Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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How The Northwest Film Forum is Re-Defining the Role of the Regional Film Center
At a time when both traditional theatrical film exhibition and nonprofit operations are confronting new obstacles, Seattle’s Northwest Film Forum is re-defining the role of the regional independent film center. The recent promotion of 27-year-old Courtney Sheehan, from Artistic Director to Executive Director marks a new direction for the 20-year-old film center. Since Sheehan joined the organization as program director in 2013, The Northwest Film Forum has increased box office and ramped up audience engagement, donated hundreds of hours of venue rental space and staff time to community groups, and created new partnerships. Recent program partnerships include KEXP, Civilization, Fandor, Brick Lane Records, the University of Washington, the […]
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Watch: The Art of Slow Motion in Film
In the latest episode in “The Discarded Image” video essay series (above), filmmaker and video essayist Julian Palmer tackles the art of slow-motion. “The world moves at a rapid pace. Our lives slip through our fingers. We have no control of time – except, of course, if you’re a filmmaker,” intones Palmer, who adds that “filmmakers intuitively manipulate the speed of the image.” The video highlights various examples of how slow-motion is used to heighten emotion in tense or violent situations, focus in on details viewers might otherwise miss, and also how it can help “to get inside the head […]
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Watch: Coen Brothers Documentary on VICE Guide to Film
George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, John Turturro, and composer Carter Burwell are among the talking heads who analyze the filmmaking brothers’ oeuvre in VICE Guide to Film‘s recent episode on the Coen Brothers (above). The segment, which amounts to an extended video essay, breaks down scenes from some of their most memorable films and delves into their collaboration process. Discussing the directing duo, Turturro says, “It’s like a two-headed monster.” Previous episodes of the show have focused on the work of Kelly Reichardt, Gus Van Sant, John Carpenter, Todd Haynes, and other directors.
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Watch: Bill Plympton’s Hitler’s Folly for Free
Academy Award-nominated animator Bill Plympton has released his latest feature film, Hitler’s Folly, for free on the Internet. Running 67 minutes, the controversial mockumentary, which mixes live-action with bits of animation, re-imagines Adolf Hitler as a successful animator and artist. “This is a very very provocative and kind of wacky look at the movie industry and also Hitler’s career if he became a cartoonist,” explains Plympton in the introduction to the film (which you can watch above). Plympton wrote, directed, designed and animated the film, which stars Nate Steinwachs (Goddess of Time) and Dana Ashbrook (Twin Peaks). Reviewers have not been kind to the film, with […]
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R.I.P. Muhammad Ali, 1942 – 2016
Indeed, the Greatest. Remembering Muhammad Ali with this trailer from also one of the greatest sports documentaries of all times, Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings. From Edward Guthmann’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle: At the height of his stardom, Muhammad Ali was possibly the most famous man on earth. Cocky, dynamic, a tremendous athlete and a wizard at homespun, extemporaneous verbal gymnastics, Ali had the world on a string…. On a deeper level — and this is where When We Were Kings exceeds its expectations and becomes a great film — Gast examines African American pride. He records […]
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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 […]
