Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Five Questions with Tracktown Directors Alexi Pappas and Jeremy Teicher
It’s rare, if not unheard of: a first-time feature film director who is also an Olympic athlete. Such is the case with competitive long distance runner Alexi Pappis, who, along with her boyfriend Jeremy Teicher (one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2013), co-wrote and co-directed Tracktown, a new feature film which will have its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on June 4. In addition, Pappas, who will compete for Greece at the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil, stars as Plumb Marigold, a young Olympic hopeful trying to find balance in life. Filmed and set in the real-life “Tracktown,” […]
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Is It All About “Who You Know”? The Seven Steps Towards the IFP Narrative Labs
“It’s all about who you know.” That’s the suspicion when you’re a filmmaker trying to get the right kind of attention. I found this troubling because I knew absolutely no one. I kind of knew my mailman, but I could tell he wasn’t that into my movie when I talked to him. However, I was just selected for the IFP Narrative Labs with my film, A Bad Idea Gone Wrong. So, I went from an unenthusiastic relationship with a postal carrier to being in the IFP Narrative Labs. And you can too in seven easy steps! Step One: Write a […]
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“Ducking” Prison Drama Heartlock Heads to the IFP Narrative Labs
Have you heard of Richard Matt and David Sweat? They are the two convicts who engineered a meticulously plotted escape from a Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York last summer. The plan was set in motion once they were assigned to an inmate sewing shop, which was overseen by a female prison worker. The two convicts spent the next nine months methodically breaking down the personal and professional boundaries of their overseer — befriending her, coaxing her into a sexual relationship, and, finally, coercing her into assisting with their escape. Sadly, by the time all was said and done, […]
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How to Build Your Documentary’s Distribution Strategy
Gone are the days when if you were lucky enough to sell your documentary to a single distributor, they would take care of the rest. Though a select group of established documentary filmmakers still operate along those traditional lines, the majority of independent filmmakers working in documentaries today rely on a hybrid distribution plan in which theatrical, festivals, broadcast, educational, non-theatrical, and VOD rights are split. The upsides of a hybrid plan are that it potentially enables filmmakers to earn more revenue and also to develop a long-term audience. The downside? It means more work for filmmakers. A workshop at the recent Oregon […]
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IFP Announces Ten New Narrative Films for Its Filmmaker Labs
The IFP announced today the ten work-in-progress narrative films that will take part in its 2016 Narrative Lab. They include a romance shot in Ukraine in the months following the 2014 revolution; a drama about the astral travels of a comatose man during what may be the apocalypse; and a comedy about house thieves trapped inside a house by its high-tech alarm system. The filmmakers, all first-time feature directors, are attending this week in New York a series of programs and mentorship sessions providing feedback on their edits as well as advice and counsel on festival strategy, distribution deals, marketing, […]
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Cannes Dispatch #4: Thoughts on Awards, I, Daniel Blake, Risk, Elle
I won’t spend too much time bemoaning the Competition prizes handed out last night by George Miller’s jury. Their decisions sucked, just as the Coen brothers’ jury’s did, just as Campion’s did, just as Spielberg’s kinda did, just as Moretti’s very much did, and okay fine I’ll stop there. The best film way more often than not goes home empty-handed from these things, and it rarely matters. Maybe a few less people sought out Holy Motors because Nanni Moretti thought Leos Carax didn’t spend enough time developing his characters, or a few more people were curious to discover whatever the […]
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Ken Loach, Xavier Dolan Top Surprising Cannes Awards Ceremony; Andrea Arnold’s American Honey Wins Jury Prize
One of the more surprising Cannes awards ceremonies has just ended, with Ken Loach becoming a two-time Palme d’Or winner with his I, Daniel Blake, about a 59-year-old carpenter battling England’s health care system following a heart attack, winning the top prize. (The director’s The Wind that Swept the Barley won the Palme in 2006.) I, Daniel Blake, while not one of the buzzier titles in the Competition, was generally well received; the same can’t be said for the jury’s Grand Prix, awarded to Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World. Variety’s Guy Lodge tweeted, “Giving Xavier Dolan […]
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Cannes Dispatch #3: It’s Only the End of the World, The Park, The Red Turtle
The best thing about Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World: 35mm. Take whatever jabs you will at the 27 year-old Québécois (he’s certainly taken his fair share this year as the first of several punching bags in the Competition slate), but he is as mindful as any active filmmaker — young or old — about basic formal decisions like aspect ratios and the textural differences between digital and celluloid images. The only new film in the entire festival to be projected from a film print (Cannes Classics has two: Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital and Roger Corman’s The Pit and […]
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Cannes Dispatch #2: Paterson, Happy Times Will Come Soon, Harmonium, Personal Shopper
I really ought to have more faith in Jim Jarmusch. Here’s an artist who, despite routinely delivering cinematic UFOs time and again, is still capable of surprising me with works that feel sui generis not only with regard to world cinema, but to his own filmography as well. Paterson, which is not even close to the “slight” or “minor” effort early reports claimed were threatening to land it in a sidebar (low key, sure, but so what?), manages to restate a number of Jarmusch’s pet motifs and themes in a tenor I’d not yet experienced in his work—at least not […]
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Private Discussions and Public Support: The 18th Maryland Film Festival
Although this may not sound as remarkable as it is, the Maryland Film Festival (MFF) thrives on being filmmaker-friendly. Encouraging attending filmmakers to participate in a closed-door, multi-hour group conference designed to serve as a safe space to voice their career concerns and hosting a rocking evening of karaoke performed on a stage at The Windup Space (which uncannily resembles the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks), MFF works hard to keep participating artists in dialogue with one another. In screening spaces as the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), the Walters Art Museum, and the intimate black-box Single Carrot Theater, it’s not uncommon […]
