This past winter we continued a tradition that started with the From Here to Awesome experiment, a “day and date” festival concept that helped 22 films reach theaters, living rooms and viewer’s computers in 2008. The WorkBook Project Discovery and Distribution Award gives a filmmaker an amazing prize consisting of a week long theatrical run in LA with social media, street team and PR support. A run where the filmmaker keeps the box office and we help to pull together the independent community in an effort to drive awareness around the film. Over a 100 films were submitted and today […]
Titles for the 35th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival were announced today. The mixture of world and North American premieres range from directors like Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden‘s It’s Kind of a Funny Story, to Julian Schnabel‘s Miral to Susanne Bier‘s In A Better World. The full list of titles screening in the Gala and Special Presentations sections are below. TIFF has also announced that the festival, running from Sept. 9 -19, will be extended one day longer this year and in celebration of their 35th year will be running a “TIFF For Free” series were past […]
The history of moviegoing in New York City is quintessential to the survival of the medium. Manhattan alone provided a healthy nexus of theatrical activity at the beginning of the 20th century, and in that regard, little has changed. The city continues to host dozens of theaters, including more arthouse venues than almost anywhere else in the world. From the usual specialty releases regularly showcased at the Sunshine and the Angelika to the storied repertory programming at prestigious fixtures like Film Forum and Lincoln Center, New Yorkers have innumerable eclectic opportunities to expand their cinematic horizons. But movies without distribution […]
Big news from the Library of Congress today. In their three-year annual review of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, restrictions on documentary makers related to the fair use of copyrighted materials were significantly eased. Attorney Michael C. Donaldson, who assembled the coalition lobbying for these changes and provided pro bono counsel, commented, “Documentary filmmakers have been freed of the high price extracted by rights holders, or the high price of possible criminal prosecution, when they need to reach public domain material or material to be used pursuant to fair use. All they have to do is follow a few simple […]
Here’s the latest in the New Breed series of videos with filmmakers at the Los Angeles Film Festival. This one is called “Planning for Discoveries.” The previous episodes were “Nothing You Have to Have” and “Engineering Serendipity”. Episodes go up Monday and Thursday until all seven are live on the site. NEW BREED LOS ANGELES – Episode 3 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo.
“I know a lot of filmmakers grew up making movies, but I didn’t really do that,” reveals Adam Bowers, the writer, director and star of the Sundance NEXT entry New Low. “While they were getting experience I was just getting experience being an idiot.” If you caught his film in Park City this year then you’re probably not surprised by this admission. Perfectly playing the quintessential neurotic schlub, Bowers, 25, has always been fascinated by characters who are a bit self-serving and not too bright. But what makes New Low stand out from other indie comedies is its keen sense […]
For decades John Waters has been the filmmaker who has sprung to mind when one thinks about Baltimore and the movies. But with the release of his exquisitely directed, formally rigorous second feature, Putty Hill, Matt Porterfield adds his name to the city’s cinematic honor roll. “For me, Baltimore — the physical environment and its people — is a real source of inspiration,” he says. “It’s a diverse but stratified city, an amalgam of the North and South, divided along race, class, and socioeconomic lines. I hope my films can perform some kind of social function by bridging gaps and […]
For Arielle Javitch, whose first feature, Look, Stranger, is currently in post, moviemaking and movement have always been intertwined activities. She began her career as a dancer, and when a back injury sidelined her from performance, she began to make short dance films. “They started as pure movement, and then they began to get more narrative,” Javitch remembers. “One of my shorts was about refugees, and I used testimonies from different [refugee] stories, trying to make them visual through dance and other imagery. The film was beautiful, but it didn’t succeed, and then I knew I had to move into […]
Danfung Dennis, who is self-lensing his first directorial effort, says he had never handled a video camera before starting production. But for Dennis, who made his name as a photojournalist covering strife in China, Iraq and Afghanistan, the transition was an organic one. “The Canon 5D Mark 2 came out,” he remembers, “and it was very similar to the cameras I had been using. With just one button push I was shooting HD video.” Dennis, who had been shooting in Kabul for Newsweek, thought he might make a short Web video about the conflict there. But soon Dennis upsized his […]
At the IFP Narrative Lab, a mentor said of Susan Youssef’s first feature, Habibi Rasak Kharban (literally, “Darling, Something’s Wrong with Your Head”): “It’s a classic story, like Romeo and Juliet.” True, but the roots of Youssef’s story go back far further. The film is an adaptation of the 12th-century Sufi parable Majnun Layla, which was itself based on a 7th-century Arabic story. Over the years, the tragic tale of undying love between a woman and the wandering poet her family forbids her to marry has formed the basis for countless works of art, from Shakespeare’s classic to several Indian […]