YouTube illusions are becoming a genre all their own. This one is kinda gorgeous. (Hat tip: iTricks.)
For a while AMC has been an approachable theater chain for independent filmmakers seeking a direct way to get their films in front of theatrical audiences. Now, the company has announced AMC Independent (“AMCi”), a program that commits screens in 60 AMC venues to independent fare. Most of the films upcoming on the initial AMCi slate are mini-major titles (Please Give, Babies) that I’m sure would have wound up on AMC screens anyway, but the fact that the company has positioned the program they way it has — and the noises they are making about future programming — are encouraging […]
Premiering in the documentary competition at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, Alex Mar’s American Mystic is a poem of a film, following three young people in America who have chosen to make their spiritual practice the center of their lives. A pagan priestess who proudly defines herself as a witch, Morpheus has moved to the outskirts of rural California to create a pagan sanctuary on a small plot of land. Kublai, a Spiritualist medium, works on a farm in upstate New York but spends his off hours with his head in the hands of elderly women, learning to channel […]
Last night’s Stranger Than Fiction screening of Doug Block’s The Kids Grow Up was a homecoming of sorts. Block’s previous foray into personal documentary 51 Birch Street was actually the first ever film to be screened in the series, a fact announced by its organizer, Thom Powers, when he introduced it (and his new baby) to the audience. In 51 Birch Street, Block recounted how his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent remarriage crystallized doubts he’d always had about his parent’s marriage. Block’s latest outing, The Kids Grow Up, is similarly a family affair — it weaves archival footage of […]
Yesterday, in an 8-1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a statute that would have infringed on certain documentary makers’ First Amendment rights. Relating to the depiction of animal cruelty and killing on screen, the statute, by criminalizing such depictions, would have limited filmmakers’ abilities to cover any number of subjects ranging from hunting to our food industry to, ironically, animal abuse itself. The IFP New York was one of several organizations filing an amicus brief in support of the filmmaker filing the case, a documentarian named Robert Stevens who was sentenced to 37 months in Federal prison for […]
Earlier today Cannes unveiled the 24 films selected for its annual sidebar, Directors’ Fortnight. Opening this year with Renaud Barret & Florent de la Tullaye’s documentary Benda Bilili!, the line-up is dominated by first-time filmmakers, 11 in all. One American standout is Cam Archer (Wild Tigers I Have Known) who will be screening his latest, Shit Year, starring Ellen Barkin. Fortnight will take place May 13-23. Full list of titles below. FEATURE FILMS Alegria (Joy), directed by Marina Méliande et Felipe Braganca (Brazil) All Good Children, directed by Alicia Duffy (UK) Alting bliver godt igen (Everything Will Be Fine), directed […]
MSNBC’s nightly programs are manna, a much-needed counterbalance to the agitprop spewing from Fox News. Reading Stephen Holden’s preview of the Tribeca Film Festival in the April 16th edition of the Times, I wondered if we need more than ever an alternative print organ covering culture, in New York anyway, with the clout of the Times. Holden parrots Tribeca’s moldy marketing theme, then jumps to a questionable conclusion. “Because the festival…was born in the ashes of the World Trade Center as a community development project to revive the devastated economy of Lower Manhattan, you might say My Trip to Al-Qaeda is woven into […]
Too enthralled by the latest social media craze? Those are the questions posed by producer Mike Ryan (Junebug, Life During Wartime, 40 Shades of Blue) in his essay in the new issue of Filmmaker, which you can read online now. From his piece: Developing content and nurturing auteurs should be our top concern, not figuring out distribution models or revenue schemes. The whole purpose of independent film is to make films that aren’t prefabricated to hit a target audience of someone else’s devising. In fact, it’s that kind of market-centric thinking that puffed up the bubble with derivative films; it’s […]
Now online check out select stories from our Spring issue, which will hit stands next week. Alex Gibney talks about this latest doc, Casino Jack and the United States of Money; Laura Poitras follows up her Oscar nominated My Country, My Country with the powerful The Oath; and Bahman Ghobadi explains the challenges behind making No One Knows About Persian Cats. Plus, YouTube’s Sara Pollack discusses the site’s distribution model, production designer Jack Fisk recounts his 30-plus year career, Anthony Kaufman wonders where’s the under-30 indie film audience in Industry Beat, and in two passionate pieces that highlight opposite ends […]
If, after all the talk about indie film panels this past week, you would like to attend one… More info here. (Hat tip: Jamie Stuart)