I just returned from the opening of filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s new installation, To Walk Next to One’s Shoelaces in an Empty Fridge, at the Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th St. in New York. It’s a really beautiful work, and anyone interested in the Belgian filmmaker or autobiographical media art in general should make an effort to check it out. The installation takes place in two rooms. In the first, text fragments from an autobiographical writing Akerman published last year are projected on a scrim which scrolls inward within the space like a gossamer Richard Serra sculpture. In the second, a […]
Filmmaker has been on press the last week so that has meant that we’ve been slacking on the blog. But one of the things I’ve been meaning to post about is the government’s new “2257” regulations which, on the sheer basis of their audacity, should be provoking outrage in the independent world. Strangely, though, our indie sector has been quiet on this government intrusion on content creators, probably because it specifically targets adult entertainment. Anyway, this Newsday editorial does a far better job than I could have explaining why you should care about these new regulations. Here’s an excerpt: “Regardless […]
On the opening weekend of the IFC’s new IFC Center (which a friend reported was packed out for the opening of Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know), the folks at Gothamist have posted an interview with our friend John Vanco, the chief programmer for the theater. Vanco talks a lot about film and outlines an exciting vision for the theater, and he also reveals a past life as a carpenter when asked about the theater’s construction delays: “My background as a carpenter is an awfully obscure fact and fading memory — that was a long time ago. […]
Below we linked to a Hollywood Reporter article about the momentum in the industry towards collapsing the traditional theatrical/home video/pay television windows that have governed when new motion pictures are released to the public. Today on his blog, Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Productions and HDNet films are at the forefront of this experimental distribution, has a cogent explanation of his strategy. Make sure to read the postings from readers below his blog as well. Hollywood may not like it, but it’s clear that he is on to something. From the piece: “Why not price a DVD or the PPV at […]
Anne Thompson’s column this week in the Hollywood Reporter is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of specialty film distribution. She interviews folks like IFC’s Jonathan Sehring and Picturehouse’s Dennis O’Connor about what she says is the inevitable collapse of the theatrical/home video/pay cable distribution window system. IFC’s Sehring, whose IFC Center opens this week in New York, is particularly forthright: “While he has no plans to ‘expand beyond one facility,’ says Sehring, he sees other changes ahead. ‘We’re going to alter our business plans over the next six to eight months. We feel strongly about video-on-demand as […]
Adam Bhala Lough is one of our 25 New Faces alumni, and his feature Bomb the System opened in New York this weekend. Here are quotes from an interview with him in the Gothamist. On the difficult of making sympathic graffiti artist characters: “…anyone who’s walked up to their apartment in NY and saw a fresh tag on their door, literally dripping because it just went up, and got pissed off, they’re going to bring that hatred to the movie. A lot of people even asked me, ‘why did you even bother making a movie about graffiti writers? They’re horrible […]
Via Variety comes more details about the long-awaited June 17 opening of IFC Film Center in Manhattan at the site of the old Waverly Theaters. The IFC has assembled a high-powered advisory board to lend its clout to the venture. Writes Willa Paskin in the trade, “Helmers Steven Soderbergh, Alfonso Cuaron, Richard Linklater, Kevin Smith, Errol Morris, John Sayles, Rebecca Miller and Gary Winick will be among those serving on the center’s advisory board. Nonhelmers Noah Cowan, Cynthia Swartz and Dan Talbot also are members. “According to IFC prexy Jonathan Sehring, board members will mainly be involved with programming, ‘be […]
Writing in the New York Press, Matt Zoller Seitz (who recently spoke with Jeremiah Kipp for Filmmaker about his own debut feature, Home) uses the occasion of Jet Li’s trip to the U.S. to promote the Rogue Pictures release of Unleashed to pen a lengthy and thoughtful appraisal of the various martial arts genres in the age of globalism and the Internet. From the piece: “In the past decade, the rise of the internet and cheap DVD authoring technology made it harder for repressive governments to regulate pop culture’s ebb and flow. When a noteworthy new release comes out in […]
If you pick up the new issue of Filmmaker, you’ll notice by reading our cover articles on Miranda July and her first feature, Me and You and Everyone We Know, the large role the Sundance Institute had in developing that film and supporting its production. July’s film was a Summer 2003 Sundance Lab project and it went to become a hit at the Sundance Film Festival and will open from IFC Films this June. And then there’s another Lab project I’m very interested in — David Jacobson’s Down in the Valley, which I thought was an amazing script and which […]
Jake Brooks provides the first media coverage of the IFP’s Producer’s Group, a gathering of some 50+ Gotham producers gathered last year to discuss the high costs of indie shooting in New York. With IATSE hiking pension and welfare benefits to over $100 per day per IA crew member, a group of producers, spearheaded by Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente, and Gretchen McGowan of Open City and HDNet and including such folks as John Penotti and Tim Williams of GreeneStreet, Ted Hope and Anthony Bregman of This is That, and John Sloss of Cinetic Media, met to discuss ways in which […]