Following is the text for Ted Hope’s keynote address at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum on September 27, 2008. Thanks to Ted for allowing us to reprint his speech. A THOUSAND PHOENIX RISING How The New Truly Free Filmmaking Community Will Rise From Indie’s Ashes I can’t talk about the “crisis” of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren’t in crisis. The business is changing, but for us –us who are called Indie Filmmakers — that’s good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an […]
My name is Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and this is my guest post for the just-concluded Independent Film Week here in New York. Along with Zachary Lieberman (co-creator of The West Side), I spoke on Monday’s panel “Your Film Online,” and I wanted to expand here on some thoughts I shared during that panel — mostly in response to the prevailing wisdom that “the sky is falling” on independent film. (This is also cross-posted on my own blog, No Film School). I’m a New Face of independent film, not an Industry Veteran, so maybe it’s naiveté that leads me to have a […]
The four-to-five week run of New York Film Festival screenings and press conferences each fall functions as something of an annual end-of-summer camp for a certain caste of mostly local film journalists. The series of videos shot, directed, edited by and usually starring Jamie Stuart which document this ritual should be, then, something of a camp yearbook… except that over the years Stuart has only rarely seemed interested in directly documenting the festival itself. He uses the experience of the NYFF — its films, visiting filmmakers both relatively obscure (Hany Abu-Assad, Hong Sang-soo) and unquestionably famous (Warren Beatty, Nicole Kidman), […]
The 54th edition of the notorious Flaherty Film Seminar (June 21-27) kicked off with some steamy words from president Patti Bruck. “We’re not here to discuss film,” she insinuated; “we’re here to argue about film.” Begun in 1955 when Robert Flaherty’s widow Frances gathered filmmakers, critics, and musicians to discuss the potential of the moving image, the Seminar has evolved into one of the more idiosyncratic and invigorating stops in the film world, with an almost Nietzschean will for conflict. No titles or filmmakers are announced beforehand; all screenings, meals, and discussions are mandatory; filmmaker/audience hierarchies are abandoned in favor […]
Last spring we took an exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs as filmmaker Braden King posted weekly stories about his experience with his project, Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent. Now, he’s graciously given us an insight into what he took away from the Institute, including attending this year’s Festival, where he was involved in the New Frontier’s Multimedia Performance Events with The Story Is Still Asleep and Here was selected as the U.S. recipient of the 2008 Sundance / NHK International Filmmakers Award. “I haven’t fought much with the past, but I’ve fought plenty with […]
Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?, premiering here in Rotterdam, is Barbara Caspar’s thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late writer, whose formally inventive novels, published from the ’70s through the mid-90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon. A beguiling and intensely contradictory figure, Acker is best known for books which creatively appropriated texts from Great White Male writers, retelling them in an emotionally raw, sexually blunt, and politically questioning female voice. And with her appearance in several conceptual art videos in the ’70s, her close-cropped dyed blond hair, her tattoos and her piercings, Acker was […]
[ Filmmaker concludes its exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs (which wraps up at the end of the week) with a final entry from Filmmaker Braden King [pictured above], who’s been posting weekly stories on his experience at the Labs. His project is titled Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent, and follows an American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside who’s traveling with an adventurous landscape photographer revisiting her homeland. King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Will Oldham and Yo La Tengo. He co-directed the film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks […]
[ Filmmaker continues its exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Every Monday Filmmaker Braden King [pictured] will be posting a weekly story on his experience at the Labs until its conclusion on June 28. His project is titled Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent, and follows an American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside who’s traveling with an adventurous landscape photographer revisiting her homeland. King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Will Oldham and Yo La Tengo. He co-directed the film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.] Sunday, June 17, 2007 It’s […]
[Beginning today Filmmaker Magazine will be taking an exclusive look inside the Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs. Every Monday Filmmaker Braden King will be posting a weekly story on his experience at the Labs until its conclusion on June 28. His project is titled Here, co-written by himself and Dani Valent, and follows an American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside who’s traveling with an adventurous landscape photographer revisiting her homeland. King has directed music videos and short films for Sonic Youth, Will Oldham and Yo La Tengo. He co-directed the film Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back.] Friday, June 08 […]
It’s a rainy mid-day in late August — the wetness welcome, following an intolerably hot week, even by New York City summer standards. At night during that unpleasant spell the postmodern auteur Wong Kar-wai — the master of lush visuals and unpredictable soundtracks, the absolute perfectionist concerned with memory, loss, loneliness, and the subjectivity of time — had been shooting scenes downtown on the West Side of Manhattan, on SoHo’s funky Grand Street, for My Blueberry Nights, his first movie in English and the out-of-competition opening night presentation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (The Weinstein Company will release the […]