Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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IFW: MEETING JUNKIE
Hi. My name is Gillian Robespierre. I’m a writer/director attending the 2011 IFP Emerging Narrative project forum with my script Obvious Child. It’s a romantic comedy with an abortion. Yes, it’s a comedy. I just got home from three crazy days of m-f’ing meetings. I’m hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline. I won a grant, thank you Rooftop! And a picture of me meeting with Sundance Institute’s Rachel Chanoff made it into the Filmmaker Magazine Blog! It looks like Rachel is telling my fortune. I hope she sees a puffy Northface jacket in my future to wear at Sundance. I […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #21
Second #987, 16:27 1. Double Ed to Jeffrey: “If you want to spray for bugs Jeffrey, it causes us no pain.” 2. “The black tradition is double-voiced.” (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., from The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism) 3. Valvoline. 4. Comet. 5. A “Danger” sign. 6. The backroom of a hardware store might be said to be a particularly American place, one whose codes are so obvious they are practically inscrutable. 7. The image at second #987 exists on the level of folklore. 8. One of the Eds is blind; the other sees for him. 9. […]
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Week One at the Edit Center
Over the next six weeks director and Filmmaker contributor Alix Lambert is taking The Edit Center’s course in feature film editing. This is the first of her weekly blogs on her experience. — Editor As a director, I have sat in the editing room for the better part of two decades. My long-time friend and brilliant editor, Hannah Neufeld has talked my off the ledge, dissuaded me from many bad ideas, and brought her own keen eye and internal rhythm to projects that we have worked on together over the years. Other editors (notably David Ritsher) have done the same […]
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DAVID LYNCH’S “THE 3 Rs”
While we wait, perhaps quixotically, for a new David Lynch feature, here is The 3 Rs, a short film commissioned by and for the Film Festival Viennale. (If you’re a Lynch fan, make sure to check out our Blue Velvet project, a year-long consideration of his classic feature.)
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INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK SNAPSHOTS
Yes, as Dan Schoenbrun notes below, there was a lot of paella at the Copacabana club last night for Independent Film Week’s closing party. Here are a few of the photo’s I snapped during the week. Pariah producer Nekisa Cooper (left) attended Independent Film Week with a No Borders project, Five Nights in Maine. It’s the debut feature of Bay area producer Maris Curran (right). Here they are at one of the evening cocktail parties at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center. Zach Lieberman (left) and Koo (right) were two of our “25 New Faces,” selected after they premiered the […]
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ALL OVER BUT THE PAELLA: EVEN MORE IFW SNAPSHOTS
Independent Film Week wrapped up last night with a closing night party swankier than most of us in the non-profit indie film world are used to. There were lobster rolls. There was paella (seriously, more paella in one place than I’ve seen over my entire life.) And there were three-hundred underfed indie filmmakers. Not a bad deal This was my third time at Film Week, and easily the best. Over five days, we hosted 2,200 filmmaker/industry meetings, as well as a conference, a screening series and a boatload of other special events. Here are some final photographic highlights: Writer/Director […]
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2011 GOTHAM AWARDS TRIBUTES ANNOUNCED
The IFP has announced that Charlize Theron, David Cronenberg and Gary Oldman will receive career tributes along with earlier announced recipient Tom Rothman, CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, at the 21st annual Gotham Independent Film Awards. Signaling the start of awards season, the Gotham Independent Film Awards honors the year’s top independent films and filmmakers with seven competitive awards: Best Feature, Best Documentary, Breakthrough Director, Breakthrough Actor, Best Ensemble Performance, Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You (selected by the editors of Filmmaker) and Audience Award as well as four tributes. This year’s tributes also happen to be involved […]
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IFW: A TRUE LOVE CONNECTION?
Day One of Film Week is complete! Wow, did we ever get better at talking about Our Nixon today. Ten back-to-back 30-minute meetings with brilliant people who are really interested in your film will do have that effect. Did Our Nixon make a true love connection? Who knows, but sparks were definitely flying. And it’s all about getting to the second date. We came into this week with a lot of meeting requests, and although I was fairly flabbergasted by the interest we elicited, I really shouldn’t have been. Because Our Nixon has a really fantastic premise: it’s a feature […]
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IFW: MY NAME IS KOO
My name is Koo, and I’m a blogoholic. Not really, but I do run a NoFilmSchool”>blog about independent filmmaking, and I’ve also contributed to this Filmmaker web site a number of times. So, what am I doing here (again)? I’ve got a feature script in the Emerging Narrative program this year. I also had a script in the similar-but-different No Borders program this same time last year; the main difference is EN scripts have no financing attached and NB do (theoretically, that is: we didn’t last year, but that’s another story). If you read my thoughts on the No Borders experience) you’ll see […]
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IFW: BELARUS COMES TO FILM WEEK
My name is Madeleine Sackler, and I’ll be blogging on my first time bringing a film to IFW’s Spotlight on Documentaries. I’m looking forward to seeing how the week goes! For now, a little on the film. Unstable Elements is my second feature, and it’s been an entirely different experience than any film I’ve worked on in the past. Of course, every documentary is different, which is one of the reasons I love what I do, but this has been a particularly challenging process. Unstable Elements tracks an underground resistance group called the Belarus Free Theater, which exposes problems with the […]
