American Hardcore filmmakers Paul Rachman and Steven Blush have a new project: Lost Rockers, a documentary “about great musicians overlooked by pop culture.” From the project’s Kickstarter page: LOST ROCKERS… offers insight into what it takes to “make it,” and why so many of equal talent to famous stars fall through the cracks. The film tells the life stories of these forgotten artists — of different eras, genres, creeds and orientations — from their doomed paths to fame to their ultimate redemption. You’ll experience amazing music you can’t believe you never heard. LOST ROCKERS has only just begun. We’ve shot […]
The Wall Street Journal-hosted Venture Capital Dispatch blog linked to my article yesterday about the closing of independent film distributor and festival website service business B-Side Entertainment. Scott Austin’s piece focused on comments made in the piece by CEO Chris Hyams and President of Distribution Paola Freccero about the company’s fate at the hands of the VC funding model. The executives said that B-Side was on the road to being profitable but couldn’t deliver large enough returns in the time period desired by financier Valhalla Partners. Austin points to another B-Side investor: original Series A-funder Mike Maples, Jr. and his […]
A often stunning and certainly never less than riveting meditation on the coming of age of an Arab/Corsican criminal in the unforgiving French penal system, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is that rare bird that feels utterly at home as an art house blockbuster (its pedigree includes the Grand Prix in Cannes, multiple European Film Awards and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film) and as a potential crossover hit. It follows a young prisoner named Malik (a terrific Tahar Rahim), who enters jail as little more than a homeless petty thief, but after being taken under the wing of […]
B-side Entertainment, the Austin-based tech and distribution company that provides website services to film festivals, is closing. The company, which launched a New York-based distribution arm just 13 months ago, lost its funding from venture capital fund Valhalla Partners in late 2009. “We have spent the last four or five months looking for a [financing] alternative,” B-Side CEO and founder Chris Hyams told Filmmaker. “But we reached the end of our cash before we could secure new investment. We had to shut the company down.” B-Side laid off the majority of its staff last week and throughout the weekend notified […]
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Burma VJ director Anders Østergaard for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Burma VJ is nominated for Best Documentary. Danish cinema currently has numerous talented fiction directors – everybody from Lars von Trier, Christopher Boe, Ole Bornedal, and Susanne Bier to Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring, Nicolas Winding Refn and Lone Scherfig – and now Anders Østergaard is bringing attention to the country’s documentary output. Born in Copenhagen […]
Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow and the whole team behind The Hurt Locker for winning Best Director and Best Film at this year’s BAFTA Awards.
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ira Sachs interviewed The Messenger co-writer-director Oren Moverman for our Fall 2009 issue. The Messenger is nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Woody Harrelson) and Best Original Screenplay (Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman). The two Iraq war soldiers played by Ben Foster and Woody Harrelson in Oren Moverman’s astonishing directorial debut, The Messenger, serve in a different kind of military theater. It’s not in the Middle East but at home, here in […]
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Alicia Van Couvering interviewed The Cove director Louis Psihoyos for our ’09 Sundance Film Festival coverage. The Cove is nominated for Best Documentary. Unlike other films playing in our three-part look at crossover artists at Sundance, The Cove is not playing in New Frontier, but in the Documentary Competition, and that’s despite its director’s non-traditional background. Louie Psihoyos was one of the world’s top-ranked photographers, a staff member at National Geographic […]
The film must-read of the moment is Chris Jones’ beautifully written profile of Roger Ebert in Esquire magazine. Of course the article chronicles Ebert’s recent health problems — cancer operations that have wound up removing much of his lower job and eliminated his ability to eat, drink, and speak. But the piece also succeeds in capturing the strange and inspiring mix of sagacity and serenity that Ebert is projecting in late career through not only his reviews but also his Twitter page and blog. I was talking to a colleague not too long ago about which traditional media types had […]
Filmmaker and frequent Filmmaker contributor Jamie Stuart sent a link to a simply gorgeous suite of 22 photos he shot around Central Park and other locations during New York’s recent snowstorm. Take a moment and head to his site to view the photos, which were all done, astonishingly, on his iPhone camera using the Old Camera app.