Filmmaking

ETHIOPIA AND GHANA?

Alexa has added country rankings to their free internet traffic counter and, for reasons I can’t explain, they are claiming that Filmmaker is the 88th most visited website in Ethiopia. And we are in the top 2,000 in Ghana. I’m happy to see our stats up, of course, but I don’t know why our page view rate is several hundred times higher in Ethiopia than elsewhere. Speaking of internet traffic, Filmmaker coolly slipped over the 50,000 friends mark on our MySpace page, so if you’ve got a film to promote, join and post your banner or poster as a comment.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 18, 2007 Filmmaking
JENA DOES THE SOCIAL REGISTRY

While in Rotterdam I caught Container, the latest experiment from one my favorite filmmakers, Lukas Moodysson. The film, which premiered in Berlin last year, features black-and-white footage of a heavy-set crossdresser and a young Asian woman doing all sorts of strange things underneath a voiceover by actress Jena Malone. To be clear, it is Jena Malone on the soundtrack, and she identifies herself as “the American actress Jena Malone,” but it’s unclear if the non-diagetic voiceover is completely unrelated to the image or whether its the fantasy of one of the characters. In any case, Picturehouse supposedly has the film […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2007 Filmmaking
THE FILMMAKER AS FINANCIER

With his various blogs, Sujewa Ekanayake has been a tireless supporter of DIY independent filmmaking. Now, he’s going to put his money where his keyboard has been with a gesture that, if replicated by others, could lead to a new way of financing no-budget films. Two years after the United Nations announced “The Year of Microcredit,” Ekanayake is applying the economic model pioneered by Muhammad Yunus in which tiny loans — microcredit — are offered to unproven entrepreneurs in order to realize their projects to independent moviemaking. From Wikipedia: Microcredit is the extension of very small loans (microloans) to the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2007 Filmmaking
A WALK IN THE SEA WINS THE TEDDY

Congrats to Esther Robinson (pictured), one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces, for winning this year’s Berlin Film Festival Teddy Award with her A Walk in the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory. For more on the film check out Brian Brooks at Indiewire, who has a feature up on Robinson’s doc along with two others: Steven Kijak’s Scott Walker documentary and Rodolphe Marconi’s Lagerfeld Confidential. Check out the Teddy link above for the other awards, which include the Best Narrative Feature Prize to Zero Chou’s Spider Lillies.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 17, 2007 Filmmaking
GRINDHOUSE TRAILER ONLINE

Okay, this looks pretty great.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2007 Filmmaking
WHEN A TREE FALLS IN BERLIN

Over at Indiewire, Eugene Hernandez has an excellent report from Berlin on the premiere of Ryan Eslinger’s When a Tree Falls in the Forest. Eslinger, who was one of our 25 New Faces in 2004, is one of the youngest directors to premiere a film in Berlin’s Competition. If you read the industry papers, it’s been a mixed blessing as the film received several negative trade reviews and star Sharon Stone didn’t show for the post-screening Q and A. Hernandez offers a more balanced view, noting fest head Dieter Kosslick’s support for Eslinger and quoting Raj Roy, the American member […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 16, 2007 Filmmaking
ZODIAC X NINE

For those of you excited about the March 2 release of David Fincher’s latest, Zodiac, IESB.net has posted nine clips from the film. And, if you haven’t read it yet, check out Jamie Stuart’s “Are We there Yet?”, an article on HD cinematography that talks with d.p. Harris Savides about his work on the film.

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2007 Filmmaking
NIGHT AND THE CITY

I was surprised how purely lovely I found Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers, currently on display through tomorrow (Monday) night outside the Museum of Modern Art. Using multiple projectors to beam images onto walls and screens affixed outside the museum, Aitken’s public art film has an appealingly simple concept: the synchronous, small-scale moments that echo between a group of otherwise disparate New Yorkers going about their daily lives. With actors like Tilda Swinton, Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power), Seu Jorge and Donald Sutherland and carefully composed images that alternate between shallow focus portraits and geometric abstraction, Aitken’s silent city cinema does what […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 11, 2007 Filmmaking
EASY COME, EASY GO?

It’s late at night in Europe, and I’m not quite sure what to make of this article I’ve just read in Variey by William Triplett entitled “IRS strips indie film tax breaks.” The thrust of the article: the IRS has ennacted onerous restrictions on the film financing tax break contained in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. This tax break has incentivized private investors to invest in independent film by allowing them to deduct the full amount of their investment in the first year rather than amortizing it over multiple years. According to the Variety article, the IRS is […]

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 9, 2007 Filmmaking
HOOKING UP

Mike Mohan, who some of you may know from his work at the Sundance Institute, is also a director, and he’s just launched a new web series at Atom Films called “Casual Encounters.” It’s a sort of mockumentary spoof on the whole phenomenon of finding a one night stand on internet sites like Craig’s List. Two episodes are already posted, with more promised for the coming weeks. Here’s episode one (and it’s, as they say, NSFW — “not safe for work”).

By Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2007 Filmmaking

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