6302 Results for “Open ”
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“A real sense of intimacy”: Anthony Chen on Ilo Ilo
Anthony Chen has been promoting Ilo Ilo for 10 months and isn’t finished yet: after the UK release in May, a year’s worth of constant interviews and promotional travel may finally be over. Launched at Cannes, Ilo Ilo garnered the Camera d’Or for best first film; a little over three months later, it opened at home in Singapore and became the country’s highest-grossing film of the year. That’s an unusual feat for an emotionally harsh family drama in the arthouse vein. “In Singapore we make about ten films a year,” Chen explained over Skype. “Nine out of ten are usually […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 4, 2014 -
Battle Cry: Chris Eska on The Retrieval
Low-budget period indie films are rare in and of themselves, but to find one which inhabits the war-torn south with such authenticity and veracity as Chris Eska’s The Retrieval is rarer still. Set towards the end of the Civil War, the picture follows young Will (Ashton Sanders), a former slave. Along with his uncle Marcus (Keston John), Will has fallen under the sway of brutal bounty hunter Burrell (an eerily effective Bill Oberst Jr.), who threatens to kill them unless they can retrieve escaped slave Nate (Tishuan Scott). Crossing lush forests that double as battlefields, Will and Nate struggle to survive […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 3, 2014 -
“Groundbreaking Work Often Sits at the Boundaries of Technology”: Sound Designer Johnnie Burn on Under The Skin
It’s unlikely many films released this year will lean as heavily on sound design for their overall impact as Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin, a loose adaptation of Michel Faber’s 2000 novel of the same name. The director’s long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s Birth is a warped, haunting melange of sci-fi and cinema vérité which reinvents Hollywood siren Scarlett Johansson as a blank-eyed, cold-hearted alien with a cut-glass English accent. The alien shores up in the Scottish highlands and embarks on an implacable quest which involves cruising around in a white van, looking for hapless local men to “seduce.” Under The […]
by Ashley Clark on Apr 2, 2014 -
The Lost Children Experience at FilmGateMiami 2014
This is a brief post-mortem on my last interactive live event at a small interactive festival in Miami called FilmGate 2014. Over the past year, I have been focusing on a few core principles in my work. These are not rules, but questions I return to when making a piece of immersive/interactive work. Rules/audience agency. When we go to a movie, we know the rules. Sit in the dark, eat our popcorn, watch. When designing a new experience, it’s important to communicate the rules to your audience so they can let go of their minds and get immersed. Along with this, […]
by Mark Harris on Apr 2, 2014 -
Not Finding Vivian Maier
So you say you’re an artist, but you’re not publishing your stuff? You’re a photographer, but you’re not on Instagram? You’re a writer, but you’re not on Twitter? Well look out buddy, because that just won’t stand. There’s gonna be a documentary about you. I mean what kind of person doesn’t throw themselves at the feet of fame? What kinda weirdo does art for the sake of art and not public adoration? This is too baffling, too inscrutable, too foreign a concept. Not only are we gonna make a movie about you, but we’re also going to dredge up every […]
by Noah Buschel on Mar 31, 2014 -
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Doron Weber on Science on Screen and Live Distribution
Last month, I wrote an article about the rise in live supplements to theatrical screenings. Turns out, this is hardly a novel idea. Coolidge Corner, an arthouse theater smack dab in the Boston suburb of Brookline, has been merging the two formats for nine years running. With the help of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Coolidge spearheaded the Science on Screen series, in which selected films are programmed alongside specialists who contextualize the narrative within science and technology, which is not necessarily as straightforward as it sounds. Take, for instance, a recent screening of 8 Mile, which was followed by professors […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 31, 2014 -
If You Build It, Will They Come? On the Treefort Film Fest
Idaho’s only city of 100,000+ residents sits in a valley north of the Snake river. Boise is a boomtown these days, with over 150,000 new residents since George W. Bush took office and new west corporate bravado written all over it. The flat city’s pert, immensely walkable and surprisingly bumpin’ downtown extends into residential areas north and east. Looming hills ringing much of the town can be glimpsed from almost anywhere in the city proper as long as the light is just so; it’s an oddly marvelous place to roam around. A gold rush town after the French and Native […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 28, 2014 -
Thoughts Towards the Killer App of Indie Film
I’m a writer-director/producer with a couple of features under my belt. Since the last one was released (Burning Annie), the world’s economy collapsed, half of the studios’ arthouse labels folded, and the audiences for music, books, and film splintered into a million fragments. At the same time, smartphones and app-culture rose to dominance. My new film Laundry Day is in post. As I warily eye the world that I will be releasing my baby into, I’m somewhat alarmed by the large and growing divide between modern audiences and modern distributors, and how inadequate the trends of the moment are for […]
by Randy Mack on Mar 28, 2014 -
IFP Launches New Web Series Initiative
Yesterday IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced that an annual lab for web series will be added to its existing programs for narrative and documentary films. The Web Storytellers Sidebar, part of IFP’s RBC Emerging Storytellers program, is designed to promote web series through an in-depth consultation during Independent Film Week in September, with additional logistical support extending beyond. Up to five series–in any stage of development, production, or post–will be selected to participate in the conference, which constitutes the largest meetings-based film forum in the United States. As part of their acceptance, the projects also will have exclusive access to additional IFP web series […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 27, 2014 -
Upstate Blues: Drake Doremus on Breathe In
Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy – a gauzily photographed love triangle drama that won Sundance – didn’t burn up the box office, but it opened up a number of doors for the third-time director and his atmospheric followup. By turns strident and sentimental, Breathe In feels like a step forward on a number of fronts. As the 30-year-old director told Filmmaker recently, the film was more or less not scripted, but it has the tension of a tightly wound product of a veteran screenwriter. Guy Pearce is Keith, a married music teacher full of longing for his zesty younger days who risks […]
by Brandon Harris on Mar 27, 2014
