Festivals
Interviews - Festivals
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Somewhat North of Boston, They’re Showing Films: Executive Director Jay Doherty on the SNOB Film Festival
This weekend (November 12 – 14) the SNOB [Somewhat North of Boston] Film Festival takes place in Concord New Hampshire. Earlier this week we talked to Jay Doherty, Executive Director of the festival about its history, what sets it apart from other festivals, and some of the films being shown. Filmmaker: How did the SNOB Film Festival start? Doherty: This is the 14th annual festival. It started with a group of people who were interested in bringing independent film to central New Hampshire. They started the Somewhat North of Boston film festival as kind of a joke that a lot […]
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Map It: Going On Location With Dirty Looks Programmer Bradford Nordeen
Between fighting for real estate and fighting for an audience, it can be hard pulling off a successful film series in New York. Independent programmers can’t be blamed for relying on the lure of unconventional spaces to draw distracted filmgoers. While it’s fun to see a film on a rooftop or a pier, these spaces often serve as exciting backdrops for otherwise conventional content. Few film series actively exploit the connections between site and content to say something meaningful about the spaces around us. That’s what makes On Location different. This ambitious month-long series of “queer interventions” (the schedule can […]
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“I’ve Made it a Priority to Not Be Afraid of Evolving”: Jennifer Cochis on Producing, Programming and Directing
My German teacher in Berlin has been hacked. In class, she violates her “no speaking English” rule to explain that for nearly a year, a hacker has tracked her digital life in order to stalk her in real life. I’ve never been personally hacked — or so I think — but, the inconvenience of it seems rather minor compared to the sense of intimate violation. The Sony leak, the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence, and my teacher’s less gossip-worthy admission all underscore this pervasive reality of digital fragility. This is a topical conversation, but it’s also a really abstract one. […]
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Down in the Boondocs: The NYFF’s Go-To Films (I)
The expansive New York Film Festival is no longer the greatest-hits affair of three decades back when it was built around 20-25 titles, a majority of which were what had been on display at the previous Cannes. The arrangement was a gift and a curse: manageable, for both journalists and completists, but limited. I remember what a production it was when the fest dared to add a lowbrow Hong Kong movie by one Jackie Chan. Now there are lots and lots of strands, which cover a variety of genres and niche audiences — followers of the avant-garde and new technologies, […]
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Report from Ukraine: The Odessa International Film Festival
It’s never easy to pull off a successful film festival, but current conditions in Ukraine have made it nearly impossible. Five years ago, when organizers initiated an annual summer event in Odessa, the Ukrainian film industry was developing and the first festival rather small. But the Odessa International Film Festival grew quickly, reportedly beyond its organizers’ expectations, and began to receive the attention of the international film community, particularly in Europe. Now the Potemkin steps made immortal by Eisenstein are the site of outdoor screenings of classic films like (of course) Battleship Potemkin and the in-competition feature films have swollen by 140%, besides […]
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“I Jumped on a Running Train:” Interim Artistic Director Mart Dominicus on Rotterdam 2014
The Artistic Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam since 2008, Rutger Wolfson had begun work on this year’s edition of the festival, the 43rd, when fate interceded. In November, Wolfson was hospitalized with a rare autoimmune disease. (Happily, he is expected to make a full recovery.) With the festival two months away from its starting date, Mart Dominicus — a lecturer at the Netherlands Film Academy, a screenplay and editing coach, and a member of the festival’s Supervisory Board since 2010 — stepped in to become Artistic Director for this year’s festival. At the festival’s end, Filmmaker sat down […]
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Dance on Camera: Organizing a Dance Film Series
While much of the indie film community’s attention remains on Park City, there’s more than enough going on elsewhere to keep filmmakers and art lovers busy. Foremost among such events is the Dance on Camera film series, co-presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Association and held from January 31 – February 4. Dance films date back at least to Edison’s very first Vitascope exhibition in April 1896 and have been a mainstay of popular and arthouse cinema ever since, from Loie Fuller through Gene Kelly, Maya Deren, and the work of hundreds of choreographers, film directors, and documentarians today. DFA […]
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Joseph Oxford and Bradley Stonesifer Create a World in Cardboard for Me + Her
Director Joseph Oxford and cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer created an imaginary world using cardboard boxes and rubber bands for their animated short film Me + Her. A labor of love that evolved over four years, their work was rewarded when the film was accepted into Sundance’s Short Film program. Oxford has worked in the industry since 2007 in a variety of roles, including production assistant and art director, but Me + Her is his first project as writer and director. Oxford first met cinematographer Stonesifer through a director friend, and they both worked on the film The Vicious Kind in 2008. […]
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Organizing the First Sindh International Film Festival
Launching a film festival is no easy feat, and it’s even harder when you’re doing it in an area with little film industry infrastructure, plenty of political and social instability and a global reputation as a haven for Islamic extremists. But those odds against a strong festival in the southeastern Pakistani province of Sindh, which includes Karachi, actually make it all the more urgent for its organizers to create a successful event. Assad Zulfiqar Khan, an independent filmmaker who studied at the London Film School in the U.K., is among those spearheading the festival, and he spoke with me about […]
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Curator Miriam Bale on New York’s La Di Da Film Festival
New York may have a film festival for every neighborhood, but La Di Da, the brainchild of programmer and critic Miriam Bale, has carved a niche for itself that feels more temporal than geographical. Now in its second year, the festival, whose title is a tip of the cap to Annie Hall’s choice refrain, has expanded upon its foundations as a communal haven for filmmakers creating aesthetically timeless, genre-friendly, and narratively experimental work. In doubling the selection, Bale deepens her exploration of films that, despite being very much of the here and now, feel as though they’ve been unearthed from […]
