Columns
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The Invention of Paramount Pictures
The Media History Digital Library is a goldmine of information about early cinema, the sorts of magazines, journals, and trade publications that, in the pre-digital era, had only been available to those able to travel to research libraries. At over 800,000 scanned pages and growing, the collection is daunting, and what I plan to do in Time Frames, a five-part series, is cull through and select a series of images and text from the collection to highlight key transformative moments in the film culture and industry, as well as other oddities and obscure artifacts. It’s perhaps impossible for us not […]
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Day 10 of 16: Chad Hartigan and This is Martin Bonner
In This is Martin Bonner, Chad Hartigan’s second fiction feature, Martin (the wonderful Australian-born, Seattle-based actor Paul Eenhoorn), is heading into life’s third act and attempting to make something of it. Post-divorce, he moves West to Reno, Nevada, where he takes a job as an outreach counselor, offering spiritual guidance to recently paroled ex-cons. Enter Travis (Richmond Arquette), who, rejoining civilian life after doing time for a hit and run, finds himself adrift, unable to fully assimilate and to connect with his now-grown daughter. In Martin he finds an awkward but needed companionship. This is Martin Bonner‘s narrative is a […]
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Filmmaker John Greyson Remains Jailed Inside Cairo Prison
Acclaimed Canadian director John Greyson and Dr. Tarek Loubani remain in a Cairo, Egypt prison following yesterday’s no-show by a prosecutor scheduled to meet with lawyers for the two men. Greyson and Loubani were arrested on August 16 on their way to Gaza City, where Loubani runs a program training doctors at a local hospital. Greyson was reportedly planning a documentary project. Due to strife in the region, the two extended their stay in Cairo an extra day when they were arrested and held for a 15-day detention period, a stay which ended yesterday. Now, they are being held indefinitely […]
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Shooting With John: Adam Schartoff
I was very nervous about the experience. The idea was to go upstate, about 80 or 90 miles or so north up the Hudson Valley region, to some bucolic spot and shoot guns. Originally we were supposed to shoot skeet but that equipment wasn’t available so we ended up doing target practice. A longtime gun control advocate, I was a bit at the end of my rope. It was November of 2012 and there had been close to 16 mass shootings in the U.S. up to that point including the Batman shooting and the Texas A&M shooting that summer. The […]
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What New Film Has the Most 25 New Faces of All Time?
There are many good reasons to see David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, opening today. Many of those are articulated in David Barker’s interview with Lowery and Anthony Kaufman’s interview with its D.P., Bradford Young, but here’s another: this single film displays the work of more of our 25 New Faces than any other picture. Here’s that list: Jay Van Hoy & Lars Knudson. Now mainstays of the independent scene, New York-based Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen were, in 2006, the first producers to appear on the “25 New Faces” list. At the time the Parts and Labor team […]
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Shushers, Vulgar Auteurism and the NSA: Sunday Morning Links, August 11, 2013
Here are some links to take your through the rest of the weekend. Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine gives his first interview since the release of mbv. The encrypted email service Lavabit has shut down rather than, it is surmised, comply with U.S. government demands regarding its data. “If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it,” says its founder. At the New Yorker, Richard Brody responds to discussion of “vulgar auteurism”: There has been lots of talk online in recent weeks about a critical phenomenon called “vulgar auteurism” (V.A.), a term coined—as I just […]
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Remember to Talk about the Movies!
For those of you who are in the film business, I have some advice: when taking a meeting, remember to talk about a movie! Now, I’m not saying this as some kind of altruistic public service, as if independent film will die if you don’t get out there and talk it up. No, I’m offering it as a piece of practical self-help because, when meeting someone from the film industry, you will seem a more interesting and worthwhile person if you have something interesting to say about a movie itself! This piece of advice may seem a bit oxymoronic. I […]
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What’s in the Summer Issue of Filmmaker
The Summer issue of Filmmaker is in mailboxes and on newsstands. Appearing on the cover is Fruitvale Station writer/director Ryan Coogler in what has been called an epic dialogue with fellow director Ava DuVernay. Their talk encompasses Coogler’s practice of working with two editors, how he preps for his shoot day, the concept of black innocence and the reason he included the dog scene. And while much of our print content is print only, we’ve unlocked the paywall for this story. You can read it here. Also in the issue: our annual 25 New Faces selection, our pick of the […]
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Day 1 of 25: James Ponsoldt and The Spectacular Now
A new, occasional column here at Filmmaker, “The Shooting Schedule” looks at film production through the prism of a single shoot day. I peruse a film’s call sheet and production report and ask the director questions solely based on what I see there. To launch the column, I couldn’t think of anyone better to talk to than my friend James Ponsoldt, whose third feature, The Spectacular Now, opens today. A contributor to Filmmaker — and a director whose first feature, Off the Black, Robin O’Hara and I produced — Ponsoldt has made with The Spectacular Now an indelible teen romance […]
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Filmmaker’s Most Popular Posts of July, 2013
Via Google Analytics, here are our most popular posts of July, 2013. 1. 25 New Faces of 2013. No surprise here. Our annual survey of new talent regularly nabs our top traffic of the year — so much so that our site has crashed for two years straight. (Thanks, site5!) If you haven’t surveyed the list, you can find all 25 of our directors, actors, cinematographers and new media artists here. 2. Summer Grant Deadlines for Filmmakers. Dante Pilkington’s listing of funding opportunities for both fiction and documentary filmmakers took the number two spot. But if you’re just coming across […]
