Filmmaking

AASIF MANDVI TO HOST GOTHAMS

IFP announced today that The Daily Show With Jon Stewart‘s correspondent Aasif Mandvi will be hosting this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards on Dec. 2. Named one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film this year for his upcoming project, 7 to the Palace, which he stars and co-wrote, Mandvi was recently in the Ricky Gervais-starrer Ghost Town and appeared in episodes of The Sopranos and Sex and the City. But he’s best known for his witty fake reporting on The Daily Show and will certainly have a lot of material to play with come Dec. 2. Interesting sidenote: […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Oct 30, 2008 Filmmaking
THE SKY IS JUST FINE, THANK YOU

For those who enjoyed the excerpt we put up of Scott Macaulay‘s roundtable discussion on the current state of independent film from the Fall issue, one of the participants, Ted Hope, was on NHPR’s “Word of Mouth” this week and continued the thinking that he voiced for the magazine and at his keynote address at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum: the truly free filmmaking community will survive.

By Jason Guerrasio on Oct 30, 2008 Filmmaking
MILK PREMIERES IN SAN FRANCISCO

Executive producer William Horberg attended the premiere of Gus Van Sant’s Milk last night in San Francisco and writes about it on his blog. An excerpt: It was almost 37 years ago that Harvey Milk, the subject of the film, moved to the Castro District from New York City and set up his camera shop there with his boyfriend Scott Smith, at what was to become ground zero in a cultural movement and struggle for respect and equal rights for gay people that, despite the major victories Harvey and his supporters achieved before his untimely assassination, as he became the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2008 Filmmaking
FILMMAKER’S GUIDE TO HALLOWEEN HORROR

For those of you planning a Halloween viewing party, the staff of Filmmaker has compiled thoughts on seven films guaranteed to generate chills. Inside. If you watch a lot of horror films, at a certain point you being to feel that you’ve seen it all. I did… at least until I saw Inside. This French shocker is part of a new wave of Gallic horror that includes films like Haute Tension, Frontieres, Calvaire and Them. For me, it’s the most extreme and transgressive of the bunch, mostly due to its relentless, remorseless elaboration of its queasy premise: a pregnant woman, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2008 Filmmaking
PLANNING FOR THE BEST CASE FESTIVAL SCENARIO

If you’re one of, probably, about 3,000 feature filmmakers who have submitted your features to the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, then you are beginning to think about that best-case scenario: getting in. After the acceptance rush fades, you will realize that the whole process of finishing your film, scheduling the festival, and devising a publicity and marketing plan is a lot of work. To help you out producer Ted Hope, who has a lot of first-hand experience, has been posting this week on this Truly Free Film blog a series of pieces on the different stages of the process. He […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2008 Filmmaking
WHAT EIGHT YEARS BRINGS

The filmmaker Charles Stone caused a sensation in the indie film world in 1998 with his short film, True, which launched him in both the film and ad worlds. The hilarious short, along with his music videos, led him to make his first feature, Paid in Full. And when the short was seen by ad agency DDB Needham, they had the idea to hire Stone to take the characters and concept and apply it to a Budweiser ad. These spots, called Whassup?!, won all the big advertising awards in 2000 and Stone went on to make movies like Drumline and […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 29, 2008 Filmmaking
BILLY THE KID ARRIVES ON VIDEO

Jennifer Venditti’s doc Billy the Kid arrives on home video today. Check out Nick Dawson’s interview with Venditti here.

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2008 Filmmaking
MARK GILL ON THE FUTURE OF THE THEATRICAL BIZ

In what is something like an appendix to his famous “The Sky is Falling” L.A. Film Festival keynote speech, Film Department head Mark Gill is the guest on this week’s issue of the “The Business” film podcast. Gill’s segment is called “Mini-Majors, Endangered Species?”, and in it he discusses the independent film theatrical business in the wake of this year’s specialty label shrinkage. Like everyone, Gill wags his finger at overproduction but then he extends the argument to its logical end result — fewer movies in theaters. And that he likes. Quoting Gill: “The first and the best news is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2008 Filmmaking
Zizek and Henri-Levy on Kusturica

In a piece entitled “Clash of the Titans” at the Haaretz.com blog, Shlomzion Kenan writes about the recent debate between two “superstar philosophers,” Bertrand Henri-Levy and Slavoj Zizek, at the New York Public Library in late September. At one point, the conversation veered into a discussion of the Serbian director Emir Kusturica, whose vision of his homeland Zizek subjects to a a typically idiosyncratic critique of “the carnival.” From the piece: Joyously, Zizek spreads arms out and declares to Levy: “I hope we share another point, which is – to be brutal – hatred of [director] Emir Kusturica. ‘Underground’ is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2008 Filmmaking
THE ELEPHANT IN THE SCREENING ROOM

At The Hollywood Reporter, Gregg Goldstein reports on the stellar per-screen gross of Seth Grossman’s The Elephant King this weekend at the Angelika Film Center. The 2006 Tribeca selection, now being distributed by producer Unison Films and Strand Releasing did $16,000 despite modest P&A. The secret was apparently a blend of grass-roots marketing targeting non-film constituencies as well as a Gen Art-like blend of a screening and premiere party for a higher ticket price. From the piece: Unison head Emanuel Michael worked with Priority Films to contact Asian, Thai, drug and alcohol groups, and film schools at local universities. The […]

By Scott Macaulay on Oct 27, 2008 Filmmaking

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