The following letter, drafted from materials provided by Donaldson and Callif, is an update on an amicus brief filed in support of filmmaker Joe Berlinger. If you’re not familiar with the situation regarding his film Crude and Chevron, please read the below and then this editorial by Robert Redford detailing the importance of this case. On June 23, 2010, the IFP joined thirteen other organizations and nine individuals in signing an amicus brief in support of filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who was ordered to turn over 600 hours of outtakes from his documentary Crude to petrochemical company Chevron Corporation. Chevron, threatened […]
Perhaps it goes without saying that the world of independent film missed the boat on Wendell B. Harris Jr. No one, especially this author with the same surname as the now fifty-six year old Michigan native, wants to play the woulda, shoulda, coulda game. Yet whenever I think about the career I would have liked to have seen Mr. Harris have, it’s hard not to turn a bit melancholy. I guess being in the right place in the right time with the right people and a large enough sum of money counts for something, but if being at the podium […]
This is perhaps the longest gestating blog post in Filmmaker Blog history. Back in December, Ted Hope commented on the graying of the arthouse audience in a post entitled “Can Truly Free Film Appeal to Younger Audiences?” He asked: What is it that new audiences want? What must the indie community do to engage them? It is really surprising how few true indie films speak to a youth audience. In this country we’ve had Kevin Smith and Napoleon Dynamite, but nothing that was youth and also truly on the art spectrum like Run Lola Run or the French New Wave (Paranormal […]
This post is half public service for the tech-challenged (like me), and half “note to self” for the next time I change my internet connection settings. Briefly, like the many PS3 owners who have posted all over the internet looking for help, connecting a PS3 to the internet can be a challenge if you’re not quite sure what to do. I remember cursing the Gods of Sony last year when I bought a PS3. Then, through some kind folks on Twitter, I figured out how to do it and all was good. Recently, I changed my home ‘net security from […]
I don’t need any special encouragement to blog about a new book by Rick Moody…. especially when it has to do with a “blocked writer… whose major success is winning the right to author the novelization of the remake of the 1963 horror flick The Crawling Hand.” And when it has a pretty great trailer that took me back to Saturday afternoons watching Channel 20 in Washington, D.C. when I was growing up. (Hat tip: The Rumpus.)
Without an environment to shoot, cinematographers have nothing; without directors of photography to shoot their sets, production designers have no purpose. It takes a lot of people to build a world for the camera to film, and while the director may inspire and supervise its creation, it takes a production designer and a cinematographer to get it in front of the lens. The creative and practical collaboration between these two key crew members often gets personal. It is always co-dependent. We spoke to three such teams about their most recent projects together – Inbal Weinberg and Andrij Parekh of Blue […]
AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Documentary Festival (held June 21 to 27) announced its distinguished winners. Best Feature directors receive $5,000. Best US Feature: WO AI NI MOMMY (I LOVE YOU, MOMMY) directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal, which documents eight-year-old Chinese Fang Sui Yong and her adoption by a Jewish couple from Long Island who name her “Faith.” The film follows Faith and her parents’ twist-and-turn journey over a year and a half. Best World Feature: THE WOMAN WITH THE 5 ELEPHANTS directed by Vadim Jendreyko, which chronicles eighty-five-year-old Svetlana Geier who has dedicated her life to language. Considered the greatest translator of […]
The LA Film Festival (held June 17-27) announced its winners. The prize for Best Narrative Feature went to Danish director Pernille Fischer Christensen for A Family. The Documentary Award went to J. Clay Tweel for his doc Make Believe. Christensen and Tweel both receive $50,000. L.A. Film Festival winners (descriptions provided by the festival): Narrative Award (for Best Narrative Feature): A Family (En Familie) directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen (Denmark). The conflict between love and duty plays out in this stunning, award-winning saga about a successful Danish family that faces agonizing choices when its charismatic patriarch falls ill. Documentary Award […]
A curious celebration of cinema and the mix of craft, history and ideology that goes into its making, Angela Ismailos’ Great Directors provides a chance to travel into the minds of ten of the world’s most celebrated film directors. In conversations with Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles, Ismailos probes these directors for the secrets of their success while recounting much of the history of post-War world cinema via archival footage, occasionally ponderous black-and-white B-roll of the filmmakers, and mostly insightful voice over commentary. Detailed and […]