Filmmaking

CANNES SNAPSHOTS: TARANTINO, NOE, HANEKE

A lack of wireless, fatigue, and my dislike of netbooks (particularly the kind in the American Pavilion) have curtailed my Cannes posting. I have no idea how Eric Kohn, Matt Dentler, Allison Willmore and the trade reviewers get their well considered reviews up so quickly after their screenings. That said, I’ll try to have my thoughts on the handful of films I saw up when I get back to Paris tomorrow. Very quickly, though, Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void is disquieting and dreamy, as much a psychologically charged immersive space as it is a conventional film narrative. Noe’s decadent Tokyo […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 23, 2009 Filmmaking
THE FEST WHERE $100,000 IS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Just posted over on Festival Ambassador, Mike Plante highlights this year’s Off Plus Camera Film Festival in Karkow, Poland (he and Trevor Groth presented the “25 Years of Sundance” program at the festival). Off Plus Camera has not only begun to grab the attention of celebs like Anna Karina (pictured) but filmmakers who can vie for it’s Grand Prize of $100,000. And I don’t mean 100g’s worth of equipment and other prizes, I mean $100,000 in cold hard U.S. cash.

By Jason Guerrasio on May 19, 2009 Filmmaking
CANNES: 42 BELOW’S ONE DREAM RUSH FILMS FETED

This year’s Cannes Film Festival was the occasion of the European premiere screening of films from One Dream Rush, a film series sponsored by 42 Below and the Beijing Film Studios in which 42 directors were commissioned to create 42-second short films dealing with and hailing from the world of dreams. What’s the difference between this series and any number of other sponsored film/multi-director internet plays? Short answer — the filmmakers chosen are great, their films are for the most part really, really good, and their extreme brevity gives each piece the quality of a memory half-remembered from a dream […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 18, 2009 Filmmaking
THE MACARTHUR FOUNDATION BYTES DOWN ON DIGITAL MEDIA

Jonathan Fanton, President of the MacArthur Foundation, has posted a “President’s Essay” in which he discusses the ways in which digital media is transforming both our lives as well as the working methodologies and granting practices of the Foundation. I recommend the essay, and particularly noteworthy is the section on media grantmaking, in which Fanton says the Foundation will now seek to fund projects that take advantage of the new distribution tools as well as those from new sources of information and that stimulate and include audience interaction. An excerpt: With these changes, the challenge of providing individuals with diverse […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 18, 2009 Filmmaking
FREE IS NOT ENOUGH

A funny thing happened on the way to the publication of Chris Anderson’s upcoming Free. The newspaper business went into free fall, other content industries may soon follow suit, and at least a small group of media consumers are beginning to wonder what type of content will be lost if everything is delivered free to the consumer but enabled (and defined?) by its advertising and marketing support. Representing the resurgent tollkeeper model is the Financial Times in this article by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson entitled “Media’s want to break free.” It concludes: Content owners are battling what Chris Anderson, author of The […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 18, 2009 Filmmaking
DIY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF LIST-BUILDING

Filmmaker Angelo Bell commented on the thread about Ted Hope’s “38 American Film Problems/Concerns,” calling it an “overexaggeration of the challenges” and responding to several of Ted’s points by saying that what is really happening now is not that business models are failing but that there is a “power shift” from studios/producers to individual filmmakers committed to exploring DIY approaches. As I said in my blog post, what Ted did was write an amazingly comprehensive list on which every filmmaker will find several points to agree with. That said, many of the points will be ignorable by each individual filmmaker […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 18, 2009 Filmmaking
CANNES: MY NEIGHBOR, MY KILLER’s ANNE AGHION

Premiering in Cannes in Un Certain Regard, Anne Aghion‘s penetrating and transfixing documentary, My Neighbor, My Killer, is the culmination of a decade-long filmmaking quest to address one of the most difficult questions facing citizens, communities, tribes, religious groups and ethnic factions around the world today: “Could you forgive the people who slaughtered your family?” In 1994 hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsis were slaughtered by Rwanda’s Hutus, with villager killing fellow villager, cousin killing cousin. The Rwanda genocide has been well covered in the media, but less focused upon has been the Gacaca Tribunals, open air citizen hearings instituted […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 17, 2009 Filmmaking
CANNES: MARKET MURMURINGS FROM THE CROISETTE

Here’s another report from producer Noah Harlan recounting the business news he’s hearing in Cannes: An additional update. I had dinner tonight with a major European Foreign Sales agent and then later was talking with an indie packaging & sales agent at a big agency and both echoed the same thoughts about the sales environment. The top end is doing pretty well but there are few films at the top. There are pockets of niche product that are moving. Everything else is totally flatlined. All the so-so films or B+ films are dead in the water and no one’s buying. […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 17, 2009 Filmmaking
A HARD 38

Ted Hope, who in the past has assembled lists of reasons to feel good about independent film, has posted the sobering opposite: a comprehensive list of “38 American Independent Film Problems/Concerns.” They include: Lack of access — outside of NYC & LA — to films when they are at their highest media awareness (encourages bootlegging, limits appeal by reducing timeliness). Distrib’s abandonment (and lack of development) of community-building marketing approaches for specialized releases (which reduces appeal for a group activity i.e. the theatrical experience). Emphasis on upfront compensation for star talent creates budgets that can’t reasonably recoup investment. HP&W fringe […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2009 Filmmaking
CANNES: ABOUT THAT RUSSIAN PRE-SALE…

A report in Screen Daily by Geoffrey McNab details problems independent producers and sales agents are having with Russian buyers as a result of the financial crisis. I’m not surprised to know that the below is happening, but it’s a little unusual to hear it discussed by the buyers themselves at a public panel. From the article: Russian distributors have issued a stark warning to U.S. sales agents – renegotiate deals on films acquired before the economic crisis or else they will stop buying altogether. Their fiercely worded remarks came during a panel discussion at the RussianPavilion in Cannes today […]

By Scott Macaulay on May 16, 2009 Filmmaking

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