6300 Results for “Open ”
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“I Feel Totally OK with Being an Eternal Slave to Love and Cinema”: Yann Gonzalez on Obsession, Porn and Knife + Heart
Near the end of Yann Gonzalez’s queer neo-giallo intoxicant Knife + Heart, gay porn producer and director Anne (Vanessa Paradis) finds herself in a delapidated porno theatre in 1970s Paris, watching her own work from the past projected onto the screen. The elusive murderer terrorizing the set of her newest film is also transfixed by the porn being projected. Anne’s history as creator of fantasies and the traumatic history of the masked killer who’s been knocking off her cast and crew converge, film and reality melt into one another. They’re both frozen in their tracks in the cat and mouse […]
by Kyle Turner on Mar 15, 2019 -
Digital Haves and Have-Nots: Disappearing SVOD Deals and Independent Film
Subscription streaming services are dominating the independent film marketplace—in more ways than you think. Yes, Amazon dropped nearly $50 million at Sundance to buy several movies, and Netflix spent another $25 million in the days and weeks that followed. Beyond inflating acquisition costs over industry norms, the outsized influence of the over-the-top new media giants are affecting all sectors of the distribution business. Some industry veterans suggest this isn’t so different from previous bullish markets when well-heeled specialty divisions like the Weinstein Company or Fox Searchlight drove up prices. “Sundance has been competitive for years, so I’m not sure it’s […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Mar 14, 2019 -
When 2019 Was the Future
The artist David Levine once staged reenactments of memorable film scenes at their original locations in Central Park. A performer ran laps around the reservoir in a nod to the opening of Marathon Man, while stand-ins for Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis acted out the Cracker Jack scene in The Out-of-Towners by the Trefoil Arch. Scenes from The Royal Tenenbaums, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm and Portrait of Jennie, among others, were underway elsewhere in the park. The performances were unmarked, and some were more discernibly theatrical than others. Period clothes or the spectacle of a confrontation played and replayed in intervals could tip […]
by Joanne McNeil on Mar 14, 2019 -
Locked in Rage: Writer/Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre on The Mustang
A wild horse is captured, transported to a prison facility where he will be “broken,” or trained, in a program that doubles as a form of therapy for the inmates inside. A broken man is released from solitary confinement into the main population, where his ability to banish his anger is dependent on the relationship he forges with that horse, a brilliant brown mustang. The Mustang, the first feature from Paris-born, LA-based filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, is an artfully restrained, quietly moving film built around the most elemental of oppositions: freedom vs. imprisonment, man vs. animal, violence vs. self-control. And […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2019 -
Moonshot: Todd Douglas Miller on Apollo 11
Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11, which premiered at this year’s Sundance, originated from the simple idea of using archival footage to revisit, in time for its 50th anniversary, the first moon landing. For those who’ve grown up watching the same images trotted out over and over—Neil Armstrong bouncing on the moon, a burning ring of fire propelling itself backwards toward Earth as Apollo leaves the planet—the premise seems tedious and redundant, an ossified staple of Baby Boomer montages regularly intercut alongside clips of Woodstock and the Vietnam War, now freshly recharged by nationalistic rumblings about a space force. And as […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 14, 2019 -
Audiences in the Sky: How to Sell Your Film to the Airlines
In 1996, flying home from Slamdance, I was stuck on the tarmac at the Salt Lake City airport in a blizzard. After an hour and a half, a Sundance actor and I tried to talk the flight attendants into playing a VHS tape of my film Omaha (The Movie) in the cabin. They were happy to but said we had to clear it with the pilot and led us into the cockpit. The pilot thought it was a cool idea, too, but ultimately wondered whether the corporate office might object and decided he probably shouldn’t play the film. To this […]
by Dan Mirvish on Mar 14, 2019 -
No Money, No Problem?
They’re the two most beautiful words in the cinematic language: tax credits. Almost no one who practices the seventh art got into it to learn about business; if anything, they got into it to avoid it altogether. Alas, it’s almost impossible to participate in the most expensive art form without being at least semi-fluent in business jargon. State film tax incentives are a crucial part of most American films’ financing these days, be they giant Marvel productions filming in incentive-rich Atlanta or a tiny indie shooting in Albuquerque, mere miles from the set of Better Call Saul. As of this […]
by Matt Prigge on Mar 14, 2019 -
Elementary Force: Claire Denis on High Life
No one expected Claire Denis to soften with age. At 72, the French auteur has been a daring and unpredictable force in cinema for three decades now. After delivering last year’s talky romantic comedy Let the Sunshine In, which offered the unexpected sight of Gérard Depardieu as a lovesick psychic, Denis has returned with a certified leap into the unknown. High Life is the filmmaker’s first English-language film, her first science fiction foray, and her first featuring eye-popping CGI. Boasting an international cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth and André Benjamin, and set to be released by […]
by Paul Dallas on Mar 14, 2019 -
On Decks: The Art (and Necessity) of the Independent Film Lookbook
Lookbooks are an increasingly vital part of the filmmaking process. A good lookbook can make a pitch, just as a bad one can dissuade an investor, producer or financier from a project. Yet the creation of lookbooks is rarely discussed. The topic is missing from the many labs and tutorial programs set up to help first-time filmmakers—even though a good lookbook is perhaps the quickest way for a project to stand out. Simply put, refined visual knowledge and the skillful conveying of that knowledge is power for a director. When we interviewed Reed Morano last year about her work on […]
by Meredith Alloway on Mar 14, 2019 -
Charleen Swansea, 1932-2018
I read about Charleen Swansea’s death nearly four months after she passed, and it was somewhat of a surprise that the news had taken so long to reach me. After she died in August 2018, I noticed few, if any, attempts at eulogizing her filmic legacy or reevaluating the complexities that made her one of the great documentary subjects. A sort of Southern Renaissance woman, Swansea became a compelling character in the films of Ross McElwee, to whom she was a mentor and former teacher. Starting with Charleen in 1977 and up through Bright Leaves in 2003, she was a […]
by Daniel Christian on Mar 14, 2019
