The sound of Casio keyboards float out of a Gap on Broadway and I’m transported. It’s 2013. I’ll be 35-years-old soon. But for a moment I’m back in 1986. I don’t know who the singer is. It’s a boy who sounds like a girl, could be anyone in the ’80s. But it could only be from the ’80s. The strange canned ignorance of it. The willful naiveté. As if the whole world got together and said — let’s be POP. And any emotion, any art, any death, any clarity — we’ll process through that pop. The ’80s. The one decade […]
If you are an independent filmmaker who’s not a trust fund kid, most likely you are on that constant search for financing for your next project. As two filmmakers living in New York, attending indie film parties and groups, we are constantly hearing stories about the film that’s been five years in the making and counting… and to be honest, it’s a little depressing. We need more stories about “the little film that could!” to inspire optimism among indie filmmakers instead of the tired “Who’s financing your film?” conversations. We are no experts, but over the past year of collaborating […]
Recently, I was on a panel at the Little Rock Film Festival titled “Cinematic Nonfiction: Not Your Parents’ Documentary Film.” As our moderator Robert Greene, the director of Fake It So Real, and I waxed rhapsodic over the state of nonfiction filmmaking in Denmark, I realized that my own doc philosophy has evolved over the years – as I’ve noticed more and more that Americans lag behind much of the world when it comes to quality doc-making. While a lot of nonfiction aficionados like to chalk up this disparity to generous government subsidies in Europe, the problem actually lies much […]
Winner of the Best Feature Tiger Award at the 2012 Rotterdam Film Festival, Maja Milos’s Clip has stirred controversy on the festival circuit for its graphic and downbeat look at the sexual rebellion of a barely-teenage Serbian girl. The first feature of its young female director, and partially financed by the Serbian government, the film takes its title from its 14-year-old protagonist’s penchant for recording her drug-and-sex-fueled environments on her cell phone. Brandon Harris covered the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam for the Spring, 2012 edition of Filmmaker and below is his take on the movie. Clip is released on […]
Alongside a Jony Ive-helmed refresh of its iOS mobile software, a long-awaited update of Apple’s Mac Pro line was finally announced at today’s WWDC. Replacing the large cheesegrater floor model is a computer one-eighth the size that resembles the classic Braun KF 20 coffeemaker. From the Verge: The new Mac Pro will be one-eighth the size of the old 40-pound Mac Pro. The new desktop, which stands 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches wide, will ship this fall. When it does, it’ll feature a blacked-out aluminum exterior and be small enough that it can sit on most desks. Inside, it will make […]
Today the 2013 IFP Narrative Labs got under way, and the participants in this year’s program have just been announced. All are the films selected are debut features first-time directors and have budgets under $1 million, and the teams behind each project are provided with an immersive mentorship experience that helps them navigate from post-production through to the festival circuit and distribution. Among the films selected for the 2013 Labs include two by former alumni of Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces”: Gary Huggins, director of Kick Me, appeared on the list in 2006, and Paul Harrill (Something, Anything) featured in in 2001. Other notable participants include Aron […]
The preacher in torn blue jeans and brown suede boots sipped his pint before delivering his sermon as video projections all around flashed clips of films. The church was the open-air foyer at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in downtown Toronto, and about 60 of the faithful gathered Saturday night to hear world-renowned d.p. Chris Doyle pontificate about cinematography, aesthetics, and his alter ego, Dù Kefeng. Last week, Dù Kefeng was one of the stars gathered to launch TIFF’s Century of Chinese Cinema summer program. The program will present the likes of action superstar Jackie Chan and heavyweight producer Nansun Shi, […]
Last week, Amazon added a new tool to Amazon Studios called Amazon Storyteller. Storyteller is a free, easy to use storyboarding tool, but before you rush out to try it, you might want to know a little more about Amazon Studios. A little history Not content with creating a distribution mechanism for films and videos, Amazon began dabbling in the world of production with the launch of Amazon Studios in latter 2010. Amazon Studios invited screenwriters to submit movie and television scripts with the prospect of prizes and production deals. During the first few months the incentive was primarily cash […]
May 9, 2012 My friend Arnold Barkus and I decide to collaborate on a script about the true-life relationship between outsider artist Joseph Cornell, a 59 year-old virgin who still lived at home with his mother and crippled younger brother, and Joyce Hunter, a 19 year-old waitress and teen runaway. January 17, 2013 Arnold and I submit a draft of our script, titled The Story of Joseph Cornell and Joyce Hunter, to the Hamptons Screenplay Lab. March 18, 2013 I receive a voicemail from David Nugent, the artistic director of the Hamptons International Film Festival. He informs me that our […]
Blue-Tongue Films’ name appears before such films as Animal Kingdom, Hesher, The Square and Kieran Darcy-Smith’s Wish You Were Here, released this week by eONE Films, but it’s not a production company. Rather, Blue-Tongue Films calls itself a “production collective,” with its members including one American and seven Australian filmmakers. It started in 1996 when a grainy black-and-white five-minute film introduced them to no one in particular, certainly not the world. Nash Edgerton was working as a stuntman — or at least trying to. The group’s first short film, Loaded, started as a chase sequence meant to be a show […]