Slamdance today announced the 20 films that comprise its 2016 Narrative and Documentary Competition selections. A total of 16 premieres — 12 World, three North American and one U.S. — will be presented January 22 – 28 at the festival’s usual digs atop mainstream at the Treasure Mountain Inn, Park City, Utah. Said co-founder and Slamdance President Peter Baxter in a statement, “The standard of DIY filmmaking around the world is the highest we’ve seen, and the diversity of storytelling is the most we’ve experienced. With a record breaking number of submissions to select from, the narrative and documentary feature […]
The annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Screening Series, co-presented by The Museum of Modern Art, Filmmaker Magazine, and IFP kicks off December 11th at MoMA. The series, now in its tenth year, singles out outstanding films from the film festival circuit that are currently not available in theaters and deserve a wider audience. Each film will screen twice at MoMA from December 11-14. Most screenings will be followed by Q & A’s with the directors and additional talent. The selected films are Bloomin Mud Shuffle, directed by Frank V. Ross; Bob and the Trees, directed by Diego Ongaro; H., directed by Daniel […]
With more than 200 films and events, DOC NYC has become the largest documentary film festival in the United States. It has also become a must-stop for emerging and established filmmakers who want to deepen their craft through DOC NYC PRO, a series of panels and master classes with industry leaders. I attended the festival this week and my colleague Cheree Dillon and I live-blogged every panel for The D-Word, the worldwide online community for documentary filmmakers. What I came away with were four important things emerging documentary filmmaker should learn (and every veteran should remind themselves of as well!) in […]
An added feature of the 2015 DOC NYC festival was the DOC NYC PRO Conference, which included a weekend of masterclasses dedicated to the work process in cinematography, animation, editing, and building your film’s sound with the composer. Over 20 professionals touched upon the nuts and bolts of each craft while dialing into the importance of building the relationship with their director as a key element in serving the story. Below are some of the highlights the professionals shared with the audience. Use Your Camera with Intention. Mira Chang of Half The Sky said she always has a checklist of […]
“Hard, Fast, and Beautiful” is the title of a dedicated Ida Lupino program at the recent 53rd Vienna International Film Festival. The program is named in honor of Lupino’s film, which New York Times critic Bosley Crowther reviewed in 1951. “It simply recounts the quick parabola that a girl tennis player describes in becoming a tennis champion and then chucking it all for love,” he wrote of the “trite and foolish” script. Hard, Fast, and Beautiful was Lupino’s third directorial attempt. Well, technically, it was her fourth. When director Elmer Clifton had a heart attack in 1949 during Not Wanted, Lupino […]
Cinema Eye, which presents the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking as part of the annual Cinema Eye Week, today announced the five nominees for its annual Heterodox Award. The Heterodox Award honors a narrative fiction film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. The five films nominated this year for the Cinema Eye Heterodox Award are: Arabian Nights: Volume 1 —The Restless One directed by Miguel Gomes God Bless the Child directed by Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck Tangerine directed by Sean Baker Taxi directed by Jafar Panahi The Tribe directed by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy With the announcement of […]
When I meet Tippi Hedren in Vienna, we’re with a handful of other journalists for nearly an hour-long roundtable interview. There are less than ten of us, but after a series of interruptions, digressions, poking, and prodding, the pack feels more like an encroaching swarm. But Hedren is no stranger to this kind of journalistic interrogation. The recent Viennale programmed a tribute to her and invited Hedren from her home on the Shambala Preserve in California for her first visit to the capital of Austria. The animal rights activist also worked with both Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, so Hedren’s presence at […]
[The following is a guest post from IFP Screen Forward Labs participant Christian Lybrook.] “It’s great. What are you going to do with it?” A friend — a filmmaker and media strategist — asked this question after watching the pilot to our pre-apocalyptic thriller Zero Point. But let’s back up a sec… Two years ago, Gregory Bayne and I set out to make a web series — 8-12 minute episodes, maybe we’d do six episodes in a season. We’d put it out on the web and hopefully people would watch. That was our original plan. But something happened along the […]
It was a little over half a decade ago that I read at one of Audacia Ray’s intimate Red Umbrella Diaries events on the Lower East Side. Since then this sex worker storytelling series founder – whose resume also includes stints as a bodyworker, escort, and executive editor of $pread magazine – has become one of the foremost voices of sex work advocacy through her Red Umbrella Project (RedUP), harnessing the media to de-stigmatize the oldest profession in the world. Now, after waging battle against violence and for the public health of those in a long-marginalized industry, she’s executive produced The Red […]
Here we have the full list of nominees for the 9th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking. Cartel Land leads the pack with five nominations; the winners will be announced at the 9th Annual Honors Ceremony on January 13, 2016 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. For more information, visit the Cinema Eye Honors website. Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking Amy Cartel Land Democrats Listen to Me Marlon The Look of Silence The Wolfpack Outstanding Achievement in Direction Matt Heineman, Cartel Land Kim Longinotto, Dreamcatcher Laurie Anderson, Heart of a Dog Frederick Wiseman, In Jackson […]