Over at his Cinema Echo Chamber, Brandon Harris interviews Tom Quinn, writer/director of the excellent indie feature The New Year Parade, which screens tonight at the IFC Center. The film won the Grand Prize at Slamdance this year and is also a graduate of the IFP Rough Cuts Lab, which is where I originally encountered it. Harris originally wrote about the film here on the Filmmaker blog, and in the intro to the interview at Cinema Echo Chamber he dubs the film a “naturalistic, emotionally resonant look at the year long dissolution and repair of a South Philadelphia Irish family, […]
A feminist voice, maverick filmmaker, or just an egomaniac? Filmmaker Henry Jaglom has been called many things and all of them are explored in Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeremy Workman‘s brief (only 58 minutes) but entertaining documentary. Armed with his trademark hat, loose tongue and nonstop-running camera, Jaglom explores the inner psyche of his actors and the audience by filming the “reality” of the moment in his films, no matter how damaging it may become to who he’s filming. This style has led to comparisons to Cassavetes or Godard, and to some, a hack filmmaker with no talent. Using archival footage […]
LUDIVINE SAGNIER, CLOTILDE HESME AND LOUIS GARREL IN DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ’S LOVE SONGS. COURTESY IFC FILMS AND RED ENVELOPE ENTERTAINMENT. Occasionally a filmmaker comes along who truly remind us why we love cinema. Christophe Honoré is not only one of those people, but also finds multiple other ways of expressing his seemingly endless creativity. He was born in Finistere (literally “The end of the world”), a small town in Brittany, France, and attended the University of Rennes, where he studied literature and film. In 1995, he moved to Paris where he began reviewing for the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma while […]
Screen Daily today runs a must-read edited excerpt of financier Ben Waisbren’s recent remarks in Berlin about film financing, the credit markets, slate deals, and the movie business overall. Here’s how they intro his piece: “In a prescient speech more than a month ago in Berlin, financier Ben Waisbren talked of impending calamity for the US wave of slate financing – banks won’t touch such mega-deals again until there is more transparency and a better alignment of investor and studio interests.”
Asia Argento — the writer, director and actor — has been justly celebrated this week by Nathan Lee in the Village Voice on the occasion of her starring role in Olivier Assayas’s latest thriller, Boarding Gate. Lee calls her “not only the most fearless actor of her generation, but also one of the most intelligent and commanding,” an assessment with which I concur. His piece is hard to excerpt, so I suggest you simply go to the link and read the whole thing. Also look for Travis Crawford’s piece on Mother of Tears, her father Dario’s latest feature in which […]
In her Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke links to and comments on a Bloomberg.com report that states that the Sundance Channel is for sale and that Cablevision, which already owns the IFC, may be a potential buyer. From Andy Fixmer’s Bloomberg report: The Sundance Channel, the cable network built around Robert Redford’s annual film festival, is for sale and Cablevision Systems Corp. may be the eventual buyer, according to Pali Research. Owners General Electric Co., CBS Corp. and Redford are seeking $400 million to $500 million for the channel, which has 26 million subscribers, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali […]
I had a business meeting last week in which there was an honest discussion about whether the “Two Girls, One Cup” phenomenon was played out or not. I’ll say no more. Apparently, though, it has not, as the internet meme has crossed over into the old-media world of Esquire magazine. Karina Longworth reports over at SpoutBlog: I’m fairly certain Cary Grant was never asked by an interviewer to watch internet scat porn so that his word-for-word reaction could be printed in a major magazine, but poor George Clooney lives in a different time. Presumably because there’s very little new to […]
Over at his DIY Filmmaker blog, Sujewa Ekanayake posts a long interview with Barry Jenkins (pictured) about his Medicine for Melancholy, one of the real discoveries (and a film I very much liked) out of SXSW. He talks about Godard, being inspired by Claire Denis’s Vendredi Soir, and whether Medicine for Melancholy is, in Sujewa’s words, “the Barack Obama of indie films.” Here’s his response to the latter — specifically, whether or not his film can “cross over” from the typical “multi-ethnic but largely white” base of indie film to reach more diverse audiences. “The Barack Obama of indie films.” […]
The social marketplace site, IndieGoGo, has announced the first film to reach its funding goal on the site. Titled, The Lilliput, filmmaker Minna Zielonka-Packer raised $10,000 through the site and will use the proceeds to film a sneak peak of the film. Here’s the synopsis of the film from the site: An American filmmaker travels to Poland to make a film about Gombin, the town her father was born in, as a memorial to him and to the Holocaust. Poland 2008 is a country of contradictions where the invisible torture of the past meets the hope of the future. To […]
Let me start off by saying I’m not a fan of award shows. And in no way am I speaking for the magazine, I personally don’t like them. How you can rate films (or music, or anything in the arts for that matter) is just beyond me. But there’s one thing that an award show can do if done right and that’s bring a community together. That’s what the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors did last night in New York City. Created by filmmaker AJ Schnack and Stranger Than Fiction founder Thom Powers (and sponsored by IndiePix), this celebration of non-fiction […]