Wunderkind-auteur William Friedkin who stormed the Hollywood gates with The French Connection and The Exorcist in the 1970’s enters the21st century with, Bug, a film that depicts the maddening descent into self-destructive paranoia. Adapted from the stage play of the same name, written by Tracy Letts and starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, Friedkin presents a noirish setting of a socially marginal characters inhabiting the outskirts of middle-America Oklahoma; which in this case is a lesbian bar and ramshackle roadside motel. Shannon, who also starred in the stage play version, reprises his role as Peter Evans, an AWOL American soldier […]
Here’s a Google link to a conversation that Scott Kirsner from CinemaTech had during the IFP Filmmaker Confernece with Brett Gaylor, a Montreal-based filmmaker who is exploring new modes of collaboration for documentary filmmaking. I’m also embedding below, but if you go to the Google page you can download the 12-minute piece in a format suitable for playing on your iPod or PSP.
VICTOR RASUK IN ALFREDO DE VILLA’S ADRIFT IN MANHATTAN. COURTESY SCREEN MEDIA FILMS. Though he is now living in Los Angeles, Alfredo De Villa can’t stop returning to New York City to make his movies. The 35-year-old writer-director was born and raised in Puebla, Mexico, but moved to the U.S. when he was in his teens. He began his film career with shorts, Joe’s Egg (1995) and Neto’s Run (1999), both of which went on to win him the DGA’s Best Latino Director Award. He studied Directing at Columbia University’s film program, after which he moved into advertising, and in […]
Over at his Docs that Inspire, Joel Heller has posted an MP3 download of Scott Kirsner’s IFP Filmmaker Conference panel on digital downloading for filmmakers. Here’s what he has to say about the conference/podcast: Kirsner is arguably the most engaging panel moderator on the new media scene, both because of his knowledge of emerging distribution platforms and the persistence he brings to asking panelists tough questions and keeping things moving along. Panels such as this one are a vital service to filmmakers, who are faced with an overwhelming array of online distribution possibilities in new media landscape that’s evolving at […]
I’ve posted previously about Jonathan Lethem’s “Promiscuous Materials Project,” in which he allows filmmakers, songwriters and playwrights free adaptation rights to some of his short stories. Now, Lethem has a page on his blog in which he notes which artists have taken him up on his offer. An, in the cases of many of the songwriters, he posts streams of their work. Check it out. Among the film news: Blade Runner screenwriter Hampton Fancher is making a short fllm from Lethem’s story “Interview with a Crab.” Related: Lethem also announced that he would give the film rights to his latest […]
If you are in New York this weekend, consider going to see Larry Fessenden’s Iceland-set, environmental/exisentialist horror movie The Last Winter, which is playing at the IFC Center. Manohla Dargis gave the film an amazing review in the New York Times. She wrote, in part: It’s amazing what you can do with a low budget, an expansive imagination and a smooth-moving camera. (A fine cast helps.) An heir to the Val Lewton school of elegantly restrained horror, wherein an atmosphere of dread counts far more than a bucket of blood and some slippery entrails, the director Larry Fessenden is among […]
Tomorrow, Friday, is the final day of the IFP Filmmaker Conference, and it’s both free and open to the general public. From 9:00AM until 10:30AM panelists will discuss issues surrounding fair use in documentary film, the limits of, benefits from, and restrictions around E&O insurance, and specific issues that have arisen in various docs having to do with fair use. It’s at the Puck Building in New York at Houston and Lafayette. Anybody working in documentary film today has to know about these issues. Here’s the schedule: FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21st – FAIR USE IN DOCUMENTARY FILM FAIR USE 101 9:00 […]
As we pass the half-way point, I want to thank all of our guest bloggers — Pamela, M. Dot, Alicia, and Brandon — who’ve been covering the IFP Filmmaker Conference. But as GreenCine pointed out today, there are other places to get your vicarious Conference fix. The Film Panel Notetaker has several long and detailed accounts of the various panel discussions. And Scott Kirsner has several long posts as well on his CinemaTech blog. In one, while listening to THINKfilm’s Mark Urman discuss the challenge of publicizing a film in the internet age, Kirsner goes web-surfing to the THINKfilm site […]
In 2005 indie director Larry Fessenden was troubled by the state of the world—specifically, by our leaders’ callow response to the threat of global warming. So he did what he does best: He made a horror movie. The Last Winter, about a skeleton crew of oil-dredge workers afflicted by madness and other disturbing phenomena in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, revisits some of the tropes in Fessenden’s spooky 2001 feature Wendigo, including a fearsome, shape-shifting deer-spirit. The film was overlooked when it premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, later acquired by IFC First Take (releases September 19), and recently […]
The IFP Filmmaker’s Conference is this week at the Puck Building (I’m moderating a talk with Crackel’s Tony Lisano in about an hour) and you’ll see some new and other familiar faces on the blog this week. Several filmmakers and journalists will be reporting in everthing from the various panels and events to their own experience navigating the Conference with their projects. So, check back often this week…