For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a lover of science. Astronomy especially. I grew up watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and James Burke’s great series Connections. Even today, I am indebted to writers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Sean Carroll for writing about subjects like black holes and the nature of time in ways that a layman like me can understand. I think people like this are imperative to society because many of the subjects they study are critical to us as a race. Two of those subjects are NEOs (Near Earth Objects) and astrobiology. NEOs […]
Each year, the owners and operators of America’s art house cinemas gather the week before the start of the Sundance Film Festival at a resort nestled in the mountains of Midway, UT. The Art House Convergence, this year celebrating its 6th anniversary, brings together theaters from all over the US and Canada to help foster the growth and viability of art house and independent cinemas. The Convergence, organized under the non-profit status of the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, MI and chaired by the Michigan’s Executive Director, Russ Collins, has continued to grow over the past six years; what began […]
Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, announced today that the Institute’s Artist Services program – which provides Institute artists with exclusive opportunities for creative self-distribution, marketing and financing solutions for their work –has expanded to include selected films supported by one foundation and five nonprofit organizations. Additionally, these organizations will join with Sundance Institute in continuing to shape the program and the services it offers. The Bertha Foundation, BRITDOC, Cinereach, Film Independent, the Independent Filmmaker Project and the San Francisco Film Society will each select films that they have supported to receive access to best-in-class digital distribution arrangements that […]
Now that the 2013 Sundance Film Festival is underway, it’s an opportunity to remind indie filmmakers that, sadly, their future is on the web and not in movie theatres. Park City screenings, parties and other get-togethers are great fun and a good chance to meet other makers and distributors. However, don’t expect to make a deal! This year Sundance will screen 119 feature-length films from 32 countries, including works from 51 first-time directors. These works were selected from 12,146 submissions, including 4,044 feature-length films and 8,102 shorts. One can only wonder if the odds for having one’s feature selected (2.9%) […]
James Swirsky & Lisanne Pajot are the directors, producers and distributors of the Sundance award-winning feature documentary, Indie Game: The Movie. Before we began production on Indie Game: The Movie, we saw Louis C.K. perform in our hometown of Winnipeg, Canada. It was a great show. He was hilarious, and we walked away cemented in the idea that Louis C.K. is one of the funniest people on the planet. Creatively, it’s hard not to be inspired by someone performing at the top of his or her field. However, little did we know, two years later, Louis C.K. would be inspiring […]
This past Monday night, as temperatures dipped well below zero, film curators and programmers from America’s art house cinemas gathered in a screening room in Midway, Utah, for a unique screening opportunity at the annual Art House Convergence. Shane Carruth, the Sundance award winning director of Primer, brought his new film, the highly anticipated Upstream Color, to the conference to show the film directly to art house cinema programmers a full week before the film’s World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. And while writers (like I) have been asked to embargo our thoughts on the film itself until the […]
Factory 25 announced today that it has acquired world rights to Indiewire’s number one undistributed film of 2012 and SXSW award-winning film Sun Don’t Shine. Written and directed by acclaimed actress/filmmaker Amy Seimetz (Tiny Furniture and Sundance Film Festival 2013 films Upstream Color and Pit Stop), Sun Don’t Shine was nominated for the “Best Film Not Playing” category at IFP’s Gotham Independent Film Awards in 2012 and was produced by Kim Sherman, a member of last year’s edition of “25 New Faces” here at Filmmaker. Sun Don’t Shine follows Crystal (Kate Lyn Sheil) and her boyfriend Leo (Kentucker Audley) on a tense and mysterious road trip […]
Distribution veterans Bob and Jeanne Berney are returning to the business of releasing movies with Picturehouse, reviving the distribution brand Bob Berney headed in the mid-’00s. Reports Michael Ciepley in the New York Times, the Berneys, along with a group of investors, have bought the Picturehouse name and logo from Warner Bros. and have signed a deal with Netflix, which will release the company’s films following their theatrical release. A first picture is already lined up: “a 3D action movie,” Metallica Through the Never, starring the band. From the New York Times: On Tuesday, Mr. Berney said he is seeking […]
Do you watch movies downloaded via the Internet to your laptop, tablet, smartphone or even TV set? If so, have you received a love letter from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) informing you to either go on a digital data diet or plan to pay more to suck down more streaming 1s and 0s? If not, it will arrive shortly. The leading ISPs are changing the usage and pricing models they have long used, shifting the industry from one with “unlimited” plans to “limited” deals. The effort to impose data caps – sometimes called data throttling – may have significant, […]
Part 1 of this series laid out the overall plan for The Lost Children Premier event at Film Society of Lincoln Center in January 2013. In this post, I’m going to focus on some thinking behind the live immersive portion of the event. As I’ve been working on this, I’ve been thinking a lot about this term “immersive.” Any great piece of art can be immersive. Any time you get sucked into an amazing movie to the point that you forget you’re actually watching a movie, that is immersive. I remember having that experience with No Country for Old Men. But here, I’m […]