Powered by 
In Director Interviews, Nick Dawson talks with Abel Ferrara on the release of Mary at the Anthology Film Archives. I’m a big fan of this film — it’s his best in years. (Although I haven’t seen Go-Go Tales and the Chelsea Hotel doc yet.) Ferrara fans can also dip into the Filmmaker Archives with this interview with the director about R Xmas by Jeremiah Kipp. And, not on the Filmmaker site but on the late Zoe Lund’s site, my cover story on Bad Lieutenant back in 1992.
Over the weekend I read on Ain’t It Cool News about James Gunn and Spike TV’s “PG Porn,” a series of short satiric films starring porn stars but which feature no sex. Here’s Gunn from the AICN piece: My brothers Brian and Sean and I came up with PG PORN years ago. We’d talk about all sorts of scenarios where you take the typical porn set-up and things would somehow go wrong. When I was a kid I’d go see X-rated movies in a theater with my friends. I would rarely get turned on — it was all about laughing […]
Via Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York blog comes this sad notice: the East Village’s Mondo Kim’s will be closing, and Mr. Kim is searching for some organization to take the store’s collection of 55,000 videos. (Hat tip: Movie City News.) From the blog: In posters on display at Mondo Kim’s, he writes to say that, due to “rapidly declined” financial resources, he is seeking a sponsor to take on his entire collection of 55,000 films. The flyer goes on to say that he plans to close the rental department of his business and hopes to ensure that the collection will still […]
“One truism of being a documentary filmmaker is that your subjects often continue to make news long after your film has wrapped and is widely seen,” writes AJ. Schnack at his All These Wonderful Things blog. “Kicking off a new feature here at the blog, Sam Green, the co-director of the Oscar-nominated THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, writes about Ayers’ return to prominence and the mixed feelings it provokes for the director.” What follows are Green’s thoughts about Ayres, who he got to know through the making of his documentary, his sudden emergence as an issue in the Presidential campaign, and both […]
Here Jamie Stuart examines the New York Film Festival with a irreverent brand of narrative/reporting that features the indie stars attending the festival while weaving a twisted tale starring Stuart himself.
Congrats to my old friend and colleague, Karol Martesko-Fenster, founding publisher of Filmmaker and co-founder of Indiewire on his new position at Babelgum, the ad-supported internet TV platform. From the press release: Babelgum, the free independent web TV platform, today announced the appointment of Karol Martesko-Fenster as General Manager & Publisher of thecompany’s Film Division. Martesko-Fenster will oversee allaspects of the film offering on Babelgum, expanding programming acquisitions and partnerships and global film industry and festival activities. Karol will also assume the role of Managing Director of theannual Babelgum Online Film Festival working closely with creator Stefania Valenti and Jury […]
CinemaTech’s Scott Kirsner sent me an email alerting me to a really interesting project he’s done with ITVS. From his email: Earlier this year, ITVS asked me to interview a group of documentary filmmakers who were working on the vanguard. Specifically, we wanted to focus on three things: 1. Opening up production in new ways, communicating and collaborating with the audience while a film is still in the works. 2. Distributing in new ways, through avenues like iTunes or downloads on a filmmaker’s own Web site 3. Marketing and cultivating an audience for the work in new ways, and figuring […]
CineVegas programmer and Filmmaker contributor Mike Plante writes: “Not sure why the Off Camera festival in Krakow has gone so unnoticed in the US, maybe because it’s first time and in an unknown city – but I went and it was great, all the filmmakers and jury had a blast, and they give out 100,000 Euros in their competition. Probably the biggest prize of any festival?” Off Camera was off my radar as well, but I just checked out Mike’s blog postings and they detail a spirited fest with a good, artistically attuned line-up. Here’s his account of Holly Woodlawn […]
Not film related (not, that is, if you don’t think the general economy has anything to do with film production, studio or independent), but congrats to Paul Krugman for his Nobel Prize in Economics, announced today. Today in the NY Times he asks whether British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has saved the world economy. That topic is also discussed by screenwriter Howard Rodman (Savage Grace) in his Huffington Post blog titled “Hank and the Swedish Model.” (That’s “Hank” as in “Paulson”).
Here’s Stuart, Mickey Rourke, and the conclusion of this year’s series. Be back in a year for NYFF47.