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The four-to-five week run of New York Film Festival screenings and press conferences each fall functions as something of an annual end-of-summer camp for a certain caste of mostly local film journalists. The series of videos shot, directed, edited by and usually starring Jamie Stuart which document this ritual should be, then, something of a camp yearbook… except that over the years Stuart has only rarely seemed interested in directly documenting the festival itself. He uses the experience of the NYFF — its films, visiting filmmakers both relatively obscure (Hany Abu-Assad, Hong Sang-soo) and unquestionably famous (Warren Beatty, Nicole Kidman), […]
With the New York Film Festival around the corner you know it’s time for Jamie Stuart to come out of hiding and dazzle (as well as bewilder) us with his series of shorts from the fest. Below is a teaser he sent. This year’s series will begin on the site next week. Also, new on the Web Exclusives page is a brief essay Karina Longworth wrote for us on Stuart’s previous NYFF pieces.
As the IFP’s Independent Film Week rolls along, there has been quite a lot of discussion around the streets of Chelsea of new paradigms, the role of the independent filmmaker, and creative strategies to reach audiences. I’ve been wearing my producer hat this week, taking meetings at the IFP’s No Borders program. I’ll write a bit more about this experience when it’s all over, but suffice to say for now that it’s been an excellent couple of days filled with energetic and surprising meetings that stand in stark contrast to the torrent of bad news coming from Wall Street and […]
The IFP announced today that Melvin Van Peebles will be honored with a Tribute at this year’s Gotham Awards, taking place Tuesday, Dec. 2, in New York City. Recognized as the “godfather of independent film and modern black cinema,” Van Peebles wrote, produced, scored, directed, and starred in the landmark 1971 independent film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song. He is an Emmy Award winner, a three-time Grammy nominee, and an 11-time Tony nominee. His latest film, Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus Itychfooted Mutha premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. As part of the Gotham Tribute, The Museum of Modern Art will present a […]
I started to write more about David Foster Wallace but scrapped it. For all of its celebrated intellectual brilliance, Wallace’s writing always resolved itself on the simplest, most human terms while still vigilantly guarding itself against the ever present threats of lazy thinking, sentimentality and, as he discusses in the Kenyon address linked to below, our “default thinking.” I can’t summon up anything profound or summarizing about him or the news that he killed himself. I simply direct you to his own writings. There is much on the web today about Wallace, including this round-up of links from GreenCine, that […]
I was absolutely stunned to return home to New York tonight from a wedding in Massachusetts and read online that one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace, died this weekend in Claremont, California. Wallace’s novels include Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, and he is the author of several excellent books of essays, including A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. From the obituary in the L.A. Times: Times book editor David Ulin was in New York City for a National Book Critics Circle Board meeting Saturday. “What was a party is […]
There are many paths to cinematic success, some of them direct, some of them not, and it is fair to say that Irena Salina has taken a more meandering route than some to reach her current position. Born in Paris in the wake of May ’68, she grew up in a theatrical family (her uncle was the late, great French actor Philippe Noiret) and initially aspired to becoming an actress. When her adolescence was disrupted by her parents’ divorce, she chose to drop out of school and became a radio reporter at the age of just 15. After a stint […]
To conclude our series of blog posts from Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, currently in theaters, here is his breakdown of how he posted his movie. Able Danger was shot on an Panasonic AG-HVX200 by accomplished Brooklyn-based cinematographer Charlie Libin. We shot HD using no tape. It was shot to P2 cards, basically RAM and then copied to a hard drive. It was edited on Avid mostly on a laptop in a basement and then on an Avid at Jump Editorial. It was edited in HD but at the Panasonic “native” file size of 1280 x 720. This is […]
Beginning today over at Filmmaker Videos is a series of interviews from Toronto provided by Filmcatcher.com. Up now is Jeffrey-Levy Hinte‘s much talked about documentary Soul Power, about the 1974 Zaire music festival. Keep checking the page daily as we’ll be posting interviews through next week.
Ted Hope alerted me to the very cool Trailers from Hell site, in which an amazing and erudite group of filmmakers — John Landis, Howard Rodman, Allison Anders, Michael Lehmann, Larry Cohen, Joe Dante and others — provide voiceover commentary to a series of trailers from great movies, most of which hail from B-movie or genre traditions. Personal favorites include Blast of Silence, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and, embedded below, Point Blank. Check this site out!