From a press release we received today: “Emerging Pictures announced today that it will launch its Digital Cinema Network with an investment by Los Angeles-based Participant Productions. This digital cinema initiative will establish a nationwide network for the distribution and exhibition of specialty films in such venues as prestigious museums, performing arts centers, science & technology institutions, and restored movie palaces. These venues will screen independent and international films, both dramatic and nonfiction, as well as alternate content such as film festivals, dramatic performances, concerts, and other mission-appropriate programming. “Participant Productions, founded in 2004 by eBay pioneer and philanthropist, Jeff […]
Checked out the Cyan Pictures site and discovered several new postings, the most interesting of which is the announcement of Long Tail Releasing, the Manhattan-based production company’s new distribution arm. Long Tail plans to release from 15 to 25 films in its first year and gear up to the release of an astounding 250 films annually, all by economizing and compacting the costs of distribution. Writes Cyan’s Josh Newman: “Long Tail started from a simple question: what costs make up that $250,000 [the initial releasing costs of a low-budget arthouse film], and how can we drastically reduce, share or eliminate […]
Filmmaker readers should check out two essential articles in the Village Voice this week by friends and colleagues Anthony Kaufman and Ted Hope. Both deal with the relationship between our current political climate and the state of indie filmmaking today. Kaufman, who gives up his “NY Scene” column in our magazine this month due to his move to Chicago, asks the question, “Reagan-era callousness sparked an indie film renaissance. Will Bush 2 inspire another?” Kaufman’s piece winds its way through discussions with Christine Vachon, James Schamus and Jeff Levy-Hinte before concluding with a trenchant inquiry by HBO’s Colin Callendar: “Whether […]
One topic Graham Leggat’s Game Engine column in Filmmaker regularly returns to is the rise of “independent gaming” in the videogame world. Just as independent filmmakers reacted against studio monoliths in the ’80s to start a new wave of indie production, there is now a slowly emerging groundswell of developers doing something similar in the world of videogaming. From the Guardian‘s gaming weblog comes this beginning-of-the-year piece, “Nine Foolish Videogame Predictions for 2005.” One of these predictions is “The Rise of the Indie Scene”: “The dominance of EA doesn’t necessarily mean the death of smallscale videogame production. Far from it. […]
Via press release we learned of producer Effie T. Brown’s ambitious new production and development slate — eight pictures ranging from a horror movie with a black cast to a couple of period dramas. She also announced that her production company, Duly Noted, has a first-look deal with HBO’s Original Programming Department. Brown, who received the IFP Producing Spirit Award three years ago, has been a producer on several HBO movies, including Real Women Have Curves, and The Stranger Inside, and she was also Executive Producer of Jane Campion’s hugely underrated In the Cut, which is on cable a lot […]
Via Defamer comes this odd L.A. Craig’s List talent call which I’m not quite sure speaks for itself: We are looking for the new Vincent Gallo & Chloe Sevigny!!! Independent Feature Film Production Company is casting adult male and female actors as well as experienced traditional actors for a new narrative film that has explicit scenes of sexuality. The film is a cross between “The Brown Bunny” and “Reservoir Dogs.” It’s the romantic and thrilling story of two professional hitmen who fall in love one night and the woman who comes between them. We finished a very successful narrative feature […]
Producer, screenwriter and co-president of Focus Features James Schamus penned this sharp essay in In These Times on one short-term goal progressive citizens can rally around during their post-election blues: oppose the nomination of White House Legal Counsel Alberto Gonzales to the position of Attorney General. Schamus explains: The mainstream media uses the word “torture” to describe those (hundreds of) documented cases of “isolated” incidents, performed by those “few bad apples” at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. When it comes to the pervasive use of torture at Guantánamo’s Camp X-Ray and scores of other secret military prisons around the globe, the […]
I always admire those who are able to lay either their professional and personal lives out online for all to see. One person who does this when it comes to his independent film producing is Muse Production’s Chris Hanley, who has made an entertaining habit of posting on his website copies of business emails he’s received under the apt header of “Scathing Letters.” For a while the letters sections was filled with angry back-and-forths from folks like Vincent Gallo and Don Murphy over older Muse projects, but Hanley has updated the site recently with two choice bits of correspondence, both […]
The Sundance Institute today announced the Opening Night film and complete lineup of feature films screening in the Premieres, American Spectrum, Frontier, Park City at Midnight, Special Screenings, and Sundance Collection categories of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. According to a press release received today, “The Film Festival opens on January 20 in Park City with the World Premiere of Happy Endings, written and directed by Don Roos and starring Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Tom Arnold. ‘A discussion of American values is at the forefront of many of the films this year, and the humor and compassion with which […]
Via Variety comes this interesting subscription-only piece announcing a new spin-off for Fox’s espionage TV series 24 which reachers viewers via cell-phone. Writes Josef Adalian, “In a first-of-its-kind deal for a U.S. TV studio, 20th Century Fox TV has greenlit production of a live-action 24 spinoff skein that will be produced exclusively for cell phone users. Dubbed 24: Conspiracy, the show — featuring original characters separate from the Fox TV skein — will unfold over 24 roughly one-minute episodes; one seg will be downloaded to subscribers’ phones every week.” Premiering in the U.K., where cell phone use and 3G technology […]