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Congrats to two of Filmmaker‘s 2008 25 New Faces, John Magary and Dee Rees, for being selected as Sundance Institute 2008 Time Warner Storytelling Fellows. Congrats also to the third winner, playwright Kirsten Greenidge. From the press release: Sundance Institute and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) announced today the selection of playwright Kirsten Greenidge and filmmakers John Magary and Dees Rees as the 2008 Time Warner Storytelling Fellows. Greenidge (with her project BOSSA NOVA) participated in the 2008 Sundance Theatre Lab. Magary (with his project BLOOD ABUNDANCE, OR THE HALF-LIFE OF ANTOINETTE) and Rees (with her project PARIAH) participated in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 9, 2008Mad at humanity? Wipe it out. In Dark Realm Studios’ online game Pandemic 2, you try to wipe out all of mankind by being perfect disease.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 9, 2008From Matt Dentler and Cinetic Rights Management comes news that Rick Linklater’s seminal indie, Slacker, is now available for free viewing on Hulu. When, in 1996, Filmmaker picked the 50 Most Important Independent Films, Slacker was number 10. Here’s what we wrote: Rick Linklater’s Slacker was rejected by several domestic festivals, but then a Film Comment scribe spotted the film at the Seattle Film Festival and wrote a laudatory piece. And when a tape made its way to John Pierson, who forced distribution execs to travel to Linklater’s hometown of Austin to attend the film’s run at the local Dobie […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 9, 2008Over in Director Interviews, Nick Dawson interviews Marianna Palka, writer/director of the Sundance Competition film Good Dick, which opens this weekend in Los Angeles at the NuArt and then rolls out to other cities around the country. (New York opens next weekend at the Sunshine.) In it she explains the title, saying, “It’s like titling a poem or something. You have to title it, you can’t just call it ‘These People.’” From the piece: Filmmaker: The film tackles the subject of dislocation and the difficulty of connecting with people in L.A. Palka: Right, and everybody’s so isolated in their car. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 8, 2008On the Filmmaker Video page you’ll find the third part of Jamie Stuart’s NYFF46. Appearances by Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Mike Leigh, Wong Kar-Wai, Christopher Doyle, Alexander Olch and Susan Meiselas. If you haven’t seen the first two episodes in this year’s series, which you need to have seen to follow this one, you can find them here.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008Fresh DV has posted a podcast with filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain. Shlain is an organizer of and presenter at The Conversation, coming up next week (October 17 and 18) in Berkley, California. Below you can watch Shlain discuss her new project, “Connected: A Declaration of Independence.” And as noted in my post below, The Conversation is offering a special discount to Filmmaker readers who would like to attend the event. Click on the links here for more info and to take advantage of the discount.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008As noted on Jon Taplin’s blog, one of his students, Russell Newman, with the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication, has “compiled a list of the main presidential candidates’ views on hot-button political topics about media and technology such as media ownership/consolidation and network neutrality.” Click on the link to compare the candidates’ views on Net Neutrality, Media Ownership and Consolidation, and other topics.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 7, 2008New models, new forms of storytelling, convergence, how we will make money, how we will make art — being an independent filmmaker or investor or producer right now is all about talking. Being part of the dialogue. Taking part in the conversation. Appropriately, then, Scott Kirsner of the CinemaTech blog, Ken Goldberg, Tiffany Shlain and Lance Weiler are co-hosting The Conversation/The Future of Cinema, Games and Online Video: New Tools/New Distribution/New Rules at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California on October 17 and 18th. The official spam: This October, pioneers at the forefront of change in cinema, video, games, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 6, 2008Back in 1995 Ted Hope wrote a full-throated and trenchant critique of the indie film business for Filmmaker that was entitled “Indie Film is Dead.” It’s either sad, funny, curious or fascinating (take your pick) that much of what Hope wrote 13 years ago still applies today. (If you haven’t read this piece, I really recommend hitting the link and taking a look at it.) I thought of this piece today while reading something on his Truly Free Film blog — a report from a panel discussion at the Woodstock Film Festival. First, from the old Filmmaker piece: The film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 6, 2008Filmmaker 25 New Faces writer/director Antonio Campos is written up in the New York Times today by Dennis Lim. About his new feature Afterschool, which plays at the New York Film Festival: Afterschool, which Mr. Campos called a “present-day sci-fi film,” wrestles with a strange and relatively new fact of life that we have barely had time to process. We live in a world where, he said, “it feels like YouTube has been around forever and will always be around.” For more from Campos, visit the Filmmaker Videos page, where our friends from Filmcatcher have produced for us a short […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2008