| Filmmaker Magazine

Yung Chang, Up The Yangtze

A SCENE FROM DIRECTOR YUNG CHANG’S UP THE YANGTZE. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS. At a time when the popularity of documentaries is at an all-time high, Canadian director Yung Chang is not only telling stories as compelling as his peers’, but doing so with a truly cinematic sensibility that is often lacking in his field. Born in Whitby, Ontario, to first generation Chinese immigrant parents, Chang studied film production at Concordia University, graduating in 1999. He was also a student at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where he learned the Meisner Technique. He directed the short film The […]

by Nick Dawson on Apr 25, 2008

ROBBED CLOSING CANNES’ FORTNIGHT

Cannes‘ 40th Director’s Fortnight was announced today in Paris with good showings from Latin America, Spain and particularly France with 12 of the 22 films either French or co-productions. The lone U.S. film is Joshua Safdie‘s The Pleasure of Being Robbed, a warm, beautifully lensed, simple story of a curious girl wondering around New York City in search of connections with strangers. The film gained a lot of attention at its premiere at SXSW and has been building buzz on the regional circuit since. I saw it at Sarasota earlier this month (where it received the fest’s Independent Vision award) […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Apr 25, 2008

30%

It’s official — Governor Patterson has signed the enhanced New York tax incentive. The state now offers a 30% tax credit against qualified expenses and it’s now payable to the production company in one year, not two. The city’s five percent remains intact, meaning a 35% credit for films lensed within the five boroughs.

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2008

GLORIOUS GLORY

One of the hits of this year’s SXSW was the 25-minute short, Glory at Sea. Set in a magically real, emotionally honest post-Katrina New Orleans, the film is something of a mini-epic, a grand tale of outsized, heartbreaking ambition set against both a devastated city and the boundlessness of the open waters. The story of Ben Zeitlin’s film, unfortunately, did not end with its triumphant Austin premiere. Zeitlin and members of his crew were injured in a serious car accident on the way to a screening. The uninsured Zeitlin broke his hip and pelvis and has two sprained ankles. So, […]

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 23, 2008

CANNES ’08 LINE UP ANNOUNCED

As you can see from the list below, the 61st Festival de Cannes is filled with many familiar names including Steven Soderbergh, who brings his pair of Che films, and works from Clint Eastwood, Atom Egoyan, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen and Charlie Kaufman‘s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. The festival takes place May 14-25. IN COMPETITION24 City, directed by Jia ZhangkeAdoration, directed by Atom EgoyanChangeling, directed by Clint EastwoodChe (The Argentine, Guerrilla), directed by Steven SoderberghUn Conte de noel, directed by Arnaud DesplechinDelta, directed by Kornel MundruczoIl Divo, directed by Paolo SorrentinoGomorrah, directed by Matteo GarroneLa Frontiere de l’aube, directed […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Apr 23, 2008

WHACKING THE WACKNESS

Over at Ain’t It Cool News, Quint calls the trailer for Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness “an okay trailer for a great movie” and “a little clunky.” At Hollywood Elsewhere, Jeffrey Wells thinks star Josh Peck “is basically Leo Gorcey” and is not likely to ever play “anything other than a what-up homie who sells tabs of ecstasy and dilaudid in Tompkins Square Park” while one of his readers, Hallick, calls the clip “the dullest trailer of 2008” and asks, “What the hell are they trying their hardest not to sell here?” Yep, the trailer’s underwhelming, but it does set you […]

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008

HACKING THE CRM

At his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner follows up an earlier post announcing Cinetic Media’s hiring of Matt Dentler to its new digital rights division, Cinetic Rights Management, with a conversation with three of the company’s key players: Christopher Horton, COO Janet Brown, and Dentler. (If you haven’t heard, John Sloss’s Cinetic Media has set up a new company that will represent digital media rights for independent films. They are currently contacting many indie filmmakers and producers and signing for representation films that will presumably be leveraged into digital distribution platforms ranging from internet downloads to new delivery devices like mobile […]

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008

TAKING NOTES ON VAN

Phillip Van, who was one of our “25 New Faces” last year (and who is photographed here by Richard Koek), is taking part in the Tribeca All Access program and is interviewed by the Film Panel Notetaker. He discusses And She Stares Longingly at What She Has Lost, the short film he made as part of the Little Minx project. He talks about his TAA project Darkland, Carl Jung, Richard Nixon, and his short, High Maintenance. An excerpt: I made High Maintenance to touch upon behaviors that I see in excess today among friends and in society; things like rampant […]

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008

WAITING FOR CHARLIE

Over at his blog, Jonathan Taplin calls “Charlie Rose by Samuel Beckett” the “most creative video mash-up of the year.”

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008

THE BLOG NEXT DOOR

The FilmInFocus series “Behind the Blog” continues this week with a new entry: Matt Zoller Seitz and his “The House Next Door.” An excerpt: HOW HAS YOUR LIFE CHANGED BECAUSE OF YOUR BLOG? HAS IT GONE IN ANY NEW DIRECTIONS BECAUSE OF YOUR NEWFOUND PROMINENCE? Throughout my career, I always took my work seriously, but I also had a skeptical or even cynical attitude about it — that it was just something people read at breakfast or on the bus to kill time. But since I started the blog I’ve been contacted by a lot of people who have been […]

by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2008

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