ALBERT (VOICED BY BARRY OTTO) AND THE ANGEL (VOICED BY GEOFFREY RUSH) IN DIRECTOR TATIA ROSENTHAL’S $9.99. COURTESY STRAND RELEASING. Being an independent filmmaker is difficult enough without adding the further challenges of animation, so it’s always a pleasure to see the emergence of a visionary talent like Tatia Rosenthal. The Israeli writer-director and stop motion animator was born in Tel Aviv in 1971 and explored some very diverse avenues before deciding on her current profession: Rosenthal was in the Israeli Defense Force for two years, spent a period of time at medical school and then studied photography in Paris […]
It’s June, so that means it’s time for the Sundance Labs, where emerging writers, directors and composers hone their skills in preparation for their next films. This year, we’ll be featuring a number of Lab participants blogging from the Sundance Institute, and to launch the series we’re really happy to have actor and writer/director Keith Gordon (A Midnight Clear, Mother Night, Waking the Dead) conveying his experiences as an advisor to the Directing Fellows. In this first post, penned in the middle of his drive from L.A. to Utah, he writes about the reasons he goes back to Sundance year […]
In the upcoming issue of Filmmaker, Howard Feinstein covers the Cannes Film Festival and has high praise for Bahman Ghobadi’s No One Knows About Persian Cats (pictured), which played in the Un Certain Regard section. He calls the film, which is about two musicians trying to form a band after being released from prison, “a love/hate letter to Tehran itself.” Ghobadi, who now lives in Berlin, has recently seen his fiance, journalist Roxana Saberi jailed (she was recently released) and he himself was imprisoned for a week when he returned to the country recently to visit his mother. He speaks […]
If you’re not familiar with David Kaplan’s work this is a good CliffsNotes on his talents, which caught our eye back in 1999 when we made him one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film. With the main focus put on his 1997 Sundance short, Little Red Riding Hood, a black and white-shot adaptation of The Story of Grandmother folk tale, the disc also includes two other shorts, Little Suck-a-Thumb (1992) and The Frog King (1994). Kaplan’s Riding Hood telling is a mix between Tim Burton and Guy Maddin with a little toilet humor sprinkled in with narration voiced […]
Filmmaker James Longley (the excellent Iraq in Fragments) is in Iran working on his new documentary film, which includes coverage of the current disputed election. He’s been blogging at Doug Block’s D-Word doc forum, and over the weekend posted an amazing series of bulletins about the election, which include his thoughts on what it means for Iranian politics and then a gripping description of his being detained while his translator was beaten. A.J. Schnack has collected these posts in a single blog entry here. From one of the earlier posts: If this outcome is allowed to stand, we now have […]
When we last checked in with producer and director Tommy Pallotta, he was talking about distributing his latest documentary, American Prince, through BitTorrent for free download by filesharers… but he hadn’t done it yet. Now he has. You can download the torrent uploaded by the filmmaker himself here at Mininova. And here’s the description on the page: In 1978, director Martin Scorsese turned his camera on his friend and roommate, Steven Prince, with his lost documentary American Boy. Best known for his role as the gun salesman in Taxi Driver, Prince was a true-life raconteur, actor, ex-drug addict, and road […]
Head over to Festival Ambassador to see Mike Jones‘s coverage of the festival (part 1, part 2 & part 3), which wrapped over the weekend with Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s Easier With Practice winning the Grand Prize of $10,000. Other winners include:Best Documentary: Douglas Tirola’s All In: The Poker MovieBest Short: Destin Daniel’s Short Term 12Special Grand Jury Prize for Directing: Justin Nowell’s Acting for the CameraSpecial Documentary Jury Prize for Artistic Vision: Jessica Oreck’s Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Robert Saitzyk (director) and Cory Knauf and Joseph McKelheer (screenwriters) Exceptional Artistic Achievement Award for GodspeedFilmmaker to Watch Award: Jeff Mizushima’s Etienne!
As news reports come in from the aftermath of Iran’s highly contested and most likely fraudulent election, film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a supporter of challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, is one of the voices speaking out. From a post by Abbas Djavadi on the blog Iran & Beyond: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, a prominent film producer supporting Mousavi, who stayed in his favored candidate’s headquarters, told Radio Farda that they were called by the Election Commission well before the first results were announced. “Don’t announce Mr. Mousavi’s victory yet,” they were told by authorities. “We will gradually prepare the public and then you […]
The Netflix/Film Independent “Find Your Voice” competition has selected its ten semi-finalists, and now it’s time to vote for the winner, who will receive a total of $350,000 worth of production services and cash towards the making of his or her film. I’m going to go through the ten nominees right now and check them out but, not to play favorites, you might consider Dee Rees’s Pariah as we love her work: she was one of our “25 New Faces of 2008.” Her Netflix submission is below:
Michael Moore‘s upcoming untitled film will look at the global financial crisis. Below is the teaser that began running in theaters this weekend. The film opens in early Oct.