Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
Should Documentary Films Strive For Social Change?
It’s a widely recognized fact that today’s low-budget independent filmmaker can no longer delight in the luxury of simply getting from development through post. She may be the writer-director, but chances are, she also has a hand in the film’s grassroots publicity efforts and even its release. In the case of documentary film, some are tacking ‘public advocate’ onto their ever-expanding CVs. Aggregate, a Seattle-based policy firm that aims to promote social change, partnered with the True/False Film Festival to survey the 2014 filmmakers on how they saw their films in relation to public policy and advocacy. 56% of participants said they had no plans to conduct […]
-
Made in NY Media by IFP Center Announces New Managing Director and Promotions
IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced yesterday that Gordon Ampel, most recently vice president of worldwide operations at Focus Features, has been hired as the Managing Director of the Made in NY Media Center. Ampel’s prior experience includes positions at USA Films and October Films. As the new Managing Director, Ampel will oversee programming, education, marketing, communications, community engagement, creative operations, rentals and hospitality teams at the Center. In its nine months of operation, the Media Center has opened its 20,000 square-foot-space in downtown DUMBO — including co-working spaces, talent incubator, 72-seat screening room, art gallery and café — to more […]
-
A Series of Visitations: Alexander Sokurov’s Days of Eclipse
The Strugatsky brothers novel upon which Alexander Sokurov’s 1988 Days of Eclipse is based has the following fairly mind-blowing premise: a group of scientists in Moscow find their research in various fields frustrated by inexplicable events, and conclude that the universe is deliberately sabotaging them in an attempt to preserve its mysteries. Sokurov’s film has plenty of the inexplicable but none of this throughline — it’s parsable only with difficulty and guidance from external sources — and relocates the settting from St. Petersburg to Krasnovodsk, Turkmenistan. Krasnovodsk is now Türkmenbaşy, having reclaimed an indigenous name in the post-Soviet era. This […]
-
Stray Links, 8/18-8/21: Orson Welles’ First Film is Online and Chinese Film History
This week’s round-up of suggested reading is all film-related for a change: • The China Digital Times conducts a long, fascinating interview with Paul Pickowicz, an authority on Chinese cinema who talks about studying film in China from 1982-83 as an “unwelcome guest,” shifting trends in national anxieties as expressed on-screen through the decades, how long-dead political affiliations shape the government’s choice of which films from pre-1949 to promote as canonical, and much more. It may be the most interesting film-related thing I’ve read all week. • Kurmanzhan Datka: Queen of the Mountains, a Kyrgyzstani epic about a 19th-century hero, […]
-
Watch: Martin Scorsese on The Films of Rossellini, Cassavetes, Minnelli and More
More than any other American director working today, Martin Scorsese retains perhaps the most encyclopedic set of knowledge when it comes to his cinematic forbearers. Two years ago, Fast Company distilled 85 references made throughout the course of a four hour interview on Hugo, and dubbed it “Martin Scorsese’s Film School.” Flavorpill went ahead and paired the majority of those titles with pre-existing commentary from the filmmaker’s documentaries, A Personal Journey Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy, to create a comprehensive video essay. Watch above for Scorsese’s insight into everything from Two Weeks in Another Town to Faces, Italian Neo-Realism (Rossellini) to pre-noir gangster films (Walsh), and much more.
-
NYFF Announces Spotlight on Documentary Selections: Films From Maysles, Blank, Scorsese
The New York Film Festival took some haranguing after announcing the inclusion of only one documentary in their Main Slate a week ago. Rectifying matters is their Spotlight on Documentary lineup, which features new works from Albert Maysles, Les Blank, Frederick Wiseman, Martin Scorsese and assorted filmmaking giants. I will, of course, also be looking forward to the New York premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing follow-up, The Look of Silence, which is said to be an exemplary companion piece, and Arthur Jafa’s Dreams Are Colder Than Death, which is perhaps more topical than ever. Check out the full list of films […]
-
Trailer Watch: Giuseppe Makes a Movie (Red Band)
From Cinelicious Pics comes this trailer for Adam Rifkin’s Giuseppe Makes a Movie, a portrait of the Ventura, CA-based no-budget cult filmmaker Guiseppe Andrews. Rifkin has known Andrews for 15 years, back from the days of Detroit Rock City, Said Rifkin to Filmmaker‘s Lauren Wissot, “This shy and respectful kid started cranking out no-budget films one after another, and every one of them was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I’m really hard to shock and these were crazy. Insane. But not a forced, ‘hipster trying to be weird for weird sake,’ kind of insane – these were genuine […]
-
A Guide to the World of Film Podcasts
A few years ago I was doing a 30-minute internet radio show and decided one day to re-purpose it as a podcast. I thought, why not? Public radio shows like This American Life and Radiolab were doing it. I was also realizing that I was wasting my time being on the radio at all. Filmwax Radio was not public radio, and I assumed correctly that only a relatively small number of people were tuning in. I also thought that going podcast-only would be an opportunity to change my show’s format. I’d no longer be constrained by a 30-minute slot, nor […]
-
Woody’s Magic Routine
At the end of Manhattan, perhaps Woody Allen’s masterpiece, he lies on a couch and lists all the things that make life worth living. As a twelve-year-old, I thought it was the coolest and hippest list I’d ever heard. Groucho Marx, Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s recording of Potato-head Blues, Swedish movies, Sentimental Education by Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by Cézanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, and Tracy’s face. But as I’ve gotten older, I see that list differently. It’s a list to reaffirm a sense of self. […]
-
Sylvia Earle, Mission Blue, and Netflix’s Push into Social Issue Documentary
With Netflix in the midst of filming Orange Is the New Black‘s third season and putting $3 million into new content this year, the paradigm seems to have permanently shifted from the service being seen primarily as a content distributor to an established content creator. In other words, its continual production of scripted programming is no longer novel, which is why its push into the exclusive acquisition of nonfiction material is no less remarkable. Following the success of films like Jehane Noujaim’s The Square (a 2013 Oscar contender), Greg Whiteley’s Mitt, and the Holocaust-themed short The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life earlier […]
