Here’s the final piece of the Gothams nominations. The previous nominations can be found here, but this time around we have the nominations for two new categories honoring long- and short-form breakthrough series. For the full press release, click here. Breakthrough Series – Long Form* A continuing or limited series with episodes running 30 minutes or longer. Jane the Virgin, Jennie Snyder Urman, Creator (The CW) Mr. Robot, Sam Esmail, Creator (USA Network) Transparent, Jill Soloway, Creator (Amazon) Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, Creators (Netflix) UnREAL, Marti Noxon, Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, Creators (Lifetime) *Additional nominee credits to be […]
As part of the “Gothams Classics” event series celebrating the Gotham Independent Film Awards awarded annually by IFP (Filmmaker‘s parent organization), directors Mira Nair and Debra Granik will be in conversation at the Made in NY Media Center following screenings of two of their films. Tonight, Mira Nair will be speaking in between screenings of two of her best known films, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake; more information on that event can be found here. Tomorrow night, acclaimed narrative and documentary filmmaker Debra Granik will speak after screenings of Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone; more information on that event can be found here. […]
Margaret Mead’s achievements during her 52 years as a curator at New York’s Museum of Natural History have been more seminal than my personal favorite, one that for some unknown reason is close to my heart: persuading the American Jewish Committee to publish a book, driven by interviews with immigrants from Eastern European shtetls, which purportedly created the stereotype of the loving, smothering, guilt-inducing (all that suffering!) yiddishe mama. More to the point of this article, I also admire her willingness in 1976, on the occasion of her 75th birthday, to lend her name to an annual ethnographic film festival […]
I’ll be moderating a Q&A tomorrow night, Thursday, October 22, in Miami with three of the city’s most compelling and original filmmakers: Jillian Mayer, Monica Pena and Carla Forte. It’s the closing night of this edition of the Miami Beach Cinematheque’s “Speaking in Cinema” series, and we’ll be discussing the individual works by these directors that have played at this series as well as the filmmakers’ general practice and thoughts on the Miami scene. Filmmaker readers will be familiar with Jillian Mayer’s work as she, along with partner Lucas Leyva, were selected for our 25 New Faces list in 2012. […]
On Wednesday, October 28, Filmmaker Magazine will be presenting at the IFP’s Made in New York Media Center a Master Class on filmmaking with the provocative Paris-based, Argentinian auteur Gaspar Noé. As his latest film, Love, a romantic melodrama with hardcore sex and shot in 3D, prepares to hit American screens, we’ll be screening Noé‘s first, rarely-screened picture, Carne, and then discussing his subsequent work. With its widescreen cinematography, William Castle-ish flourishes and spasms of ultra-violence, Carne, a tale of a racist horse-meat butcher in the South of France bent on avenging what he believes to be the rape of […]
From its opening frames, Isiah Medina’s first feature 88:88 announces itself as a torrential carousel of images and sounds, with one seemingly independent from the next even as they teeter along the same line of questioning. Loosely described as a personal meditation on poverty, friends and family in his hometown of Winnipeg (with scant commonalities to Guy Maddin’s characterization), Medina uses a variety of camera technologies to interrogate a specific situation of young adulthood that nonetheless consumes the viewer in its visceral flashes of intimacy. Filmmaker spoke to Medina about democracy in filmmaking, his concept of the cut, and whether or not he considers his work documentary. 88:88 […]
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that any director, following his second ambitious, divisive high-profile theatrical underperformer/probable money-loser (or anyone fresh off a recently completed production, really), might generally welcome a chance to get out of town. It’s unclear how far in advance Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood planned to go to Rajasthan to collaborate on an album with Israeli-born, Indian-residing Sufi convert Shye Ben Tzur, or whether Paul Thomas Anderson initially committed to tagging along; regardless, it seems to have been restorative fun. Junun is a 54-minute music doc in which Anderson shoots whatever he wants, however he wants to. There are five credited camera operators, including Anderson […]
“Life doesn’t have punch lines or a plot. It unfurls in ways that are somewhat random,” says Laurie Anderson. We’re sitting in a small room with fluorescent lighting and acoustically challenged walls. Anderson is wrapping up her last morning at the San Sebastián Film Festival with her newest hit, Heart of a Dog. She isn’t happy I showed up for the interview without having seen her film. I wasn’t happy myself, having missed the screening after several bus route missteps when I arrived in town the night before. If I hadn’t missed the film though, I wouldn’t have gotten the […]
With the late summer and autumn film festival calendar almost an embarrassment of riches — from the traditional splendor of Venice to the ever-expanding line-up in Toronto — filmmakers can be faced with a tricky choice of where to go. They will find plenty of reasons to pick Spain’s San Sebastian, which often screens films in a quick turnaround after their premieres in Toronto helping to consolidate their appeal, and offers a wealth of cash awards, including a €50,000 ($56,000) purse for the New Directors winner, a €35,000 ($39,000) prize for a Latin-American film in the Horizontes Latinos strand and the €50,000 […]
IFP has announced the complete lineup for the Fall and Winter season of their Screen Forward series. The four films, Field Niggas, Funny Bunny, Cronies and Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, will each receive a weeklong theatrical run at the Made in New York Media Center by IFP in Dumbo. Read up on the films below. October 16 – October 22 FIELD NIGGAS, directed by Khalik Allah A wise-cracking, probing urban flaneur, Khalik Allah paints an impressionistic portrait of the loiterers and denizens in and around 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Field Niggas. Beneath the bright lights of a corner convenience store, Allah […]