFOUR Will World Premiere at the New York Film Festival
Laura Poitras’s long-anticipated third film in her trilogy dealing with post-9/11 foreign policies and the security state, CITIZENFOUR, will world premiere in the Main Selection of the 2014 New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced. Poitras had been working on the film following her Oscar-nominated The Oath when she was contacted by a mysterious whistleblower, who later revealed himself to be Edward Snowden. That encounter changed the course of her film, to say nothing of our national dialogue concerning the limits of our freedom in the internet age. From the Film Society of Lincoln Center: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2014 -
Five Questions with Before We Go Director Chris Evans
Making his directorial debut with a nighttime two-hander, Before We Go, actor Chris Evans has gravitated to dramatic material far removed from the effects-driven world saving of his Captain America movies. Starring alongside Alice Eve, Evans puts his own spin on the “one night” film, a sub-genre that has been explored over the years in pictures ranging from Before Sunrise to Into the Night to In Search of a Midnight Kiss. Here, Evans tells us what he tried to do differently and what’s unique about Gotham at night. Before We Go premieres this week at the Toronto International Film Festival. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2014 -
Five Questions for The Editor Writer/Directors Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks
With the recent Berberian Sound Studio and now The Editor, we’re in a bit of a giallo revival. Or, more accurately, the gory, gloriously art decorated Italian horror thrillers of the 1970s have inspired a new generation to pay homage in the form of their own meta-commentaries. Interestingly, Peter Strickland’s Berberian Sound Studio and this year’s Toronto-premiering The Editor both feature post-production crew as their protagonists. In Berberian Sound Studio, it was a foley artist; in The Editor, Matthew Kennedy and Adam Brooks’ horror comedy, our hero is a once-vaunted picture editor who, following an accident, now must wield his […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2014
