Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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The 6th Annual Thin Line Film Fest
First things first – Texas’s Thin Line Film Fest does not take place in Austin, nor in March, nor does it accept indie narratives, nor any fiction films at all. In fact, this six-year-old event, which plays a month prior to SXSW, smartly doesn’t define itself in relation to that cinematic elephant in the Lone Star State. Which is its strength. Texas’s only fest devoted strictly to docs – from local to international – Thin Line (the name inspired by its founders’ desire to explore that space between fact and fiction) does take over Denton, Texas, for 10 days in […]
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Silver Linings Dominates Spirit Awards
In what may be an indicator of the direction tonight’s Oscars will take, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook dominated the proceedings at yesterday’s Independent Spirit Awards. The film, which was Filmmaker‘s cover movie for the magazine’s Fall 2012 issue, won big in the major categories, taking Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress (for Jennifer Lawrence). The awards show was ultimately a rather curious affair. Best First Feature was won by Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is actually Chbosky’s second film as director. Derek Connolly, screenwriter of Safety Not Guaranteed, won Best First Screenplay and then proceeded to give an […]
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“25 New Faces” Alums Our Nixon and Blue Caprice Bookend New Directors/New Films
The current class of “25 New Faces” continues to make headlines, this time bagging opening and closing night spots at the upcoming New Directors/New Films being works by 2012 alums. Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye‘s archival doc Our Nixon kicks off the MoMA/FSLC-housed festival, while Alexandre Moors‘ Beltway sniper drama Blue Caprice closes the event. Other U.S. indies at the 2013 edition of ND/NF include Joshua Oppenheimer’s buzz doc The Act of Killing, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and Shannon Plumb’s Towheads, while additional standouts include festival favorites like Tobias Lindholm’s A Hijacking and Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell. The […]
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5 Broken Cameras Director Emad Burnat’s Statement on His LAX Detention
If you follow Michael Moore on Twitter, you’ll be aware that 5 Broken Cameras’ Palestinian director Emad Burnat was detained by immigration officers on his arrival at LAX airport. Burnat is in Los Angeles for Sunday’s Academy Awards, where the film he made with Israeli director Guy Davidi is nominated for Best Documentary. In response to this incident, Burnat just released the following statement through the film’s distributor, Kino Lorber: Last night, on my way from Turkey to Los Angeles, CA, my family and I were held at US immigration for about an hour and questioned about the purpose of […]
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“Don’t Go Through The System”: John Singleton Talks in Toronto
John Singleton was raised on silent movies. The 45-year-old director of Boyz in the Hood and the Shaft remake grew up next to the Century Drive-In in Inglewood, California. As a boy, he’d literally peek out his window and watch his heroes Bruce Lee and Billy Jack‘s Tom Laughlin battle on-screen without sound. “The first breast I saw was Pam Grier’s,” Singleton confessed to a rapt audience at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox Tuesday night, hosted by director Clement Virgo as part of the city’s Black History Month celebrations. “Every time I see Pam Grier I tell her, ‘You made me want […]
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SXSW Adds The Spectacular Now, The East and More
The SXSW Film Festival today announced a further round of films that have been programmed for this year’s festival, including Sundance favorites such as James Ponsoldt’s The Spectacular Now, Zal Batmanglij’s The East, Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin’s Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer and Lucy Walker’s The Crash Reel. Among the other films also added are Ramin Bahrani’s At Any Price, which bowed at Venice last year, and a film shot entirely by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne on his iPhone, entitled A Year in the Life of Wayne’s Phone. A full list of the new titles is below: […]
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Cinekink Announces its 2013 Line-Up
Cinekink NYC has announced the line-up for its 2013, tenth anniversary edition, which runs February 26 – March 3, 2013. Presented by Cinekink, “an organization dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television,” the festival has historically mixed documentary, fiction and experimental work, drawing from the festival circuit, the art world, and adult production. Here’s the line-up, and further information can be found at the festival’s site. (The festival’s closing-night film is a restoration of Radley Metzger’s ’70s porno-chic hit, The Opening of Misty Beethoven. Read our interview 1997 interview with Metzger here.) […]
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25 New Faces Update: At SXSW and Beyond
There’s been a lot going on with our current crop of 25 New Faces, so I thought I’d do a quick catchup of recent goings on. Firstly, four feature projects by 2012 alums are playing at this year’s SXSW Film Festival: there’s a world premiere for Ornana’s first narrative feature, Euphonia, while Bassam Tariq and Omar Mullick’s evocative documentary These Birds Walk (a world premiere at True/False later this month), Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher (which was actually shot in Austin) and Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye’s archival doc Our Nixon will continue their fest circuit runs there. (Incidentally, Lane and […]
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Festival Cinematography Notes – At Sundance, Alexa Rising
The day Sundance began, Daily Variety’s lead article kicked off with: “In this brave new indie world of VOD, shifting release windows, RED cameras [italics mine] and social media marketing…” I was struck by how little any of this has to do with indie filmmaking alone. As a token of digital revolution, RED cameras are so five years ago. It’s hard to storm the ramparts when last year’s #5 and #7 box office hits were shot with RED Epics (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Amazing Spider-Man). In fact, not only were last year’s #1 and #4 hits filmed with […]
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In Praise of Doubt
It turned out to be incredibly prophetic that my first day in Venice, Italy, as one of the leaders for the Biennale College-Cinema was spent at collector François Pinault‘s incredible Punta della Dogana. This beautiful museum opened in 2009, with its closest neighbor — the Santa Maria della Salute Church — constructed almost four hundred years prior. It was but the first example of old masters sitting side-by-side in conversation with the new I experienced during this magical and inspiring week. Filmmaker and fellow IFP Lab leader Jon Reiss and I entered the exhibition. In Praise of Doubt was based […]
