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.
At Filmmaker we’ve been on top of the DSLR story — the use of small digital SLR still cameras by filmmakers — in a series of articles beginning last year. (See “Shutterbugs” in Spring, 2009, and “Pimp your DSLR” in Summer.) That said, Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo has just posted an astonishingly detailed and useful article on his No Film School site called “The DSLR Cinematography Guide.” It’s got a huge amount of information in it with tons of hyperlinks to other articles, posts on user forums, and the blogs of various d.p.’s working with the format. I highly recommend it if […]
A couple of weeks ago I blogged about Matt Porterfield’s Kickstarter campaign for his film Putty Hill. He needed to raise $10,000, and with 30 hours left to go, he is still collecting funds over and above his goal; he’s currently at $18,926. Undoubtedly, the film’s high-profile premiere — in the Berlin Film Festival’s Forum section — helped. You can follow his adventure there over at the IFP blog, where Porterfield has been blogging. Here’s an excerpt where he talks about some of the people he has been meeting: I saw Claire Denis (pictured) speak to the Talent Campus today […]
In the Fall of 2008 filmmaker Jeff Deutchman asked his friends from around the world to record their feelings and experiences on the day Barack Obama was elected President. The resulting material comprises his feature 11/4/08, which premieres at SXSW next month, and Deutchman is still in post raising money. He has a Kickstarter page and is looking to raise $3,500 for color correction and the preparation of various marketing materials. Here’s how he describes the project: Two weeks before the election of Barack Obama, filmmaker Jeff Deutchman asked his friends around the world to record their experiences of 11/4/08, […]