Filmmaking

JIM HELTON’S “LOVE KILLS DEMONS”

As you know from my support of the Sparrow Songs project, I’m interested in time-based online filmmaking. Filmmaker (and Blue Valentine editor) Jim Helton has just completed his own one-a-month project, Love Kills Demons. From the website: Over the span of one year filmmaker Jim Helton documented New York-based artist Chris Rubino while he searched for a new direction in his work. In the process we see screenprinting, drawing, painting, wandering as well as a peak inside the workings of a studio and an artist’s process. The final 12 part film that is Love Kills Demons takes a look behind […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 29, 2010 Filmmaking
HIGH SCHOOL SPIES ON YOUTUBE

Via Mashable comes notice of Agents of Secret Stuff, a slickly-shot, 35-minute high school spy comedy film by Wong Fu Productions. After only a week or so, the group’s latest film has been seen by 2.3 million people on YouTube. Here’s Wang talking about the picture: Written in a couple days, the 35-minute movie was shot in one intense week this past summer. Drawing from the talents of a few dedicated friends, the crew was no bigger than 10 and was usually just the three of us from Wong Fu Productions (WFP), plus the actors. There was no big budget, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 28, 2010 Filmmaking
TRAILER WATCH: ADAM PENDLETON’S “BAND”

Artist Adam Pendleton has created a new large-scale video installation at New York’s The Kitchen inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Rolling Stones’ deconstruction, Sympathy for the Devil. It features the band Deerhoof and runs through December 23. From the catalog copy: This solo exhibition presents the U.S. premiere of Adam Pendleton’s new large scale video installation. Pendleton’s BAND is a form and content refashioning of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil, which stands in open contrast to the earlier film. Modeling Godard’s belief that radical formal complexity can undermine the bourgeois logic implicit to narrative filmmaking, BAND tracks the indie-rock band […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 27, 2010 Filmmaking
TRAILER WATCH: “I LIKE YOU”

Coming in over the transom is this trailer for I Like You, a film by Jamie Heinrich. Heinrich hails from Reno, Nevada, and, based on this trailer, the self-described micro-budget film boasts some pretty striking cinematography and a good deal of heart. A few sites seem to have been given an early look. From Todd Brown at Twitch: The sort of naturalistic indie drama that Gus Van Sant and Larry Clark got their start with, I Like You is the feature debut not only of director / editor Heinrich and star Benna but also, seemingly, of just about everybody else […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 27, 2010 Filmmaking
LAUREL NAKADATE’S PORN STAR POETRY

Artist and filmmaker Laurel Nakadate, whose The Wolf Knife is one of this year’s nominees for our “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award, has a new short, Untitled, in which porn stars Kate Kastle, Stacey Dollar, Robbye Bentley, Lucky Starr, and Stacy Adams read the poetry of Dora Malech. From HTML Giant’s Jackie Wang: In the video Untitled, Laurel has porn actresses read poems by Dora Malech. The interplay between Dora’s poems and the premise of the video is brilliant. The poems grapple with the tension between corporeality and disembodied intellect—being pure body or pure […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 26, 2010 Filmmaking
A SHORT FILM FOR “REQUIEM FOR A DREAM”

The Requiem 102 project, in which various critics, writers, and filmmakers (mine is here) dissect individual frames of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, is now in its third week, and the quality of submissions is both amazing and diverse. The latest is photographer Bruce Livingstone, who has made a short narrative commenting on the film’s early love scene. Reading the Love Scene in “Requiem for a Dream” from Bruce Livingston on Vimeo. Another good one: novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Hand’s “potent blast to the nervous system.”

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 26, 2010 Filmmaking
BLACK FRIDAY DEALS FOR FILMMAKERS

Black Friday — the shopping day after Thankgiving that is supposed to tip retailers’ balance sheets into the black — has been a staple of holiday consumerism for years, but I’m not sure I ever remember it quite like this. Not only did chain stores open in the dead of night this year, but every small, specialty and online dealer I buy from has flooded my in-box with discount offers. After this email deluge I feel a little silly that I didn’t move up Filmmaker‘s annual subscription deal a week to take advantage of all the shopping frenzy. Oh well, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 26, 2010 Filmmaking
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

From all of us at Filmmaker, best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers. We hope everyone has a great and safe holiday, and we’ll be back tomorrow and into the weekend with news on the Gotham Awards as well as all of our regular content

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 25, 2010 Filmmaking
DEBATING CLIMATE CHANGE AT IDFA

Before IDFA’s Green Screen Climate Debate began at the Escape Club in Rembrandtplein Monday afternoon, our host noted that none other than Al Gore was due to arrive at Schiphol airport at any moment (no doubt in one of his private environmentally-damaging jets). Though he was in Holland to receive an award, the Nobel laureate, unfortunately, had declined the festival’s offer to stop by to debate. Too bad because we were left with the star of Cool It, Bjorn Lomborg — the John Cameron Mitchell-resembling “skeptical environmentalist” whose book the film was based on — instead facing down Jan Rotman, […]

By Lauren Wissot on Nov 24, 2010 Filmmaking
IS AMAZON STUDIOS A THREAT? JIM MCKAY AND I DISCUSS

After posting last week about the new Amazon Studios, director Jim McKay and I have had an email discussion about this new crowdsourced development entity. There’s been much criticism — from me but many others around the web — of the minimal protections given writers, who grant Amazon an 18-month free option and the right to have the tech giant’s online community give input to and even rewrite their original work. (Read my earlier post here.) Jim isn’t as alarmist as some about the new venture; his take is rather nuanced. Here’s our conversation, reprinted with permission. McKay: I liked […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 23, 2010 Filmmaking

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