Authors — Scott Macaulay

THE SIGNS OF PROGRESS

Filmmaker‘s Managing Editor, Jason Guerrasio, returned from the film festival in Dubai this weekend and, like most visitors, he was knocked out by the pace of construction there. (See his photo-essays, below). In fact, a discussion of Dubai’s explosive growth — the political, social and design repercussions of such — is a hot topic at the moment, and two very different takes on the build-up of Dubai can be found online. The current issue of Metropolis contains three articles on Dubai, one of seven states belonging to the United Arab Emirates. (Thanks to Bergen Swanson for the link.) The first, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 16, 2007
WITNESSING HISTORY

As today is Human Rights Day, the 49th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it’s a good time to link to Witness.org, the organization founded by musician Peter Gabriel that, as it explains on its home page, “uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.” Witness recently launched The Hub, which it calls “the first global platform dedicated to human rights media and action.” This section […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2007
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN, 1928 – 2007

One of the twentieth century’s great artists, the composer and electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen, died last week. Pitchfork has a short appreciation, and our memoriam, his Helicopter Symphony, is below.
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2007
SLAMDANCE PREVIEW: MY MOTHER’S GARDEN

Cynthia Lester’s film My Mother’s Garden has been selected for the Slamdance Documentary Competition and will premiere at Park City in January. The film has a MySpace page which streams the extraordinary show reel (also embedded below) and contains this summary of the film: My Mother’s Garden explores one woman’s extreme attachment to material objects and her emotional struggle to let go of them. My Mother’s Garden is the story of Eugenia Lester whose hoarding disorder has entered a dangerous and life threatening stage. Directed by her daughter Cynthia, it documents how one family comes together to cope with their […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 9, 2007
ANOTHER WAY OF THINKING

Last winter in a Filmmaker article recapping 2006’s most notable trends in independent film, I used as my lede a discussion of metrics — how, in every business, there’s some kind of unit of evaluation, but how in independent film that yardstick is often hopelessly confused. First-time filmmakers exorcising personal demons or doc makers espousing outside-the-mainstream viewpoints are later shocked and disheartened when their films don’t get picked up by a mini-major and gross Michael Moore numbers. Why don’t, I wrote, filmmakers consider things like the importance of transmitting the film’s message and their own enjoyment and personal growth as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 9, 2007
THIS IS A HISTORY OF NEW YORK

I stopped by Other Music this weekend and discovered on the racks photographer Paula Court’s book, New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88. I first moved to New York during those years and became Programming Director at The Kitchen during the tail-end of that span, and for me the book, full of striking, energetic portraits of NYC’s key downtown art players, was not just a nostalgic blast-from-the-past but also a welcome confirmation that, yes, there was something special and perhaps unrepeatable about that scene and its casual cross-pollination. The Times Online has an article and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 9, 2007
ALTERNATING FIELDS

Harmony Korine’s latest feature, Mister Lonely, opened recently in England, will open France soon, and is due to arrive in U.S. theaters in the Spring from IFC Films. But Korine has also been filming some other work recently. Here’s a wonderful TV ad he just completed for the British department store chain Thornton’s.
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 29, 2007
OFFENSIVE PLASTIC-NESS

A few years ago producer Ted Hope was at the forefront of the indie campaign against the major studios’ “screener policy” — the edict that specialty film companies could not use mailed promotional screeners in their Academy campaigns. Hope, along with producer Jeff Levy-Hinte and a group of allied production companies, won a court battle and the studio policy was reversed. Now, Hope has emailed about another issue concerning screeners — specifically, their impact on the environment. While other parts of the industry are going green, the mailed output of two companies in particular are not. From Ted Hope: After […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 28, 2007
CHEAT SHEET

When I was a kid I remember going to see Apocalypse Now at D.C.’s incredible Uptown theater and being handled a program when I entered. It was a black-and-white book, about sixteen pages, with stills from the film and commentary about it. It was a cool thing to get at a movie and I still have it. So it was interesting to read over at Ray Pride’s Movie City Indie that the Weinstein Company are doing something similar for the release of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. Pride quotes the press release: The Weinstein Company is pleased to announce that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 25, 2007
WEEKEND LINK CATCH-UP

Here’s a collection of links to some things I’ve found interesting in the last week but which, because of the holiday, I wasn’t able to post here as their own separate entries. Filmmaker AJ Schnack has written an excellent post on the yearly disappointment that is the Academy Award doc shortlist. (For the complete list, click here). Typically, the Academy overlooked the most artistically risk-taking films, movies like Manda Bala and Billy the Kid, and went, mostly, for worthy films dealing with serious subjects that also happened to subscribe to long accepted methods of documentary practice. (Nominees included such strong […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 25, 2007

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