Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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12 Steps to Avoid Going Broke Applying to Film Festivals
The author of this guest essay is a filmmaker whose most recent film is Between Us. He is also the co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. — Editor I recently wrote an article about 12 Steps to a Saner Festival Plan in which I suggested the volume-method of festivals: Get your film into as many festivals as you can, and build momentum from one to the next. Unfortunately, a lot of people read that article. And the one consistent question I’m getting is if we’re broke filmmakers, how can we afford to apply to so many festivals? Chances are you […]
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We are the Visitors: On Godfrey Reggio’s Masterwork
The Toronto International Film Festival this year permitted me to look back and remember the first independent movie I ever saw when I was 15 years old, Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law. That film made me want to run away from home and make movies, and I did. This year I saw his new film, Only Lovers Left Alive, as well as another film by a director whose work was formative for me. The same year I saw Down By Law I was listening to cassette tapes of Philip Glass, music I had taped from vinyl albums belonging to people […]
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Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: A Means of Escape — African Cinema on the Lido.
At this year’s Venice Film Festival, there was a conspicuously sparse showing in the programme for native African and African-themed cinema. However, although the majority of these slim pickings were tucked away toward the end of the festival when attendance had thinned considerably (many journalists had either headed home or departed to Toronto), their quality was largely impressive. To varying degrees, these films broached an historically enduring theme in African cinema: the attempts of young people to escape straitened circumstances. The only sub-Saharan representative at the festival — and the most harrowing film I saw overall — was Berlin-based Israeli […]
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TIFF 2013: Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
One of the more anticipated films of a very strong Wavelengths section, Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness unspooled Saturday night to a packed house at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Jackman Hall. A true collaborative effort by two major filmmakers, the feature follows a black guitar player, Robert A.A. Lowe, from a northern Finland commune through a solitary journey across a lake into an isolated wilderness to the climactic scene on a stage in Estonia, where he performs with a black metal band. The film is less of a character study than it is the […]
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Thank Heaven for Seven: The Best of NewFest
This year marks the 25th anniversary of NewFest (September 6-11), kissin’ cousin of LA’s OutFest. Before the acronym LGBT became a more inclusive umbrella for groups stigmatized on account of sexual and gender preference, an earlier incarnation of a queer film event, The New York Gay Film Festival (1979-1987), was the only game in town. Founded by Peter Lowy, it took place at the Thalia cinema, then a film-buff paradise on the Upper West Side, and filled a huge gap for many of us. Distributors were fearful of gay-themed films. Of the selection, recurring topics included coming out and of […]
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The Future of Storytelling: Tom Perlmutter on the Evolution of Cinema
The Future of Storytelling has announced the date of its second annual summit — October 3, in New York City. In the interview below, the National Film Board of Canada’s Tom Perlmutter expounds on his belief that new forms of storytelling will change the world. For more, read the press release below and visit the Future of Storytelling website. The Future of StoryTelling (FoST) will host its second annual summit in New York City on Thursday, October 3rd. FoST gathers a community of storytellers across all disciplines—including film, TV, publishing, music, gaming, journalism, adverting, and more—to explore how technology is […]
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Indie Film Truly Underground: The 2013 Toronto Urban Film Festival
TIFF isn’t the only festival opening in Toronto this week. For the last six years, the high-profile screenings along King Street West have been accompanied by a cadre of short silent videos screening on monitors in the city’s underground subway stations. The Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF, a nice titular contrast with TIFF) draws submissions from all over the world and — due to its restricted format as much as in spite of it — elicits some of the most innovative filmmaking on show in the city. It’s also seen by thousands more viewers than its above-ground counterpart. This year’s […]
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Laboratory, Theater, Classroom: Matt Bolish on NYFF’s Convergence
A typically storied showcase, the New York Film Festival embraced the future of film in its 50th edition with the creation of Convergence, a sidebar dedicated to transmedia and interactive storytelling. Last week, the program announced its sophomore slate, which will examine the intersections of technology, content, and audience collaboration across its three categories: Experiences, Panels and Keystone Presentations. Experiences selections The Cosmonaut and Charlie Victor Romeo immerse the viewer alongside Russian cosmonauts in the 1960’s space race and mid-tailspin airline pilots, respectively. “25 New Face” Elaine McMillion will also present her documentary Hollow, which utilizes web-based HTML5 storytelling to […]
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25 Picks for the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is overwhelming. Following the more rarefied Telluride and Venice Film Festivals, it’s a large, populist event that mixes red-carpet premieres with new filmmaker discovery and highlights from Cannes and other earlier events. As I usually do, I’ve concentrated on premieres and American independents for this preview, largely omitting films you’ve heard about because they’ve already been praised at other festivals (like, for example, Telluride hits 12 Years a Slave and Prisoners). Here, selected from the feature films, is what I’m hoping to catch at the festival this year. Beneath the Harvest Sky. The documentary team […]
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Venice 2013: 6 Lessons from At Berkeley Director Frederick Wiseman
The great American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, La Danse) arrived at this year’s Venice Film Festival along with his latest work, At Berkeley. A monumental, 244-minute exploration of the famous California university, it emerges as a rigorous, deeply insightful institutional study, and a hymn to the power of open communication, particularly in the context of modern-day America. Following the film’s world premiere on September 2nd, Wiseman, looking spry at 83, took to the stage to address the audience. Filmmaker Magazine was on hand to capture the highlights. On motivation “I made the movie because I have been making […]
