Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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IFW: THE BIG QUESTION
The following post was written on my way to IFP Film Week, which ends today. Are audiences ready to spend 85 minutes immersed in the lives of conservative Muslim women in Syria? That’s the big question this week. Many delays at LAX today. But there’s no comparing our airport to the one in Damascus. Here, people are shuffling on board the airplane with Starbucks in one hand, Burger King in the other, arguing the finer points of how to get an upgrade. In Damascus, people are stuffing every last inch of their luggage with dates, nuts, and Syrian chocolate, hugging relatives […]
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“WEEKEND” — A HAMMER TO NAIL PICK
(After world premiering at the 2011 South By Southwest Film Festival where it won an Audience Award, Weekend was picked up for distribution by Sundance Selects. It opens theatrically in New York City on Friday, September 23, 2011, before expanding to more cities in the coming weeks. It’s also available through cable VOD for three months beginning on September 30th. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) It is Independent Film Week in New York City. As this is the first time that I’ve personally been involved in IFP’s annual program to the extent that I have (I’m pitching […]
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SEE YOU YESTERDAY: MORE IFW SNAPSHOTS
We’re halfway through Independent Film Week, and time has started to play tricks. Days seem to stretch on forever, but at the same time, hours go by like minutes. Today I accidentally said to someone, “I’ll see you yesterday.” Here are some more snapshots of Film Week in action: The creative forces behind IFP’s 2011 Narrative and Documentary Lab projects share the stage at the end of Tuesday night’s Lab Showcase at the Walter Reade Theater. Writer/Director Gillian Robespierre discusses her screenplay Obvious Child with the Sundance Institute’s Rachel Chanoff. Writer/Director Harrison Witt (Sister Sarah) helps actor […]
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An Interview with Shit Year‘s Cam Archer
This post was originally published when Shit Year premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010. The film opens today at the IFC Center. It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #20
Second #940, 15:40 “That’s kind of interesting,” Sandy says, laughing, after Jeffrey has—out of the blue—demonstrated the chicken walk. Blue Velvet was the last Lynch film on which Alan Splet designed sound and in this scene, like so many others, it’s as if we are enveloped in an auditory cocoon. “Sound is very important,” Lynch has said, “because it really is half the film. With film, the whole can be greater than the parts if you have the sound, the image, and sequence of scenes right.” At right around second #940, the film cuts to this shot, and the sound […]
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Joe Swanberg, Factory 25 Announce New DVD Subscription Series
Prolific independent director Joe Swanberg announced today a new distribution plan for his next four films. Partnered with Factory 25, Swanberg is offering fans a four-film, one-year subscription to his work. For $99.95 subscribers will receive a box that will fill up each quarter with not only DVDs but also bonus material, including 45rpm records, photo books and posters. “I’m in the nice position right now of having so many [completed] films I’m trying to get out into the world, so I’m taking the plunge and doing something interesting,” says Swanberg.The four films are Silver Bullets and Art History (both […]
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TORONTO 2011: “WAVELENGTHS” PART II
The adventurous Wavelengths experimental film programs at the Toronto International Film Festival, curated first by Susan Oxtoby and then, in recent years, by Andréa Picard, are a true festival highlight. 2011 was exemplary in this regard, its five experimental programs marked by a diverse range of aesthetics and artistic projects. An eerie mood pervades the smart, surprising Sea Series #10 by John Price, one of the only films in the 2011 Wavelengths experimental program at the Toronto International Film Festival explicitly inspired by world events. An intertitle explains that the film was made “10,190 km from Fukushima” on May 21, 2011, two months after the deadly Japanese […]
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The Cooler Bandits
John Lucas grew up in Ohio. When Lucas decided to volunteer for the Big Brother / Big Sister program in Akron he couldn’t have known how much it would change his life, and the lives of the boys he would meet. His little brother was an eleven-year-old named Charlie. Soon after meeting Charlie he met Charlie’s cousin: Poochie. He also met a number of other kids, and started photographing all of them. After Lucas left Ohio, he would return often to the community in Akron, saddened and angered to find the lives of the children that he had known being […]
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TORONTO: WHIT STILLMAN DISCUSSES “DAMSELS IN DISTRESS”
Via The Guardian, here’s a talk with Whit Stillman and clips from his new film, Damsels in Distress.
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PLATFORMS, PMD’S & PERPETUATING OBSCURITY
Our innovation is stagnant. Stagnant and boring. Really. Boring. The movies themselves are one thing having long been locked into a race to the bottom with their Hollywood counterparts in an often times futile effort to just be noticed, but most stagnant and boring is the proliferation of new ‘platforms’ on which filmmakers can ‘launch’ their careers. Everywhere I look there is some new upstart looking to get into the digital distribution realm touting how their platform puts the power in your hands and provides a direct gateway for your film to reach an audience. A claim which, of course, […]
