Filmmaking

SIX DAY WEEK

Eugene Hernandez at Indiewire has the scoop on some rebranding at the IFP. The IFP Market has been rechristened Independent Film Week. The works-in-progress section will now be called the Project Forum. And, the event, which takes place September 14 – 19, will move to F.I.T. in Chelsea. No word on whether Tim Gunn will be moderating any of the filmmaker workshops. IFP Executive Director Michelle Byrd is quoted in Eugene’s piece: “In the film industry, the word ‘Market’ suggests business transactions, but IFP’s commitment to filmmakers and their projects extends long beyond the six days of Independent Film Week,” […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
THREE TIMES IS THE CHARM

Dade Hayes in Variety reports on the big news coming out of the NYC Governor’s Office: the state is tripling it’s 10% tax credit for below-the-line production costs, taking it to 30%. The State Legislature approved the bill, and now it awaits Governor Patterson’s signature. Add in the New York City rebate and you wind up with 35% against below-the-line costs associated with shooting in New York. The increased rebate is designed to make New York more competitive with Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which have large rebate programs. Just as significant is a change made to the structure of […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
IFP ROUGH CUT LAB DEADLINE TOMORROW!

Just a quick reminder if you were planning to submit your project to the IFP Rough Cut Lab, which I’ll be mentoring this year with Gretchen McGowan. The deadline is tomorrow, Friday, April 11. You can read more about the program here, along with info on submitting your project. If selected, you’ll join some very good company. Past Rough Cut Lab films include two big films on this year’s fest circuit, Jennifer Phang’s Gen Art Grand Prize winning Half Life and Tom Quinn’s Slamdance Grand Prize-winning The New Year’s Parade.

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
SHANE CARRUTH, PHONE HOME

Over at the Onion A.V. Club, Scott Tobias inducts a worthy feature into what he calls “The New Cult Canon”: Primer, Shane Carruth’s no-budget, intellectually forceful and narratively complex Sundance Grand Prize-winning sci-fi movie. Here’s Tobias: The genius of Primer is that form matches content: Carruth is telling a story about a couple of young inventors working out of a garage, so it follows that he’d take a similarly analog approach to filmmaking. An autodidact with an engineering background, Carruth shot the film in his native Dallas, with his parents’ house serving as a primary location. From the very first […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2008 Filmmaking
CATCH-UP BLOGGING

We just put the new Spring issue of Filmmaker to bed, so that’s why there hasn’t been much blogging here. Really, I was going to try to burn the midnight oil and throw some postings up, but then I read the now infamous New York Times “Death by Blogging” article and thought better of it. So, here are a few things I would have posted about in greater detail if I had the time. First, as you know from reading this blog, we try to keep up with and promote the work of our annual “25 New Faces” filmmakers. I […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2008 Filmmaking
A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE?

One of the more curious projects out there right now is reported on by Jeff Wells today over at Hollywood Elsewhere. It’s the adaptation of Peter Biskind’s Down and Dirty Pictures, which is to be directed by Kenneth Bowser, best known for his Emmy Award-winning episode of American Masters on John Ford and his helming of the doc version of Biskind’s previous Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. Now he’s heading behind the camera again for a dramatic adaptation of Biskind’s book chronicling the rise of independent film — or, more accurately, the growth of the mini-majors and the specialty film market. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Apr 2, 2008 Filmmaking
PAUL ARTHUR, R.I.P.

Manohla Dargis notes the passing of film historian, critic and filmmaker Paul Arthur in the New York Times. An excerpt: He was first published in the early 1970s, and over the next few decades he wrote fluidly and accessibly on a range of topics, notably avant-garde cinema but also film noir and documentary. His work appeared in publications including Artforum, Film Comment, Cineaste, The Village Voice and USA Today magazine. For several years starting in the mid-1980s he served on the board for two venerable avant-garde film institutions in New York: the Collective for Living Cinema, an adventurous screening space, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2008 Filmmaking
WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Here’s a roundup of some stuff that caught my eye in the blogosphere this weekend. There’s a lively discussion going on over at Indiewire regarding the Tribeca Film Festival’s “embargo” rule that attempts to prohibit press from writing about pre-screened films until after their Tribeca premiere. Of course, in the world of mainstream journalism, embargos happen all the time; what irks a pretty passionate group of responding posters is the TFF’s attempt to be strict with this rule when it comes to the online journalists who can often positively motivate a fan base leading up to a film’s fest premiere. […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2008 Filmmaking
ARTS ENGINE NABS DOCUCLUB

Celebrating its tenth year, the organization Arts Engine, which produces, supports and distributes social-issue media, has announced today that it will be expanding its services to include DocuClub, the 14-year-old program dedicated to nurturing documentaries that are works-in-progress. DocuClub’s first screening of ’08 will be recent “25 New Faces” Kimberly Reed‘s Prodigal Sons, taking place next month in New York City. Arts Engine is also re-launching its fiscal sponsorship program, which has provided services for films such as My Kid Could Paint That, God Grew Tired of Us, The Story of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, The Trials of […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Mar 28, 2008 Filmmaking
AUSTIN FLASHBACKS

With Austin’s SXSW 2008 now a memory, perhaps it’s appropriate that Spencer Parsons’ essay on the changing topography of the city itself has just gone up at the FilmInFocus site. The critic, professor and filmmaker (his feature I’ll Come Running, starring Melonie Diaz, should appear on the festival circuit this year) pens an ode to the places the city has lost since Rick Linklater’s Slacker memorialized a whole stretch of its countercultural topography. And despite the inherent whiff of nostalgia, Parsons finds much to like in Austin today while writing more broadly about the ways artists appropriate and create from […]

By Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2008 Filmmaking

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