6300 Results for “Open ”
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Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best Writer/Director/Star Ryan O’Nan
No one can say actor/musician Ryan O’Nan didn’t pull his weight in his directorial debut, Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best, which makes its theatrical debut on September 21 via Oscilloscope Laboratories. Besides directing, writing, and starring in the film, O’Nan wrote and sang most of the songs on the soundtrack (album out 9/18 on ATCO Records). A 2011 IFP Narrative Labs project that premiered at Toronto last year, Brooklyn Brothers is the story of two ne’er-do-well musicians who make an unlikely alliance, embarking on the kind of quixotic journey that’s tailor-made for a buddy movie. But O’Nan’s film finds itself […]
by Jim Allen on Sep 18, 2012 -
Shooting with John: The Occupation of Indie Film
If independent film is going to prosper well into the 21st century, many would agree that there must be some sort of interdependence between filmmakers, a collective effort that will help everyone to communicate and share resources. Thankfully, there is already a driven group of Americans who are doing exactly that, providing a template that indie film can examine and emulate. It’s the Occupy movement. No matter how you feel about their politics, Occupy has utilized new technology and social media better than many organizations and affinity groups in the United States. And if you look closely at how they […]
by Marty Lang on Sep 17, 2012 -
Born Out of Grief: Kathy Leichter’s Here One Day
I first found out about Kathy Leichter’s documentary, Here One Day (above), via an email announcing the film’s Kickstarter campaign. Like many independent filmmakers, I receive many such emails. But what set this one apart from the others was the sender, filmmaker/editor (and friend) Pola Rapaport, whose work I greatly admire – and the film’s subject. Here One Day (screening at IFP’s Independent Film Week, Spotlight on Documentaries) is about Kathy’s mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide. It’s a story about what a person with mental illness does to a family — a story many of us can relate to — and […]
by David Licata on Sep 17, 2012 -
Five Questions with Knuckleball! Directors Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg
Knuckleball, the new documentary from Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, is about a small group of athletes who’ve gone against the grain. Just a handful of pitchers in the century-plus history of Major League Baseball have relied on the famously unpredictable knuckleball, a pitch that doesn’t spin yet darts every which way. Stern and Sundberg followed two of these guys—Tim Wakefield, of the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Mets’ R.A. Dickey (above)—for the duration of 2011 season. Significantly lighter than the Manhattan-based filmmakers’ previous documentaries—The Devil Came on Horseback was about the genocide in Sudan; The Trials of […]
by Kevin Canfield on Sep 17, 2012 -
The Best and Worst of the Toronto International Film Festival
Maybe I’m just a delusional film buff, but after a quarter-century of attending the Toronto International Film Festival – now affectionately called TIFF, a less compensatory moniker for Canadians with a complex than the laughably arrogant Toronto Festival of Festivals label of yore – I believe that the event and its component parts echo the unique demographic of this large North American city. The festival’s multiple ethnic and racial sections coexist snugly. More than any other big international film festival, TIFF – proudly uncommercial – is built upon a carefully balanced assortment of heterogeneous cinemas: national and generic, mainstream and esoteric, the spanking new and […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 17, 2012 -
Angela Davis on Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners
“When the doors slid open, furious flashes of light jolted me out of my reflections. That’s why they had cuffed by hands in front. As far as I could see, reporters and photographers were crowded into the lobby. Trying hard not to look surprised, I lifted my head, straightened my back and between the two agents, made the long walk through the light flashes and staccato questions toward the caravan waiting outside.” These lines from Angela Davis’s 1974 autobiography, written at the age of 28 and edited by Toni Morrison, describe the way she remembers a humiliating perp walk four […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 15, 2012 -
What’s Special About This?
I had a series of epiphanies in the morning TAP session today. The most profound thought I had was a question, and I think it’s a question that must have an answer if you are pitching a film. I think this may be the toughest question in the world, because if the answer is not obvious you’ve got nothing. It’s such a great lesson, and after today it’s a new rule for projects we’ll take on in our company. What’s special about this? Today I also got another bit of what I came here for. There are very few places […]
by Zaheer Goodman-Bhyat on Sep 14, 2012 -
Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon’s The Central Park Five at TIFF
It was horrific. One April night in 1989, a woman was jogging through New York’s Central Park when she was beaten and savagely raped. She lost 75% of her bodily fluids, lay in a coma for days and her face was pulverized so badly that friends identified her by a ring on her finger. Police picked up five black and Latino teenagers, secured confessions and launched one of the ugliest trials in New York’s history. Newspaper pundits and Donald Trump called for the death penalty. Even the African-American community turned their backs on the teens. After all, they were savages. […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 14, 2012 -
Actress Nathalia Acevedo on Post Tenebras Lux
Post Tenebras Lux, the film that won Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas the Best Director award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, has a story. But what it’s really about, first and foremost, isn’t narrative but texture: The grainy wetness of mud in an open field. The harsh bristle of matted dog fur. The wet steam of a tiled sauna. It’s also about sound, from the giggle of a boy being tickled by his father to the thunder of rugby cleats on a hard floor. Shot in a box-y 4:3 aspect ratio with intermittently hazy edges, Post Tenebras Lux (the title translates […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 13, 2012 -
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY’S “THE CLOCK” TO HAVE MONTH-LONG WINTER RUN AT MOMA
For those New Yorkers who, like me, feel like they’ve only scratched the surfaced of Christian Marclay’s enthralling 24-hour installation, The Clock — or, more pressingly, for those who have yet to experience it at all — there is excellent news today. The Museum of Modern Art has announced that Marclay’s immersive exploration of cinematic time will return to NYC for a month this winter, running from December 21 to January 21. There will be a number of days when the entire film will screen continuously, most notably on New Year’s Eve, an event which promises to be extremely memorable. Below […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 12, 2012
