Here’s part one of five from yesterday’s press conference of the New York Film Festival’s opening day film, The Social Network, at Lincoln Center yesterday. Parts two through five can be seen at the film’s YouTube site.
IFP invited a number of us to blog our experiences at Independent Film Week, and we were supposed to contribute three posts. But with a whirlwind of meetings, events, and networking opportunities to try to take advantage of, I haven’t had much time to sleep, much less time to blog. So here’s my one post wrapping up our experiences pitching our transmedia project 3rd Rail (pictured) during Independent Film Week, which will have to do in lieu of three progress reports. For a great general description of the Project Forum and how it is configured, see Marc Maurino’s post. Marc […]
Like a bitch-slap to those who have accused it of excessive reverence for French fare over the past 48 years, the 2010 New York Film Festival is bookended and centered on American movies—oddly enough, all from the big studios. David Fincher‘s The Social Network (pictured above) opens the event September 24; Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter is the October 10 Closing Night selection; and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, the Centerpiece. I’ve seen none of them, but early reviews of The Social Network have been very positive, not surprising from the director of Se7en and Fight Club. Evaluations of Hereafter have been much […]
Eugene Hernandez, the editor-in-chief/co-founder of indieWIRE will be joining the Film Society of Lincoln Center as their director of digital strategy, according to an announcement sent out today by FSLC. Hernandez is one of the most respected voices in indie film, starting indieWIRE in 1996 and building it to become the prominent site that it is today through tireless news and film festival reporting, and most recently bringing on marquee names to blog for the site like Anne Thompson, Todd McCarthy and Leonard Maltin. FSLC describes Hernandez’s newly created role as overseeing all digital initiatives of the nonprofit, including working […]
Hello again, Marc here reporting from three days of meetings. It’s been an exciting whirl, and in hopes that some future IFP Emerging Narrative participant might read this (or just the IFP-curious at home), I think I’ll share a bit of what my last three days have been like. As aforementioned, prior to arrival, we received a schedule of meetings, all of which were scheduled between 9 AM and noon in the Emerging Narrative part of the Project Forum space, which is a huge room bisected; one side has a lounge-type area with chairs, wifi, helpful IFP staffers, and lots […]
How do you make a narrative film about a long, difficult poem? Jean Cocteau’s legendary Blood of the Poet gives it a go I suppose, but its style departs from the conventions of narrative very early on for something more willfully avant-garde. Poetry just doesn’t lend itself to shot reverse shot and one hundred and eighty degree director’s lines. This clearly difficult task didn’t daunt veteran documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, however; they took up the challenge as they made the jump to narrative in Howl, a thoughtful meditation on the early life and seminal work of Allen Ginsberg. […]
In this time of economic peril, many Americans have begun to shed frivolous spending for small but rich pleasures. With less nights of take-out or cineplex movies, they’ve learned that it’s the homemade things that count in this world. Filmmaker Anna Farrell portrays a tight-knit community in her documentary Twelve Ways to Sunday, one that always knew about the basic and organic things in life. Fixing up motorcycles, dishing up meals at the local diner, and canning fruit preserves, the people of Allegany County, New York, have always sustained through the good and bad times. Playing this Wednesday at Rooftop […]
As I wrote about on our newsletter a few weeks ago (and if you don’t get the weekly newsletter, why not? It’s free), we’ll be adding more new columns and original web content in the days ahead. On Friday we launched “Into the Splice,” Nicholas Rombes’s column on the pleasures of moviegoing. Every two weeks he’ll be going to a movie and writing an essay about the experiences and thoughts it triggers. And today we have the first of a three-part essay by Zachary Wigon on the multiple meanings of Catfish (pictured), examining it within the context of other movies […]
Editor’s Note: The following essay contains major spoilers about the film Catfish. Part One: Catfish and Reality In the movie, the 14-year-old boy tells the school therapist that he likes to watch “little clips” on the computer, little videos. He describes them as “little clips of things that seem real.” Earlier in the film, we saw a montage of YouTube clips, from a cat playing piano to Saddam Hussein being hung to a baby laughing. Later in the film, the boy sees two girls die from a drug overdose right in front of him. How real that event does — […]
Hi again, Marc here with a report from opening day and the first day of meetings in the Emerging Narrative section for my character driven crime drama “Inside the Machine.” Yesterday started with an orientation with IFP folks, in a room full of other writer/directors looking for producers. Before they got started we all introduced ourselves, and afterwards started trading cards and contact information right away. I know how I felt, and informal chats revealed that I was not alone: having written a script, been selected to Project Forum, and maybe practiced pitching a bit, we didn’t really know what […]