Filmmaking

SITA SINGS THE BLUES PREMIERES — ONLINE AND FOR FREE!

Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues, the winner of the Filmmaker-sponsored “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham award, screens on WNET’s Reel 13 series on March 7, but the complete feature is now available online at the Channel 13 site. If you aren’t going to be home on the 7th, don’t have TiVo, or just want to sample some of the movie and find out what all the fuss is about, click here.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2009 Filmmaking
PETER SCARLET STEPS DOWN AT TRIBECA

In perhaps the most curious use of a Billy Wilder reference in film festival journalism, Tribeca Film Festival director Peter Scarlet has resigned from his position just two months before this year’s festival and less than two weeks after Tribeca hired former Sundance director Geoff Gilmore to a postion as chief creative officer at Tribeca Enterprises. From Peter Knegt’s story in Indiewire: “The term ‘The Seven-Year Itch’ always evokes that famous still of Marilyn Monroe standing on a NY subway grating with her skirt blowing up around her thighs,” Scarlet said in a statement today. “But as my 7th Tribeca […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2009 Filmmaking
IATSE CREW EMAIL FUNNY… BUT FOR THE WRONG REASONS?

Over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke publishes an email that is circulating among IATSE members that is a satirical attack on IA leadership for not aggressively expanding jurisdiction into New Media productions. And while I sympathize with union members who are watching the entertainment conglomerates move into web production, I have to wonder whether the below really helps their cause: FILM CREW WANTED: “New Media” production company seeks crew for experimental project. Applicants must be able to create, research, write, coordinate, production design, art direct, construct, paint, dress & decorate sets, location manage, assist direct, design/tailor/supply costumes, do hair […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2009 Filmmaking
A NEW, REVISED LIFE FOR THE NEW YORK TAX CREDIT?

News this week about the New York State Film and Television Tax Credit program, which is currently in a kind of limbo now that the funding allocated for it by the State has unexpectedly run out just ten months in a multi-year program. First, there was an article in the New York Post by Tom Topousis that reported that Governor Patterson’s office has indicated that it will seek additional funding for the program. The article included these two intriguing paragraphs: Marissa Lago, president of the Empire State Development Corp., told a breakfast meeting of the Association for a Better New […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 28, 2009 Filmmaking
DUSHKU, TIMONER BRING MAPPLETHORPE TO THE SCREEN

Here is an unexpected pairing: Dollhouse star Eliza Dushku and her Boston Diva Productions will team with doc director Ondi Timoner, who won the Sundance Doc Grand Jury Prize this year with We Live in Public, to make a biopic about the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. From Tatiana Siegel’s Variety piece: Dushku has secured the exclusive rights and the full cooperation from Mapplethorpe’s estate and has enlisted two-time Sundance grand jury prize winner and indie darling Ondi Timoner (“DIG!”) to helm the film, which is titled “The Perfect Moment.” Timoner’s Interloper Films and Dushku’s Boston Diva Prods. are producing the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2009 Filmmaking
DOC FILMMAKER WINS FIRST AMENDMENT SUIT

From the law firm Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein and Selz comes a press release announcing the New York State Court dismissal of case brought against doc filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love. It’s great to see a filmmaker challenging such a seemingly frivolous lawsuit and winning. Excerpted from the press release: The film centers on the controversy surrounding Grammy-award winning musician Youssou Ndour’s release of his acclaimed album “Egypt.” Plaintiff, a former attorney for Mr. Ndour, appears briefly in archival footage taken at a press conference. “Vexatious right of publicity claims often hamstring documentary filmmakers,” said […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2009 Filmmaking
HAND-HELD COPPOLA

Check out Francis Ford Coppola’s new site for his forthcoming movie Tetro, starring Vincent Gallo. He’s got a video blog going with an accompanying flash gallery of images. The first vlog, just posted today (and shot by the director with the camera in his outstretched hand), is a brief intro to the film (and his Napa Valley workspace), and Coppola discusses why it’s his first original screenplay since The Conversation. From the site: It is his most personal film yet, arising from memories and emotions from his early life, though totally fictional. It is the bittersweet story of two brothers, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 25, 2009 Filmmaking
UNDER WRAPS

Director Maria Beatty last appeared in Filmmaker in 2002 when she interviewed Erin Cressida Wilson about her screenplay for Steve Shainberg’s Secretary, and since then we’ve been hearing about her plans for a mainstream narrative feature. Now, reports Lauren Wissot in a “sneak peek” at The House Next Door, Beatty has finished Bandaged, which is executive produced by Abel Ferrara. From Wissot, an excerpt: Bandaged is S&M filmmaker Maria Beatty’s foray into the indie mainstream – if one could call a flick best described as Mädchen in Uniform meets The English Patient meets Eyes Without A Face “mainstream.” Fittingly, none […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2009 Filmmaking
BETWEEN THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION

Okay, here’s a pull quote you won’t often get from me: this film is good for your soul. I’m referring to Astra Taylor’s Examined Life, which opens tomorrow at the IFC Center in New York and which is so engaging, hopeful and against-the-grain that it becomes a must-see cinematic tonic for these confusing times. Examined Life is Taylor’s documentary about the related acts of thinking and walking. Using the history of mobile thought as her springboard (for more on this, read Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust), Taylor (pictured) follows eight philosophers as they stroll through their hometown environments engaging in a series […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2009 Filmmaking
SAM FULLER CREATES THE PERFECT WEB VIDEO

Well not, apparently, that Sam Fuller, although there’s something about this aerial view of New York City that seems timeless. Check out the director’s lovely “New York Paper Airplane Flight,” which is aided immensely by the Alexandre Desplat score (from Birth) that is yoked to it. Flying from Sam Fuller on Vimeo. Perhaps paper airplane flights are a new web sub-genre, like pet tricks and microwaved explosions? Here’s another take on the same idea, shot in 2000. Hat tip: Very Short List.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 24, 2009 Filmmaking

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