Issues
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Back in the Field
Thunder cracks in the distance. Bolts of lightning illuminate the Colorado sky in flashes of pink. A warm breeze touches my skin, and the remnants of last night’s storm roll through our creek-side camp. It’s 2:32 a.m. Shadows scurry back and forth — gathering gear, disassembling tents, making tiny packets of oatmeal, downing instant coffee, fiddling with camera equipment and making last-minute adjustments to backpacks. Silence dominates the darkness, but excitement and nerves percolate palpably below the surface. Thirty minutes later, we gather and begin snaking through the black forest as a unit, guided only by tiny lights, intuition and […]
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A Business of Ignorance?
The impact of digital distribution on the indie film landscape has been vast. First, film titles began to inch up the alphabet toward the letter “A” to get noticed at the top of VOD listings. The latest development: Find a young TV star with a solid online fan base and you’re gold. “I’m seeing more and more films leveraging up-and-coming TV actors that have social media profiles,” says Erick Opeka, senior vice president of digital distribution at Cinedigm Entertainment. “Those audiences can’t wait to consume more product that features their favorite actors. The films come out of nowhere and storm […]
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Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2013
Greeks, if not Greece, persist. In March, the 15th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival presented 76 Greek premieres among its teeming 10 days of attractions, streaming many films across Greece and Cyprus, as well as 520 films in a Market with 55 buyers from around the world. “Here we are again, despite the hardships,” Dimitri Eipides, artistic director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and TDF reflected on opening night. Of its 1999 inaugural, he said, “Audiences were skeptical then. The establishment of an internationally acclaimed institution celebrating the art of documentary was something unheard of in Greece. But […]
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Editor’s Letter
We used to classify the filmmakers in each summer issue’s “25 New Faces” by listing their job category under their names, such as “director” or “cinematographer” or “actor.” But we don’t do that anymore, mostly because it’s too difficult. Take this year’s “25” — virtually everyone on the list is some kind of multi-hyphenate. There are two directors of photography on the list, and both are directing their own films — and one has even become a kind of distributor! And those two are by no means the only shooters here. Quite a few of the directors we picked this […]
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Foreign Sales 101: What Independents Need to Know About Selling Films Abroad
This article originally appeared in our Summer, 2013 issue. With substantial revenue (sometimes well above 50 percent) coming from exploitation outside of a film’s home country, it is vital that producers know how to target and then structure deals with foreign sales agents. For those beginning to explore international distribution, here are some very basic ideas and concepts about the business of foreign sales to know going in. What is an international sales agent? In simplest terms, an international sales agent is the conduit to your film’s distribution outside of its country of origin. The sales agent will acquire a […]
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L.A. Unplugged: Director Paul Schrader on The Canyons
Stunning black-and-white photos of movie theaters — old-style palaces and tacky multiplexes alike — sit underneath the credits of The Canyons, the 18th feature from veteran director and screenwriter Paul Schrader. Except rather than evoke the majesty of the 20th century’s dominant art form, they depict its collapse. These theaters are guttered, wrecked, their seats torn out, signage empty, neon fixtures torn and dangling from the ceilings. Some of these theaters — vintage single-screen Art Deco houses — are surely no longer viable in the modern era. The demise of the pictured strip-mall multiplexes, however, is most likely the product […]
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Present Imperfect
James Ponsoldt’s new movie, The Spectacular Now, is hard to talk about. Just describing its plot — a slacker high-school senior on the romantic rebound falls for the school’s shy girl as they bond over parent problems — doesn’t do it justice. And if you throw in notice of lead character Sutter’s drinking problem, then you prompt speculation about Ponsoldt’s choice of material. This is his third movie in the row about an alcoholic! (Full disclosure: Robin O’Hara and I produced the first, Off the Black.) Step into The Spectacular Now, however, and you’ll find yourself drawn into a world […]
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Turning the Tables
Nervous laughter fills the air as a box of surgical masks is passed. Everyone is instructed to take one and place it over their mouths. With masks in position, the group of 12 is quickly ushered into an elevator. After a few moments there is a jolt — the doors open and everyone slowly funnels out. The seventh floor of the New School has been transformed into a sci-fi world. Debris covers the ground, and strange sounds echo down the halls. A lone girl staggers forward, her face concealed by a long mane of black hair. With head hung down […]
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Tall Stories
Presented as a “live screening,” Katerina Cizek’s Web-based interactive piece, HIGHRISE/Out My Window, was a mesmerizing highlight of the “Expanding Documentary” exhibition at the 2010 edition of IDFA. Now, nearly three years later, Cizek is poised to extend her artistic exploration of urban living to the Web pages of The New York Times. Peeking out from its paywall, the Grey Lady has nabbed the director and her National Film Board of Canada producers to collaborate on a forward-thinking op-ed doc series on the subject of vertical housing. Set to launch in the fall, it consists of four short documentaries, the […]
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The Way It Is Now
For the past half-year or so, I have been in constant dialogue with the distribution and foreign sales companies who are releasing four of my recent productions. While engaging these companies, in conjunction with the four directors, I noticed some patterns emerging that are revealing of the current distribution landscape — patterns that differ dramatically from the old ways of theatrical and home video release. Rest assured, it’s not all bad news. It used to be that foreign pre-sales would help us get our dramas financed. Now we can barely find foreign sales agents for our American independent films, even […]
