Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
FROM AN ABANDONED FARM TO THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Critic and cultural forager Nick Rombes is making an artistic practice of unexpected connections, chance encounters and disrupting the temporal logics of cinematic narrative. Filmmaker readers know him well for his on-going The Blue Velvet Project, but he has other ventures, including recently, the “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” series. “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” was birthed when, while on a long, late-night drive, Rombes pulled over to the side of the road and decided to explore an abandoned barn nearby. There, he found a box containing film strips cut in 12-frame segments with the written directive, “Do Not Screen.” And then… (from Peggy […]
-
“NICKSTARTER” — MONEY FOR A GUY CALLED NICK
Very funny Kickstarter parody because, after all, life is a project too. (By the way, Filmmaker has a curated Kickstarter page, and I just added some new projects.)
-
TRIBECA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #1: I WROTE THIS SONG FOR YOU, INDIEWOOD
How to take stock of the Tribeca Film Festival? 9/11 was a long time ago, after all. Bin Laden is dead. Rebuild the neighborhood, De Niro said. Bring back economic activity and all that. Perhaps the machinations of the real estate market took care of it. A classy sandwich down here costs $16. Not like I buy any food during the festival in Tribeca; it’s all free. Go to the Apple Store (in SoHo, but close enough) and have some wine. The 92YTribeca had bite-sized bacon cheeseburgers during GE’s-sponsored Film Forward shorts program yesterday. And if I actually want to […]
-
CABLE WOES
Some 70 years ago, the economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the notion of “creative destruction” to explain the role of technological innovation in capitalism. Over the last decade, digital disruption has wrought havoc on the publishing industry (i.e., magazines, newspapers and books) as well as records and broadcast TV. Now, it is upsetting the cable TV apple cart. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that the audience for 11 of the top 15 most-watched cable channels, including Nickelodeon, TNT and FX, is falling. Reuters reported that a Citigroup analyst, Jason Bazinet, found: “Beginning late last year we began to notice […]
-
TRUTH AND DOCS AT TRIBECA
Truth-Telling from Mississippi to Israel to China to Texas Yes, truth is the essence of documentaries. But whose truth? What truth? In dangerous times, truth is elusive. When pain lingers, truth digs deeper into the obscure. Regardless, sometimes truth must come out. Sometimes there is no choice. Sometimes even fear is no match for truth — such as in Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. In 1965, filmmaker Raymond DeFelitta traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi to shoot a documentary for NBC News on racial tensions in the South. DeFelitta initially planned to capture the conflict from the perspective of Southern whites, yet […]
-
THE SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Once-in-a-lifetime experiences abounded at this year’s Sonoma International Film Festival, a boutique event in the heart of northern California’s wine country – complete with complementary wine and cheese before every screening (and a trailer featuring an animated, tap-dancing wine bottle named Tipsy whose tagline read, “Is everything out of focus, or is it just me?”). Held early April, a week apart and an hour’s drive – yet a world away – from that longest running festival in the U.S., SIFF serves as a worthy reminder that attending non-market-driven fests not only allows one the opportunity to discover overlooked diamonds amongst […]
-
ENVISION 2012: EIGHT TIPS FOR SOCIAL ISSUE FILMMAKERS
Last week in New York City, the Independent Filmmaker Project, the United Nations Department of Public Information, and the Ford Foundation presented Envision 2012: Stories for a Sustainable Future. The two day event featured screenings of sustainability-focused documentaries (including Jessica Yu and Participant Media’s new Last Call at the Oasis), keynote addresses from Don Cheadle and Alexandra Cousteau, and panel discussions that included social issue advocates and established filmmakers. And, while the discussions this year did focus on the issue of sustainability, there was still plenty of universal wisdom dispensed that social issue filmmakers – no matter their chosen subject […]
-
BOOK REVIEW: “PHILIP KAUFMAN,” BY ANNETTE INSDORF
One of the pleasures of Annette Insdorf’s new book on the director Philip Kaufman — titled, simply, Philip Kaufman (University of Illinois Press, $22.00) — is how jargon-free it is: while it implicitly subscribes to the auteur theory, which credits the film director as the creative author of a film, it does so through the type of patient close readings that have fallen out of fashion. The first book-length assessment of Kaufman’s oeuvre, which will reach 14 films when Hemingway and Gellhorn premieres on HBO in May, Philip Kaufman is a shrewd and very readable study. It seeks not only […]
-
Five Questions with Journey To Planet X Director Josh Koury
Josh Koury is a chronicler of art on the fringes. In 2002, he founded the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival (BUFF), which he ran until 2006, screening weird and wonderful movies that had failed to find a home elsewhere, and in 2007 he directed the documentary feature We Are Wizards, which spotlighted Harry Potter fans who demonstrated their profound love of J.K. Rowling’s world by forming bands that performed “wizard rock.” Now Koury has teamed up with his frequent collaborator Myles Kane (the co-founder of BUFF and Koury’s editor on Wizards) to co-direct Journey to Planet X, a non-fiction feature that focuses […]
-
The Blue Velvet Project: A Confession
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 Editor-in-Chief, that I would compose each entry “well ahead of time,” I confess that the following posts were composed the day of posting: #12 #27 #28 #77 #93 I confess to posting—out of unreasonable affection for the frame […]
