Thursday, June 5, Filmmaker, the IFC, IndieGoGo and the IFP are hosting an evening at the IFC Center that is part of Internet Week New York. It’s called “Where Film and Internet Collide,” and it’s one of three events going under this name that are dedicated to the merging of filmic and web sensibilities when it comes to creating new work. At the IFC we’ll be screening a number of interesting works created for the web and then will be discussing these works and web production in general with their creators. There will be plenty of time for questions, so […]
MENA SUVARI IN DIRECTOR STUART GORDON’S STUCK. COURTESY THINKFILM. Since the very beginning of his career, Stuart Gordon has set out to shock and disrupt. Gordon, a native of Chicago, began his assault on the public after developing a love of drama at the University of Wisconsin. He subsequently started the Screw Theater – which made national news in 1968 when they performed a nude, psychedelic version of Peter Pan – and went on in 1970 to found the Organic Theater Company in Chicago, where he was artistic director for 15 years. Over that period, Gordon worked with Roald Dahl, […]
Sidney Pollack, director of such films at Tootsie, Out of Africa, Sketches of Frank Gehry, and Three Days of the Condor died today of cancer. He was 73. In addition to directing, Pollack was an active producer (credits include Michael Clayton, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Cold Mountain) as well as an actor, appearing in such films as Eyes Wide Shut, Husbands and Wives, and, recently Clooney’s Michael Clayton. Within the world of big-budget Hollywood moviemaking, Pollack brought intelligence, political awareness, and solid craftsmanship to projects in a variety of genres and subject matters. He was also one of the […]
It is a sign of insanity to do the same thing over and over (like make an independent film) and expect different results? At GreenCine, Jonathan Marlowe re-poses the question of the moment in a piece entitled “Studios didn’t build their sales models for you”: Under these circumstances, why are filmmakers still holding out for the legendary promise of a theatrical release? When the likelihood of success for films made on spec (that is, a film made with private money on the hopes of selling it to an established studio or distributor) approaches the same statistics as the chances of […]
Brian Eno, who just turned 60, is interviewed in Wired, and as part of his long conversation he talks about the changing definition of the artist in the digital/social-networking age. Wired: Much has been made about the way tech (MySpace, digital distribution) has sped up the whole hype/buzz process. Had your career gone from 0 to 160mph the way it could today, how might that have influenced your development as an artist? What effect has Internet technology and culture had on art and artists? Eno: That’s an interesting question. The effect of highly accelerated careers could be this: Ideas are […]
If you’re an indie film pontificator who likes to talk about Radiohead’s and NIN’s innovative free pricing models, then you should check out the weekly podcast Econ Talk, which spent an hour with Wired’s Chris Anderson, whose next book is all about the trend towards no-cost goods and services. (This topic was explored by Anderson in a recent Wired cover story. I subscribe to Wired, not because I read it that much, but because it’s only $8, and I get enough out of it to justify that cost. But I didn’t read Anderson’s piece in Wired, although I did listen […]
Indiewire has the winners of the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and there are surprises all around. First, the Stateside scuttlebutt that Soderbergh’s Che would be awarded the Palme d’Or was wrong. Benicio del Toro won the Best Actor award for the film, but the festival’s top honor went to Laurent Cantet’s Entre Les Murs (“The Class”), the latest from the director of Human Resources and Vers le Sud and the last film to screen for the jury. Here’s the lede from Justin Chang’s Variety review: A fully sustained immersion in the academics, attitudes and frequent altercations of a group of […]
The New York Times Sunday business section has an article on Cinetic Media’s new digital rights division. Here’s the painful lede by Brooks Barnes: MORE than 3,600 independent features were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival this year, a record driven by inexpensive digital equipment and an abundance of film financing. But only a couple hundred of those movies will ever be distributed in theaters. Does that mean that almost 90 percent of indies have zero value?
GAY MUSLIM REFUGEES MEET IN DIRECTOR PARVEZ SHARMA’S A JIHAD FOR LOVE. COURTESY FIRST RUN FEATURES. After a distinguished career as a print and television journalist, Parvez Sharma has made a notable transition to documentary filmmaker. Born and raised in India, Sharma studied English at the University of Calcutta before gaining three film and journalism related masters degrees at universities in India, Britain and the U.S. He spent the nineties as a newspaper reporter in India and then moved on to working for his country’s premier news network, Star News Channel, using his position to draw attention to human rights […]
Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin’s The Edge of Heaven is a fierce, generous melodrama of boundaries and passions, of blood and yearning, the second of a trilogy about émigré culture patterned after Fassbinder’s “BRD Trilogy” (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, Veronika Voss) of post World War II German history. His fiery prior feature, Head-On, is the “love” component, with Edge comprising “death” (with “evil” on the way). Comparisons can be drawn to other work by the late German director, especially with his inclusion of Fassbinder stalwart Hanna Schygulla in a major, moving role. Akin seems to have found his métier […]