Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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CARSON MELL AT THE SUNDANCE DIRECTORS LAB, PART TWO
The Sundance June Directors Lab is underway, and blogging here at Filmmaker from the Sundance Resort in Utah will be two of the Lab’s filmmakers. Here is Carson Mell, attending with his dark comedy, Ajax, about “a band of alcoholic astronauts and a young woman adrift in outer space [who] become at odds with one another after discovering the purpose of their mysterious mission.” Read part one of his series here. The Sundance Directors Lab is over now, and I’m starting the Screenwriters Lab again in a couple of days. Out of the last 17 days, we’ve only had two […]
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Five Questions with Radio Unnameable Directors Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson
For decades, Bob Fass has been a unique voice on the airwaves of New York City’s freeform radio station WBAI with his show “Radio Unnameable.” From hosting a young Bob Dylan to organizing spontaneous youth gatherings with the Yippies, Fass has come to define an era of radio that had a profound influence on our culture. In their new documentary film Radio Unnameable, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson tell Fass’ story by utilizing a treasure trove of archival material, interviews and audio (which is constantly updated and can be sampled here). After premiering at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, […]
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WHY IS WILLIAM FRIEDKIN TURNING INTO ALI G?
William Friedkin’s first major movie in a long time, Killer Joe — a Texas noir based on the Tracy Letts play of the same name — is being released in just over a month, and as a result the legendary director has been a lot more visible. In addition to popping up at a string of festivals with the film, Friedkin is now an active presence on Twitter. A week or two ago, Friedkin posted the above (completely mind-blowing) Instagram picture of himself as Ali G on his Twitter feed, and then at the currently running Edinburgh International Film Festival […]
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EXCLUSIVE: PREMIERE OF TRAILER FOR PAUL LOVELACE AND JESSICA WOLFSON’S “RADIO UNNAMEABLE”
We’re very happy to exclusively premiere the trailer to Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson’s buzz doc Radio Unnameable, a portrait of the legendary late-night radio DJ Bob Fass. The film, which premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival earlier this year, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sarasota Film Festival and has its first NYC screening at BAMcinemaFest tonight. You can check out Filmmaker‘s interview with Lovelace and Wolfson here. Radio Unnameable Documentary Trailer from Jessica Wolfson on Vimeo.
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The Blue Velvet Project, #130
Second #6110, 101:50 1. Jeffrey has his hands full. There is Mike (who, in one of Blue Velvet’s weird tonal shifts, has suddenly become apologetic and even Jeffrey’s ally), and there is Sandy helping the naked Dorothy into the backseat of Jeffrey’s car which will take them to Sandy’s house, where, stark naked in the living room, Dorothy will call Jeffrey “my secret lover” in front of Sandy and her mother, and where she will tell Sandy that Jeffrey “put his disease in me.” 2. The shot is so heavily coded with cinema’s past that it’s as if fragments of […]
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WRAPPING SILVERDOCS 2012
Brutus McCracker, a Chihuahua with a camera mounted on his collar, wandered through the Silver Spring Civic Building capturing low-angle moments of the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Film Festival. The camera is featured in Seth Keal’s short CatCam, one of 114 films from 44 countries programmed in the 10th edition of Silverdocs that concluded yesterday. The canine mascot provided a cheery reminder of the relaxed nature and intimate setting of the festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, a multicultural suburb abutting Washington, D.C. With its proximity to our nation’s capital, the festival specializes in social issue docs and attracts activists and political […]
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NOW ONLINE: FARIHAH ZAMAN AND JEFF REICHERT’S “REMOTE AREA MEDICAL”
Last week at the the Los Angeles Film Festival, our very own Lady Vengeance, Farihah Zaman, premiered her documentary short Remote Area Medical, co-directed with her husband Jeff Reichert, himself a filmmaker (Gerrymandering) and film journalist. The film — which is embedded below — was made as part of the Focus Forward series, for which 30 filmmakers have been commissioned to make three-minute documentaries. There is, however, a feature-length version of Zaman and Reichert’s film in the works, to be released in 2013; to stay updated on its progress, “like” its Facebook page and follow @RAMmovie on Twitter. In a […]
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ARTFUL DODGERS
On June 21st, the Supreme Court blinked. It used a legal technicality to sidestep determining the status of two long-simmering “indecency” cases and, thus, the legal status of broadcast television and radio, the traditional mass communications media. One case involves the spoken word and was against Fox over what are known as “fleeting expletives,” words like “fuck” and “shit” uttered by Cher, Nicole Richie and Bono at the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003. The second was against ABC for showing what can be called “fleeting nudity,” the brief display of a female actress’ nude buttocks during an episode […]
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EIFF 2012: NEW BEGINNINGS
Walking around the opening party you couldn’t help but hear the word “rebirth” a lot. As the most heavily pregnant person in the room, this made me jump, but I soon joined in the celebration. The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival had just opened with William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, and the evening was a definite success. Not everyone liked the film — there were questions about on-screen violence towards women in particular — but everyone agreed that as an opener, new festival director Chris Fujiwara had hit the right note. Smacked it right on the kisser, you might say. There […]
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LAFF 2012: CREATIVE NONFICTION
In a very real way, Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives presents the other side of the Pincus coin: where that film teeters near death, Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore’s documentary focuses on birth. Gaskin, regarded as the “mother of authentic midwifery,” has been present for over 1,200 births, written four books, and lectured across the U.S. and abroad since founding the Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee in the early ’70s—no slim resumé. Lamm and Wigmore have compiled a great deal of footage from the period – bearded men wielding guitars, fuzzy camerawork, and hippie gatherings are […]
