Filmmaking

FREE FAIR USE DISCUSSION

Tomorrow, Friday, is the final day of the IFP Filmmaker Conference, and it’s both free and open to the general public. From 9:00AM until 10:30AM panelists will discuss issues surrounding fair use in documentary film, the limits of, benefits from, and restrictions around E&O insurance, and specific issues that have arisen in various docs having to do with fair use. It’s at the Puck Building in New York at Houston and Lafayette. Anybody working in documentary film today has to know about these issues. Here’s the schedule: FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21st – FAIR USE IN DOCUMENTARY FILM FAIR USE 101 9:00 […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007 Filmmaking
BLOGGING THE IFP FILMMAKER CONFERENCE

As we pass the half-way point, I want to thank all of our guest bloggers — Pamela, M. Dot, Alicia, and Brandon — who’ve been covering the IFP Filmmaker Conference. But as GreenCine pointed out today, there are other places to get your vicarious Conference fix. The Film Panel Notetaker has several long and detailed accounts of the various panel discussions. And Scott Kirsner has several long posts as well on his CinemaTech blog. In one, while listening to THINKfilm’s Mark Urman discuss the challenge of publicizing a film in the internet age, Kirsner goes web-surfing to the THINKfilm site […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 20, 2007 Filmmaking
Winter Chill

In 2005 indie director Larry Fessenden was troubled by the state of the world—specifically, by our leaders’ callow response to the threat of global warming. So he did what he does best: He made a horror movie. The Last Winter, about a skeleton crew of oil-dredge workers afflicted by madness and other disturbing phenomena in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, revisits some of the tropes in Fessenden’s spooky 2001 feature Wendigo, including a fearsome, shape-shifting deer-spirit. The film was overlooked when it premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, later acquired by IFC First Take (releases September 19), and recently […]

By Damon Smith on Sep 18, 2007 Directing
WELCOME BLOGGERS!

The IFP Filmmaker’s Conference is this week at the Puck Building (I’m moderating a talk with Crackel’s Tony Lisano in about an hour) and you’ll see some new and other familiar faces on the blog this week. Several filmmakers and journalists will be reporting in everthing from the various panels and events to their own experience navigating the Conference with their projects. So, check back often this week…

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 17, 2007 Filmmaking
BORDER CROSSINGS

Over at his Variety blog, “The Circuit,” Mike Jones writes in his Toronto wrap-up about an encounter with one of the Canada/U.S. border crossing officials: The border agent at the Toronto airport held me at the desk, studying my business card. He was trying to think up the title of a film he’d seen long ago. He’d scoured the internet for it and come up empty. As the line grew behind me, he described it as a story of a man abused by his wife. It involved drinking, a child, poverty, and more drinking. He leaned forward, pointing his pen, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2007 Filmmaking
RYAN IS FETED

Over at his blog, Anthony Kaufman posts a letter from Ted Hope saluting Mike Ryan, who was named one of Variety‘s 10 Producers to Watch. He begins: Despite — or maybe because of — working in the film business, it is rare that I encounter the individual that is clearly driven by passion for film, knowledgable on a wide range of subjects, has a cultivated and constantly evolving aesthetic, and lives and breathes in accordance with principals and politics that they have fully thought out and committed to; to me all those things should be up on the PGA website […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2007 Filmmaking
SHOCK AND AWE

Alfonso Cuaron’s latest film is playing at the Toronto Film Festival, but you can see it now, for free, online, below… It’s his collaboration with Jonas Cuaron and author Naomi Klein that accompanies Klein’s latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing summarizes the book’s thesis thusly: …present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. After a disaster (war, tsunami, terrorist attack), you can push your agenda for worsening labor conditions, looser regulation, and pocket-lining exercises (Enron, Halliburton) while the reeling, disaster-struck population of the world has its attention […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 9, 2007 Filmmaking
IFP MARKET TIPS

A week ago on Indiewire, Agnes Varun posted a “Doc Filmmakers Guide to the IFP Market,” which is full of solid advice from Market vets to help you navigate the upcoming conference (Sept. 16 – 19). Today, on the Renew Media blog, she posts a follow-up: the entirety of a 1,200 word piece by Tracy Heather Strain, a seven-year Market vet. It’s full of practical advice that anyone attending the Market should read.

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2007 Filmmaking
BART WALKER HEADS TO CINETIC

In what Gregg Goldstein of The Hollywood Reporter proclaims a “seismic shift of power in the independent film community,” CAA agent Bart Walker, previously the head of their NYC film office and rep to such directors as Sofia Coppola, Julie Taymor and Julian Schnabel, has left the agency to join Cinetic Media. THR reports that Cinetic’s John Sloss and Walker will form a new division, Cinetic Management. From the joint statement Sloss and Walker released: We see Cinetic as a new kind of service company, one that will create innovative structures that benefit filmmakers as well as financiers so that […]

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2007 Filmmaking
FROWNLAND REMINDER

Ronnie Bronstein’s film, co-hosted by Lodge Kerrigan… a rare screening, tonight, IFC Center/New York, 7:30…. see you there.

By Scott Macaulay on Sep 5, 2007 Filmmaking

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