6294 Results for “Open ”
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2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant Recipients Include Lily Gladstone and Nijla Mu’min
SFFILM has announced the 17 recipients for the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Grant, awarded in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, which includes $425,000 in funding and professional support for narrative projects at different stages of production. From the press release: The SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, and supports films that address social justice issues—the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges—in a positive and meaningful way through plot, character, theme, or setting. Awards are made to multiple projects once a year, for screenwriting, development, and post-production. Recipients are offered […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Nov 21, 2023 -
How to Make Nickelodeon Slime Look Like Oil: Special Effects Coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin on Killers of the Flower Moon
Brandon K. McLaughlin remembers the exact moment he knew he wanted to work in the movie business. It was Halloween night and McLaughlin was eight years old. His uncle—a special effects technician—had invited him to set to watch the Disney adventure The Rocketeer being made. “I got to see them blow up the zeppelin while the Rocketeer was running on top of it,” McLaughlin said. “From that point on, I never wanted to do anything else. I was fascinated with everything that went into the magic of moviemaking, and the special effects department creates that magic, tricking the audience into […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Nov 20, 2023 -
“Where Exactly Does Consent Live?” Rea Tajiri on Wisdom Gone Wild
Rea Tajiri’s Wisdom Gone Wild takes a hard look at a difficult subject. Tajiri’s 93-year-old mom Rose is a witness to the US’s dark concentration camp history, having been incarcerated along with the rest of her Nikkei farming family during the Second World War. Primarily through Rose’s engaging tales, alongside home video and family photos, Tajiri goes (and takes us) on a decade-plus, nonlinear cinematic journey— neatly paralleling Rose’s own thought process, as the veteran filmmaker’s mom began her dementia decline at the age of 76—or should I say, dementia “reinvention.” For far from being a tragic story about “losing” […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 20, 2023 -
FILM FEST KNOX 2023: A Fest is Born
Introducing Time of the Heathen on day two of the inaugural FILM FEST KNOX, artistic director Darren Hughes teased that “75 minutes from now, you will be among the hundreds—or perhaps thousands—who have seen this movie.” Access to something otherwise difficult to view is at least part of the premise for any film festival; in the case of 1961’s Heathen, Hughes noted that this might be not just the North American premiere of the restoration (following Il Cinema Ritrovato) but possibly of the film itself. Despite its very regional American origins (the performance of Milton Babbitt protege Lejaren A. Hiller […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 17, 2023 -
“The Crueler My Friends Are, the Funnier I Think They Are”: Emerald Fennell on Saltburn
“I wanted to make something about a desire so intense that it destroys everything around it,” says Oscar-winning writer-director Emerald Fennell of Saltburn, her opulent sophomore psychodrama about class, obsession and longing set in an English countryside estate. “That locust cannibal obsession that I think we’ve all felt about someone that makes you completely lose your fucking mind.” In Saltburn, it’s Barry Keoghan’s humble and unknowable Oxford novice Oliver Quick who feels that fixation. His object of desire and fascination is Jacob Elordi’s dreamboat Felix Catton, an upper-class cool guy who welcomes Oliver into his inner circle, and later, to […]
by Tomris Laffly on Nov 16, 2023 -
At Least 18 Filmmakers Withdraw from IDFA 2023
In the opening days of this year’s edition of IDFA, the documentary festival issued two statements on the bombing of Gaza. Following protests at the opening night ceremony where protesters carried banners including the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the festival issued a first statement that condemned “the hurtful slogan written on a banner by the protestors, for voicing their concerns, expressing the hurt they felt,” before going on to state that “we believe that this slogan should not be used in any way and by anybody anymore.” The Palestine Film Institute condemned that […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 15, 2023 -
“I Rejected the Concept of Linearity”: Leslie Tai on How to Have an American Baby
Sprawling in scope, observational in form and jaw-dropping in access, Leslie Tai’s How to Have an American Baby shows exactly what its title describes. The title is also the name of a sales talk one of the doc’s characters gives to Chinese moms with the financial means to travel and gift their future offspring US citizenship. The Chinese-American director takes her viewers on the wildest of rides through a birth tourism industry hiding in plain, sunny SoCal sight: underground maternity hotels run by shady operators and filled to the brim with expectant mothers, local hospitals employing doctors in on the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 14, 2023 -
“The Pendulum Can Only Swing So Far Before the Industry Realizes That There is More to Film, and Life, Than Celebrities and Murderers”: Frances Henderson on Her Essay Doc, This Much We Know
“I think the reason we’ve never pinpointed the real beginning to this genre is because we’ve never agreed on what the genre even is. Do we read nonfiction in order to receive information, or do we read it to experience art? It’s not very clear sometimes… I am here in search of art.” — Jon D’Agata When I interviewed documentary filmmaker Frances Henderson for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2014, she discussed the above quote from author Jon D’Agata, noting that it held pride of place on the moodboard that hung above her desk. ” I am very much […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2023 -
Back to One: “It’s Not About You,” The Sixth Annual Kevin Corrigan Episode
The SAG strike is over and Back To One returns in the most fitting way—with The Sixth Annual Kevin Corrigan Episode. The living patron saint of the indie actor fills us in on what’s been going on in his world over the past year, talks about playing off of Tim Blake Nelson in his latest film Bang Bang, takes us way back to his first time on a film set as an extra in 1987, describes a recent rewarding experience of performing his own ultra personal material, and ponders his strange case of involuntary lens spiking. Plus stories about “manhandling” […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Nov 14, 2023 -
“A Solutions-Based Intervention”: Facet Founder Maida Lynn On Her New Program Supporting Doc Producers
After supporting a range of programs uplifting the independent film community, including Sundance’s Art of Nonfiction and the Dear Producer Award, philanthropist, grant maker and producer and executive producer (Pahokee, Aleph, The Tuba Thieves), Maida Lynn recently announced through her company Facet a new “experimental” initiative, the Producer Group. Rather than the traditional model of providing project-specific support that sees grantees working individually, and different in many ways from the prevalent “lab” model, where supported filmmakers gather for brief bursts of mentorship from industry professionals, the Producer Group will attempt to foster collaboration between producers and “create a space for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 11, 2023
