Authors — Scott Macaulay
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25 Great Short Films to Watch Online
The folks at Taste of Cinema have curated a list of 25 of what they dub the best shorts available to watch online. Weighted towards the experimental and animation, it is indeed a good list. One personal favorite is Alison Maclean’s 1989 short, Kitchen Sink, a masterpiece of domestic horror with a strong David Lynch influence. From Kitchen Sink Maclean went on to direct the features Crush and Jesus’ Son and, more recently, various commercials and TV episodes. Back in the day, Kitchen Sink made a huge impact, and I still recommend it to filmmakers looking for an example of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2014 -
5 Questions For X/Y Writer/Director Ryan Piers Williams
An admission of infidelity — hers — sends a pair of twentysomething New Yorkers into separate rabbit holes of desire, regret and personal discovery in Ryan Piers Williams second feature, X/Y. The film is something of a family affair, as Williams and his wife, America Ferrera, star as the couple, with each supported on their La Ronde-ish journeys by a charismatic cast of supporting players, including Melonie Diaz, Dree Hemingway, Common and Amber Tamblyn. Intimacy, IRL and online; sexual fantasy vs. reality; the artist’s life vs. the corporate warrior — all these dichotomies are explored in a film that draws […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2014 -
5 Questions for Below Dreams Director Garrett Bradley
New Orleans-based multi-media artist Garrett Bradley makes her feature debut at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival with Below Dreams, a tough-minded portrait of three economically-challenged twentysomethings trying to settle a life for themselves in a city that’s seen its own share of recent adversity. Honest and sensitive, the film is informed by Bradley’s own experience living in New Orleans, and she developed the script based on interviews conducted on frequent Greyhound bus trips there. Below Dreams is an alumni of the IFP Narrative Labs. Filmmaker: What’s been new creatively for you in terms of moving from gallery-based work to a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2014 -
Robert De Niro’s First Vine
Posted by Jerome Jarre is what he bills as Robert De Niro’s first six-second film. (On first view, it kind of falls into the “Hey, is this thing on?” category of unintentional art.) Hat tip: MUBI Notebook.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2014 -
Tribeca: 5 Questions for Glass Chin Writer/Director Noah Buschel
“Boxing has always drawn dumb, confused macho guys like myself,” writes filmmaker Noah Buschel. “It’s cool, it’s tough, it’s naked, it’s true…. But the thing about boxing, as Norman Mailer pointed out, is that it’s just as sensitive as it is murderous. If you go to a boxing gym, and Floyd Mayweather’s not there, it is a remarkably quiet and tender place.” Buschel heads straight into that quiet and tender place with his latest, Glass Chin, premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival. Since he’s already written an essay for us about the film itself, we sent Buschel a set of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2014 -
25 Picks for the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival opens today, and, as usual, it’s a multi-headed hydra with splashy events, panels, talks but also, of course, films by new and emerging filmmakers. And while Tribeca has garnered a reputation in recent years as a solid platform for international directors with either world or U.S. premieres, this year the American independent section seems particularly strong. Indeed, it was easy to whip out this list of 25 picks I’m especially interested in seeing and that tie closely with the American indie focus of this magazine. Docs look especially sharp, with a number of them dealing with […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 16, 2014 -
Welcoming Vadim Rizov as Managing Editor
I’d like to welcome to our Filmmaker staff our new Managing Editor, Vadim Rizov. After an exhaustive job search — thanks to the over 200 of you who applied — we hired Vadim, who previously covered the True/False Film Festival for us. Many of you know Vadim’s bylines from Sight and Sound, Little White Lies and Indiewire, not to mention his posts last year at The Dissolve. Vadim also posts his reviews at Letterboxd and other stuff at his personal blog, Infinite Philistinism. Vadim’s a very smart writer whose interest in culture extends beyond independent film to music and literature. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 14, 2014 -
“This is a Generic Brand Video”: Satire or How-To?
At McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, writer Kendra Eash published a poem, “This is a Generic Brand Video,” satirizing (or maybe just noticing?) the pleasant, fuzzy, vaguely neoliberal language of brand videos. Language like this: In today’s high speed environment, Stop motion footage of a city at night With cars turning quickly Makes you think about doing things efficiently And time passing. Lest you think we’re a faceless entity, Look at all these attractive people. Here’s some of them talking and laughing And close-ups of hands passing canned goods to each other In a setting that evokes community service. Now, the folks […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Laundry Day
In my “How to Find a Producer” article in our Fall, 2013 edition, I interviewed New Orleans filmmaker Randy Mack about his efforts to develop local producers, a challenge that arose when he embarked on his third feature, Laundry Day. More recently, Mack speculated here on the perfect independent film discovery app. Now there’s a trailer for Laundry Day, posted above. From the film’s website: A fight in a 24-hour bar-laundromat among four New Orleans barflies —a musician, a bartender, a street performer, & a drug dealer — is revisited from each perspective, revealing an intricate web of service industry […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2014 -
Approaching Independent Film Distribution Like Booking a Band
One problem lower-budget independent filmmakers face when figuring out both financing and distribution is a paucity of data. VOD numbers aren’t publicly reported and once you get into non-theatrical distribution, those numbers usually don’t appear in any box-office reporting. As many, including us here at Filmmaker, have said, we need to share our data, whether that’s in public forums or among private collectives. One filmmaker who is doing the former is Paul Osborne over at Hope for Film. In an excellent post, he breaks down the revenue for the small-scale theatrical run for his feature, Favor, and compares it to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2014
