Filmmakers of color have historically not had an easy path into the film industry. Though that’s been changing over the last few years, there’s a lot to learn from people who’ve had to fight to get their films funded, distributed and seen by audiences. The IFP Week 2020 panel “An Independent Black Filmmaker’s Story: The Journey to Reach Audiences” actually had more than one story. And while the filmmakers all had plenty of advice for those trying to break into an industry becoming gradually more open to non-white creatives, there was one overall message. “Don’t count on anybody else,” said […]
In mid-March, New York City movie theaters went dark. The coronavirus pandemic exploded in America, hitting the city harder than anywhere else in the country. While some indoor institutions have partially reopened, including museums and bowling alleys, with indoor dining en route, there still remains, as of this writing, no such plan for places that show films — one of the richest and most diverse aspects of the city’s cultural life. The major multiplex chains are hurting, but so are NYC’s many smaller art house and repertory theaters, who’ve been forced to think way outside of the box to survive, […]
“Once we said, ‘We’re doing this’, there was no going back,” stated IFP Executive Director Jeffrey Sharp earlier this week, remembering the moment this past March when he and the organization decided that the 42nd edition of IFP Week would go virtual. IFP Week, which began today, was among the first of the Fall film industry events to definitively move online, and it was a risk. “No one knew anything at that moment,” said Sharp about the progression of the pandemic and its impact on the industry. “But it was our board that really encouraged us to move quickly and […]
Going independent is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you have the freedom to do what you want, unencumbered by restrictive bosses. On the other, you lack the support system that comes with working for others. The three filmmakers who participated in the IFP Week 2020 panel “Blurring the Lines of Storytelling: How Do I Get My Story Out,” moderated by journalist, author and philanthropist Soledad O’Brien, know that all too well. They’re all independent, free agents who may team up with a corporate monolith now and then but make their own paths. Before she went indie, Ursula Liang, a […]
It’s been seven-and-a-half years since Jadin Bell, a high school student from La Grande, Oregon, committed suicide following a period of intense bullying. Harrased by fellow classmates for being a gay young man in a deeply conservative town, Jadin’s suicide made national news. It also inspired his father, Joe, to set out on a cross-country roadtrip (on foot!), spreading an anti-bullying message to any good samaritan who would listen. On October 6th, 2013, Joe Bell would also tragically lose his life, being hit by a semi-truck while in the midst of his improbable journey. Good Joe Bell, the second feature […]
There was nothing at Berlinale quite like Malmkrog. I say this first with the authority of having seen it almost immediately after my train arrived on the first of what would be ten disappointing days at the 70th edition of the festival. Relative to Malmkrog, the other big directors at the festival mostly played it safe. And having this behemoth—an adaptation of a 1900 Russian text by Vladimir Soloviev entitled War and Christianity: Three Conversations—as the inaugural film of the new Encounters section at the festival was one of the boldest decisions undertaken by the festival’s new artistic team. That the […]
I’m not going to deny it — the dip in New York’s temperature signifying the approach of Fall coupled with the migration of the New York Film Festival from Lincoln Center to my Lower East Side living room has left me melancholy. Other out-of-town festivals I might have skipped this year, but there hasn’t been a New York Film Festival in 30 years that I haven’t attended at least a few screenings, to say nothing of the associated parties and events. But while I’m missing the casual encounters in the lobbies, the spotlight that shines on the film teams post-screening […]
Seven years after Sacro GRA became the first nonfiction feature to win the Golden Lion, Gianfranco Rosi returned to Venice with Notturno. The opening titles succinctly provide context—three years of footage captured adjacent to ISIS-related warfare in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon—while the first shot immediately re-establishes Rosi’s total ability to sculpt reality: groups of soldiers jogging in laps, separate squads with just enough time between one brigade passing and the next that it’s a visual and sonic surprise every time, the whole unignorably and beautifully color corrected. The shot holds as multiple divisions jog past the camera, their bodies outlining […]
I can still recall my red pill moment while watching Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation with my best friend, at the (pre-financial crisis) time an analyst at a big bank. “Corporations are people? What the hell?” I practically shouted. “Yup,” he simply responded with a weary shrug. For many clueless progressives like myself, unaware that corporate power had been spreading like the coronavirus, silently hijacking all branches of our government for decades, The Corporation was both horror film and wakeup call. The real deep-state conspiracy. Since then we’ve endured the Great Recession and our current economic calamity/health catastrophe/racial injustice awakening. […]
Even without the pandemic, and the attendant pulling of high-market-value films from the festival circuit until it’s over (?), it’s likely Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia would have been the opening night film of TIFF 2020. The goal of gala presentations is to sell out expensive seats, and the Q&A combo of Lee and Byrne after a concert movie would have been a surefire bet. A mostly workmanlike rendering of Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show, American Utopia opens with “Here,” one of two songs co-written with Daniel Lopatin from the fairly poky album of the same name—the least familiar selections, five in all, […]