Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Six Quick Doc Tips: Blitz Wisdom with Call Me Kuchu Director Malika Zouhali-Worrall
The IFP Independent Filmmaker Conference’s “Blitz Wisdom” panels are quick, TED-like talks from filmmakers discussing their projects and/or offering tips and pointers. Here are a few highlights from Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s Blitz Wisdom on the making of the documentary Call Me Kuchu and how they created this successful and highly provocative documentary about the first openly gay man in Uganda: — When researching a topic for your film, find a cause that is topical and personal to you and research, research, research. While the filmmakers had no direct connection to the LGBT situation in Uganda, they had learned a great deal […]
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What Can The Industry Do For Us? Notes from the Filmmaker Conference, Day One
Independent Film Week — IFP’s annual takeover of Lincoln Center — ushered in its 2013 edition yesterday with the Filmmaker Conference. A collection of workshops, panels, keynotes, case studies, and networking sessions, the Filmmaker Conference addresses a variety of topics at the forefront of the industry’s conscience. Day one, as its banner title “Future Forward” suggests, was primarily concerned with the impact of new platforms and technologies on independent filmmaking, and the ways in which creators evolve alongside an increasing array of tools. Exciting as the possibilities are, two particular panels took the opportunity to zero in on the industry […]
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Future Forward – A Day for New Voices in Independent Film
Sunday’s schedule of events at the IFP’s Filmmaker Conference titled “Future Forward” really couldn’t have been more perfectly named. Though each panel could be seen appropriately fitting for the title, two in particular really hit home the idea that our future and our way forward is through new voices and new stories, mainly through new, minority filmmakers (and that much of the success of these new filmmakers is in our hands). First-time writer/director Ryan Coogler, whose film Fruitvale Station is already appearing on Top 10 lists for 2013 with rumors of Oscar nods, spoke candidly about the film’s production, about […]
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“A Filmmaker Lives in a Suitcase”: Guillermo del “Toronto” Speaks During TIFF
At the end of a one-hour chat held on the first full day of TIFF, an audience member suggested that the Mexican director of Pan’s Labyrinth be renamed Guillermo del Toronto. The sentiment behind this fanciful idea lay in the fact that del Toro keeps returning to Toronto to film here, most recently the $250-million mega-actioner, Pacific Rim, and is now prepping the horror flick, Crimson Peak, before cameras roll next spring. “I’ve lived in L.A., Madrid, Budapest,” del Toro recalled before an invited audience at the Trump Hotel. “[A filmmaker] lives in a suitcase.” The Canuck version of the […]
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TIFF Critics Notebook: Artful Thrillers and Satisfying Biopics (Despite Themselves!) are All the Rage
The 38th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival is well past its halfway point. The big red-carpet premieres are fading into the distance. As all the hoopla dies down, little-known indies from all over the globe are jockeying for much desired attention amidst the fest’s sprawling slate. A festival for all tastes, Toronto’s lineup features a smorgasbord of world and North American premieres, many of them more or less shared with Venice and Telluride, on top of a smattering of films from earlier in the circuit calendar, across every conceivable discipline of modern filmmaking. Acquisitions so far have been […]
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Five Questions for 1982 Director Tommy Oliver
Premiering at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is 1982, the directorial debut of noted independent producer Tommy Oliver (Kinyarwanda). Set in Philadelphia in the year of the film’s title, 1982 is the story of a father (an affecting Hill Harper) torn between his love for his wife, who has descended into crack addition, and his responsibilities to his young daughter. Set during the start of the crack epidemic, 1982 is an intimate film that returns us to a time, pre-The Wire and and all of the other drug dramas of the last three decades, when crack changed the character […]
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Curator Miriam Bale on New York’s La Di Da Film Festival
New York may have a film festival for every neighborhood, but La Di Da, the brainchild of programmer and critic Miriam Bale, has carved a niche for itself that feels more temporal than geographical. Now in its second year, the festival, whose title is a tip of the cap to Annie Hall’s choice refrain, has expanded upon its foundations as a communal haven for filmmakers creating aesthetically timeless, genre-friendly, and narratively experimental work. In doubling the selection, Bale deepens her exploration of films that, despite being very much of the here and now, feel as though they’ve been unearthed from […]
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Filmmaker Conference Chat with IFP’s Rose Vincelli Gustine
IFP’s cornerstone event, Independent Film Week, is less than a week away. The event is made up of Project Forum, which showcases in-progress projects from emerging filmmakers, and the Filmmaker Conference, which stages numerous panels and events to help filmmakers with myriad aspects of their work. In anticipation of Film Week, Filmmaker spoke with IFP’s Producer and Program Manager, who oversees the Conference, about what it has to offer this year. N.B. Filmmaker magazine readers can use the code 13Friends13 to get a special discounted price for tickets to the Filmmaker Conference. Filmmaker: First up, can you tell me about […]
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TIFF: Nathaniel Dorsky’s Song and Spring and Peter Hutton’s Three Landscapes
Through my late teens, my Sunday mass of choice was the 1pm. I was lucky to belong to Catholic parish that was built in the turn of the century; I loved the dark wood, red velvet, shadowy vibe and how it contrasted to the sunny bustle out on the street. Later in life, as I gained the courage to face reality without a dogmatic crutch, I still longed for that peaceful hour spent in quiet reflection in the middle of the day. At 1pm this Sunday, a TIFF 150-seat theater was filled with a festival audience that remained totally still […]
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Mark Peranson on his Apocalyptic The Last Movie Homage, La última película
Appearing in the Wavelengths section of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is La última película, an experimental comedy about filmmaking and the apocalypse by two directors joined in collaboration by CPH:DOX’s DOX:LAB program. Filipino director Raya Martin (Independencia) collaborates with Canadian critic and filmmaker Mark Peranson on a crazily cinephilic conceit: remaking Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie as, literally, the last movie. The Color Wheel‘s Alex Ross Perry stars as a “disillusioned and delusional” filmmaker traveling to the Yucatan to make a psychedelic Western in the days leading up to the Mayan Apocalypse. Nicolás Pereda star Gabino Rodriguez plays […]
