| Filmmaker Magazine

THE ATROCITY EXHIBITION

It’s hard to find original gift ideas. While searching for a Valentine’s Day present, I remembered a conversation I had with the director Sara Driver in Rotterdam. She told me about Boym Studio’s Buildings of Disaster series. Small postmodern totems, the series consists of bonded nickel sculptures of sites like the Chernobyl nuclear reactors, the Unabomber’s Cabin (pictured, right), the L.A. freeway during the O.J. Simpson chase, the Waco Complex, and, yes, the World Trade Center. Reading about the sculptures, one would imagine them to be pieces of ghoulish kitsch. Seeing them in person, though, they come off as strange […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 13, 2004

OVERLOOKED

Of course, with the Academy nominations come and gone, it may seem kind of pointless to hype an un-nominated performance. But given the nods to Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro for their work in 21 Grams, I just wanted to mention my favorite performance in the film which I was surprised to see absent from the various year-end lists. I’m not talking about Melissa Leo, who has her supporters, but rather Charlotte Gainsbourg. Playing Penn’s wife — a Brit transplanted to Memphis who just wants a second chance at a child with Penn — Gainsbourg, in a quiet, unshowy […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 10, 2004

MARK SILVERMAN FELLOWSHIP

Sundance has awarded its annual Mark Silverman Producer’s Fellowship to L.A.-based producer Gina Kwon. Formerly a V.P. at Myriad Pictures, Kwon has worked with Academy Award-winning filmmaker R.J. Cutler on his TNT series The Residents and his Fox series American High. She’s most associated, though, with director Miguel Arteta and producer Matthew Greenfield, having production-managed Star Maps, associate produced Chuck and Buck, and co-produced The Good Girl. She is currently producing a Sundance Lab project, Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, aiming for a Summer 2004 shoot. The fellowship, which is a tribute to the late producer […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 9, 2004

FIELD REPORT

Following last year’s Rotterdam Film Festival, Simon Field, the fest’s illustrious director, announced that the 2004 edition would be his last. This year’s festival more than lived up to the high standard Field set when he joined Rotterdam eight years ago, and now Field has revealed his next endeavor. He’ll be joining the U.K. production company Illuminations, run by Keith Griffiths and John Wyver, and will be executive producing a series of music, architecture and film pieces commissioned by the City of Vienna on the occasion the Mozart anniversary in 2006. Theatre and opera director Peter Sellars will be artistic […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 5, 2004

REMEMBERING LYNN AUERBACH

Lynn Auerbach, the Sundance Institute’s much-loved Associate Director of the Feature Film Program, passed away shortly after this year’s festival following a brief illness. For her many friends and colleagues — including the dozens of young fellows and industry mentors who have passed through the Sundance labs since her arrival at the Institute 15 years ago — the news came as a sad shock. Passionate, witty, and clearly in love with her job of discovering new filmmaking talent and helping them develop their projects, Auerbach nurtured her fellows with equal amounts emotional support and keen advice. Just a few of […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 4, 2004

THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF BIG BUSINESS

Following The Corporation‘s successful run at the Sundance Festival, where it won the Documentary Audience Award for World Cinema, Big Picture Media Corporation has signed a U.S. distribution deal with Zeitgeist Flms. Co-Director/producer Mark Achbar (who co-directed The Corporation with Jennifer Abbott and co-created it with writer Joel Bakan) couldn’t be more pleased with the response the film has generated. “From the feedback we had after our sell-out screening at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, to this amazing reception at Sundance, not to mention the truly incredible numbers so far with our Canadian launch — it’s clear that […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Feb 2, 2004

SAINT — AND SISTER — HOOD

One of the buzz films to emerge at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival has been Teona Strugar Mitevska’s How I Killed a Saint. The 29-year-old director attended the MFA program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and on one level, her film could easily fit within the American indie “dysfunctional family” tradition. It tells the story of Viola, a young girl who returns home after travelling abroad for three years, having left behind a family secret and returning to tense relationships with her out-of-it parents and alienated, delinquent brother. Except in this case, Viola is returning in 2001 from […]

by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2004

A PRIMER ON “PRIMER”

Upon hearing the awards news from Sundance this past Sunday in Rotterdam, most of the buyers and sales agents at the Cinemart all wanted to know one thing from me: “What the hell is Primer?” The small minority who caught the film in Utah, though, had a different question: “Why the hell did this film win the Sundance Grand Prize?” International film business types customarily feel somewhat lost and bewildered at Sundance, unable to figure out the shuttle bus routes or how to make it into the evening parties. But to be completely confused by what’s on screen? That’s a […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2004

THE (LEAD) TIMES WE LIVE IN

In the first post on this new Filmmaker blog, I wrote about how we’d use this space to break out of the quarterly confines of the magazine’s publication schedule. Well, that’s still the intention, but after a few days here at the Sundance Film Festival, this blog has been filling up with news items filed by the New York office while the Sundance-attending staff has been seeing the movies, going to the parties, but not quite figuring out how to get into the rhythm of daily online journalism. One of the good things about publishing quarterly is that it allows […]

by Scott Macaulay on Jan 22, 2004

PRODIGY

A debut feature 19 years in the making, Jonathan Caouette’s “brutal and spellbinding musical-docudrama” Tarnation premiered as a rough cut at Mix 2003 and screens in the Frontier section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. (Tarnation was substantially reedited following its debut at Mix, and is tipped for the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes following its screening in Park City.) As per the Mix Festival’s write-up: “Tarnation weaves a psychotronic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of ’80s camp pop culture and dramatic reenactments drawn from Caouette’s entire life.” “It’s kind […]

by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 20, 2004

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