If you aren’t able to make it to the IFC Center tonight for Ondi Timoner’s Sundance Prize-winning We Live in Public, you can catch the Q&A via a live webcast. The webcast is embedded below, and it’s scheduled to be live at 9:15 and 11:20. Get the Pseudo Button widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox!
I haven’t seen Philip Ridley’s second feature, The Passion of Darkly Noon…. but I am a fan of his debut film, The Reflecting Skin, which I saw at its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival many years ago. On the basis of that grandiose, gothic picture, I’ve been wanting to see more of him. So, like the BBC’s Mark Kermode, I am looking forward to his new one.
Robin Wilby’s Loop Planes , produced by Christine Vachon, is the first project to emerge from the partnership between Massify and Killer Films, and it has just wrapped production. Brooke Sebold is documenting the process over at Massify, and the first video is now up. It is embedded below, and make sure to visit the page and the site for more on the project and Massify in general. Massify + Killer Films Episode 1 from Massify on Vimeo.
Last year producer Ted Hope gave the keynote address at Film Independent’s Fourth Annual Filmmaker Forum and began a dialogue on the changing face of independent film that he has carried over to regular postings on his Truly Free Film blog. Last week Hope received the Vision Award at Vision Fest 09 from the Filmmaker’s Alliance. Presented by Alan Ball, the award has heretofore only been given to directors. The clips have just gone up on YouTube — check out Hope’s message to the independent community.
Over at the new IFP Independent Film Week 2009 blog, Danielle DiGiacomo sits down with Independent Film Week ’08 veteran Bryan Wizemann, who has a number of promising projects that might just be about to go… and then he’s got a short film that questions the wisdom of it all. At Wholphin check out Film Makes Us Happy, a short in which Wizemann interviews on-camera his wife and asks her whether he should give up film. It’s a painful watch, although one with a lot of relevance to many filmmakers trying to balance work and family needs. From the interview […]
When I initially talked with producer Jake Abraham about contributing a piece to our Web Exclusives section about his DIY distribution of Kirt Gunn’s Lovely by Surprise, I told him I wanted it to be a two-parter. I wanted him to check back after the release had time to prove itself and let us know how it all worked out. Well, as Abraham notes in the intro to his just-posted new piece, “Tweet This!”, that time has come sooner rather than later. In brief, Abraham was compelled to write when he discovered that the film he’s been tirelessly promoting has […]
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t expect Inglourious Basterds to be as big a hit as it is when we selected it for Filmmaker‘s cover. I love the movie, but I thought it’s more idiosyncratic qualities would take it out of mainstream orbit. I’m really happy to be wrong. And while credit gets passed around to the Weinsteins, the publicists, etc., Tarantino should take some himself. He defied the pundits who opined that he had to cut a half hour or so out of the film after Cannes (the current cut is actually one minute longer), refusing […]
Posted this morning over on the main page are interviews with Hirokazu Kore-eda on his touching family drama Still Walking and Robert Siegel talks about his dark comedy Big Fan. Both films open in limited release this weekend.
A connoisseur of longing and remembrance who brings great sensitivity to each of his reflective fables, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda should be better known in the States, as his films extend the tradition of world-class artists like Naruse and Ozu. Enthralled with the operation of memory and the impact of grief on the lives of everyday people, Kore-eda has created a body of work that’s as rich with feeling as it is modest in tone. In Maborosi (1995), Kore-eda told the story of a quietly devastated young widow struggling to move on after her husband commits suicide. He then departed from […]
Back in 2005 Matt Ross selected STEW for our “25 New Faces” list. STEW is the multi-media art duo consisting of theater artists Stew and Heidi Rodewald, and they had just staged their show Passing Strange at the Public Theater and attended the Sundance Producer’s Lab. Four years later a film version of Passing Strange opens at the IFC Center, directed by Spike Lee. Check it out this weekend and meet Stew and Heidi, who will be appearing in person at the shows. Here’s the trailer: