70 Results for “Poland Progress”
-
In Pursuit of The Purple Onion
When I was a doorman at San Francisco’s Punchline and Cobbs comedy clubs, I never would’ve thought that three years later, I’d be making my first feature film about a comedian. I went to film school in Poland, from where my parents emigrated. While there, I made several short films, which went on to play at international film festivals in France, Albania, Poland, and the U.S. Before I went to Poland, while working with my father in China, I passed on his proposal to expand his furniture-making empire, as he called it, in order to pursue filmmaking. Eventually, back in […]
by Matt Szymanowski on Dec 29, 2012 -
2013 Sundance Film Festival Announces Short Film Program
I must admit that I didn’t have any real expectations about the just-announced shorts lineup at the forthcoming Sundance Film Festival, but this slate looks really strong, a good mixture of familiar names (many with feature experience) and emerging talents. Scanning through the selection, I’m excited to see new works by Cat Candler, Nash Edgerton and Spencer Susser, Guillermo Arriaga, Jillian Mayer, Lucas Leyva (from 2012’s “25 New Faces”), Lauren Wolkstein, Goran Dukic and Damien Chazelle in the U.S. narrative section. And kudos to a “25 New Face” from 2010, Robert Machoian, who has two shorts — Movies Made From Home # 6 […]
by Nick Dawson on Dec 4, 2012 -
Two Filmmakers Walked into a Bar…
The US in Progress market begins tomorrow. I fly to Wroclaw, Poland, in a few hours. Translation: I am frantically packing, burning DVDs, and researching European distribution companies. An Introduction: I’m a longtime film worker and first-time filmmaker. I’m in the final stages of finishing my first feature. I’m 33 years old, I have two daughters, and I live in central Pennsylvania. For over 12 years I have been a full-time alchemist attempting to fuse well-rounded family life with a career in film. This is an uncertain science and the results have been inconclusive. But A Song Still Inside, my […]
by Gregory Collins on Nov 12, 2012 -
All in the Family: Jonathan Caouette on Walk Away Renee
I’ve been struggling to find a metaphor for the very special, not to mention most unusual, connection between director Jonathan Caouette and Renee Leblanc, his mentally ill and frequently institutionalized mother and the subject of his most recent film, Walk Away Renee. The closest I could come is really a parallel, and it lies within Caouette’s body of work. In his 2010 surreal short All Flowers in Time, a beautiful young woman, played by Chloe Sevigny, has an indefinable relationship with an adolescent boy. In a bizarre world where young people’s eyes can turn glowing red, the two seem to […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jun 27, 2012 -
SXSW REVEALS FULL 2012 FEATURE FILM LINEUP
SXSW has announced their complete 2012 feature film slate. Over 90 films will screen across the festival’s ten categories, including the already announced opening night premiere of Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods and a special preview screening of Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls. New additions include the sixteen films premiering in narrative and documentary competition. The eight films competing on the narrative side include Booster, directed by Matt Ruskin, Eden, directed by Megan Griffiths, Gayby, directed by Jonathan Lisecki, Gimme the Loot, directed by Adam Leon, Los Chidos, directed by Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Pilgrim Song, directed by Martha […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Feb 1, 2012 -
ALL THAT ELEVEN ALLOWS
I plead guilty. I’ve committed the writer’s sin of entitling this article with a heavily loaded pun that threatens to undermine what follows. Referencing a 65-year-old recognized masterwork of classic Hollywood melodrama — one by Douglas Sirk, no less — that has stood the test of time, then segueing into more of the best-of-this-and-that-from-2011 litanies that every film journo is tossing into the blogosphere right now, stacks the deck against the most recent productions. A few will be remembered, but All That Heaven Allows stays with us. Out of all possibilities, this is the one Todd Haynes chose as a […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 27, 2011 -
Director Matt Osterman on Ghost From the Machine
When Matt Osterman attended the IFP Narrative Lab a few years ago, his $25,000, science fiction/supernatural thriller, about a grief-stricken man who builds a machine to communicate with the dead, was titled Phasma ex Machina. But when the film was finished and released this summer on DVD and, later, iTunes and Netflix by Screen Media, it went under the less obscure title of Ghost from the Machine. Now, however, another name change is in the works. This August Universal Pictures acquired the remake rights, attaching Gary Shore and Nathan Parker to write and direct. The new film will be called […]
by Eva Hill on Nov 9, 2011 -
LARS VON TRIER IS CANNES’ “PERSONA NON GRATA”
I missed the Wednesday morning Melancholia screening, having to moderate a table at the Producers Network breakfast the same time, but afterwards I happened to catch a snippet of the press conference. I tweeted a few comments, namely ones in which the director talked about this relationship with the film’s d.p., who started the project by telling him not to behave like so many “old or middle-aged directors and make [his actresses] younger and more naked.” “Don’t tell me that,” Von Trier said he told the cinematographer. Watching press conferences on those little TVs in the basement of the Palais […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 20, 2011 -
More on Netflix, Criterion and Hulu
Today we, along with seemingly everyone else in the film blogosphere, announced Criterion’s exclusive deal with Hulu, which will see some 800 Criterion titles stream to viewers on the Hulu Plus service. And, like everyone else, we had to add a small update when we realized that Hulu’s gain is Netflix’s loss. The Criterion titles we Netflix subscribers are used to watching (just last week, for example, I saw Agnes Varda’s Cleo from Five to Seven) will soon be leaving the service. Over at Hulu, Criterion President Peter Becker launches a blog with this declaration of love for the label’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 15, 2011 -
SXWS 2011 LineUp Announced
130 features (consisting of 60 world premieres, 12 North American premieres and 16 U.S. premieres) will screen this year from a record-high 1,792 feature-length films submitted to SXSW producer Janet Pierson and her team. Highlights include opening night film Source Code, from Duncan Jones (Moon), Jodie Foster‘s The Beaver, Greg Mottola‘s Paul, Sundance Grand Prize doc winner How to Die in Oregon, Errol Morris‘ Tabloid, Victoria Mahoney‘s Yelling to the Sky, Azazel Jacob‘s Terri and a special screening of Catherine Hardwicke‘s Red Riding Hood. See the complete lineup below. The Midnight, SXFantastic and shorts lineup can be found here. […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 2, 2011
