6300 Results for “Open ”
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LETHEM TALKS MUMBLECORE AND MORE AT SIFF
I’ve always connected with the work of Jonathan Lethem. I’m a fan of his novels and all, but I especially look at his criticism because his reference points are invariably the same as mine. We’re both big Philip K. Dick fans, he ended a novel (Fortress of Solitude) with an extended celebration of one of my favorite albums (Another Green World), and when he wrote an essay on his formative books and albums as a teenager, our lists were like dopplegangers. He also just wrote a book about Talking Heads Fear of Music, and his Promiscuous Materials project let independent […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2012 -
TRAILER WATCH: “REDLEGS”
Over the last year Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris has been making his first feature, Redlegs, and it receives a sneak preview next Thursday at Brooklyn’s reRun, sponsored by the Brooklyn Arts Council. It then opens for a week on May 25 at that same venue. Check out the trailer below. (There’s also a Tumblr blog, where Harris is promising “goofy, poignant and otherwise unmissable stuff.”)
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 26, 2012 -
Elles — A Hammer to Nail Review
Elles is being distributed by Kino Lorber and opens theatrically in NYC and LA on April 27, 2012. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. In Elles, the new film by Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, Juliette Binoche plays a journalist writing an article for French Elle on young women who finance their education (and more realistically, their apartments, clothing, and lifestyles) through prostitution. But forget the pimps and hookers of the movie underworld. The world in Elles isn’t one of coercion or strung out desperation, but of choices. It’s softcore social criticism, far less interested in systemic injustice than in the strange forces that […]
by Susanna Locascio on Apr 26, 2012 -
Copy That: On the Transformative Effects of Independent Film Production
You don’t have to be British royalty to find a cure for a speech impediment through film. High school senior Daniel Altman wrote the below account of his work on an independent feature as his college essay. It was subsequently published on the Stuttering Foundation website, where it has attracted thousands of hits, and Altman has been accepted at his top choice school for the Fall. We’re reprinting it, with permission, because it’s a great reminder that the practice of filmmaking brings many rewards, many of which often go unsung. — Editors I stutter. I stutter like Porky Pig. Sometimes […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 26, 2012 -
Jennifer Baichwal, Payback
Jennifer Baichwal is an accomplished Canadian filmmaker whose ever-searching documentaries have taken up such diverse subjects as photography (The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’ Appalachia), literary biography (Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles), the metaphysics of lightning strikes (Act of God), and the devastating underside of mass Western consumption (Manufactured Landscapes). In her latest film, Payback, loosely based on the prolific Booker Prize–winning author Margaret Atwood’s book-length study of debt as a structuring principle of life, language, and contemporary culture (the subtitle for her tome is The Shadow Side of Wealth), Baichwal investigates the disparate ways […]
by Damon Smith on Apr 25, 2012 -
TRIBECA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #1: I WROTE THIS SONG FOR YOU, INDIEWOOD
How to take stock of the Tribeca Film Festival? 9/11 was a long time ago, after all. Bin Laden is dead. Rebuild the neighborhood, De Niro said. Bring back economic activity and all that. Perhaps the machinations of the real estate market took care of it. A classy sandwich down here costs $16. Not like I buy any food during the festival in Tribeca; it’s all free. Go to the Apple Store (in SoHo, but close enough) and have some wine. The 92YTribeca had bite-sized bacon cheeseburgers during GE’s-sponsored Film Forward shorts program yesterday. And if I actually want to […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 24, 2012 -
CABLE WOES
Some 70 years ago, the economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the notion of “creative destruction” to explain the role of technological innovation in capitalism. Over the last decade, digital disruption has wrought havoc on the publishing industry (i.e., magazines, newspapers and books) as well as records and broadcast TV. Now, it is upsetting the cable TV apple cart. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that the audience for 11 of the top 15 most-watched cable channels, including Nickelodeon, TNT and FX, is falling. Reuters reported that a Citigroup analyst, Jason Bazinet, found: “Beginning late last year we began to notice […]
by David Rosen on Apr 24, 2012 -
THE SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Once-in-a-lifetime experiences abounded at this year’s Sonoma International Film Festival, a boutique event in the heart of northern California’s wine country – complete with complementary wine and cheese before every screening (and a trailer featuring an animated, tap-dancing wine bottle named Tipsy whose tagline read, “Is everything out of focus, or is it just me?”). Held early April, a week apart and an hour’s drive – yet a world away – from that longest running festival in the U.S., SIFF serves as a worthy reminder that attending non-market-driven fests not only allows one the opportunity to discover overlooked diamonds amongst […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 24, 2012 -
ENVISION 2012: EIGHT TIPS FOR SOCIAL ISSUE FILMMAKERS
Last week in New York City, the Independent Filmmaker Project, the United Nations Department of Public Information, and the Ford Foundation presented Envision 2012: Stories for a Sustainable Future. The two day event featured screenings of sustainability-focused documentaries (including Jessica Yu and Participant Media’s new Last Call at the Oasis), keynote addresses from Don Cheadle and Alexandra Cousteau, and panel discussions that included social issue advocates and established filmmakers. And, while the discussions this year did focus on the issue of sustainability, there was still plenty of universal wisdom dispensed that social issue filmmakers – no matter their chosen subject […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Apr 24, 2012 -
BOOK REVIEW: “PHILIP KAUFMAN,” BY ANNETTE INSDORF
One of the pleasures of Annette Insdorf’s new book on the director Philip Kaufman — titled, simply, Philip Kaufman (University of Illinois Press, $22.00) — is how jargon-free it is: while it implicitly subscribes to the auteur theory, which credits the film director as the creative author of a film, it does so through the type of patient close readings that have fallen out of fashion. The first book-length assessment of Kaufman’s oeuvre, which will reach 14 films when Hemingway and Gellhorn premieres on HBO in May, Philip Kaufman is a shrewd and very readable study. It seeks not only […]
by Charles Lyons on Apr 24, 2012
