Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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The Blue Velvet Project, #25
Second #1175, 19:35 Confession: the first time I saw Blue Velvet—and each subsequent viewing has only reinforced this—I’ve always felt that when Jeffrey pleads with Sandy at this moment (“Sandy, let’s just try the first part”) he’s talking about sex. What sort of plan is Jeffrey hatching, and is Sandy agreeing to? In their classic 1969 essay “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism,” Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni ask whether it’s possible for any film to escape the ideological boundaries of its making. While most films, they argue (Marxist cultural determinists that they were!), can never break free of the gravitational forces of ideology, there […]
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EASTERN PROMISES, WESTERN AVOWALS: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART TWO)
That undefinable thing called texture: It is a principal difference between cinematographic imagery from West and East. For starters, take a look at the wall show of French celebrity photos in the Walter Reade Theater’s Roy Furman Gallery, faces and torsos foregrounded with little or no regard for light or materials, and complete disregard for context. Then take a look at the stills pictured here from the four films reviewed below. In the Canadian/British A Dangerous Method, by David Cronenberg, and the American Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, they are basically head shots, not particularly interesting, and they tell you little […]
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A DAY OF EMERGING VISIONS
On the A train headed back to Williamsburg after a full day of Emerging Visions, Andrew Bird playing on my iPod. The day began with breakfast at Lincoln Center’s new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. One of my favorite moments of the day was at the breakfast when each of us had to introduce ourselves. We had to say what our craziest moment as a filmmaker was. I was reminded of the time I took the G train in the middle of the night wearing a prom-style dress while shooting a music video. The ultimate destination was Coney Island, and […]
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IFP’s EMERGING VISION’S PROGRAM — THE DAY OF…
The day started off with a nice boost to my ego: another filmmaker and fellow blogger had recognized the masterful wit in my first blog entry and approached me about it. He noted that he was normally the funny one, and would now step up his game. I am competitive by nature so this was music to my ears: bring it! Only now I have to be funny again, which may be easier said than done. We began the day with the standard fare – introductions with a filmmakers’ twist: we were tasked to name our craziest venture as a […]
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RISK TAKING AT EMERGING VISIONS
The theme that seems to be emerging today is about taking risks. When all of us filmmakers introduced ourselves this morning at our yummy breakfast we were asked to talk about the craziest thing we had done so far as filmmakers. Doug Liman during his keynote talk carefully cut our risks in two categories. Physical danger risks which umbrella all the scary things we filmmakers do to pull off a shot, most illegal. And the often scarier emotional risks. Allowing yourself to be true to your vision, to pull back the layers… to essentially trust. My introduction story was about […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #24
Second # 1128, 18:48 1. “The first thing I need,” Jeffrey tells Sandy, “is to get into her apartment and open a window that I can crawl into later.” As it turns out, this plot line never develops, as Jeffrey spots a key to Dorothy’s apartment which he takes instead. It seems like a minor point, the window, (although in the apartment in his bug overalls Jeffrey does glance twice at the window above Dorothy’s sink) and we soon forget about it. It’s one of those moments in Blue Velvet that only obliquely and in the most obscure ways references […]
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Photographer/Director Louie Psihoyos on The Singing Planet
Louie Psihoyos started out as a still photographer for National Geographic. He won an Oscar for his first feature length documentary: The Cove, which took an unflinching look at the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. He is now starting work on his next film, The Singing Planet, which will be shot underwater using extraordinary sound recording advances. He took a moment to talk with me about his films and his work as an environmentalist. Filmmaker: How did you get interested in still photography? How did you start working as a photographer? Psihoyos: I loved making art when I was a […]
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WEEK THREE AT THE EDIT CENTER
On Monday, each of us sits down to address the notes that we received from Rodney Evans, the director of The Happy Sad, on Friday. We are all tapping away with our headphones on, filling a common room, but simultaneously lost in our personal space bubbles. We do this for the better part of the day. Tuesday we have scene analysis. This is, of course, my favorite because… we are watching movies. Watching movies has been my hands-down favorite pastime since, well, forever. We watch Monique’s award-winning performance in Precious. If you have seen Precious (sorry, I’m not going to […]
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EMERGING VISIONS… IN ANTICIPATION
I’m sitting in seat 8A on a flight from San Francisco back to N.Y. in anticipation of the Emerging VisionS event tomorrow. The last weeks have been a whirlwind, the good kind where the pieces start to fall into place and momentum starts to build. My film Khsara, a comedy about Arab women who don’t get married in time, was conceived a few years ago. Since then I have been writing draft after draft thankfully with the support of fine organizations like IFP. After the non-stop No Borders week, I flew to San Francisco where my film takes place and […]
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EMERGING VISIONS MUSINGS
First, to introduce myself: I’m Kate Barker-Froyland, a Brooklyn-based writer/director. For the past several years I’ve been making short films and music videos. My new project in development is called Song One, a narrative feature I wrote about music and falling in love. The movie’s set in New York, and it’ll be my first feature. I was really excited when I found out I’d be a part of the first year of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s/IFP’s Emerging Visions program, happening all day tomorrow. Each of us (25 filmmakers) has been paired up with a mentor who we’ll be […]
