The Sundance Institute announced today the competition films for its 2011 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. At first glance, it looks like an exciting list with quite a few filmmakers we follow here at the magazine premiering their work, including Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Gun Hill Road, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On the Ice, Dee Rees’ Pariah, Azazel Jacobs’ Terri and Marshall Curry’s If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front to name just a few. In the release sent out today, festival director John Cooper commented, ““The Festival is a challenge […]
1. make a extreme documentary that almost drives you insane 2. go to airport 3. accidentally film naked woman in wheelchair with cat 4. convince security that its not performance art, keep camera 5. put on youtube 6. wait til CNN calls you (less than 24 hrs later) to air the video 7. promote upcoming DVD release John Maringouin (Running Stumbled, Big River Man) captured this scene in Oklahoma City yesterday. TSA eventually covered her up and then questioned John as they thought he staged the whole thing. There’s something funny about John – he got arrested while filming Steve-O […]
Benazir Bhutto, the two time Pakistani prime minister who in 2007 was assassinated just days after she returned from military imposed exile in Dubai to once again attempt to take control of the country, was the countries’ most significant civilian political figure of her generation. Using the tragic life and times of the Muslim world’s most dynamic and successful female politician as a lens through which to capture the larger political machinations and social upheaval that has led to the sixty-seven year old Pakistani state constantly being handed back and forth between an imperiled civilian government and a conservative military establishment, […]
Documentary fans have survived many things — Academy shortlists that ignore the year’s best films, the end of the Stranger Than Fiction fall season — but few can claim to have survived as much as the subjects of either Letters Home or Surviving Hitler: A Love Story, the final films of programmer Thom Power’s IFC series. A nine-minute montage created around letters and archival materials, Letters Home tells the story of director Melissa Hacker’s great aunt Freda, a woman who traveled through Germany and Austria in 1945 as a member of the American Army Women’s Army Corps. Hacker, a longtime Stranger […]
Film Independent announced the nominations for their 2010 Spirit Awards today. Winter’s Bone leads with seven nominations, including Best Feature, Director and Female Lead. Joel McHale will host the show Feb. 26 when it returns back to the beach in Santa Monica. Full list of nominees below. BEST FEATURE 127 Hours Black Swan Greenberg The Kids Are All Right Winter’s Bone BEST DIRECTOR Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan Danny Boyle, 127 Hours Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right Debra Granik, Winter’s Bone John Cameron Mitchell, Rabbit Hole BEST FIRST FEATURE Everything Strange and New Get Low The Last Exorcism Night […]
For ten days every November, cinephiles of every stripe are afforded an opportunity to revel in a crowd- and critic-pleasing smorgasbord of plucky international programming at the Stockholm International Film Festival, now in its 21st season. Yes it’s cold and the sun sets early in the afternoon, but what better excuse to take refuge in one of the capital city’s well-appointed, old-fashioned movie halls? Under director Git Scheynius, who co-founded the annual festival in 1990, the main focus of the competition is to provide a showcase for rising young talent, directors like Aaron Katz (Cold Weather) or Xavier Dolan (whose […]
IFP’s 20th Gotham Independent Film Awards took place last night in Lower Manhattan with Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone winning Best Feature as well as Best Ensemble and Laura Poitras‘ The Oath taking Best Documentary. Other winners on the night include Waiting for “Superman” winning the first ever Festival Genius Audience Award and Littlerock took home the Best Film Not Playing At a Theater Near You Award (chosen by the editors of Filmmaker). The show, co-hosted by Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson, was also filled with memories from Gothams past, including a beautiful montage to start the night. Tributes this year […]
Downtown Waterloo, Ontario. At night. A night unfinished. The previous evening I had spoken at a conference about analog nostalgia in the digital age. I brought a turntable with me from Michigan. And one single to play: “You’re Gonna Die” (1978) by the Ann Arbor/Detroit post-punk art band Destroy All Monsters, featuring Ron Asheton on guitar. At the border crossing entering Canada at Port Huron, I was asked a series of questions about the reasons for my visit to Canada. I answered in ways that made the guard skeptical, and I was told to go directly to Immigration. There, a […]
For a docu-phile, attending the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — with its nearly 300 films to choose from — feels less like being a kid in a candy store and more like being stuck in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for a week and a half. In addition to being Europe’s biggest fest for nonfiction flicks IDFA boasts round the clock events. (Literally — if you were still revved at three in the morning after IDFA Dance Night a program called “Docs Around The Clock” continued until 9AM, breakfast included.) In between screenings at the Pathe de Munt or the […]
As you know from my support of the Sparrow Songs project, I’m interested in time-based online filmmaking. Filmmaker (and Blue Valentine editor) Jim Helton has just completed his own one-a-month project, Love Kills Demons. From the website: Over the span of one year filmmaker Jim Helton documented New York-based artist Chris Rubino while he searched for a new direction in his work. In the process we see screenprinting, drawing, painting, wandering as well as a peak inside the workings of a studio and an artist’s process. The final 12 part film that is Love Kills Demons takes a look behind […]