To better cover the festial circuit we’ve created a sidebar in our Festival Coverage section called Festival Ambassador. There you’ll be able to get not only our take on the festivals we attend but news and notes on fests from around the world as well as deadline alerts and video shorts. Up now is Justin Lowe‘s first post from AFI and stay tuned for more to come.
Sony Pictures Classics announced today that they’ve acquired Jeffrey Levy-Hinte‘s doc Soul Power. Having gotten great reviews at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, I had the privileged of seeing the film at a private screening a few weeks ago and if you’re a fan of R&B of the ’70s and documentaries like Michael Wadleigh‘s Woodstock and Leon Gast‘s When We Were Kings (which Levy-Hinte was an editor on and where the Soul Power footage originated from) then go see this movie. Highlighting the music festival to coincide with the Muhammad Ali-George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” in Zaire in 1974, […]
Hopefully you went to the polls this morning because according to The New York Times, who has mapped out your whole Election Night here, networks could be jumping the gun to call the race as early as 8pm(!) Eastern time. An excerpt from the piece: A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, […]
Filmmaker has been a big fan of Asia Argento — as an actress and a director — over the years, and on the occasion of her BAM retrospective, “Sexy, Scary and Often Naked: Asia Argento,” which opens today, I thought I would throw up some links to our coverage of Argento over the years. Back in 2000 Travis Crawford interviewed Asia about her directorial debut, Scarlet Diva, and the article was illustrated by original Richard Kern photos (one of which I’ve included here). In 2005 Crawford interviewed Asia again in 2005 for her second feature, The Heart is Deceitful Above […]
DIRECTOR KURT KUENNE WITH ZACHARY BAGBY IN KUENNE’S DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER. COURTESY OSCILLOSCOPE PICTURES & MSNBC FILMS. Since he was a boy, making films has been at the very center of Kurt Kuenne’s life. He fell in love with the movies as a kid growing up in Silicon Valley in Southern California, and already at the age of seven began trying to emulate his heroes by shooting films on Super 8 and then later VHS cameras, using friends and family as actors. Kuenne studied film at USC’s prestigious School of Cinema-Television (where he […]
The Canadian Film Centre and SHORTSNONSTOP Mobile Festival announced this week that this quarter’s best short film is Mexican filmmaker Karen Weiss‘s Bad Head Day. Weiss will be awarded a $1500 cash prize. Launched in 2007, SHORTSNONSTOP is in its second year and awards a $1500 cash prize each quarter to the best short film selected by an international jury. Learn more on how to submit your film, here. Next deadline is Jan. 15. Weiss’s Bad Head Day can be found here.
You may recall Scott’s “Midwestern Rhapsody” post in mid Oct. about Todd Sklar and the other filmmakers who are doing a DIY tour with their film. Here’s another video diary from the guys.
IFP announced today that The Daily Show With Jon Stewart‘s correspondent Aasif Mandvi will be hosting this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards on Dec. 2. Named one of our 25 New Faces of Independent Film this year for his upcoming project, 7 to the Palace, which he stars and co-wrote, Mandvi was recently in the Ricky Gervais-starrer Ghost Town and appeared in episodes of The Sopranos and Sex and the City. But he’s best known for his witty fake reporting on The Daily Show and will certainly have a lot of material to play with come Dec. 2. Interesting sidenote: […]
For those who enjoyed the excerpt we put up of Scott Macaulay‘s roundtable discussion on the current state of independent film from the Fall issue, one of the participants, Ted Hope, was on NHPR’s “Word of Mouth” this week and continued the thinking that he voiced for the magazine and at his keynote address at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum: the truly free filmmaking community will survive.
Executive producer William Horberg attended the premiere of Gus Van Sant’s Milk last night in San Francisco and writes about it on his blog. An excerpt: It was almost 37 years ago that Harvey Milk, the subject of the film, moved to the Castro District from New York City and set up his camera shop there with his boyfriend Scott Smith, at what was to become ground zero in a cultural movement and struggle for respect and equal rights for gay people that, despite the major victories Harvey and his supporters achieved before his untimely assassination, as he became the […]