The Sundance Institute today announced the anticipated rosters for its Screenwriters Lab, Documentary Edit and Story Lab and new Theatre-Makers Residency as well as a major now presentation change. For the first time, these labs will run concurrently in a “multi-Lab” format at the Sundance Resort in Utah. But the format is not just an alteration of the calendar. Individual Lab Fellows will participate in portions of the other labs, giving these Sundance programs an interdisciplinary flavor. Said Keri Putnam, Sundance Executive Director, in a statement, “The unique gathering of independent voices, for the first time in a multi-Lab setting, […]
Although this may not sound as remarkable as it is, the Maryland Film Festival (MFF) thrives on being filmmaker-friendly. Encouraging attending filmmakers to participate in a closed-door, multi-hour group conference designed to serve as a safe space to voice their career concerns and hosting a rocking evening of karaoke performed on a stage at The Windup Space (which uncannily resembles the Black Lodge from Twin Peaks), MFF works hard to keep participating artists in dialogue with one another. In screening spaces as the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), the Walters Art Museum, and the intimate black-box Single Carrot Theater, it’s not uncommon […]
Straight from its premiere at New York City’s Metrograph theater, the new 35mm print of Titicut Follies screened at Portland’s Northwest Film Center on April 21 with director Frederick Wiseman in attendance. The controversial film portrays the wretched conditions at The Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Bridgewater, Massachusetts circa 1967. In unflinching cinema verite-style, Ttticut Follies presents a stark portrayal of the hospital’s predominantly naked inmates as they are mishandled, force-fed, taunted by guards, and locked in empty cells. Titicut Follies was famously banned prior to its planned premiere at the 1967 New York Film Festival. Though Wiseman had gotten the requisite permissions, the state of […]
Throughout the history of cinema, from It’s a Wonderful Life and Doctor Zhivago to Fargo and The Ice Storm, filmmakers have relied on snow to create authentic settings and magical worlds. But in the age of climate change, capturing snow on film has become a serious challenge for filmmakers no longer able to count on the real thing, as was the case with last year’s The Hateful Eight and The Revenant. Of course, filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Alejandro Iñárritu have the financial resources to enable them to wait for snowfall, generate artificial snow, create CGI snow, or any combination […]
Just after the Oscar nominations in 2015, Derrick Cameron wrote a guest column in The Hollywood Reporter titled “How to Fix the Oscars: Take a Cue from the Sports World and Fix the Talent Pool” in which he argued that “we have not invested in developing new voices in American cinema, particularly from communities that reflect our various cultures.” In contrast, Cameron and a team of other passionate educators have worked for more than a decade to make precisely that investment. They are the team responsible for Ghetto Film School. Founded in 2000 by Joe Hall in the South Bronx, […]
Sundance Film Festival 2016 by Adam Cook Few film festivals carry inscribed connotations the way that Sundance does. For this newcomer to Park City, a visit to this beacon of American indie cinema came loaded with preconceptions about both the nature of the “Sundance film” (part myth, part truth) and the tendency for the collective critical response to hyperbolize and rush to proclaim the year’s early favorites. Given the calendar-based approach of looking at movies in the context of their year, Sundance emerges on the heels of last year’s best-of lists, nearly 12 months ahead of when its own lineup will […]
Brett Story’s The Prison in Twelve Landscapes screens this Sunday at the Art of the Real showcase at the Film Society at Lincoln Center. Given the growing consciousness about police violence and the awe-inspiring momentum of the movement for black lives, the film couldn’t be more timely, though it eschews the hot-button approach. Story has crafted a profound and political film that, while not sensational, is quietly shocking — even if you are already steeped in the project’s central theme. By taking an innovative and unexpected approach to the subject of mass incarceration, Story reveals just how deeply entrenched the problem of over-policing is. The […]
In Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs, Isabelle Huppert plays Isabelle Reed, a celebrated war photographer who, three years before the movie begins, has died, not while on assignment but in a car crash just miles from her home in upstate New York. Her absence in the family is very much a presence in the film. She’s seen repeatedly in flashback, and her death — a suicide, the fact of which has kept from her youngest son, Conrad, a withdrawn player of online roleplaying games essayed with compelling sullenness by Devin Druid — is the fulcrum by which the other actors […]
As I write this, I’m trying to raise funds for my latest film, No Place for the Living, a feature film about a German immigrant who, in 1930s Key West, spent seven years sleeping with a corpse. Not exactly the easiest film to find financing for. So why put myself though this torment? My last film had equal hurdles. It chronicled another historical oddball (albeit a slightly less disturbing one) named Walter Potter. Potter pioneered the field of anthropomorphic taxidermy (putting dead animals in human scenarios). The film wound up going far beyond my expectations, premiering at the 2015 Tribeca […]
It only seemed fitting that Portland-based folk musician Michael Hurley would perform a short set of sad songs before the screening of Guy Maddin’s 2003 experimental melodrama The Saddest Music in the World on Friday, March 25 at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. Maddin himself was in attendance for the sold-out screening, which was presented as part of the Hollywood’s Mississippi Records Music & Film Series. In introducing the film, Maddin said it was a treat to “show this movie I barely remember making. I think what I recall is the movie is about a sad song contest, so Michael [Hurley], I […]