Filmmaking

ASK RYAN AND ANNA

If you’re wondering how filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden made a great first feature that has racked up a ton of awards, including last night’s Gotham win, well, ask them yourself. The Daily Reel has them in their “Ask the Expert” section. Click on the link for the email address to forward your own questions about independent production.

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2006 Filmmaking
IFP GOTHAM AWARDS

The Gotham Awards were handed out Wednesday night in a ceremony at the Chelsea Piers. The big winner was Half Nelson, which took the Best Feature, Breakthrough Director (for Ryan Fleck, pictured at left with producer and co-write Anna Boden) and Breakthrough Actor (Shareeka Epps, an award split with Babel‘s Rinko Kinkuchi). Steve Barron’s Choking Man won the “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award,” sponsored by Filmmaker and MOMA. D.p. Ellen Kuras was awarded a tribute for her work shooting innumerable great independent films, and other Gothams went to Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, Kate Winslet, […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2006 Filmmaking
FAMILIAR FACES IN ’07 SUNDANCE SLATE

Chris Smith. George Ratliff. Jeffrey Blitz. David Gordon Green. Jessica Yu. Those are some of the names you will recognize while looking over the 64 films below that were announced today for the 2007 Sundance Film Festival International Film and World Cinema Competitions. The festival will be held Jan. 18-28. Documentary Competition BANISHED (Director: Marco Williams)—This story of three U.S. towns which, in the early 20th century, forced their entire African American populations to leave, explores what—if anything—can be done to repair past racial injustice. World Premiere. CHASING GHOSTS (Director: Lincoln Ruchti)—Twin Galaxies Arcade, Iowa, 1982: the birthplace of mankind’s […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 29, 2006 Filmmaking
HOW SWEET IT IS

Looking through the nominees for the Independent Spirit Awards I’m very happy to see Ali Selim’s Sweet Land nominated for Best First Feature and Best Female Lead for Elizabeth Reaser. Since I saw it premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival (where it won the Audience Award) in 2005 I’ve been a big fan. Set in a turbulent post-WWI America, Reaser gives a gripping performance as a German immigrant sent to Minnesota for an arranged marriage and hope for a better life and David Tumblety’s camera work of the Northwestern plains are breathtaking. The film had to go the self-distribution […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 28, 2006 Filmmaking
On the Move

Gotham Awards Tribute recipient Ellen Kuras takes us into the fast-paced life of an in-demand DP. Ellen Kuras operates like a perpetual-motion machine. One moment she’s photographing Michel Gondry’s latest feature. The next, shooting The Rolling Stones for Martin Scorsese. There are meetings with Lou Reed about an upcoming concert project. Also, a long-gestating documentary she’s been directing at every opportunity. And in between all of that, she found time to replace her old car that just died and pick up her new tailless cat from the vet. ELLEN KURAS. There are, of course, rewards to such endeavors. Like being […]

By Jason Guerrasio on Nov 27, 2006 Filmmaking
MEETING AT MOMA

Below Andre Salas gives you some details about the special screening series at MOMA this week of the films we selected for our “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You” Gotham Award. This is the second year of this award — last year we selected Caveh Zahedi’s I am a Sex Addict as the winner and Robinson Devor’s Police Beat as one of the nominees, and this year I think we picked films of similar quality. Indeed, it’s gratifying for all of us at Filmmaker to take such a concentrated look at worthy films that have really fallen […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 23, 2006 Filmmaking
ALTMAN AT EMERGING PICTURES

Ira Deutchman emailed to tell me about the new blog for his company Emerging Pictures and a post he has up remembering Robert Altman. It’s great and long, a collection of Ira’s memories having worked with Altman on the distribution of a number of his films. When reading I had a hard time picking a section to excerpt. I was strongly tempted to lift the paragraph about Altman and Deutchman smoking a joint that had been found mashed in Altman’s shoe outside the Beekman on the opening day of The Player, but I’ll let you click to that and quote […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 23, 2006 Filmmaking
ALTMAN REMEMBERED

Robert Altman’s production company, Sandcastle 5, has relayed some appreciations of the great director from his friends and colleagues: “I was friends with Bob for 20 years before we worked together on GOSFORD PARK. It was then that I experienced the real magic of Robert Altman. When he was working he had a youthful joyfulness that was just amazing.” – Bob Balaban “I have always admired Robert Altman’s films and it was an honor to work with him on A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. We had so much fun working on that project over the past year and I know that […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 22, 2006 Filmmaking
PRIDE ON ALTMAN

Over at Movie City Indie, Ray Pride runs excerpts from an interview he did with Robert Altman for a special Gotham Award issue of Filmmaker. An excerpt: An attempt to be original counts as some kind of success, doesn’t it? “Now, if you see anything original, you won’t see it [out there for] very long. It’s time turtling on. These kids… they don’t understand anything else. There’s so much saturation. There’s not a policeman today who didn’t learn his behavior from watching films or television. We all imitate each other.” Does Altman ever think he’s imitating himself? “It now occurs […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 22, 2006 Filmmaking
ROBERT ALTMAN, R.I.P.

As various news sites, including Reuters, are reporting, Robert Altman died last night in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 81. There are many ways to eulogize this remarkable director, a true maverick who never relinquished his own very personal idea of independence over many decades of work. For now, I’m just going to point you to Matthew Ross’s cover story on Altman in our Spring, 2006 issue. At the time he had just finished A Prarie Home Companion which Ross called “a triumphant new chapter in Altman’s body of work.” In the article, Altman noted that since receiving the […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 21, 2006 Filmmaking

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cfmrk_cic		Used by Cloudflare to route user traffic for this Site.
sparrow_id		Installed by Cloudflare. Used to identify individual clients behind a shared IP address and apply security settings on a per-client basis. It does not store any personal identifiable information.

Cookie	Duration	Description
OAGEO		Installed by the Revive Ad Server. Used to cache geolocation (session, deleted when closing the browser)
OAID		Installed by the Revive Ad Server to distinguish users.