Each Friday, Filmmaker sends out a free newsletter containing an original Editor’s Letter as well as news of film openings, events, etc. (the latter mostly streaming and online, these days). The Editor’s Letters usually aren’t posted online, but here’s the April 17 edition, which links to a Deadline piece and considers the question everyone in film production is asking at the moment. If you’d like to receive the Filmmaker newsletter, you can subscribe for free here. — SM When do we all go back to work? While provisional answers to this question are suggested every day in the newspapers and […]

The production company Rathaus is partnering with a Filmmaker for a free three-night screening series, April 14 – 16, of its new and recent work, both features and shorts. The films include 2020 Sundance selection The Mountains are a Dream that Call to Me and 2019 BAMcinemafest title De Lo Mio. Says Rathaus producer and partner Alexandra Byer, “Our ESCAPES series comes from wanting to give people a night off to feign normalcy and just go to the movies in these weird times. Amongst all the chaos, we feel we have an opportunity to let people, even if just for […]

The New York State film tax credit was reduced from 30% to 25% and qualification requirements made tougher in budget legislation signed last week by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Alarmingly for filmmakers shooting low-budget in New York City, new rules make pictures budgeted in the six figures ineligible for any New York tax credit at all. Projects that shoot a majority of their days in the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, or Suffolk counties will be subject to a new minimum spend requirement of $1 million, and projects that shoot the majority of their days in any […]

Are you looking for a trusted, socially-distanced source to provide you with semi-regular cultural recommendation links during this time of pandemic? Okay, well, I’m not really either. My inbox too is full of check-ins and missives from journalists and curators seeking to maintain a digital relationship by supplying Netflix watchlists and the like during this awful interregnum. So consider these posts as much an activity for me as you as I revive this column by highlighting a few things that may provide some degree of interest, empathy or wisdom. Some things to shift your attention away from the cable news […]

It’s hard not to touch your face — something I, and many of you, have undoubtedly learned in recent weeks. As much as I now better understand epidemiological chains of transmission, I still sometimes slip up. So, I’m going to try to keep this punk earworm by the Lunachick’s Gina Volpe — here visualized in a brashly impactful video by Leah Shore, a 2013 25 New Face — in my head as I (only very occasionally and necessarily) venture out into the world.

Field of Vision and Topic Studios announced today a relief fund for documentary freelancers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and corresponding economic shutdown. The $250,000 fund is financed from the two organizations’s current operating budgets, and the funds, intended to alleviate economic hardship due to loss of income or opportunity, will be dispensed in two tranches and in amounts up to $2,000 per freelancer. Rent, healthcare, utilities, groceries and other life expenses can be covered by the funds. In a press release, co-founder and executive producer of Field of Vision, Charlotte Cook, said, “This is an incredibly hard time for […]

Filmmaker has two points of intersection with crime drama #FreeRayshawn, one of the first releases on Quibi and scheduled to drop on April 15. Director and executive producer Seith Mann was on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2003. And creator, writer and executive producer Marc Maurino has been a regular contributor for several years. In 2010 he was a blogger out of IFP’s Independent Film Week, which he attended with his debut script, Into the Machine. Several posts ensued, and then one of our great evergreen pieces: “‘It’s Just a General’: How To Take a General Meeting.’” His follow-up […]

Here’s a lovely one-minute animation by Robertas Nevecka that captures the confusing anxiety felt by those of used to working on film sets but who are now stuck at home. Nevecka is a Lithuanian assistant director whose film set drawings can be found on Instagram. Related at Filmmaker: “What Everyone Does on a Film Set.”    

To mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a German-American filmmaker is commissioned by German TV to make an experimental short film based on his uncle’s famous photograph of young Brooklynites lounging riverside as the Twin Towers burn. With wit and formal precision, filmmaker Ricky D’Ambrose (Notes from an Appearance) methodically works through the political implications of this scenario in a work that mixes film-set comedy with commentary on the slippery ways in which differing types of media ingest and adapt scenarios of historical trauma. The film screened last Fall at the New York Film Festival and is appearing here online […]

In the wake of the novel coronavirus, CPH:DOX has moved much of their program online, with a series of “debates” streaming live and available for viewing. Today’s is especially timely: Edward Snowden answering the question, “What is the effect of AI on the present and future of surveillance?” Kicking off the conversation is a discussion of privacy and surveillance issues related to government and private industry actions in the wake of the pandemic. It’s loosely tied to the festival’s screening of iHuman, Tonje Hessen Schei’s doc on the future of AI. The talk is moderated by DR’s science and technology […]