Over at Videoblogging, anyone with a camera is invited to subscribe to the Lumiere Manifesto and create one-minute works in the tradition of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century French filmmaking brothers. They’ve fashioned their call into a Dogma 95-ish Manifesto that dictates how such minute-long pieces must be conceived and shot. (Hat tips: Warren Ellis and Boing Boing) Here’s are excerpts from the Manifesto that argue for the validity of this homage in today’s times: We believe instead that everyday video brings together a collective consciousness and experience through which we all come to view a universal existence and see “light” in the […]
Over at his Long Tail blog, Chris Anderson posts an email he received from Jeff Bach, an independent filmmaker at Quietwater Films regarding the viability of the “long tail” model for an independent producer. (In this case, it’s a sports non-fiction producer — Quietwater produces films on canoeing for boating enthusiasts). Anderson posts the whole email, but here’s an excerpt: But the reality at this time for me and my company is that I need to find multiple large national distributors if I hope to even come close to making a living at this game. And I need to produce […]
FATHER CHRISTOPHER HARTLEY (CENTER) IN BILL HANEY’S THE PRICE OF SUGAR. COURTESY MITROPOULOS FILMS. William M. Haney III — or Bill Haney to you and me — is one of those people who one suspects would be successful at almost anything he chose to turn his hand to. He started his first business while still an undergrad at Harvard, and made $15m when he sold his stock in the company, aged just 26. He then moved on to invest in two environmental companies and then a software company, continuing his success with all three. He first became interested in film […]
For those of you who don’t regularly check the main page, which is now updated quite often with new content, including Nick Dawson’s “director interviews,” head over there and check out his latest: a lengthy conversation with Andrew Dominic, director of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Wunderkind-auteur William Friedkin who stormed the Hollywood gates with The French Connection and The Exorcist in the 1970’s enters the21st century with, Bug, a film that depicts the maddening descent into self-destructive paranoia. Adapted from the stage play of the same name, written by Tracy Letts and starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, Friedkin presents a noirish setting of a socially marginal characters inhabiting the outskirts of middle-America Oklahoma; which in this case is a lesbian bar and ramshackle roadside motel. Shannon, who also starred in the stage play version, reprises his role as Peter Evans, an AWOL American soldier […]
Here’s a Google link to a conversation that Scott Kirsner from CinemaTech had during the IFP Filmmaker Confernece with Brett Gaylor, a Montreal-based filmmaker who is exploring new modes of collaboration for documentary filmmaking. I’m also embedding below, but if you go to the Google page you can download the 12-minute piece in a format suitable for playing on your iPod or PSP.
VICTOR RASUK IN ALFREDO DE VILLA’S ADRIFT IN MANHATTAN. COURTESY SCREEN MEDIA FILMS. Though he is now living in Los Angeles, Alfredo De Villa can’t stop returning to New York City to make his movies. The 35-year-old writer-director was born and raised in Puebla, Mexico, but moved to the U.S. when he was in his teens. He began his film career with shorts, Joe’s Egg (1995) and Neto’s Run (1999), both of which went on to win him the DGA’s Best Latino Director Award. He studied Directing at Columbia University’s film program, after which he moved into advertising, and in […]
Over at his Docs that Inspire, Joel Heller has posted an MP3 download of Scott Kirsner’s IFP Filmmaker Conference panel on digital downloading for filmmakers. Here’s what he has to say about the conference/podcast: Kirsner is arguably the most engaging panel moderator on the new media scene, both because of his knowledge of emerging distribution platforms and the persistence he brings to asking panelists tough questions and keeping things moving along. Panels such as this one are a vital service to filmmakers, who are faced with an overwhelming array of online distribution possibilities in new media landscape that’s evolving at […]
I’ve posted previously about Jonathan Lethem’s “Promiscuous Materials Project,” in which he allows filmmakers, songwriters and playwrights free adaptation rights to some of his short stories. Now, Lethem has a page on his blog in which he notes which artists have taken him up on his offer. An, in the cases of many of the songwriters, he posts streams of their work. Check it out. Among the film news: Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher is making a short fllm from Lethem’s story “Interview with a Crab.” Related: Lethem also announced that he would give the film rights to his latest […]
If you are in New York this weekend, consider going to see Larry Fessenden’s Iceland-set, environmental/exisentialist horror movie The Last Winter, which is playing at the IFC Center. Manohla Dargis gave the film an amazing review in the New York Times. She wrote, in part: It’s amazing what you can do with a low budget, an expansive imagination and a smooth-moving camera. (A fine cast helps.) An heir to the Val Lewton school of elegantly restrained horror, wherein an atmosphere of dread counts far more than a bucket of blood and some slippery entrails, the director Larry Fessenden is among […]