Currently in its fifth year, Fast Track, a joint program of the Los Angeles Film Festival and Filmmaker magazine, was created to promote the careers of talented filmmakers over the course of a year, while spreading the word about their newest projects. The filmmakers chosen are alumni of the LAFF as well as alumni of Film Independent’s Talent Development Programs: the Filmmaker Labs, Project: Involve, and the grants awarded at the Spirit Awards. Here are the Fast Track filmmakers of 2007 and their upcoming projects. Robbie Pickering You know you’re in for some trouble when your dutiful Christian wife discovers […]
Boing Boing points to this hilarious, jauntily scored piece of media analysis in which the folks at iTulip annotate Jim Cramer’s CNBC meltdown yesterday in which he begged Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke to cut the discount rate tomorrow. “We have Armageddon!” he shouted, fearful that the current credit squeeze will decimate the financial industry. The iTulip people (who I know little about) provide a populist critique, wondering if free market free falls are only allowed to happen to aging industrial companies and not financial services.
In Variety Todd McCarthy has penned a personal take on the death of Bergman and Antonioni that begins by rightly recognizing the privileged place they held in 20th century cinema: Are there any directors today made of such stern stuff as were Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni?As a matter of fact, there are — the likes of Hou Hsiao Hsien, Abbas Kiarostami and Bela Tarr come to mind. But the miracle of Bergman and Antonioni, who died on the same day, July 30, at the ages of 89 and 94, respectively, is that, while making films expressive of bleak, even […]
Over at his blog, Sujewa Ekanayake takes his experience self-producing a one-week run of his feature Date Number One in an alternative venue and breaks it down into the hard numbers. He talks about staffing, projector rentals, sound and the advantages of setting up a projection space in a non-traditional venue rather than renting a theater.
At it’s heart, the independent film movement is driven by private equity — both the expansiveness of your college buddies or parents’ (or proverbial dentist’s) portfolio, or the adventureousness of private hedge funds looking for new investment opportunities. But the distance between macro economic goings on and the money hitting an indie filmmaker’s LLC is so vast that we often don’t consider how the broader economy is affecting our own. Here, then, is a clear and sobering article from Agonist that explains the current sub-prime mortgage mess, the possible contagion resulting from it, and both its best and or worst […]
IGN has just posted online the trailer for Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs, which Alicia Van Couvering wrote about in Filmmaker as part of her article on the so-called “mumblecore” movement. The film is getting a release through the IFC First Take series and plays at the IFC Center in New York as part of The New Talkies: Generation DIY series beginning August 22.
The forthcoming fall issue of Filmmaker marks the magazine’s 15th anniversary, and, as I was having lunch the other day with Lance Weiler, he had a great idea about how you can help celebrate it with us. If you’re a long-time (or even short-time) Filmmaker reader and any particular article or interview we’ve published has helped you or informed you in any way in your filmmaking work, let us know. Write a paragraph or two about the situation and reference the original piece. We’ll edit together the best responses and run them next issue. You can send your thoughts to […]
Over at Cinemad, Nick Russell interviews filmmaker Betzy Bromberg, who is also the Director of the Film/Video Program at CalArts. Among other things Russell talks with her about her latest film, A Darkness Swallowed, which took six years to make. He describes the film as “an astrological exploration of the mind and what we call ‘memor’” as we gradually experience a slow fall, into a funnel. Using primarily close-up imagery that seems abstract at first, Bromberg creates an overall experience of distorted enclosure that lasts for days.” An excerpt: Cinemad: Do you normally give yourself plenty of time without the […]
Great news for those who have been concerned about the proposed new rules regulating film shooting and photography on the streets of New York. The Mayors Office of Film and Television has announced that they will be redrafting these regulations following feedback from the community. You can read their announcement here. Here’s a key passage from the press release: Among other things, the re-drafting phase will focus on meaningfully addressing concerns that sections (b)(ii) and (b)(iii) affected individuals who were not engaged in the type of activities traditionally regulated by MOFTB. These are the sections of the proposed rules that […]
NINA KERVEL-BEY IN JULIE GAVRAS’ BLAME IT ON FIDEL. COURTESY KOCH LORBER FILMS. Anyone wanting to prove that a there is a “cinematic gene” need look no further than Julie Gavras. The daughter of legendary director Costa-Gavras, most famous for films like Z (1968) and Missing (1982), and movie producer Michèle Ray-Gavras, Gavras initially resisted working in film and enrolled in law school. However, her desire to tell stories on film proved irrepressible. After a stint as an assistant director in France and Italy, Gavras started making documentaries, most notably The Pirate, the Wizard, the Thief and the Children (2002). […]