Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Sundance Announces the Winners of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival
A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature, A Thousand and One and Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, won, respectively the 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s two top U.S. awards, the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. D. Smith’s Kokomo City won two awards, the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award. And Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Winner was another double winner, picking up the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic. “This year’s Festival has been an extraordinary experience,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “The artists that […]
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Noah Cowan, Former TIFF Festival Director, Curator, Critic and Distributor, Dies at 55
Noah Cowan — a curator, critic, festival director and distributor — died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 55, and the cause was Glioblastoma multiforme. Over his more than 30-year career, Cowan brought his passion and erudition to a number of organizations and endeavors, beginning with the Toronto International Film Festival, where he began as an intern in 1981. After graduating with a philosophy degree at University of Toronto, Cowan in 1989 became a programmer at TIFF, curating films for the Midnight Madness and, later, the Vanguard sections. He would go on to program major national cinema retrospectives on India […]
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Made with DALL-E-2: Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw on the Poster for Their Rotterdam-Premiering New Strains
For their Rotterdam-premiering feature New Strains‘s poster, Prashanth Kamalakanthan and Artemis Shaw knew they didn’t want to use an actual image from their pandemic production, which was shot on Hi-8. And they wanted an image that in addition to being beautiful would formally resonate with the film itself, a story of visiting young lovers (played by the filmmakers) stuck in New York when a travel ban hits at the start of a pandemic. “We were thinking about that sense of being frozen in time,” Shaw says. “In March, 2020, everyone was obsessed with the news, but we were all stuck […]
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ReelCall is Here to Make Networking and Staffing in the Industry Accessible to All (Sponsored)
Finding your team and talent for a project is a lot like dating. Have you ever wondered why companies like match.com, eHarmony and, more recently, apps such as Tinder and Bumble are so good at finding matches? They use data and inputs from their users to put the right people in front of each other. ReelCall uses that same idea to help creatives match on projects, jobs and roles to help find the right fit for each person. Do you have an idea for a project but don’t have the network to find other creatives to make your film come […]
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BMI Names Tracy McKnight, Vice President, Creative, Film, TV & Visual Media
BMI announced today that veteran music supervisor Tracy McKnight, whose work includes scores of independent films, has been appointed the performance rights organization’s new Vice President, Creative, Film, TV & Visual Media. From the press release: In this role, McKnight will lead the day-to-day functions of the Film, TV & Visual Media department. She will help identify and sign new affiliates to BMI, while continuing to cultivate and nurture relationships with the company’s industry-leading roster of film, TV and visual media composers. McKnight will also help develop programs and events that support career development and provide opportunities to highlight the […]
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Sound and Visionaries ’23: Our Picks for Awards Season’s Most Exciting Below-the-Line Artists
Filmmaker‘s most recent print issue features our annual selection of below-the-line artists whose work has excited us through this Fall’s awards season. Linked below are profiles by A.E. Hunt, Vikram Murthi, Matt Mulcahey, Isaac Feldberg and Abbey Bender on the most impressive technical aspects of six recent films, which we highly recommend viewing. Editing: Everything Everywhere All At Once‘s Paul Rogers, by A.E. Hunt Production Design: The Fabelmans‘ Rick Carter, by Vikram Murthi Cinematography: Bardo‘s Darius Khondji, by Matt Mulcahey Original Score: Women Talking‘s Hildur Guðnadóttir, by Isaac Feldberg Costume Design: The Banshees of Inisherin‘s Eimer Ní Mhaoldomhnaigh, by Abbey […]
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2022 in Cameras
2022 was a quiet year for camera technology, thank goodness. The decade plus I’ve been covering camera breakthroughs on this website has been a rocket ride. So much velocity, so little time to stop, catch one’s breath, smell some roses. Ask yourself, who can any longer tell the difference between film and digital origination on the big screen? Be honest. No less than Roger Deakins declared film a dead issue half a dozen years ago. His latest, Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light, shot using Arri Alexa Mini LF (large format) and spherical Arri Signature Primes, is a loving paean to […]
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Cinematography Notes – Desaturating Women Talking
A perk of living in New York is the arrival each autumn of the New York Film Festival, which this year marked a milestone, its 60th edition — kudos to The Film Society of Lincoln Center. I’ve long thought of NYFF as a sampler of what’s happening in world cinema, a box of fine chocolates à la Forrest Gump. New Yorkers attending NYFF are privileged to enjoy choice selections from Cannes, Venice, Berlin, even Sundance. Which is to say, if there are new winds blowing somewhere in Cinema, they will be felt at NYFF. This year, the drained-color look of […]
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Cinema Is Dead and We’re All Its Ghosts: 2022 at the Movies
“User-generated content” is the future of the moving image, and the present as well. A less sentimental look back at 2022 in film would probably take the measure of TikTok trends, Instagram Reels, Twitch streams, YouTube reaction videos and OnlyFans porn. Before cinema dies, you see the Ring Video Doorbell surveillance footage repackaged, America’s Funniest Cops–style, in the syndicated Ring Nation, which premiered this year (coproduced by Ring and MGM Television, both subsidiaries of Amazon). The overwhelming proliferation of digital images, recorded by consumer-grade digital cameras with ever-greater resolution, storage capacity, and ubiquity, is the story of the century. Such […]
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Projectr Partners With Educational Institutions to Launch New Streaming Service Projectr EDU
Projectr, the independent film-focused streaming service, has announced the launch of its new streaming branch Projectr EDU. Partnering with public libraries, universities and educational institutions across North America, the free streamer presents a curated selection that encompasses acclaimed films, archival restorations and award-winning documentaries. The streamer kicks off its educational initiative by partnering with the New York Public Library, meaning that any New Yorker with a library card can access Projectr EDU’s extensive library, which at present includes over 1,000 titles. It is also the only streaming service currently partnered with the NYPL. “With Projectr EDU, we’re delighted to be […]
