| Filmmaker Magazine

FIELD REPORT

Following last year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, Simon Field, the fest’s illustrious director, announced that the 2004 edition would be his last. This year’s festival more than lived up to the high standard Field set when he joined Rotterdam eight years ago, and now Field has revealed his next endeavor. He’ll be joining the U.K. production company Illuminations, run by Keith Griffiths and John Wyver, and will be executive producing a series of music, architecture and film pieces commissioned by the City of Vienna on the occasion the Mozart anniversary in 2006. Theatre and opera director Peter Sellars will be artistic […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2004

REMEMBERING LYNN AUERBACH

Lynn Auerbach, the Sundance Institute’s much-loved Associate Director of the Feature Film Program, passed away shortly after this year’s festival following a brief illness. For her many friends and colleagues — including the dozens of young fellows and industry mentors who have passed through the Sundance labs since her arrival at the Institute 15 years ago — the news came as a sad shock. Passionate, witty, and clearly in love with her job of discovering new filmmaking talent and helping them develop their projects, Auerbach nurtured her fellows with equal amounts emotional support and keen advice. Just a few of […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2004

THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF BIG BUSINESS

Following The Corporation‘s successful run at the Sundance Festival, where it won the Documentary Audience Award for World Cinema, Big Picture Media Corporation has signed a U.S. distribution deal with Zeitgeist Flms. Co-Director/producer Mark Achbar (who co-directed The Corporation with Jennifer Abbott and co-created it with writer Joel Bakan) couldn’t be more pleased with the response the film has generated. “From the feedback we had after our sell-out screening at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, to this amazing reception at Sundance, not to mention the truly incredible numbers so far with our Canadian launch — it’s clear that […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 2, 2004

SAINT — AND SISTER — HOOD

One of the buzz films to emerge at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival has been Teona Strugar Mitevska’s How I Killed a Saint. The 29-year-old director attended the MFA program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and on one level, her film could easily fit within the American indie “dysfunctional family” tradition. It tells the story of Viola, a young girl who returns home after travelling abroad for three years, having left behind a family secret and returning to tense relationships with her out-of-it parents and alienated, delinquent brother. Except in this case, Viola is returning in 2001 from […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2004

A PRIMER ON “PRIMER”

Upon hearing the awards news from Sundance this past Sunday in Rotterdam, most of the buyers and sales agents at the Cinemart all wanted to know one thing from me: “What the hell is Primer?” The small minority who caught the film in Utah, though, had a different question: “Why the hell did this film win the Sundance Grand Prize?” International film business types customarily feel somewhat lost and bewildered at Sundance, unable to figure out the shuttle bus routes or how to make it into the evening parties. But to be completely confused by what’s on screen? That’s a […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2004

THE (LEAD) TIMES WE LIVE IN

In the first post on this new Filmmaker blog, I wrote about how we’d use this space to break out of the quarterly confines of the magazine’s publication schedule. Well, that’s still the intention, but after a few days here at the Sundance Film Festival, this blog has been filling up with news items filed by the New York office while the Sundance-attending staff has been seeing the movies, going to the parties, but not quite figuring out how to get into the rhythm of daily online journalism. One of the good things about publishing quarterly is that it allows […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2004

PRODIGY

A debut feature 19 years in the making, Jonathan Caouette’s “brutal and spellbinding musical-docudrama” Tarnation premiered as a rough cut at Mix 2003 and screens in the Frontier section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. (Tarnation was substantially reedited following its debut at Mix, and is tipped for the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes following its screening in Park City.) As per the Mix Festival’s write-up: “Tarnation weaves a psychotronic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of ’80s camp pop culture and dramatic reenactments drawn from Caouette’s entire life.” “It’s kind […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2004

CHAIN REACTION

I ran into producer Mary Jane Skalski at the Salt Lake City airport this morning on the way into Park City, and she — along with an e-mail from director Jem Cohen — gave me material for an embarassing first post out of Sundance. In our new issue of Filmmaker, Anthony Kaufman writes in his “New York Scene” column about directors who choose, for whatever reason, not to make the festival and premiere their films in other venues. He writes about Michael Kang, whose Motel was unable to be finished in time, and also Jem Cohen, who is currently completing […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2004

“25 NEW FACES” AT SUNDANCE

Every summer Filmmaker runs a feature entitled “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in which we try to apply our long-lead editorial approach to talent spotting. We identify promising new writers, directors and actors who are flying well below the industry radar, and several of our pics usually show up at Sundance each year. Here are Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” picks in this year’s festival. The advance industry buzz on The Clearing has been all over the map, but Justin Haythe’s screenplay was the best I read a couple of years ago. It’s a terse, emotionally rich drama about a […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 15, 2004

Oh, to be a Blogger!

There are frustrations in editing a published-quarterly magazine like Filmmaker. As media cycles accelerate around us, we still publish every ninety days, trying to write intelligently about the aesthetics, business, and reasons for making independent film while pretending not to care that, with our long-lead schedule, we can’t really comment on that day or week’s movie news. The current issue of Filmmaker, for example, went to bed in mid-December, will be first read at the Sundance Film Festival, and will linger on newsstands until early April or so. Which means that meaningful commentary on the latest breaking news is pretty […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 14, 2004

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