6302 Results for “Open ”
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Freezing Filmgoing in Tromsø and the Phenomenon of Site-Specific Cinema
The Tromsø International Film Festival has always pushed the boundary when it comes to open-air cinema. The only international film festival that takes place in the Arctic Circle has a Winter Cinema, an open-air cinema with sofas positioned on top of the snow in front of a large screen with picturesque hilltops on the horizon. Most of the program is made up of short films made for children that play in the dark afternoons, but this year Festival Director Martha Otto put on a late-night screening of Dead Snow to boot. It added a new challenge for the audience, to […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Feb 5, 2014 -
SXSW Announces Midnighters and Shorts Lineups
Coming off the heels of last week’s announcement, SXSW rounds out their lineup with the Midnighters and Shorts sections. As was the case with the bulk of the festival’s Features, there’s not a huge carry over from Sundance, beyond Adam Wingard’s The Guest and Jonathan’s Chest, Person to Person, Notes on Blindness, Funnel, Dig, Verbatim and Marilyn Myller in the Shorts section. Also of note are 25 New Faces Mohammad Gorjestani and ornana’s Danny Madden, who will screen Refuge and Confusion Through Sand, respectively. Check out the full list of Midnighters; Narrative, Documentary, Animated, Midnight, Texas and Texas High School Shorts; and Music Videos below. MIDNIGHTERS Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 5, 2014 -
“I Jumped on a Running Train:” Interim Artistic Director Mart Dominicus on Rotterdam 2014
The Artistic Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam since 2008, Rutger Wolfson had begun work on this year’s edition of the festival, the 43rd, when fate interceded. In November, Wolfson was hospitalized with a rare autoimmune disease. (Happily, he is expected to make a full recovery.) With the festival two months away from its starting date, Mart Dominicus — a lecturer at the Netherlands Film Academy, a screenplay and editing coach, and a member of the festival’s Supervisory Board since 2010 — stepped in to become Artistic Director for this year’s festival. At the festival’s end, Filmmaker sat down […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 5, 2014 -
HBO Launches HBOAccess, A Short-Form Program for Diverse Filmmakers
HBO has launched a four-week program designed to provide project development, master classes and mentoring for diverse, emerging filmmakers, who identify as Asian Pacific American, Sub-Continent Asian American, African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or as a woman. Dubbed “HBOAccess,” the program will invite four finalists to Los Angeles (though housing and travel are not included) for the month of June to craft a budget and blueprint for short-form content – either a webisode or a 10-15 minute film. Upon completion of the program, HBO will consider each proposal for production and an eventual airing spot on HBO platforms including HBO […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 3, 2014 -
Winter Requiem: Jessica Oreck on Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys
The uncompromising yet lovely vérité doc Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys takes an unadorned, soulful look at a year in the lives of a pair of brothers who are among a collective of reindeer herders in rural Finland. A departure in many ways from the zany Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, Jessica Oreck’s new film is bloody and ice bound, showcasing a world of rustic north European life rarely glimpsed on screen. The grim slaughter of reindeer and the daily tribulations of running such an operation doesn’t escape the director’s eye; neither does the tenderness and decency of the people doing such work. […]
by Brandon Harris on Feb 3, 2014 -
At Rotterdam, Cinema’s Components Stretched
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) prides itself on being devoutly non-mainstream and an unabashed patron of independent cinema. Now, “independent” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” (something the Rotterdam programmers would do well to realize). However, it does let one explore work that exists on the fringes of conventional formats, be it artistically or technically. As it happens, I saw two films at the festival — within 12 hours of each other — that challenged the norms of a movie and its components. The resulting juxtaposition left me quite intrigued by the experiments undertaken, and whether there was some method to […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 3, 2014 -
Scared Straight: Trevor White on Jamesy Boy
Ostensibly based on a true story, Trevor White’s Jamesy Boy recounts the ascension, demise and redemption of James Burns, a cavalier gang member whose story is an all too American one — he fell into a life of crime on the streets of Baltimore as a 14 year old, did some hard time, and was, somewhat astoundingly given the unrepentantly punitive nature of our disenfranchisement factories known as prisons, the better for it. He’s played by a promising newcomer, Spencer LoFranco, who is joined by an accomplished cast including Ving Rhames, Mary-Louise Parker and James Woods, in a somewhat surprising turn, […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 31, 2014 -
The Davey Foundation’s Short Film Grant
Created in honor of actor David Ross Fetzer, The Davey Foundation strives to promote emerging artists under the age of 35 in both theater and film. Submissions recently opened for the Foundation’s Short Film Grant, which awards a U.S. filmmaker $3500 for the production of a short-length script. Dustin Guy Defa, a board member of the Davey Foundation and a frequent collaborator of the late Mr. Fetzer (who AD-ed Bad Fever), generously shed some light on the inaugural competition: “We’ve elected to support the short format as opposed to the feature because of the Foundation’s intent to support new voices in […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 31, 2014 -
Natalia Leite and Alexandra Roxo on VICE’s Every Woman
More often than not, filmmakers undertake the odd job to get by — not unlike, as Natalia Leite and Alexandra Roxo argue in their VICE series Every Woman, the storied “second sex.” “We started thinking about the most stigmatized, mysterious and hardest jobs women do,” Roxo narrates in the opening sequence. And so, the Brooklyn filmmaking team trekked across the country to slip inside the well-worn shoes (lucite heels) of a truckstop stripper, as captured in the New Mexico-set pilot of Every Woman. Filmmaker spoke with Leite and Roxo about the series, the dangers of overstepping exploitative bounds and the foibles of simultaneously acting […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 31, 2014 -
Rough Riders: Lotfy Nathan on 12 O’Clock Boys
Having started life as a graduate film school project that was mostly financed on Kickstarter, Lotfy Nathan’s multiple Cinema Eye Honors-nominated documentary 12 O’Clock Boys, about a young boy named Pug who is immersed in inner-city dirt-biking culture, is an immediate and searing look at a particularly American coming of age on some of the country’s roughest streets. Pug’s mom, an ex-stripper named Coco, tries to steer him on a path of study and professionalism, urging him to consider training to be a veterinarian, but in this combative, crime-ridden stretch of West Baltimore, becoming an animal doctor is a remote dream. […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 30, 2014
