Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Arnon Milchan to Receive Industry Tribute at 2016 Gotham Independent Film Awards
IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today that Founder and Chairman of New Regency, Producer Arnon Milchan will receive the Industry Tribute at the 2016 IFP Gotham Awards, joining previously announced tribute honorees Amy Adams, Ethan Hawke, and Oliver Stone for the ceremony on November 28, 2016, in New York City. “Arnon Milchan exemplifies the passion, drive, and innovative thinking essential to independent film,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of IFP and the Made in NY Media Center. “We can think of few others who have so consistently supported the best in auteur-driven filmmaking, working with such talent as Oliver Stone, David Fincher, and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. We’re […]
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TIFF Critic’s Notebook 7: The Dreamed Path + Wavelengths
I had the truly rare advantage of a loose enough schedule to accommodate seeing all four of the Wavelengths shorts programs at TIFF this year, and they were kind of a lifesaver. For someone who’s made my trade watching and writing about movies, I’m a (paradoxically?) terrible marathon viewer. Following full-length, narratively driven films, one after another, is hard work, speaking purely personally; an hour’s-ish worth of avant-garde-leaning shorts does wonders to clear the mind. It’s a different kind of stimulation, and if you don’t like one another will be along any moment. I’m going to punt on the vast majority […]
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Reading, Rejection and Relationships: Hot Tips from Three IFP Film Week Panels on Agents, Financing and Festivals
At the “Working with the Right Agent” panel at IFP Film Week, one thing we heard a lot of is that it’s a business of relationships and connections. Peter Trinh (International and Independent Film Agent, ICM) says that for big agencies, it’s impossible to look at everything that gets sent to them, so he pays a lot of attention to what the people he trusts recommend. Since his pile of scripts would be literally impossible to read in its entirety, he’s much more likely to read the ones he’s heard good things about. And to that point, he says it’s […]
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“Normalized Magic” at IFP Film Week
Like many of you, we’ve spent years making our film, 306 Hollywood. (Years!) And most of that time, it felt like we were crafting our project underground, without much notice, as if it was a film just for us. But now, here we are. IFP Film Week is upon us and finally we are bringing the film out into the world. Over the course of the week we will meet with over two dozen members of the film industry including sales agents, distributors, producers, and funders. Obviously we have big hopes. But everyone knows the problem with big hopes… It’s […]
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Bringing Web Series Butch and Nellie Take the Rap Game to Independent Film Week
It’s 9:20 pm on Friday, September 16th. I’m on the tarmac of Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport, just two Z-Quill and one red-eye flight away from my first IFP Film Week. My luggage occupies the last available overhead space. Inside are two stacks of business cards for myself and my producer Lindsey Villarreal, a raincoat (I’d heard it rains outside of L.A.), and a gay pride cape (costume for a homo-hip-hop performance on Wednesday night). Before I know it, it’s take-off time for me and my short-form episodic series Butch & Nellie Take the Rap Game. I first became involved with […]
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Feeling Empathetic through Virtual Reality at IFP Film Week
One focus of this year’s IFP Film Week is on the future of cinema in the form of Virtual Reality. A little background for those new to it: There are currently two ways of creating immersive worlds. The first wave and most common is spherical video, where you strap a bunch of cameras all together in an outward-facing circle. This approach has the familiarity of using cameras, but the viewer can’t physically move through the space — they’re akin to a locked-off tripod with a 360 swivel head, planted in one spot as characters and the world moves around them. […]
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The Faces of Comedy: Platforms That Look for (and Bring) the Funny
On Monday September 19th, IFP will host a panel entitled “The Face of Comedy: Platforms That Look for (and Bring) the Funny.” Moderated by comedian and filmmaker Todd Bieber, the panel has a refreshingly diverse array of speakers including executives Marc Lieberman and Winnie Kemp, and the comedic duo behind the Gotham-winning web series Shugs & Fats, Nadia P. Manzoor and Radhika Vaz. In broad terms, the panel will be about the intersection of comedy and digital platforms, from the perspectives of both the content creators and the executives who curate them. Bieber has known Lieberman for close to ten […]
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New Innovators in Distribution: Talking Trends and Hybrid Models at IFP Film Week
Film has been a dying industry for as long as I’ve been making, selling and distributing them. That’s what they say. And there’s certainly evidence that sales agents and distributors are having to re-think how they do business. The recent news that respected arthouse distributor Fortissimo Films had filed for bankruptcy left many saddened, but it seems that news of this nature is increasingly frequent. One of yesterday’s first panels at IFP Film Week, “New Innovators: Distribution,” moderated by Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris, brought together industry members who are working innovatively in film, TV, and online distribution to discuss […]
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Remembering My First IFP Film Week Experience
This will be my second time participating in IFP Film Week. Last year, I attended with my first film, Hooligan Sparrow, which was in post-production and later premiered at Sundance in January. Before IFP Film Week Last year, I knew nothing about the film industry (and I’m still learning now). Many of the people and companies I met with were unfamiliar to me. Immediately after receiving my meeting schedule, I spent half a day researching who was who, what they did, and what films they worked on. Most of this information was available through simple Google searches. I wrote down […]
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Stop Making Sense: Talking Music Videos at IFP Film Week
At today’s IFP Film Week panel, “Musical Approach to Visual Storytelling,” filmmakers Zia Anger, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Ashley Connor and David Svedosh will discuss their varying approaches to the medium of music videos; collaborations with the likes of Jenny Lewis, Angel Olsen, Mitski, MGMT, and Elliott Moss; and the benefits of working in a pipeline that’s a bit more streamlined than feature filmmaking. Prior to the discussion, the four shared a few thoughts on the experimental tendencies of the medium, its release strategies and much more. As a filmmaker, music videos can afford the opportunity to experiment with images and sound […]
