I received this email as a response to this week’s edition of the Filmmaker newsletter. (If you don’t get the newsletter, which contains an Editor’s Letter not appearing on this blog, you can subscribe for free here.) Scott, I always love your weekly newsletter editorials and from your last I know you need a quick, humorous distraction. The new model for film distribution occurred to me today. I’m in a creative headstorm with my editor and since our film is about humanity, the universe, and the space program under the Bush Administration, it all synthesized at once. We kidnap potential […]
With Jamaica in the American news again (just barely) due to the ongoing siege and popular counter resistance taking place surrounding the attempted U.S. extradition of alleged Jamaican drug kingpin and folk hero Christopher Coke, perhaps there is something timely about the release of Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner’s Wah Do Dem. A winner at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, it stars Sean Bones, a first time actor, as Max, an archetypal Williamsburg Hipster – he’s a skinny, aloof, very pale, self-consciously smug, skateboard riding dufus who attempts to take his girlfriend (Norah Jones) on a cruise to Jamaica. […]
The 22nd NewFest, New York’s LGBT Film Festival announced its winners over the weekend. Top winners include Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother for Best Narrative Feature and The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls by Leanne Pooley for Best Documentary. The Festival took place June 3-13 in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. List of winners Jury Awards: Best Narrative Short: “Curious Thing” by Alain Hain Best Documentary Short: (Tie) “At Night I Was Beautiful” by Steven Wilsey; “Last Address” by Ira Sachs Best Documentary Feature: “The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls” by Leanne Pooley Best Narrative Feature: “I Killed My Mother” by […]
This summer, Aspen Film and Aspen Institute are joining forces to present New Views: Premiere Documentaries, a series that features acclaimed documentaries and filmmakers. New Views debuts on July 8 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and it will continue on Monday evenings from Jul 19- August 9. Each screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director or a special guest. Five new documentaries exploring music, visual art, and photography will premiere at the festival. Click here to learn more. The New Views Line up: July 8: The Furious Force of Rhymes The Aspen Institute presents an advance […]
In his stylish new chamber drama Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, which closed the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Dutch-born filmmaker Jan Kounen (Dobermann) observes the hothouse affair between married modernist composer-in-exile Igor Stravinsky and legendary French couturier Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (played by Audrey Tautou in last year’s Coco Before Chanel). Based on a novel by Chris Greenhalgh, the film depicts a collision of oil-and-water egos: the brooding composer meets his obscure object of desire in the fiercely independent-minded Chanel, who proves to be forward-thinking about love and as fully immersed in her own art. Prior to tackling this period story […]
Do not ask for whom Kevorkian tolls, Kevorkian tolls for Stranger Than Fiction. Last night, the spring season of the IFC series came to a close with Kevorkian, Matthew Galkin’s profile of the controversial right-to-die-activist’s recent run for Congress. During the nineties, Kevorkian assisted in the suicides of over one hundred people, becoming the center of a media fire storm, a storm he stoked by sending a tape of himself injecting a terminally-ill man with an overdose of drugs to 60 Minutes and then daring prosecutors to come after him. They took him up on his offer. Determined to provoke […]
Outfest 2010: The 28th Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival will screen 147 films from 23 countries and host panels and events throughout the city, from July 8-18. Opening with Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman‘s Howl and closing with J.B. Ghuman, Jr.’s Spork, Outfest will have two other gala screenings as well as a number of special screenings of LGBT classics like Clueless and Hustler White. Here is the complete list of Outfest features: Opening Night Gala – HOWL, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (July 8 at 8:00pm – Orpheum Theatre) Closing Night Gala – Spork, J.B. Ghuman, Jr. […]
Part personal history remembrance, part time capsule of a place, part true crime thriller, Cropsey is an absorbing and terrifying piece of filmmaking. A rough hewn, nine years in the making feature directorial debut for narrative film producer turned documentarian Joshua Zeman and NYC Human Resources Administration’s Deputy Commissioner Barbara Brancaccio, it delves into the disappearances of several handicapped children in their native borough of Staten Island during the ’70s and ’80s. The filmmaker trace their distinctive childhood memories of the events as well as those of dozens of Staten Island residents who live on with this disturbing mystery, many unconvinced—even though […]
It is both accurate and reductive to call Cam Archer’s Shit Year, which premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in the Director’s Fortnight section, the story of a retiring actress grappling with the emotions produced by her move away from the Hollywood spotlight. Of course, on narrative terms, that is what it’s about. Ellen Barkin plays the actress, who has just given her final talk-show interview, moved to a cabin in the woods, and now spends her days avoiding her neighbors and flashing back to a brief affair she had with a younger actor (Luke Grimes) on the set […]
As a teenager, 29-year-old writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve was plucked from theater classes at her Paris lycée and cast in Late August, Early September (1998) by Olivier Assayas, a heady experience that would come to shape her future endeavors. After a brief detour into academia, she made a few short films and, like Assayas (to whom she’s now married), briefly contributed to Cahiers du cinéma before embarking more seriously on the path of becoming a film director. Early on, the late producer Humbert Balsan (champion of Elia Suleiman and Claire Denis, among others) took an interest in Hansen-Løve and helped finance […]