Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Watch: Weiner, Set to Kick Off Rooftop Films Summer 2016 Series
New York’s Rooftop Films will kick off its 20th annual summer series on May 18 with a screening of Weiner, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2016 US documentary grand jury prize. Directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, Weiner will open in theaters May 20 and hit VOD on May 26 via Sundance Selects. As the trailer (above) shows, the documentary follows the now infamous former New York congressman on the 2013 mayoral campaign trail following a sexting scandal. In addition to Weiner, Rooftop Films will present the documentaries Don Juan and Life, Animated, as well as narrative titles Hunt for the Wilderpeople and White Girl. […]
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Five Questions for 195 Lewis Director Chanelle Aponte Pearson
Winner of the euphoria Calvin Klein-sponsored “Live the Dream” grant at the 2015 IFP Gotham Awards, filmmaker Chanelle Aponte Pearson is the director of the upcoming web series, 195 Lewis, as well as the head of operations at the Brooklyn-based production company MVMT. In other words, she’s a consummate juggler, working on the business side of film while evolving her own film and web practice. With an excerpt of 195 Lewis, Pearson’s Brooklyn-set, queer polyamorous love story, having screened at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, we decided to check in with Pearson for a status update on the larger […]
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TCM and Criterion Partner on FilmStruck, Streaming Service for Cinephiles
If Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Fandor aren’t satisfying your cinematic cravings, you’re in luck. Turner Classic Movies has partnered with Criterion Collection on FilmStruck, a new subscription-based streaming service which will feature hundreds of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films from both independent and Hollywood studios. It will also be the exclusive streaming home for Criterion Collection, which, until now, has been exclusively available at Hulu and Fandor. FilmStruck’s library will feature a deep roster of films from such independent distributors as Janus Films, Flicker Alley, Icarus, Kino, Milestone and Zeitgeist, along with movies from Hollywood’s major movie studios including […]
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Tribeca 2016: Exploring the Virtual Arcade
Tribeca is still a young festival — its fifteenth edition just wrapped last week — and though originally traditional films constituted its entire focus, soon transmedia, interactive work, and then virtual reality gained enough prominence that by 2016 they were as integral a part of the proceedings as the film screenings. This year more VR was on view than ever before at Storyscapes, the Interactive Playground, and the Virtual Arcade that together ran the length of the entire festival. By and large, the breadth and quality of the projects testify to the burgeoning craft of VR artists as the medium continues to […]
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Kodak and Kickstarter Launch Program for Indie Filmmakers to Shoot on Film
Despite outliers such as Alex Ross Perry and Todd Haynes, the general consensus among independent filmmakers is that shooting on film is too expensive to be feasible. Over the past year, Kodak has been working to get the word out that shooting on film is a possibility – even for low-budget indies. Along with Kickstarter, the Eastman Kodak Company today announced a new initiative to support independent filmmakers who want to shoot on film. The program is open to cinematographers launching a Kickstarter campaign in order to bring their vision to life using 35mm or 16mm film. Four directors with upcoming Kickstarter campaigns […]
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Tribeca 2016: Making Guy Maddin’s Seances Interactive
Watching Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson’s latest work Seances feels both familiar and utterly strange. Born from the knowledge that over 80% of silent movies have been lost, Maddin and his collaborators at the NFB wanted to resurrect as many titles — both real and invented — as possible: first in 2012 in production sessions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Phi Centre in Montreal that were open to the public, then last year in the feature film The Forbidden Room, and now in an interactive version called Seances that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes event and is […]
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“Dear Crew”: A Doc Filmmaker Prepares Her Crew for 10 Weeks of RV Living
Filmmaker Emily MacKenzie is currently on Kickstarter with her documentary Scar Story, about Paulette Leaphart, who survived breast cancer following a double mastectomy, and who will be raising awareness by walking topless from Biloxi, MS to Washington, D.C. MacKenzie, producer Sasha Solodukhina and their crew will be traveling along with her, and they are now in the final nine days of their campaign to raise production funds. Below, MacKenzie shares a letter she has written to her crew — and partly to herself — about the challenges that lie ahead. Consider donating here at Kickstarter. To my crew – I […]
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Frederick Wiseman on His Banned Classic Titicut Follies
Straight from its premiere at New York City’s Metrograph theater, the new 35mm print of Titicut Follies screened at Portland’s Northwest Film Center on April 21 with director Frederick Wiseman in attendance. The controversial film portrays the wretched conditions at The Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts circa 1967. In unflinching cinema verite-style, Ttticut Follies presents a stark portrayal of the hospital’s predominantly naked inmates as they are mishandled, force-fed, taunted by guards, and locked in empty cells. Titicut Follies was famously banned prior to its planned premiere at the 1967 New York Film Festival. Though Wiseman had gotten the requisite permissions, the state of […]
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Tribeca 2016: Patrick Osborne on Winning an Oscar and his Animated VR Piece Pearl
Patrick Osborne came to national attention with his animated short Feast, a delightful film about a food-loving dog that screened with Disney’s Big Hero 6 and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short for 2014. It dealt with family, loyalty, and growth and change over time, particularly the strain and eventual reward as new loved ones enter the circle of a previously cohesive relationship: it’s initially difficult for Winston, the dog, to accept his owner’s new girlfriend, but ultimately it is he who makes the decision to save the relationship and he enters a much wider and more loving world as a […]
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Dean, Junction and Do Not Resist Top 15th Annual Tribeca Film Festival Awards
Dean, Demetri Martin’s gently comic picture about a Brooklyn illustrator unable to move on with his life following the death of his mother, won the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature today at the 15th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. Udi Aloni’s Junction 48 — a drama about a Palestinian rapper in the mixed-city of Lyd that won the Audience Prize at this year’s Berlin Festival — took home the Best International Narrative Feature Award, while Craig Atkinson’s Do Not Resist, about the increasing militarization of United States’ police forces, won the Best Feature in the World Documentary Competition. About Martin’s […]
