Following on from the Bay Area Boom article about the San Francisco Film Society’s Filmmaker360 program, we are profiling the 13 finalists for the SFFS’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Filmmaking grant. The winners of this award will be announced on December 8. SUSAN YOUSSEF AND MAN KIT LAM, MARJOUN AND THE FLYING HEADSCARF Synopsis: With her father imprisoned on dubious terrorism related charges, a Lebanese-American teenager in Arkansas searches for identity in the headscarf and a motorcycle. This feature is an extension of the short by the same name that screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf is the first […]
Are we in the midst of a new round of media consolidation? Is the report that Comcast made a pitch for Disney the first of a wave of further industry restructuring? Rupert Murdoch’s reorganization of the News Corp. and reports that he has been exploring the acquisition of the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune raise concern that such a round is underway. On December 3rd, Murdoch announced that he was splitting the News Corp. into two companies. News Corp. will house its publishing business, including HarperCollins, Dow Jones Newswires, the London Times and The Wall Street Journal. The new […]
Editor’s Note: This essay on ambiguous film endings contains spoilers for the film Oslo, August 31. Joachim Trier’s latest feature, the formally inventive and genuinely moving Oslo, August 31, really had me in its grip by the end. The film, which is about one day in the life of a recovering heroin addict, finishes with the protagonist returning to his childhood home, which is empty. Earlier in the film, we’ve seen him buy a whole bunch of heroin, and a relapse – or worse – may be imminent. In the opening of the film, the addict, Anders, attempts to kill […]
The following Q&A is an excerpt from a conversation between filmmaker John Henry Summerour and John DeVore, a writer for The Pulse, Chattanooga’s weekly alternative. (DeVore’s Pulse feature on Summerour can be found here.) Summerour discusses the importance of his personal relationship with the South in making his newest film Sahkanaga (“Great Blue Hills of God” in Cherokee), which is inspired by the Tri-State Crematory scandal. In 2002, it was discovered that over 300 bodies that had been committed to the crematory in Georgia for proper disposal were never cremated and instead buried or left in a shed and the […]
Fifteen years after winning the 1995 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for The Brothers McMullen, Edward Burns proves with The Fitzgerald Family Christmas that you can always return home. In his newest feature film, the Long Island native revisits the joys and trials of an Irish-American working-class family — fertile ground that helped him to stand out as a director and writer of independent film all those years ago. At first, Burns was hesitant to dip again into the well, but The Fitzgerald Family Christmas stands on its own. Two generations of actors with ties to Burns over his 15 years in film reunite […]
In this fourth episode of a series on the making of the low-budget independent film, Game Changers, director Rob Imbs and cinematographer Benjamin Eckstien discuss audio recording, communication between director and cinematographer, and how to plan out shooting a multi-day, multi-location project. Earlier parts consisted of an overview and then discussed fundraising, casting, camera and lighting gear. Filmmaker: What is the size of your crew? Eckstein: We typically have two people in our sound department every day, though there were some scenes or times of day where we had one person. We typically had an AC and another PA. On […]
Filmmaker Greg Pak (Robot Stories) has released his graphic novel Vision Machine as an iPad app and, in the process, is pointing the way towards new storytelling formats and new production and distribution partnerships. Set in the year 2061, Vision Machine is a dystopian thriller revolving around augmented reality technology not unlike Google Glass. Touching on issues like privacy and digital rights, Vision Machine was funded by the Ford Foundation as an awareness tool, and after it was completed Pak teamed up with ITVS to reimagine it as an iPad app. After learning about Vision Machine from producer Karin Chien, […]
New York City’s taxi drivers are as ubiquitous as they are invisible. In his new documentary Drivers Wanted, Joshua Z Weinstein takes the passenger seat — often literally — and trains his camera on the men at the wheel, as well as the gristly mechanics and staff who work behind the scenes at a Queens-based taxi company. Though this may be a niche community, larger economic forces are clearly at play: many of the drivers are bankrupt, broke, or struggling to support their families. From the bustle of the garage, full of camaraderie and occasional conflict, emerge several key characters […]
The credits roll, there is applause, and not too many people walked out. The festival premiere of your debut film is over. You relax, a year’s worth of stress magically departing your body. Sure, there will be tough times ahead; distribution is difficult. But, for the moment, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. But don’t relax too much, warn a trio of festival heads. Your next big job as a director looms sooner than you think. The audience Q&A you’ll lead in just a minute or two is surprisingly important when it comes to your film’s future life. […]
At special events in Europe and L.A., Sony announced the pricing for their new 4K cameras, the PMW-F5 and the PMW-F55. They also showed the first sample videos shot with the cameras. The suggested U.S. LIST pricing for the new products, planned to be available in February, are: PMW-F5 CineAlta 4K Camera $19,400 PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Camera $34,900 The AXR-R5 RAW Recorder, which is required to record 4K with the PMW-F5, or to capture RAW 4K with the PMW-F55 will list at $6,300 Sony has also come out with new PL mount lenses for the cameras that will be available […]