Every summer Filmmaker runs a feature entitled “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in which we try to apply our long-lead editorial approach to talent spotting. We identify promising new writers, directors and actors who are flying well below the industry radar, and several of our pics usually show up at Sundance each year. Here are Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” picks in this year’s festival. The advance industry buzz on The Clearing has been all over the map, but Justin Haythe’s screenplay was the best I read a couple of years ago. It’s a terse, emotionally rich drama about a […]

There are frustrations in editing a published-quarterly magazine like Filmmaker. As media cycles accelerate around us, we still publish every ninety days, trying to write intelligently about the aesthetics, business, and reasons for making independent film while pretending not to care that, with our long-lead schedule, we can’t really comment on that day or week’s movie news. The current issue of Filmmaker, for example, went to bed in mid-December, will be first read at the Sundance Film Festival, and will linger on newsstands until early April or so. Which means that meaningful commentary on the latest breaking news is pretty […]

This article originally appeared in our Fall, 1995 print edition. Development is a dirty word in the film business. To screenwriters in Hollywood, it means toiling under the tutelage of a team of business people, endeavoring to give them what they want, all the while realizing that there is little chance that their script will ever get made. To development executives, it means finding an idea, novel, or original screenplay and then having to work with a writer who can be alternately moody, recalcitrant, or even lazy – and then being disappointed with the results. For the studio executive, development […]

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This article is part of Filmmaker’s Sundance 2007 Special Coverage. GRACELAND. Anocha Suwichakornpong, known by her friends as Mai, is at home on a film set. Case in point: while most filmmakers would kill to watch their film screen in front of a Sundance audience, Mai is on the other side of the world, shooting her next short film, Days and Days and Days and Days. But then, can you blame her? Graceland, Suwichakornpong’s film about an Elvis impersonator who travels from Bangkok into the countryside with a mysterious stranger, boasts much of the top talent in Thailand, including editor […]