Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“ROOM 237” AND THE MUSIC OF “THE SHINING”
I’m leaving Sundance this year was the longest list of films I missed but really want to see then ever before. At the very top of is Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s treatise on the multiple meanings viewers have constructed from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “Discover why many have been trapped in the Overlook Hotel for over 30 years,” is the film’s beguiling tagline. Here, via Lance Weiler’s Text of Light, is an excerpt about the music.
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SUNDANCE SNOW DAZE
25 New Face composer and performer Gingger Shankar (right) with director Mridu Chandra outside the Main Street Transit Center. Shankar, Chandra and the Shanghai Restoration Project were part of Sundance’s New Frontiers with Himalaya Song, a New Frontiers multimedia performance piece that “explores this majestic mountain range and its interconnecting cultures as the region undergoes major environmental and ecological change. Featuring live narration by filmmaker Mridu Chandra and musical performances by musicians Gingger Shankar (vocals/double violin) and Dave Liang (piano/electronics), this live multimedia presentation combines modern sounds and ancient instruments with a cinematic journey through the Himalayan past and present, […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #72
Second #3384, 56:24 1. Sandy’s dream, recounted to Jeffrey: In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren’t any robins. And the robins represented love. And for the longest time there was just this darkness, and all of a sudden thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed like that love would be the only thing that would make any difference. And it did. 2. A few moments earlier, Jeffrey said to Sandy: Frank is a . . . a very dangerous […]
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SUNDANCE: PEJOT AND SWIRSKY’S “INDIE GAME”
Independent film, depending on how you define it, has had many births. But for the purposes of this blog post, let’s consider the one in the 1980s, just before the launch of this magazine. She’s Gotta Have It, Parting Glances, Poison, True Love — these were narrative features made by lone filmmakers with a mixture of private money and, sometimes, foreign TV deals, and they were released into the marketplace after being acquired by independent distributors who catered to arthouse audiences. More films followed — Clerks, El Mariachi, The Blair Witch Project — and the idea that one could possibly […]
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Storycode and Game of Thrones
All eyes may still be on Park City, but there’s still enough happening back here in the Big Apple to keep indie film lovers busy. One event was Tuesday’s presentation by Steve Coulson, Creative Director at the marketing firm Campfire, about the transmedia campaign he spearheaded for the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones last year. The event was organized by Storycode and hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in the intimate Howard Gilman Theater. Because of the detail of some of his material Coulson asked that his presentation not be simulcast or recorded, but some of the […]
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SUNDANCE 2012: POWER PLAYS
The role of authority in the lives of everyday people is a crucial question at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. From the first wave of documentaries examining the Arab Spring to fictional accounts of the personal and collective consequences of confronting our conception of power, Sundance filmmakers this year have looked at the state of our world and our culture and uncovered a complex battle for control. Of the standout films I have seen at Sundance this year, for one reason or another, the issues of control and responsibility have played a crucial part in giving this edition of the festival its distinctly dystopian tenor; there […]
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“WELCOME TO PINE HILL,” “NO ASHES NO PHOENIX” TAKE HOME TOP HONORS AT SLAMDANCE AWARDS
During a ceremony held tonight at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, prize winners were announced for the 18th annual Slamdance Film Festival. Taking home the Narrative Grand Jury Prize was Welcome to Pine Hill, Keith Miller’s vérité portrait of a reformed Brooklyn drug dealer undergoing a crisis of mortality. Meanwhile, Jens Pfeifer’s basketball documentary No Ashes, No Phoenix was awarded the Documentary Grand Jury Prize, while Caskey Ebeling’s Getting Up and Andrew Edison’s Bindlestiffs took home the Audience Awards for documentary and narrative, respectively. The full list of winners, per The Hollywood Reporter: AUDIENCE AWARDS Audience Award for Feature Documentary: […]
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RICKI STERN, ANNIE SUNDBERG MAKE SUNDANCE SHORT WITH KENNETH COLE FOUNDATION
If you’re attending Sundance, you undoubtedly have seen the orange jackets worn by the festival’s volunteers. They were designed by Kenneth Cole, the Sundance Institute board member who has been providing vests and jackets to the volunteers for eight years. In addition, Awearness, the Kenneth Cole Foundation, collaborated with Sundance on a comedic short written by Kenneth Cole Productions and produced and directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, The Devil Came on Horseback). QR codes at the festival are prompting fest goers to stream the short on their mobile devices, and it played […]
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SUNDANCE VIDEO: “SAVE THE DATE” DIRECTOR MICHAEL MOHAN AND ACTOR MARTIN STARR
Stephen and Patrick from the National Film Society are back with another Sundance interview, this time sitting down with Save the Date director Michael Mohan and star Martin Starr (Advenureland, Freaks and Geeks.) Stephen and Patrick have been inching towards perfecting their strange and unique interview style all week. This time out, they quiz Martin Starr about his love-life, ask Mohan how to make a movie, and invite both guys to join their society. Watch the full interview below.
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JOHN JESURUN’S “STOPPED BRIDGE OF DREAMS” OPENS AT LA MAMA
Since the mid-1980s, when his serial performance work, Chang in a Void Moon, ran at New York’s Pyramid Club, John Jesurun has explored on stage characters and stories mediated by the images technology throws back at us. His formally ambitious plays use theater, music, and projection to tell narratively fractured tales that are both spellbindingly eerie as well as, sometimes, hilariously funny. His latest play, Stopped Bridge of Dreams, is running now at La Mama in New York City through February 5. As I’m traveling from Sundance to Rotterdam, I’m sad I’m going to miss it. But perhaps some of […]
