While the concept of dropping into the world’s largest film event and competing with 999 other short filmmakers for the industry’s attention may seem like a Survivor-like TV show, it’s the reality each year for participants in Cannes’ Short Film Corner. Many of the filmmakers who screen their works in the basement of the Palais are arriving in Cannes for the first time, and the event is a crash course in networking and navigating the business side of film markets. “You can get lost in a sea of films,” admits filmmaker Bradley Montesi (pictured here with producer Elle LaMont), attending […]
A few days ago we received an email from Austin filmmaker Bob Ray, best known for shorts such as Hillbilly Doomsday and the documentaries Hell on Wheels and Total Badass. His message began as follows: Last week, the criminal defense lawyer who defends Chad Holt in the documentary Total Badass (Adam Reposa, a.k.a. “Bulletproof,” a.k.a. Repo) asked me to help him make a commercial for his law practice here in Austin. As required by law, we submitted it to the State Bar of Texas for approval. The legal community in Texas is going crazy with it right now and the […]
Oscilloscope Pictures today announced a unique release strategy for Shut Up and Play the Hits, Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern’s documentary on the last days of LCD Soundsystem, which bowed at Sundance earlier this year. Instead of the usual platform release for a film like this, Shut Up and Play the Hits will open on July 18 at theaters around the United States — and end its theatrical run the same day. In short, this concert movie will, um, play the hits and shut up. (Is this the first time that a film’s title has inspired its release strategy?!) Oscilloscope already […]
I dropped in on the IFP Documentary Labs a couple of times, and one of the highlights for me was the “Web Tools for Documentary” workshop run by guest speaker Gary Hustwit, a filmmaker who used the web to great effect in the production and self-distribution of his “Design trilogy” of Helvetica, Objectified and Urbanized. Hustwit, who worked in publishing and distribution before he moved behind the camera, really knows this stuff inside out – and considers his engagement with the web an integral part of what he does now. “I think of all this stuff as filmmaking – […]
While in Cannes I bumped into critic and programmer Aaron Hillis, who told me about the new Brooklyn-based endeavor he’ll be starting upon returning home — running a video store. Hillis, who already programs reRun, the independent cinema and gastropub located in Filmmaker’s building in DUMBO (and currently playing Contributing Editor Brandon Harris’s debut feature, Redlegs), recently bought the established Cobble Hill business Video Free Brooklyn. At a time when the independent film world is obsessed with VOD, downloads and streaming, Hillis is time-traveling back to the world of plastic cases, late fees, and, on the more positive side, savvy […]
May 28 The Blue Velvet Project will resume with post #119 on May 30th. In the meantime, this is a re-post of the April 23 confession, with a new confessional update at the bottom of the post. ————————- As author of The Blue Velvet Project—which owes a moral debt to the Dogme 95 movement, whose practice of constraint was an inspiration—I feel obligated to make this public statement of confessions regarding the rigors of the project. This is done in the spirit of Thomas Vinterberg’s confession regarding his film The Celebration. Despite the fact that I promised Mr. Macaulay, Filmmaker […]
Presenting evidence from a “speculative archaeological find” in Zadar, Croatia, “Ancient Cinema” is a multimedia installation and transmedia project by Canadian artist Henry Jesionka scheduled to debut in Zadar in June. The piece’s premise — that ancient artifacts recently retrieved from Zadar point to the existence of the world’s first motion picture project. Jesionka explains his Indiegogo project: Based on this speculative evidence, “Ancient Cinema” will present a working recreation of an ancient Roman movie projector, projecting the world’s first animated “films.” Along with this groundbreaking discovery, the installation will feature a short documentary about the sourcing and analysis of […]
In an interview published yesterday in The Guardian, Cannes Festival President Gilles Jacob addressed the issue of the 2012 edition’s lack of female directors in Competition, saying, “I am sure that next year the chief selector, Thierry Frémaux, will look more carefully to find films by women.” Countering critics, he said that the festival does aim for some sort of gender balance in its selections. “The job of feminists and of people like me who like the work of female film-makers is to say to [Frémaux]: ‘Are you sure there isn’t somewhere a film by a woman that deserves to […]
Michael Haneke picked up his second Palme d’Or in a row today when the Cannes jury awarded the Austrian director the festival’s top prize for Amour (pictured), his tale of an elderly couple dealing with the wife’s catastrophic health issues. The award was surprising only in its lack of surprise — while the preceding prizes had been unanticipated choices, Amour, to be released later this Fall by Sony Pictures Classics, was easily the consensus pick of critics and Competition viewers. In other awards, the Camera d’Or for Best First Film went to American independent Benh Zeitlin for his Beasts of […]
If you’ve come anywhere near the blog or print magazine recently, you’ll know that Filmmaker — myself, and much of our staff — are in love with Joachim Trier’s feature, Oslo, August 31st, which opened this weekend from Strand Releasing. I sat down with Trier last month for a short chat, posted below. We talk about the movie’s inspirations, the Louis Malle film based on the same book, adaptation, and then Trier gives some very solid and inspiring advice to young directors. Also, read my interview with Trier from the Winter, 2012 issue.