6302 Results for “Open ”
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Outta Respect
“We tried to do everything we could.” “What do you mean?” “You know what I mean. He’s gone. And we couldn’t do nothing about it.” So kicks off an iconic sequence in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, the emotional summit of a movie that’s basically one iconic sequence after another: the moment on the pay- phone when Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro) hears his old friend Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) has just been whacked. Jimmy doesn’t just hang up — he bashes the phone into the receiver, finally stomping the booth into the ground between muffled sobs while the film’s narrator, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Dec 14, 2017 -
Editor’s Letter
So many of our film industry colleagues shift their focus each fall to awards. Here at Filmmaker, we decided to devote more of our coverage, both in print and online, to distinguished collaborators who don’t receive quite the same amount of ink as directors and movie stars. I’m talking, of course, about below-the-line, and you’ll find almost a dozen of them highlighted throughout these pages. Just after we shipped our last print issue, Filmmaker celebrated its 25th anniversary at IFP Week by hosting the opening day of panels and seminars. One highlight was contributing editor Taylor Hess’s onstage version of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 14, 2017 -
Hits and Misses: Anthony Kaufman Surveys the Sundance Class of ’17
The headlines said it all: “Hollywood Faces August Death March,” “Bummer Summer” and “Beleaguered Box Office.” OK, Hollywood had a tough year, but does that necessarily apply to independent films? Well, as the saying goes, a receding tide sinks all boats. And so it was in 2017: If people were going out to fewer movies and streaming more episodic content at home, it affected both indie films and tentpoles. But if we look back at the films that premiered at Sundance 2017, there are a few instances to inspire hope: The Big Sick, of course, was the big one; Wind […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Dec 14, 2017 -
Filmmaking and Filmmaker: Advice for First-Timers from a Journalist-Turned-Director
After shipping the Fall 2006 issue of Filmmaker, where I had been the managing editor for nearly four years, I moved to Los Angeles to start my career as a movie director, the only thing I had ever wanted to do with myself. I had just turned 30, and I was behind schedule. At the time, my expectations didn’t seem so delusional. To begin with, I had found the story I needed to tell, something in a voice that was uniquely my own, and I wasn’t alone in my enthusiasm. I had a top agency and management company behind me, […]
by Matt Ross on Dec 14, 2017 -
“Your Film Will Always Travel More Than You”: Director Sophie Goyette on Independent Distribution
In 2016, Québécois filmmaker Sophie Goyette’s debut feature, Mes nuits feront écho, won the Bright Future Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A poetic rumination on morality, the fragility of relationships, and the bravery that goes into cultivating human connection, the film flows between very distinct, even seemingly disparate, locales: Québec, Mexico and Asia. Goyette, however, links these places through the journeys of a young musician, Eliane (Eliane Préfontaine), who leaves Canada for Mexico City and ends up teaching piano to the son of a middle-aged man, Romes (Gerardo Trejoluna). Romes soon leaves for Asia with his aged father, […]
by Kiva Reardon on Dec 12, 2017 -
“My Approach is More Novelistic than Journalistic”: Director Frederick Wiseman on His Oscar-Shortlisted Doc, Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
Now 87, Frederick Wiseman is showing no signs of slowing down. His most recent documentary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, which gives an inside look at the esteemed institution, has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Staying true to the filmmaker’s distinctive style of organic, no-fuss lensing, with subtle opinions about his subject matter teased out through his editorial process, Wiseman assuredly conveys in this latest work, via 197 minutes of filmic snapshots, the rich intellectual life offered — and symbolized by — the Library and its offering of community events and talks with figures […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Dec 12, 2017 -
Watch: “American Carnage: The Films of Steve Bannon”
From 2004 to 2016, Steve Bannon directed nine feature-length documentaries. Bannon, who professes open admiration for the aesthetics of Leni Riefenstahl, believed for a time that his films, which bear dire titles like Battle for America, Fire From the Heartland and District of Corruption, would catapult him to prominence as the right-wing’s cinematic answer to Michael Moore. Diving into his oeuvre is not unlike experiencing the last decade’s-worth of popular political documentaries but through a conservative looking-glass. Bannon’s films illustrate both his dangerously apocalyptic worldview, and provide an object lesson for probing the thin line between documentary and propaganda. They’re also near-unwatchable. But, they are texts worth encountering in order to get […]
by Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman on Dec 11, 2017 -
Slamdance Announces 2018 Beyond Films and Narrative + Doc Shorts Competitions
Slamdance’s Beyond category — for emerging filmmakers working beyond their first features — was announced yesterday along with its two shorts competitions, with five world premieres gracing the first category. The 2018 Slamdance Film Festival runs January 19-25 in Park City, Utah. Check out the announcement below. BEYOND PROGRAM Back at the Staircase (USA) World Premiere Director: Drew Britton Five distinctive people, each with a flimsy coping strategy, find themselves stuck together after an accident. Cast: Jennifer Lafleur, Stephen Plunkett, Leonora Pitts, Mickey O’Hagan, Logan Lark, Heather LaVine Funny Story (USA) World Premiere Director: Michael Gallagher After years of being […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2017 -
Tall Trees and Inner Lives: Kate and Laura Mulleavy on their Debut Film, Woodshock
A24 is having a good year. Again. After last year ushering Moonlight to Oscar gold, they are now poised to do the same with Lady Bird, Good Time, The Disaster Artist and The Florida Project. If they were distributing Call Me By Your Name, they’d have a monopoly on hip films of the season. Indeed, the distributor has a knack for creating pop-culture phenomenon out of independent films that might have been buried by other distributors. I’ve really been enjoying the “Lady Bird for President” posters and seeing pink hair trending. But what happens to the films in their packed […]
by Meredith Alloway on Dec 6, 2017 -
Is Twin Peaks Season Three a Movie or a TV Show? Well…
I’m always up for an endless debate that paralyzes my Twitter feed into repetitive stasis for 12+ hours at a time, and accordingly braced for one last night upon seeing that Twin Peaks: The Return had landed at number two on Sight & Sound‘s annual year-end poll. (Minutes after I published this, it popped up at number one on Cahiers du Cinema‘s list as well.) Pedantic disputes about Category Fraud — i.e., if a performance is lead or supporting for awards purposes — have never been my favorite, and I can’t imagine a topic to get less exercised about than whether a TV […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 5, 2017
