Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Five Questions with Namour Director Heidi Saman
Two years ago, Filmmaker featured Heidi Saman on our annual list of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” The filmmaker and associate producer at NPR Radio’s Fresh Air had just concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign for her debut feature Namour and was beginning to prep for production. What a difference two years makes. Namour will have its world premiere in the LA Muse section of this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, where it debuts on June 5. The story of Steven, a young Arab-American valet at a slick L.A. restaurant, caught between his dead-end job and the demands of his immigrant family, Namour references such disparate films as The Graduate and Taxi […]
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Five Questions with The Witness Director James Solomon
More than 50 years ago, the murder of Kitty Genovese stunned the nation when 38 witnesses in nearby apartments witnessed her brutal stabbing and did nothing. The incident came to represent urban apathy and spawned the “bystander effect” theory. But The Witness, a gripping new documentary about Genovese’s murder, challenges our long-held beliefs about the case. The directorial debut of screenwriter James Solomon, The Witness had its world premiere at the 2015 New York Film Festival and will open theatrically at New York’s IFC Center on June 3, with a national rollout to follow. The multi-layered documentary investigates what actually happened on that fateful […]
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The 50 Greatest Movies By Black Directors
It’s not enough to use the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite in order to draw attention to the historic underrepresenation of African-American directors in Hollywood. Pushing Hollywood to open the gates for women and people of color to tell stories is crucial, but so is looking back and appreciating the films that deserve recognition. Over at Slate, Aisha Harris and Dan Kois created a list of “The 50 Greatest Movies By Black Directors” in order to draw attention to films which warrant inclusion in the canon of great films. As the two point out, when Sight & Sound delivers its once-a-decade critics’ poll or the American Film Institute shares its 100 Years… lists, […]
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The Return of the Cassette: Prisons, “Analog Time” and a Forthcoming Feature
Filmmaker and Filmmaker contributor Alix Lambert is a guest producer on this week’s Theory of Everything, where she learns that it’s not just hipsters causing a revival in the audio cassette format but prisoners. Indeed, for most prisoners, cassettes are the only music delivery device they’re allowed. Listen to her episode, “Analog Time,” embedded here, as Lambert talks to some incarcerated men for whom cassette tapes are an escape, a salve, and even a medium of exchange. Meanwhile, Zach Taylor and Georg Petzold are finishing Cassette, “a feature-length documentary that celebrates the past, present, and future of an endearing musical […]
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Alamo Drafthouse Partners with Fan-Owned Studio Legion M
A new partnership between Alamo Drafthouse, the independent theater chain and distribution company, and Legion M, the world’s first fan-owned entertainment company, could help pave a new way for independent films to get financed and developed. The two companies announced yesterday that they had formed a strategic partnership to develop and distribute genre content, including feature films, shorts and virtual reality. On May 16th, Legion M launched a public equity crowdfunding campaign under new rules adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the the 2012 JOBS Act. Since it launched the campaign last week, the company has raised $400,000 from accredited investors and […]
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“Apply To Everything, Even If You Don’t Think You’re Ready”: Elan Bogarin at the IFP Documentary Lab
To paraphrase E. L Doctorow: Making a film is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to drive with more than headlights. My film 306 Hollywood was one of ten films chosen for the IFP Documentary Lab, and participating is like driving on a well-lit highway. With five days of presentations and workshops with industry insiders and peers you get a blast of clarity on how to finish your film and get it out into the […]
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There is No “Right” Way: 14 Things Directors Need to Know about Directing Actors
For many directors, the thought of “directing actors” can instill panic. Directors who were once cinematographers, say, or who have worked on film sets, might be at ease working with crews or blocking shots but will freeze up when challenged to give notes to actors. Such performance anxiety is not surprising. Unlike the crew, with whom directors have the whole shoot to develop working relationships, many actors are only on set for a few days. So it’s understandable that directors may worry about “getting it right” when it comes to guiding them in their performance. But the thing is: there […]
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Paula Eiselt on Birthing Her Hasidic EMS Documentary 93QUEEN at the IFP Documentary Lab
I came out of hiding on May 9th, literally and figuratively. After starting production on 93QUEEN three years ago — and giving birth to my third child three months ago — I walked into the IFP Documentary Lab armed with my breast pump and a 10-minute trailer, ready to present both of my “babies.” While Libbie, my actual baby, did stay home, I was finally able to share my project with the film world; my acceptance into the Lab marked a seminal turning point in the life of 93QUEEN and my career. 93QUEEN follows a group of Hasidic women […]
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How We Raised $27,000 on Kickstarter for a Film About Black Teen Identity, First Love and Islam
My name is Nijla Mu’min and I’m an award-winning writer/filmmaker from the East Bay Area. In March, I launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $25,000 for my first feature film, Jinn. Jinn is a coming-of-age drama about a teenage black girl named Summer whose life is turned upside down when her mother abruptly converts to Islam and becomes a different person, prompting Summer to reevaluate her life and identity. It’s a fun, fresh exploration of millennial culture, Islam, and first love. Since the campaign ended, fellow independent filmmakers and colleagues have reached out to me for insight on how to […]
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Jan Švankmajer Crowdfunds His Final Film Insects
Jan Švankmajer, the 81-year-old surrealist Czech animator, along with his longtime producer Jaromír Kallista, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund the filmmaker’s final project, Insects. Švankmajer, known for his dark but playful satirical works, has directed over 30 short and feature-length films throughout his career including Alice, Little Otik, and Dimensions of Dialogue. As a pioneer of stop-motion animation, he has had a direct influence on the works of Terry Gilliam, Tim Burton, David Lynch, and the Brothers Quay, among many others. Švankmajer wrote the screenplay for Insects, which is loosely based on “The Insect Play” by the Čapek brothers, an allegorical comedy from 1922 […]
