The San Francisco International Film Festival is underway, the first under the San Francisco Film Society’s new head, Ted Hope. In an interview with Casey Burchby at the San Francisco Weekly, Hope tells the story of his move from producing in New York to running the organization in the Bay Area and how it reflects his own evolving ideas on independent media in the 21st century. I especially like this quote about how artists can rethink their process in a time of plenty. Emphasis added below: Burchby: I wanted to connect your vision for the SF Film Society to the […]
A quick public service announcement, in case you’re not aware that the deadlines for Independent Film Week — organized by IFP, the publisher of Filmmaker magazine — are quickly approaching. Here’s all the info you should need: Independent Film Week (September 15-19, 2013) is the oldest and largest forum in the U.S. for the discovery of new projects in development and new voices on the independent film scene. The Project Forum is a meetings-driven forum connecting filmmakers with producers, funders, distributors, broadcasters, sales agents, festival programmers, and more. The three sections of the Project Forum with open applications are: Emerging […]
Since its world premiere at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival, Andrew Garrison’s documentary Trash Dance has been a festival favorite, picking up audience awards at both Full Frame and Silverdocs. The film chronicles innovative choreographer Allison Orr’s attempts to wrangle a group of garbage men and turn them, and their trucks, into the participants in her latest project. Filmmaker spoke with the Austin, Texas-based Garrison, an experienced non-fiction director known for such films as Third Ward TX and The Wilgus Stories, about the process of making Trash Dance, which opens at the reRun Theater in Brooklyn today. Filmmaker: Why did […]
Sun Don’t Shine, Amy Seimetz’s sun-blasted neo-noir opening today in New York at Cinema Village, stars Kate Lyn Sheil and Kentucker Audley as a couple, Crystal and Leo, on the run in steamy, sweaty Florida. Leo loves Crystal, and he’s not going to let the body in the trunk of their car get between them. Shot strikingly with a rough-hewn style by Jay Keitel and anchored by two powerful performances, the film owes as much to Barbara Loden’s seminal Wanda as it does to noir classics like They Live By Night. Sun Don’t Shine is acutely aware of the ways […]
It’s easy to get a bad rap in New York. It’s a town that holds grudges, where easy assumptions die hard and critical whispers ricochet from person to person. For a long time it was difficult for the Tribeca Film Festival to escape the stigma of its early years, when it remained spiritually connected to the aftermath of 9/11 and its original purpose while not having yet evolved into a truly satisfying event. Back then it was brash, unwieldy and overlong, its ambitions outstripping necessity and good taste. These qualities often overshadowed what it did well, and even as the festival […]
Courtesy of our friends at IFC Films, Filmmaker has posted a short documentary about The Reluctant Fundamentalist on our YouTube page. The film, which opens tomorrow in NYC and LA, tells the story of Changez (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani man whose life in America was inexorably altered by 9/11. At the time of the World Trade Center attacks, Changez was a fresh Princeton grad seeking his fortune on Wall Street and, with his American girlfriend Erica (Kate Hudson) at his side, the American Dream seemed imminent. But following the attacks, a cultural divide opens between the couple and Changez’s life turns for […]
Youth culture didn’t start in the ’60s. In the parlance of today’s teens, the appropriate response to this might be “duh.” Teenage, director Matt Wolf’s artful new non-fiction film, uncovers the “hidden history” of youth culture and locates its origins in various youth movements in the first half of the 20th century. From German Swing kids to American Victory Girls, the film offers a veritable lexicon of lost teen vocabulary (“teen canteen,” “buzz bucket,” “boogie in the strut hut”), and reminds us that the invention of teenager culture depended on the invention of a new language — and one that […]
In the eighth part of Filmmaker‘s interview project with prominent figures from the world of transmedia, conducted through the MIT Open Documentary Lab, Vivek Bald, filmmaker, Associate Professor of Writing and Digital Media at MIT and a member of the MIT Open Documentary Lab, answers our questions. Bald’s ongoing project, Bengali Harlem, documents the history of two little-known groups of South Asian immigrants. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,” by MIT Open Documentary Lab’s Sarah Wolozin. MIT Open Documentary Lab: How did you become a digital storyteller? Were there […]
Sun Don’t Shine is being distributed by Factory 25 and opens theatrically on April 26, 2013, in NYC and Seattle, in addition to becoming available on VOD. It world premiered at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. Visit the film’s Facebook page to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published at Hammer to Nail on November 29, 2012, in conjunction with the film’s ‘Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You’ nomination. We hear it before we see it. A sharp, resounding slap jumps out from the soundtrack. Milliseconds later, the first jittery, violent, sweaty images of Amy Seimetz’s […]
Sweet 16 was the theme of this year’s Bermuda International Film Festival, though the vibe seemed more smooth continuation than a coming of age. Like its March 2012 edition, this April BIFF screened an international selection of prestige flicks (that those of us who don’t live on an enchanted island in the middle of the Atlantic had mostly seen by Oscar time). In addition to opening night’s Ginger & Rosa, Bermudians could catch everything from The Act of Killing and West of Memphis, to Rust and Bone and Amour. Not to mention Laurence Anyways, Beyond the Hills, Chicken with Plums, […]