6300 Results for “Open ”
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THE MAKING OF A “GRASSROOTS” MOVEMENT: INTRODUCTIONS
The Making of a ‘Grassroots’ Movement’ is a series of posts that are meant to serve as a case study on transmedia marketing, social engagement and distribution for an independent film called ‘Grassroots‘. Stephen Gyllenhaal – my boss – says that running a film marketing and distribution campaign without studio distribution is a lot like running a grassroots political campaign. I am here to tell you that the two are, indeed, very similar: You live in the realm of hope, try to retain the project’s integrity, work with called-in favors, unguaranteed outcomes, creative work-arounds and half-truths. You court official-dom, but also […]
by Saskia Wilson-Brown on Oct 13, 2011 -
Margaret — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Without any fanfare, Margaret was released theatrically by Fox Searchlight on Friday, September 30, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Oh boy. Oh wow. If your idea of a rewarding time at the movies is a symphonic drama that aches with the blood, sweat and tears of real life while simultaneously upholding the finest traditions of opera, of theater, of poetry, of literature, look no further than Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret. Much has been written about the unfortunate legal brouhaha surrounding the film’s post-production — it was shot in 2005 while here we are twiddling our thumbs in […]
by Michael Tully on Oct 13, 2011 -
Alma Har’el, Bombay Beach
Stunningly shot and formally audacious, Bombay Beach, the first feature of Israeli-born music-video director and cinematographer Alma Har’el, is a rare bird, the type of film that seems to be building its own cinematic language from the ground up. Sure, it embraces some stylistic and thematic similarities with a whole host of filmmaking luminaries, but it is dancing to its very own tune, both literally and figuratively. Har’el, as we discuss below, quickly entered the lives of various people living around the California hamlet of Bombay Beach, a derelict precinct that was once a haven for zealous developers in the ’60s, […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 12, 2011 -
MOMA’S ANNUAL FESTIVAL OF FILM PRESERVATION LINEUP ANNOUNCED
Looking for something to do in Manhattan over the next month? MoMA has announced the slate for its 9th annual International Festival of Film Preservation, in which the museum presents preserved and restored films from archives, studios and distributors around the world. This year’s festival runs from October 14 through November 19, and the lineup looks like a pretty stellar way to spend an evening (or twenty). One of the highlights is the focus on ’70s genre-enthusiast and frequent Spielberg collaborator Joe Dante (Gremlins, Piranha). The festival opens this Friday with a digital preservation of the original celluloid print of […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Oct 12, 2011 -
TAXI RIDERS: DEE REES
If you’ve taken a ride in the back of a New York City taxi cab these last two weeks, you may have heard the stories of seven of New York’s most distinctive independent filmmakers of the moment. In partnership with Royal Bank of Canada and the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, the IFP has produced six spots that are playing not only in cabs but on NYC Life. Jamie Stuart directed, T. Griffin scored and I produced these pieces, and each one, in addition to profiling a person, highlights a different aspect of the independent filmmaker’s current creative, production […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 11, 2011 -
PLEASE COMMODIFY ME
In a Brooklyn Rail piece titled “We Are All Scabs: Some Contradictions in U.S. Independent Film Culture,” Donal Foreman visits the IFP’s Independent Film Week and questions the debates over sustainability, marketing and audience-building that are rampant in our community. As we pursue DIY strategies, are we just implicitly and uncritically accepting the logic of the marketplace instead of conceptualizing more empowering, liberating structures? The key grafs: Whereas in previous times films were offered up to the distribution circuit to be either rejected or accepted as viable commodities, their makers are now being asked to lead that process of commodification […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 11, 2011 -
NYFF: WEST MEMPHIS 3 ON HAND FOR UNVEILING OF NEW “PARADISE LOST 3” ENDING
You probably know by now that the West Memphis 3 (Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin) were released from prison after giving an Alford plea — a guilty plea but not admitting to the act and asserting innocence — in August. At the time directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky were locking up their third film on the WM3, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, when they heard the news of the surprise development and raced down to Arkansas. Unable to put the footage of the three being freed in the film before screening it at the Toronto International Film […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Oct 11, 2011 -
Shooting Occupied Wall Street for 99 Percent: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film
I meet-up with documentarians Audrey Ewell and Aaron Aites in downtown New York, they introduce me to Joanna Arnow, and Joanna and I are off to Liberty Plaza. Two streets north of Wall Street — in the former shadow of the World Trade Center towers — Liberty Plaza Park was created in 1968, renamed Zuccotti Park in 2006 for a real estate baron, and then renamed back to Liberty Plaza a few weeks ago by the Occupying Wall Street protesters. The park is one long block long and one short block wide, paved in stone with several colorful flower beds, ringed […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Oct 10, 2011 -
THE ARIZONA UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL 2011
It’s surprising that the Arizona Underground Film Festival is only in its fourth year since it’s got the vision and confidence of fests that have been around a lot longer. The brainchild of founder/director David Pike, who handles acquisitions for locally based BrinkDVD, AZUFF seems to have a strong sense of film camaraderie and community on its side. (Indeed, stepping out of the hot Tucson sun and into the downtown art-house The Screening Room – one of the venues of the Arizona International Film Festival, which I covered back in April – to pick up my press pass, I was […]
by Lauren Wissot on Oct 8, 2011 -
COCK OF THE WALK: THE NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL (PART THREE)
Three films, three male protagonists, all of whom fall for extended periods of time from their elevated perches. In this, the final installment of my coverage of the 49th edition of the New York Film Festival, we see how their descents are manifest in the newest works of three proven talents — okay, all of them men: British director Steve McQueen, the American Alexander Payne, and Frenchman Michel Hazanavicius. Michael Fassbender’s sexually obsessed Brandon, a seemingly calm, self-contained Manhattan business exec who keeps his personal life to himself in McQueen’s Shame (pictured above), would have been a much more challenging, certainly […]
by Howard Feinstein on Oct 7, 2011
