There’s something to be said about not being eager to please. Chris Fuller’s Loren Cass is an aggressively confrontational debut, all the more so because it is so resolutely restrained in its approach. So seemingly oblique is Fuller’s approach that one feasibly could make it through the entire film and not realize that its subject matter is the aftermath of the 1996 St. Petersburg riots; but on the other hand, that subject matter is so deeply ingrained in the film’s form that it doesn’t matter. Loren Cass doesn’t so much deal with its themes as it ingests them, and then […]
In “A Filmmaker’s Glamorous Life,” online and in our latest print edition, Esther Robinson surveyed a number of filmmakers about the jobs they’ve taken to support themselves when they are not making films. In this blog series we’ll run the unedited responses we received that were then condensed for the piece. Below: Natalia Almada. Filmmaker: How did you support yourself during the production of your last movie/movies? Almada: I was very lucky with El General because I was able to support myself with funding for the film for the most part of the production. It was only in the very […]
Here is producer Thomas Woodrow’s final post wrapping up his experience at this year’s Sundance Creative Producing Lab. When last we met, I was on my way to the Sundance Creative Producing Lab to answer a few pressing questions about my upcoming project, The Skeleton Twins, as well as creative producing in general. The Lab was an amazing experience, not only on the level of the exchange of information (which was a veritable fire hose) but also, and at least as importantly on the depth of the conversation in which we engaged together. It is one thing to swap war […]
Here’s our final Sundance Creative Producing Lab blog from producer Mynette Louie, who collects her thoughts after a night’s sleep back in New York. I flew home from the Sundance Resort late last night and just woke up after a 10-hour slumber. The weeklong experience of the Creative Producing Lab and Summit was intense, to say the least! Each day of the four-day Lab and 2.5-day Summit started at 8am and ended at 11pm, and we barely had any breaks. The range of what we covered with our producing advisers — Lynette Howell, Paul Mezey, Mary Jane Skalski, Jay Van […]
When a film is labeled controversial on its release, often times with the passage of time things that made it risqué become tamer, leaving the story less effective. Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is not one of those films. 17 years after being released, Ferrara’s disturbing look at a dirty cop (played by Harvey Keitel in one of his most powerful performances) running rampant on the streets of New York City is still as gritty, horrifying and powerful as when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1992. Receiving a much needed special edition, out this week through Lions […]
In “A Filmmaker’s Glamorous Life,” online and in our latest print edition, Esther Robinson surveyed a number of filmmakers about the jobs they’ve taken to support themselves when they are not making films. In this blog series we’ll run the unedited responses we received that were then condensed for the piece. Below: Ross Kauffman. Filmmaker: How did you support yourself during the production of your last movie/movies? Kauffman: About 14 years ago, I took long term leases on a raw space, built apartments, and rented them. I supported myself by being a landlord. Filmmaker: What was good/not good about this […]
TV ad for a Film Four mumblecore movie week. Hat tip: Karina Longworth.
In “A Filmmaker’s Glamorous Life,” online and in our latest print edition, Esther Robinson surveyed a number of filmmakers about the jobs they’ve taken to support themselves when they are not making films. Over the next few days on the blog we’ll run the unedited responses we received that were then condensed for the piece. First up: Joe Swanberg. Filmmaker: How did you support yourself during the production of your last movie/movies? Swanberg: Now I’m able to support myself as a filmmaker, but during the making of my first two features I worked as a web designer, and I worked […]
As some of you noticed and commented upon back in the early Summer, our previous message boards fell apart due to rampant spam. We decided to completely raze the boards and start from scratch, and our new boards have just gone up in what we are considering a soft-launch while we work out any unexpected bugs or kinks. If you click over there you’ll see expanded and more specific categories covering the wide range of filmmaking as well as members of our editorial staff answering questions and taking part in the conversation. So, if you are a message-board kind of […]
Proving that sometimes you just have to a) show up and b) ask, writer/director Oren Moverman sent the below email detailing how it came to be that Oscilloscope picked up distribution rights to his Sundance-premiering film, The Messenger. Six months after the film screened in Park City, a distribution deal emerged when Moverman happened to attend an IFP reception held at Deluxe Laboratories in New York to welcome Adam Yauch to its Board of Directors. Around 7.45 that night I met Adam and David Fenkel of Oscilloscope for the first time. I had wine. They told me they liked The […]