Open | Filmmaker Magazine

D.P. ED LACHMAN ON THE MAKING OF HOWL

Here’s the great director of photography Ed Lachman on the roots of his career and the making of Sundance’s Opening Night film, Howl.

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 19, 2010

THE NEW YORK TIMES COVERS DIY DISTRIBUTION

I just caught up with this Manohla Dargis piece from the New York Times published on the 14th. What she writes about — the DIY and hybrid distribution distribution strategies espoused by Peter Broderick and Jon Reiss as well as the current discussion about transmedia — will be familiar to readers of Filmmaker, but it’s still interesting to see them covered now in the Times. From the piece, titled “Declaration of Indies: Just Sell it Yourself!”: The new D.I.Y. world is open-source in vibe and often execution. Participants refer to one another in conversation and on their Web sites and […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2010

Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Ilisa Barbash, Sweet Grass

An observational documentary that utterly transports you to a forgotten corner of the American West, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash’s Sweetgrass is billed as a glimpse at the final sheep drive the state of Montana ever hosted. Shot in muddy, early aughts DV, this often funny, occasionally terrifying and almost always beautifully composed film follows a pair of modern shepherds who travel mostly on foot with three thousand sheep over a two hundred mile Montana expanse that cuts across the seemingly unending Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains. Without the use of voiceover narration or title cards, the film allows you to soak in […]

by Brandon Harris on Jan 6, 2010

Viewing Zeitgeists and the Best U.S. Indies of the Decade

To try to recall your favorite films from an entire decade (and then to limit them to only ten titles) is to immediately set yourself up for uncertainty and ridicule: first off because it’s hard enough to remember what you saw ten days ago, much less ten years ago, and secondly because to limit the list to ten is to leave hundreds of excellent films out, titles that you’ll undoubtedly get bludgeoned to death with through later feedback (“You blithering idiot~pretentious snob~Hollywood tool! How could you leave out Judd Apatow~Jean-Luc Godard~Abbas Kiarostami~McG,” read the heated responses to already posted lists). […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 31, 2009

Lee Chung-Ryoul, Old Partner

Topping the Korean box office is no small feat for a first-time filmmaker, given the perennial offerings of sassy romantic comedies and vivid, attention-grabbing genre flicks from this nation’s impressive stable of film artists. It’s even more improbable when you’ve made a no-frills documentary (not so popular in South Korea) for less than $150,000 about the relationship between an elderly farmer and his aged ox. But a few months after it hit the market at the 2008 Pusan International Film Festival, where it won the best documentary award, Lee Chung-ryoul’s Old Partner became one of the most successful indies in […]

by Damon Smith on Dec 29, 2009

Corneliu Porumboiu, Police Adjective

Cornelieu Porumboiu’s absurd anti-policier Police, Adjective, a hit at last fall’s New York Film Festival, has pushed the Romanian director into the forefront of a young group of Romanian filmmakers who have in the past four years taken the world of International Art Cinema by storm. Along with Cristian Mungiu (2008 Palme D’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), Cristian Nemescu (California Dreamin’) and Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. L?z?rescu), Porumboiu has found success at the highest levels of the international festival circuit while still trying to carve out audiences at home. In his latest film, the follow […]

by Brandon Harris on Dec 23, 2009

Stephane Aubier And Vincent Patar, A Town Called Panic

Absurdists at heart, Belgian animators Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar have spent two decades perfecting their hilariously antic brand of fantastic, faux-naïve humor. After graduating from La Cambre, the School of Visual Arts in Brussels, the duo created a popular hand-animated series entitled Pic Pic Andre Shoow, about the adventures of a magic pig and an evil, beer-swilling horse, which first debuted as an award-winning short film in 1988, and was then expanded into a three-part festival fave. In 2000, the pair decided to revisit a stop-motion short Aubier had made as his graduation film, using the most rudimentary materials […]

by Damon Smith on Dec 16, 2009

PARAMOUNT TO START MICRO-BUDGET ARM

Is the sky no longer falling? Off the huge success of the low-budget Paranormal Activity, Paramount has decided to launch a division dedicated to movies budgeted at less than $100,000. According to the Los Angeles Times the studio plans to finance as many as 20 micro-budget movies annually starting in 2010. The division will not acquire films at film festivals or markets and its $2 million annual budget will be taken from Paramount’s existing production budget. Though studios have tried and failed at doing boutique arms in the past, Paramount says not all of the projects in this division will […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 10, 2009

Lee Toland Krieger, The Vicious Kind

Opening with a blistering, misogynistic monologue by Caleb (a terrific Adam Scott), a newly unemployed construction worker who’s recent breakup has left him with an unquenchable hate for all things feminine, The Vicious Kind seems to announce its intentions very quickly: dramatizing the bitterness of a young, damaged man and the toll his misanthropy exacts on his small, middle class New England family over one long holiday weekend as his virginal brother (Peter Frost) and his gothy, bright eyed girlfriend (Brittany Snow) also return for Thanksgiving. However, as it slowly unwinds, The Vicious Kind reveals a family torn apart by […]

by Brandon Harris on Dec 9, 2009

SUNDANCE ANNOUNCES 2010 PREMIERES, SPOTLIGHTS, NEW FRONTIER, MIDNIGHT & NEXT TITLES

The Sundance Institute has announced the titles that will be in the non-competition categories for the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Notables going to Park City in January include Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, Nicole Holofcener, the Duplass bros, Michael Winterbottom (with two films), the Safdie bros, Gaspar Noé and Philip Seymour Hoffman‘s directorial debut. Also announced are the films taking part in the newly created NEXT series, where films and their filmmakers will travel the country showing their films in theaters during the fest. The Sundance Film Festival will runs January 21-31 in Park City, SaltLake City, Ogden and […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Dec 3, 2009

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