Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Cinema Eye Names Semifinalists for Nonfiction Filmmaking for Television
Now entering its tenth year, Cinema Eye, the organization that recognizes outstanding work in nonfiction film, today announced the ten films that have been named as semifinalists for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking for Television. Films eligible for this award must have aired or broadcast between June 1, 2015 and May 31, 2016, which explains why O.J.: Made in America, Ezra Edelman’s stunning five-part documentary series for ESPN, which premiered June 11, didn’t make the list. Among the documentaries recognized this year are HBO Documentary Films’ Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures by documentary veterans Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, A&E’s Happy Valley, […]
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Trailer Watch: Ron Howard’s Beatles Doc Eight Days A Week
We recently reported that Hulu has launched Hulu Documentary Films, a destination for original and exclusive documentary film titles. Now its first acquisition — The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years, a new Beatles documentary from Ron Howard — has its first trailer (above). The film features rare and exclusive footage, and was produced with the full cooperation of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison. It focuses on the early part of The Beatles’ career (1962-1966), and will explore how John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr came together to form the Fab Four. The documentary’s U.S. theatrical […]
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Producer Miranda Bailey Debunks Swiss Army Man Controversy and Challenges Conventions about Women in Film
You may not know Miranda Bailey’s name, but you probably know her work. As an actress, writer, director and producer, Miranda Bailey has a hand in just about every aspect of the independent film business. Early in her career, she executive produced Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale, and since then her producing credits have included Oren Moverman’s Time Out of Mind and the award-winning documentary Spinning Plates. Bailey’s production company Cold Iron Pictures was behind the award-winning 2015 Sundance sensation Diary of a Teenage Girl, in which she played a supporting role opposite Kristen Wiig. This summer two other films that […]
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Watch: Dawn Porter’s Op-Doc Film The Chosen Life
The New York Times today debuted a new Op-Doc film, The Chosen Life, the latest film in a series by independent filmmakers supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures. Directed by Dawn Porter, The Chosen Life chronicles the challenges faced by Dr. Yashica Robinson, the only practicing OB GYN in Huntsville, Alabama who provides abortions. This film was inspired by Porter’s feature Trapped, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. Trapped will appear on PBS’s Independent Lens on June 20. “While making Trapped, I met this beautiful smart determined woman and I […]
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Upstream and Downstream: 5 Observations about Independent Film Distribution at the 2016 Midpoint
The following article appears in our Spring, 2016 print edition and is appearing from behind our paywall today for the first time. Will 2016 be remembered as the year that Amazon and Netflix gobbled up the indie film market? Probably. While the two online behemoths could always change their strategies in the next several months, the ramifications of their first quarter dominance stretched far and wide, sending shockwaves through the business. But there were other changes afoot, as well. Here are five industry trends that continue to linger long after Park City. 1. The Enduring Impact of Amazon and Netflix Okay, Amazon […]
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“Enjoy the Ride”: Bang Gang Writer/Director Eva Husson on Female-Driven Stories, Teens and Social Media, and Learning How to Be a Director
“Enjoy the ride,” said Eva Husson before she screened her first feature film in January at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Roughly 100 minutes later, a stumbling crowd poured out of the cinema as if collectively descending a roller coaster exit ramp, vertigo subsiding with each stabilizing step. Husson’s Bang Gang: A Modern Love Story , which opens in New York and Los Angeles on June 17 from Samuel Goldwyn, is about the sexual unleashing of French suburban teens and the boundaries that shape their relationships. An explosive score integrating electronic and classical music reverberates within the rhythm of the […]
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Watch: The Radical Beauty of Tangerine
When Tangerine was released in 2015, much of the press attention focused on the fact that it was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s. Though that technical feat is impressive, the raw beauty of the film is equally striking. Set on Christmas Eve, Tangerine follows transgender sex workers and best friends Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) on an odyssey through various Los Angeles subcultures. At Fandor Keyframe, a new video essay (above) by LJ Frezza examines the film’s unique aesthetic and how director Sean Baker and DP Radium Cheung found beauty from a position of marginalization.
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The Wrong Box: Zach Clark’s Little Sister, MoMA’s Sally Bergerless Doc Fortnight
“I needed structure!” says former goth Colleen Lunsford (Addison Timlin, star-to-be) in a revelatory moment in Little Sister, the latest feature by Brooklyn-based Zach Clark (White Reindeer, Vacation). It is one of two unaffected masterpieces (the other is Ira Sachs’s Little Men, which I’ll review when the increasingly daring Magnolia Pictures releases it) screening at BAMcinemafest (Jun 15-26) that I was fortunate enough to catch early — two for two! Colleen is exasperated trying to explain to her estranged, self-absorbed mom, Joani (Ally Sheedy, better than ever), why she left home to seek out spiritual redemption in a cloistered New […]
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Five Days in Dumbo: Week One of the IFP Lab 2016
After living with a story in your head for 20 years and finally getting it onto a page and into a lens, any validation you can get of having made the right decision is welcome. Having produced a handful of micro budget features, and co-directing one of them, I’ve definitely needed some wind in the sails after months of living with films that are in the can, and Cold November is no exception. Getting to the finish line with the available resources, which admittedly are not many on this budget level, is a delicate dance, teeming with unknowns and varied […]
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Pressing Pause: Elaine Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg Take a She Does Podcast Break
One of the best podcasts to launch last year was She Does, a series of audio portraits of women creators across film, music, new media, journalism and more. It was created by two filmmakers, Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg, who previously collaborated on Sheldon’s award-winning interactive documentary Hollow. Using data visualization and web storytelling techniques to examine the economic and social history of one rural West Virginia town, Hollow landed Sheldon on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list and announced her as a documentarian committed to exploring all the new forms non-fiction storytelling can take in a digital world. Hence, […]
