Filmmaking
Filmmaking
-
The Ten Best Undistributed Films of 2024
This year was a peak travel year for me, mostly festival-enabled, and I was pleased by the number of good films I was privileged to see along the way that I wouldn’t have otherwise. While the globalization of film via the internet has improved access all round, it’s a mistake to think that everything good winds up somewhere legally accessible, even if only as an obscure VOD option. Some films remain unaccounted for, which is both unfortunate and a reminder of how many good films there remain to see. Here are ten of the year’s best, with links to their longer […]
-
Cinema is Not a Sport: My End of the Year List, 2024
At the end of each year comes the excitement of listing my favorite released films. This is a moment where I like to reflect on the status of modern cinema. When great films populate my list, ones that make my heart pound, I become alit with hope. Great is the desire to believe in the work being made today, especially as the gems of today’s moviemaking are often found on the deeper pages of Letterboxd.com’s most popular movies. In the 1950s, for example, the most critically lauded films are ranked at the top of page #1, sorted by the most popular […]
-
“Apple Changed the Whole Landscape of How You Market a Product”: Sebastian Pardo on Crafting Graphic Design for The Brutalist
In late October, A24 dropped a teaser for their highly anticipated The Brutalist, where glimpses of Brady Corbet’s epic flash by as credits and review pullquotes horizontally crawl across the screen like the VistaVision-format celluloid that ran through the camera to capture the picture. It’s a sharp piece of trailer design that formally evokes the experience of the film as much as it serves as a piece of marketing. The design of the scroll also summons the Bauhaus stylings that inspire the architecture of The Brutalist’s subject, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), highlighting the words on screen around evocations of the […]
-
The Animals Around Us: Amalia Ulman Visits Isabella Rossellini
In the first of a series on filmmakers and their relationship to the animal world, artist, director, writer and actress Amalia Ulman visits with actress, director (of the short film series Green Porno, among others), model and animal behaviorist Isabella Rossellini at her regenerative farm, Mama Farm. Rossellini can currently be seen on screen in Edward Berger’s Conclave playing Vatican nun Sister Agnes, while El Planeta director Ulman’s newest film is Magic Farm, premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Photographs by Amalia Ulman. On October 2, I visited Isabella Rossellini’s farm with Gabriella. We took the train from Penn […]
-
Sentient Images: RaMell Ross on Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross’s 2018 feature debut, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, is a non-narrative portrait of its Alabama locale, shot entirely by the filmmaker over years of immersion, his instinctually captured material assembled into intricate juxtapositions. Few scale-ups for a second film have been more dramatic: Nickel Boys is a narrative feature adapted from a pre-existing text (Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Nickel Boys), proceeding in more-or-less linear order through an incident-filled narrative, with an on-record budget of around $23 million and production handled by Plan B Entertainment and Louverture Films. The latter’s Joslyn Barnes was also a producer and […]
-
Hits & Misses 2024: Case Studies of Six Sundance 2024 Premieres
In September, Variety declared, “Indie Films Are Staging a Box Office Comeback,” touting the success of the films Longlegs, Thelma and Late Night with the Devil as signs of life for a segment of the industry “crushed by COVID, strikes and streaming,” as reporter Brent Lang wrote. “And while it’s a long way from the arthouse heyday of the 1990s and early aughts, the turnaround is impressive.” Maybe not that impressive. Citing the more than $100 million global gross of Longlegs, a NEON-produced wide-release serial-killer movie, as some kind of indie darling misses the point. Thelma and Late Night are […]
-
My Hot Librarian Summer: Libraries and Independent Film Distribution Strategies
It can take two or more years for independent films to progress through festival, theatrical, VOD, streaming and maybe airline releases, after which their discoverability fades. For filmmakers, the question then becomes, “How will people discover my movie now?” For many, the answer revolves around libraries. Across public, college and university libraries, there are estimates that up to 30 percent of library checkouts are movies, not books. Filled with DVDs, libraries have become the new Blockbuster—but, increasingly reliant on library-specific streaming services, they’re also becoming the new Netflix. Many of us independent filmmakers are so excited to sign a distribution […]
-
“Don’t Expect to Like ‘Em:” The Making of Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky
Entering to a standing ovation at a Friday-night screening of Mikey and Nicky at New York’s Metrograph on December 6, Elaine May looked out at the full house. “I was told this entire audience is made up of editors,” she said. And then, mock-anticipating their first question, she declared “Steenbeck,” name-checking the flatbed editing table on which her 1976 film was cut. The event was organized by the American Cinema Editors as part of their ongoing Filmcraft series at the Lower East Side Theater, and May was accompanied onstage by two editors; series moderator Phillip Schopper, and Jeffrey Wolf, who […]
-
Considerations: More Golden Globes Silly Season
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. We’re now five weeks away from the Jan. 17 Oscar noms, and the last few days have seen which campaigns are working—at least with critics and whoever is voting for the Golden Globes these days. And miraculously, no main frontrunner has emerged in the best picture race, although the sure things are making themselves known. Over the last week, while publications began rolling out their year-end lists, critics in New York and Los Angeles voted […]
-
UTA Partner Theresa Peters Joins the Gotham Film & Media Institute’s Board of Directors
The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s parent publication, announced today that UTA Partner Theresa Peters will join the organization’s Board of Directors. Known as a guiding force in entertainment who has shaped the evolution of countless careers across film and media, Peters will work with The Gotham to advance its mission of celebrating and nurturing independent film and media creators by providing career-building resources, access to industry influencers, and pathways to wider recognition. “Theresa Peters represents the very best of what an industry leader can be – someone who not only shapes the careers of renowned artists but also creates […]
