On this blog we’ve posted the line-ups of the various Sundance sections, but we forgot to include the shorts. So, to make up, Max Friend in the Filmmaker office has compiled this exhaustive post listing not only all the shorts but also hyperlinks taking you to info on the films, the filmmakers and sometimes the films themselves. Enjoy. U.S. Dramatic Shorts Abbie Cancelled (Directors: Dumb Bunny) — Two couples who have never met find themselves engaged in an awkward dinner after their mutual friends cancel at the last second. Acting for the Camera (Director: Justin Nowell; Screenwriter: Thomas Nowell) — […]
Geoff Gilmore asks himself and us all the right questions about change, independent film, and the evolution of film festival’s in this Indiewire First Person piece, launched on the eve of this year’s fest. I especially liked his riff near the end about stopping our natural tendency to “date” films based on their release date. From the piece: Theatrical admissions have trended downwards for a number of years and the importance of consumer preference and choice, of filmgoers seeing films when and how they want, is essential to success for the film industry in the future. The “long tail” of […]
FilmInFocus has asked a number of filmmakers about theirs. I love Azazel Jacobs’, think I’m going to adapt Michael Tully’s as one of my own, and feel that Astra Taylor somehow channeled my own thoughts about the book we are both reading right now. Check out the lists here.
Let me weigh in quickly on the imbroglio surrounding the deletion of Kevin Lee’s YouTube account. On the account Lee had posted his series of critical video essays on a number of recent and classic films, and in the course of arguing the aesthetic merits of each picture the videos included clips from the movies themselves. Apparently, YouTube received a complaint from the copyright holder of one of the clips and deleted his entire account. Matt Zoller Seitz has the complete story along with a comments thread that is also a must read, and Karina Longworth originally covered the story […]
Last year, I put together a blog post with a taster of some quotes from Director Interviews I did in 2007 and I have now (somewhat belatedly) come up with a compilation of choice soundbites from this past year. Though in my thoughts on 2008 I expressed the opinion that it had been a below average year for cinema (at least in comparison with the high water mark of 2007), it has been a hugely enjoyable 12 months from my perspective as an interviewer. Any year in which you get to sit down with George Romero, Werner Herzog, Catherine Breillat, […]
I like the nice, clean look of the new Indiewire along with a number of its user-friendly interactive features. It’s just gone live so I’ll spend some time exploring it, but for now, here’s a piece of editor Eugene Hernandez’s introductory letter: As I revealed last week, we have spent over a year developing this new site, but it’s actually taken us twelve years to get here. We’ve not only re-designed indieWIRE, but completely re-imagined it. Understanding that indieWIRE has emerged as a hub for filmmakers, the industry, and movie lovers alike over the past twelve years, we have developed […]
At the of Barack Obama’s election-night speech, he had a beautiful bit of oratory in which he remembered an elderly woman and spoke of all the things that she saw in her lifetime. What will we see if we live as long as her, he wondered. That, in essence was the question posed to a distinguished group of artists, writers and thinkers at The Edge. The responses here are of the quality that you want to bookmark the page and read one a day for the next month or so. Formally, the question posed by editor and publisher John Brockman […]
What’s the mood heading into the 25th Sundance Film Festival? Overall, the sense of a across the board scaling back is palpable. Almost no one will talk about their own company’s downsizing publicly, for fear of appearing financially unstable, but it’s no secret that the economic catastrophes have hit everyone’s travel and promotional budgets. Besides fewer sponsored parties – Motorola, for instance, will not be in attendance — the rumor is that some photo agencies have majorly scaled back their coverage, sticking to the red carpet only, and usually ubiquitous publications aren’t sending their film critics. “The party grid is […]
Independent filmmakers like to think that they are creating works of art that contribute to an enduring American culture. There’s just one problem: these works of art are disintegrating. Literally. More concerned with life rights than half-life, filmmakers are allowing their films to crumble and dissolve into analog blurs and forests of digital glitches as formats change, materials are uncared for, and elements are left forgotten on lab floors. Enter the Sundance Collection, a collaborative program with the UCLA Film and Television Archive. It is the first archive to be devoted exclusively to the preservation of independent cinema. This year, […]
Here’s Anthony Kaufman’s Industry Beat column for the upcoming Winter issue. “Gay Marriage Ban Inspires New Wave of Activists,” declared a recent headline in The New York Times. If the passage of California‘s Proposition 8 initiative — which denied same-sex couples the previously granted right to marry in the state — could stir hundreds of newly politicized members of the gay community to join together and fight back, will that same activist energy jolt America‘s gay and lesbian filmmakers to do the same? If a new, more radicalized LGBT cinema were on the rise, trend spotters would likely find murmurs […]