Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
San Francisco International Film Festival Announces its 2018 Golden Gate Award Feature Competitions
The San Francisco International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards Feature Competitions were announced today, and the 20 films span many well-received pictures we’ve had our eye on here at Filmmaker over the last year. These include 25 New Face RaMell Ross’s Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, Mila Turajlić’s The Other Side of Everything, Jordana Spiro’s Night Comes On, and Sandi Tan’s Shirkers. There are two world premieres: a US/Ghana production by Bay Area directors Zachary Fink and Alyssa Fedele, The Rescue List, about a safe house for kids escaping the country’s child labor system; and Tre Maison Dasan, US […]
-
The Challenge of Making Fiction Podcasts Discussed as IFP Expands into Audio Storytelling
“Podcasting has just been invented as a medium, and no one knows what a fiction podcast is,” said John Dryden, Director of Scripted Content at Panoply Media, at last week’s IFP Audio Thought Leader Summit at the Made in New York Media Center. “It’s just not a radio drama. Radio drama has been dead in the U.S. for 50 years, so we are starting from scratch.” Dryden was speaking along with Leital Molad, First Look Media’s Executive Producer, Podcasts, on a panel titled “New Fiction: Developing Scripted Narrative Podcasts,” moderated by the Media Center’s Programming Producer Bill Curran. Between the […]
-
BVOD (Blockchain Video on Demand), “Crewfunding” and VR Enthusiasm at the EFM’s Horizons Section
Artificial intelligence (AI), the blockchain and mixed reality were at the center of the recently completed Berlin Film Festival’s newly expanded Horizons section. Taking place within the European Film Market (EFM), the 2018 program’s focus on buzzy technological innovations bucked the predictions of some skeptics by drawing sold-out crowds and with several tech companies choosing the festival to launch their platforms. The continued expansion of virtual reality (VR) was also in discussion, with a wide range of projects, including the virtual behind-the-scenes of Wes Anderson’s opener Isle of Dogs, available for viewing in the festival’s inaugural VR cinema. EFM Director […]
-
Berlinale 2018: Fascism, Reconciliation and Surprises
“Through images of natural turmoil the viewer gets the idea that societal events are just as unavoidable as any flood disaster. Constantly receiving outbreaks of natural violence served up as news, the spectator automatically transfers natural laws of causality to human conditions and inevitably ends up mistaking the crisis of the capitalist system for a geological tremor.” — Siegfried Kracauer, “The Weekly Newsreel” in Die neue Rundschau 42, no. 2, October 1931 This year’s Berlinale was marked by two retroactively related occasions. The first one, celebrated by a retrospective, was the centenary of the Weimar Republic, that liminal space that historically divides […]
-
Fact and Constructed Fictions in the Bright Future Section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam
What is film but a desire to make visible that which we cannot see? Love. Hate. Or in the case of the latest from Penny Lane, pain. After having bowed at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam before, Lane’s return to the Bright Future section with the world premiere of The Pain of Others isn’t a surprise, but she’s certainly earned her place there. The found-footage, experimental doc, which despite being compiled of YouTube videos and newsreels, feels dense enough to require a dissertation on delusion, suffering and this digital age. Working in a similar form to the all-archival constructed […]
-
“The Narrative Model Used in TV Series Brings Us Back to a Stage That We Long Surpassed in Cinema”: Lucrecia Martel’s Rotterdam Masterclass
Lucrecia Martel’s Zama was one of the few titles to escape the sweeping critical scorn heaped upon the cinematic year 2017. After getting passed on by Cannes (potentially because one of its producers, Pedro Almodóvar, was president of the jury – though that would only have disqualified it from the main competition) and inexplicably landing an out of competition slot in Venice, the long-anticipated fourth feature by one of today’s most distinguished auteurs was received with Twin Peaks: The Return-levels of enthusiasm in certain quarters. The comparison to Twin Peaks isn’t merely incidental: both are works of staggering confidence and […]
-
True/False Announces 2018 Lineup
For its 15th edition, the doc-centric, hybrid-friendly annual True/False Film Fest has unveiled a lineup of 40 features, with no less than six world premieres. Black Mother, Khalik Allah’s keenly-awaited follow-up to Field Niggas, is one, as is América, the feature debut from Chase Whiteside & Erick Stoll (profiled in last year’s 25 New Faces of Film). Here’s the lineup; shorts will be announced tomorrow, with the full schedule released on Saturday. For more information, visit the festival’s website. Adriana’s Pact (dir. Lissette Orozco; 2017) The director idolized her glamorous aunt, whose political past holds dark secrets. (Presented by the Kinder Institute on […]
-
“In Time, the Movie Always Reveals What It Wants to Be”: Editor Terel Gibson on Sorry to Bother You
One of the breakout hits of this year’s Sundance, purchased by A24 in the festival’s last days, Boots Riley’s ambitious directorial debut Sorry to Bother You takes place in a near-feature uncomfortably close to the present. Telemarketer Cassius (Lakeith Stanfield) makes his way up the corporate ladder when it’s discovered his “white voice” does wonders in selling product. His rise up the corporate ladder, bringing him to the attention of unsound company head Steven Link (Armie Hammer), worries his activist girlfriend Detroit (Tessa Thompson). Editor Terel Gibson told Filmmaker about the challenges of assembling Riley’s satirical first film. Filmmaker: How and why did […]
-
“Advocating For the Civil Rights of Women”: Editor Kate Hackett on Half the Picture
The title of Amy Adrion’s Half the Picture should be taken semi-literally: if women are half the population but severely underrepresented behind the camera, what’s being lost? Her documentary interviews a number of female directors (including Gina Prince-Blythewood, Catherine Hardwicke and Penelope Spheeris) on their experiences, good and bad, while (not) making movies. Editor Kate Hackett explained her work on the film and why she found it inspiring prior to the film’s premiere. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hackett: I […]
-
“No One Knows How Much Work Went Into Getting It Right”: Editor Neil Meiklejohn on Wild Wild Country
Led by one Rajneesh (also known as Bhogwan), a group of Indian believers arrived in 1981 at Wasco County, Oregon. The tensions between the new arrivals and the locals, leading (among other things) to the largest biochemical poisoning in US history on 1984, are examined and fleshed-out in the six-part Netflix series Wild Wild Country. Editor Neil Meiklejohn discussed his latest collaboration with Chapman and Maclain Way prior to Wild Wild West‘s premiere at Sundance. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of this series? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this […]
