Open | Filmmaker Magazine

NEW YORK INDIES STRIKE WGA DEAL

The AP is reporting that four New York indie film companies — Greenestreet Films, This is That Corporation, Killer Films and Open City Films — have signed an interim agreement with the striking WGA, allowing them to go forward with WGA-scripted development projects and productions. From the piece as it runs on CNN.com: Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, speaking for GreeneStreet, Open City and Killer films, credited the union with “thoughtfulness during the discussions.” This is that co-founders, Ted Hope and Anne Carey, said the united action by the companies to settle “clarifies our support for and solidarity with the […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2008

ROTTERDAM: ABLE DANGER

Given that he’s just made his debut feature about the mysteries, speculations, half-truths and flights of fancy that comprise the 9/11 Truth Movement, I guess it makes sense that filmmaker Paul Krik is accustomed to finding conspiracy wherever he goes. He’s travelled from Brooklyn to Rotterdam to premiere Able Danger, but when I ask him to shoot me an email about why he chose to make a movie about 9/11 conspiracy theorists, he responds by noting some suspicious activities having to do with Dutch bicycle renting: “Indruk de en Brooklyn fietser in Rotterdam” True Conspiracy #1; It is illegal to […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2008

Trumping Trump

The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz’s first film, Dance Party, USA. Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008

Hear My Song

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Ray Pride interviewed Once writer-director John Carney and lead Glen Hansard for the Spring ’07 issue. Once is nominated for Best Original Song for “Falling Slowly” (Music and Lyric by Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova). When Baz Luhrmann was promoting his musical phantasmagoria Moulin Rouge, I asked him how far you could go in the other direction — could a film musical consist simply of a couple coming together and moving […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008

My Super Sweet 16

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Lisa Y. Garibay interviewed Juno director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody for the Fall ’07 issue. Juno is nominated for Best Picture, Best Directing (Jason Reitman), Best Lead Actress (Ellen Page) and Best Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody). The pairing of writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman was one of complete chance, like one of those cop-buddy movies where the grizzled vet is set up with a renegade newbie and […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008

Last Man Standing

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford director Andrew Dominik for our Web Exclusives section of the Website. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Casey Affleck) and Best Cinematography (Roger Deakins). After making only two features, Andrew Dominik deserves to be recognized as one of the most exciting and talented writer-directors working today. Born in […]

by Nick Dawson on Jan 28, 2008

DUTCH TREATS

I’ve still got most of my Sundance commentary to get up and I’m on my way to the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where I’ll try to file some short reports on the fest and the concurrent Cinemart, which is a great financing conference that plans, this year, to begin a dialogue about how it can be reshaped for the future. (Full disclosure: I’m on the CineMart’s Advisory Board.) From the festival’s Tiger Daily: Eschewing conference and panel formats and instead deploying the tried and tested device of brainstorming towards a consensus, IFFR management and industry experts will sit down this […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2008

SUNDANCE BUSINESS AT THE MIDPOINT

It happened maybe a day later than last year, but the acquisitions floodgates have opened a bit at the Sundance Film Festival. But it wasn’t the typical first-weekend films that enthused distributors. In Variety, Ann Thompson is reporting that Focus Features has bought Andrew Fleming’s Hamlet 2, which debuted at the unsexy time of Monday at 5:30 in a deal she pegs at over $10 million for worldwide rights. The film stars Steve Coogan as an English teacher who writes a sequel to Shakespeare’s play in other to rescue the school’s theater department. Perhaps more significantly, the film is directed […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2008

SLAMDANCE DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: CYNTHIA LESTER, MY MOTHER’S GARDEN

Interview by Brandon Harris As Sundance begins this weekend, the world of independent cinema once again turns its attention to this snowy resort town thirty miles outside of Salt Lake. Yet, since 1995, Sundance hasn’t been the only act in town. The 2008 Slamdance Film Festival begins today at Park City’s Treasure Mountain Inn, opening with Randall Cole’s Real Time, a brisk indie comedy starring Randy Quaid. As a brief snapshot of some of the 29 features and 67 shorts that Slamdance will screen in the next nine days, I caught up with thirteen Slamdance Filmmakers to discuss their films […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2008

SUNDANCE: AN AIRBORNE PREVIEW

As I type this I’m on my way to the Sundance Film Festival, where the Filmmaker team will be filing coverage all week. I’ll be blogging along with Jason Guerrasio and Justin Lowe; Jamie Stuart will be shooting video – creating one of his own typically personal and idiosyncratic portraits of festival life as well as filming interviews with directors and actors which you’ll see in the months ahead; if all goes well, Brian Chirls will be shooting and posting video from the fest’s panels and programs; and, Brandon Harris will be covering Slamdance, blogging news and reviews from the […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 17, 2008

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