Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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New Platform VidaFair May Have Just Changed Film Monetization (Sponsored Post)
Launching this month, VidaFair.com gives filmmakers control over their content’s monetization without needing the approval of elite gatekeepers or multinational conglomerates. The startup sees itself in lofty terms — democratizing revenue creation to ordinary people through tech — somewhat in the footsteps of Uber and Airbnb. VidaFair lets filmmakers set their own fee per 24-hour video rental, anything from $0.00 to $20.00 is allowed (yes, filmmakers can choose to make nothing per stream if they wish). VidaFair has its own fee per rental stream, of course, but it’s purely based on file size, i.e. the metric which most closely correlates […]
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“Let’s Look at the Color of Your Emotional Journey…” Director Frida Kempff on Her Immersive Psychological Thriller, Knocking
Swedish director Frida Kempff makes an astonishing and bold debut with Knocking, her Sundance-premiering psychological thriller now out in the U.S. on digital platforms. Molly (Cecilia Milocco) has been released from a mental hospital into everyday life, moving into a spartan apartment in an impersonal urban apartment building. But at night, as images of her past trauma flicker through her recovering brain, there’s a knocking sound. What begins as an irritant turns to destabilizing obsession as Molly begins to believe that the sounds originate from a woman help captive and in danger. In an incredible performance, Milocco keeps us both […]
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Twenty Nonfiction Film Projects Receive Grants from Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program
Twenty nonfiction feature projects have been awarded grants totaling $600,000 by the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program in its latest funding round. The grants target projects in all phases of filmmaking, from development to distribution and impact. Disability, feminist history, globalization, grief and loss, and housing inequality are among the subjects and, notes the press release, “… eight out of the ten U.S. films granted are helmed by at least one BIPOC director. This statistic reflects the fund’s commitment to emerging artists whose voices have been historically marginalized in hegemonic Western societies. Globally, half of the projects supported have international […]
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A Mysterious Pathway Into a Tormented Mind: Lucile Hadzihalilovic on Her Trance-Like Psychological Drama, Earwig
A young girl with melting ice for teeth bound to a mysterious protector, an older man who drains and refreezes those teeth each day — such a scenario, found in artist Frank Catly’s 2019 novel Earwig, provides the perfect source material for French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović, whose films depict the uncanny transformations of adolescence in startling, near-surreal ways. In 1994’s medium-length La Bouche de Jean-Pierre, a teenage girl, ensconced at her aunt’s following her mother’s suicide attempt, is subjected to the menacing gaze of her aunt’s abusive boyfriend. In her feature debut, 2004’s Innocence, adapted from Frank Wedekind’s novella, Mine-Haha, or On […]
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“A Haunting Symbiosis”: On Ed Lachman’s Newly Restored Lou Reed & John Cale Concert Film, Songs for Drella
Not merely an addendum to Todd Haynes’s The Velvet Underground, Ed Lachman’s Songs For Drella is a ravishingly beautiful, sometimes thrilling audiovisual recording of a song cycle by Lou Reed and John Cale, the founders of the Velvet Underground. Cale and Reed’s early musical collaboration as the VU was inspired but unlikely – they had diametrically opposed musical roots and passions. Short lived as the band was, it became the source for punk, glam, and whatever followed from those fundamentally subversive pop genres. The VU began sliding toward death when Reed effectively fired Cale in 1968. (He had fired their first producer, Andy Warhol, […]
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“Sending Your Script to Someone is Like Asking Them to Never Speak to You Again”: Fran Kranz on the Making of His Grief and Reconciliation Drama, Mass
Two sets of parents enter a plain, drab room located down the hallway of an unassuming Episcopalian church. Their reason for meeting pertains to their respective sons, both of whom have died. One set of parents have lost their son to a mass shooter at his high school, the other set’s son was himself the mass shooter. That is the basis for Fran Kranz’s emotionally raw debut feature, Mass, a film that is necessarily an actors’ showcase but also an exercise in pared-down filmmaking that finds tension and release in the subtlest of camera gestures. As the parents debate everything […]
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Death Ride to Osaka, The Equalizer and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Among graduates of the “Roger Corman film school,” Jonathan Kaplan doesn’t have the same level of name recognition as Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, or Francis Coppola, but he clearly learned the same lessons they did while plying his trade directing exploitation flicks for Corman’s New World Pictures. Although it might seem like the only thing Kaplan’s films have in common is that they have nothing in common – his filmography includes blaxploitation (Truck Turner), Oscar winning and nominated dramas (The Accused, Heart Like a Wheel), science fiction (Project X), Westerns (Bad Girls), and one of the greatest teen movies ever […]
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The Year of the Hybrid: 9 Ways to Make the Most of a Hybrid Festival Premiere
This is a very weird time for film festivals and filmmakers. During the first year of the pandemic, it was fairly simple: Almost every festival around the world became online only. There were a few exceptions, of course: The Göteborg Film Festival in Sweden stranded one person on a tiny island for a week to watch every film. The Oldenburg Film Festival in Germany had living room premieres. And many festivals pivoted to drive-in and other outside venues (especially where the climate allowed for that). By summer of 2021, the feeling among festival organizers was that now that we have […]
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25 New Faces of Film 2021
Click here to read this year’s edition of the 25 New Faces of Film.
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Out in the World: The Vital Role of the Social Impact Producer
Often I read the news and feel jaded about what I find there, desensitized to very real issues. Then, as a viewer, I’ll watch a film, or see a moving play or artwork, and feel the urge to do something—to learn more, to do my part. As a filmmaker, have you ever developed the concept for a film, or been in the middle of production, and thought more specifically about the change your film could spark in the world? Have you ever watched and thought to yourself, “What can I do?” Answering these questions with concrete initiatives that go beyond […]
