We just put the new Spring issue of Filmmaker to bed, so that’s why there hasn’t been much blogging here. Really, I was going to try to burn the midnight oil and throw some postings up, but then I read the now infamous New York Times “Death by Blogging” article and thought better of it. So, here are a few things I would have posted about in greater detail if I had the time. First, as you know from reading this blog, we try to keep up with and promote the work of our annual “25 New Faces” filmmakers. I […]
The Tribeca Film Institute announced the projects for its 2008 Tribeca All Access program today. The program is designed to “help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities,” according the the press release. Tribeca All Access will provide the filmmakers workshops and opportunities to present their works in one-on-one meetings with more than 100 potential investors, development executives, producers and agents. The six-day event will take place during the Tribeca Film Festival in late April. The 37 narrative and documentary projects selected (the largest showing ever) are listed below. NARRATIVE Bardos, Anslem Richardson (Writer)Two family […]
Over at his DIY Filmmaker blog, Sujewa Ekanayake posts a long interview with Barry Jenkins (pictured) about his Medicine for Melancholy, one of the real discoveries (and a film I very much liked) out of SXSW. He talks about Godard, being inspired by Claire Denis’s Vendredi Soir, and whether Medicine for Melancholy is, in Sujewa’s words, “the Barack Obama of indie films.” Here’s his response to the latter — specifically, whether or not his film can “cross over” from the typical “multi-ethnic but largely white” base of indie film to reach more diverse audiences. “The Barack Obama of indie films.” […]
I haven’t seen Doomsday yet, but I want to — I loved Neil Marshall’s Descent, and despite the 28 Days Later meets Resident Evil meets Road Warrior mix-and-match vibe of the trailer, I can’t believe this director doesn’t deliver something interesting with this new film. Filmmaker contributor Travis Crawford, who has seen the film and sent the below in an email, corroborates my feelings that Doomsday may offer more than people are giving it credit for. From Crawford: I felt that it was a very self-knowing, vintage Verhoeven-esque PARODY of the ultra-violent futuristic action thrillers from which it admittedly derives […]
Over at the main page there are two new web-only pieces that both interview directors whose films open this week and who both quite consciously explore in them issues of borders and identity in a globalist age. One is a new director, Patricia Riggen (a Filmmaker 25 New Face discovery in 2005) and the other is a veteran, Olivier Assayas, and their films couldn’t be more different. Damon Smith interviews Riggen about her La Misma Luna, an emotional and affecting mother-son tale that draws from both the Mexican telenovela and the American indie road movie genres. And then there’s Olivier […]
Over the course of eight feature films, Olivier Assayas has built a solid international reputation as a director of stylish, naturalistic thrillers and social dramas that team with sensuality. Assayas is a boundlessly resourceful director and in his most recent film, Boarding Gate, a lower key, appealingly absurd riff on the same erotic, globalization-era techno thriller he first brought us in 2002’s explosive Demonlover, the fifty-two year old French filmmaker uses his signature loose, montage-y style to tell what is essentially a lurid and oblique crime story, full of people with secrets and double agendas, whose longings to fulfill the […]
Though her short-film and documentary projects have a clearly articulated social conscience, director Patricia Riggen says she prefers to make moving films that tell a story with “big emotions.” Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Riggen began writing scripts for television after a stint in the world of newspaper journalism, and eventually became vice chairman of short-film production at the Mexican Film Institute. In 1998, she moved to New York City and attended Columbia University’s MFA program in film studies, focusing on screenwriting and directing. While still a student, she made La Milpa, a 27-minute narrative short set during the Mexican Revolution, […]
Inspired by true events, director Ti West (The Roost) throws out the typical elements and traps of the horror genre to create what he calls an “experimental horror.” Shot with one HD camera, West uses sparse dialogue, long takes and a haunting score to tell the story of three friends who travel from New York City to the woods of Delaware to hunt deer. Similar to films like Deliverance, The Decent or Open Water — ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances — the hunters become the hunted when a sniper begins to shoot them down one by one. But instead […]
NAOMI WATTS AND TIM ROTH WITH UNWELCOME VISITORS MICHAEL PITT AND BRADY CORBETT IN DIRECTOR MICHAEL HANEKE’S FUNNY GAMES U.S. COURTESY WARNER INDEPENDENT PICTURES. Michael Haneke is a director who makes films strictly on his terms, and — as his new movie demonstrates — writes his own rules if he doesn’t like the existing ones. The son of an actor-director father and an actress mother, Haneke was born in Munich, Germany, and grew up just outside the Austrian capital, Vienna. He attended the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy, psychology and theater. Over the course of the 70s and […]
Jamie Stuart emailed the following observation about No Country for Old Men after rewatching the film on DVD: I rented No Country yesterday. I’d read a few complaints on Anne T.’s blog about the scene where Bell goes to the motel room — and Chigurh is supposed to be behind the door (people were complaining that Chigurh seemed to have vanished). I always thought Chigurh was simply hiding behind the door, since that’s where he’s shown during the initial cross-cutting. But watching the DVD — and even brighting the image all the way — Chigurh IS NOT THERE when the […]