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CHAIN REACTION
I ran into producer Mary Jane Skalski at the Salt Lake City airport this morning on the way into Park City, and she — along with an e-mail from director Jem Cohen — gave me material for an embarassing first post out of Sundance. In our new issue of Filmmaker, Anthony Kaufman writes in his “New York Scene” column about directors who choose, for whatever reason, not to make the festival and premiere their films in other venues. He writes about Michael Kang, whose Motel was unable to be finished in time, and also Jem Cohen, who is currently completing […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2004 -
“25 NEW FACES” AT SUNDANCE
Every summer Filmmaker runs a feature entitled “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in which we try to apply our long-lead editorial approach to talent spotting. We identify promising new writers, directors and actors who are flying well below the industry radar, and several of our pics usually show up at Sundance each year. Here are Filmmaker‘s “25 New Faces” picks in this year’s festival. The advance industry buzz on The Clearing has been all over the map, but Justin Haythe’s screenplay was the best I read a couple of years ago. It’s a terse, emotionally rich drama about a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 15, 2004 -
Oh, to be a Blogger!
There are frustrations in editing a published-quarterly magazine like Filmmaker. As media cycles accelerate around us, we still publish every ninety days, trying to write intelligently about the aesthetics, business, and reasons for making independent film while pretending not to care that, with our long-lead schedule, we can’t really comment on that day or week’s movie news. The current issue of Filmmaker, for example, went to bed in mid-December, will be first read at the Sundance Film Festival, and will linger on newsstands until early April or so. Which means that meaningful commentary on the latest breaking news is pretty […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 14, 2004 -
The 2000 Berlin International Film Festival
Major transitional years occur only occasionally in the festival world. It is, in part, continuity of venue and curatorial staff that makes these institutions tick; their very consistency allows filmmakers and film professionals to make informed choices about how films might be received at their premieres. In this context, the 50th Berlinale was a traumatic and difficult event. Ten years ago, when the Wall fell, rumors had already begun that the Festival would be moved from its hideous, if comforting, decades-old home in Breitscheitzplatz to new digs in the just-liberated wasteland of Potsdamer Platz, the former center of all things […]
by Noah Cowan on Mar 15, 2000 -
The 1998 Cannes Film Festival
While many important films premiered in front of attractively dressed people at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the big story on the beach was the regal blessing accorded the American indie scene. Four films appeared in Competition plus a handful in the Director’s Fortnight, all produced in the United States outside of studio-based development and production systems. Further risking immodesty – after all, Filmmaker is a cheerleader for just this kind of work – the Festival was even more specifically laudatory: it celebrated the filmmakers who emerged from New York in the early ’90s and their powerful aesthetic influence on […]
by Noah Cowan on Jun 15, 1998 -
The 1998 Gen Art Film Festival
Gen Art gets a lot of flack for being a “party” festival. Each film shown at the New York City-based event is explicitly marketed with a party attached, usually in some fashionable SoHo night spot. Those who believe in the sanctity of the cinema deplore this cross-breeding of evening activities. Many film professionals who attend the parties claim they don’t know anyone there, and that this somehow makes the Festival lightweight. This is all bosh. Festivals have been founded on far more suspicious foundations than this, and in fact one big one – that I happen to work for called […]
by Noah Cowan on Mar 19, 1998 -
The 1998 Berlin International Film Festival
Trade magazine writers have jokingly claimed for years that they preprint their Berlin roundup articles with the header “Industry Disappointed At Berlin.” This year was no exception; see Variety especially. Stacked up against this continuous din of bad news is a genuine enthusiasm for the Berlinale among American independent filmmakers, curators and critics. So what’s going on? Are the suits trying to spoil the party? The trades attack the Festival on three fronts – the biz, the stars and the films – and it is often vulnerable in each. I have never attended a Berlinale when it has failed in […]
by Noah Cowan on Mar 15, 1998 -
The 1997 Sundance Film Festival
A decade-long honeymoon is over for the Sundance Film Festival. After a dizzying climb to the top echelon of world film festivals, the event came under withering criticism this year. Post-mortem articles cloaked in outrage appeared around the world. Most critics rightly scorned sub-standard screening facilities, but others took aim at this year’s film crop and the changing essence of the Festival itself. The Sundance Institute, created in 1981, and the Film Festival, in 1985, were designed to “enhance the artistic vitality of American film.” This mission statement often meant supporting films in the Cassavetes’ tradition, films made with minimal […]
by Noah Cowan on Mar 15, 1997 -
Intelligent Screenplay Development
This article originally appeared in our Fall, 1995 print edition. Development is a dirty word in the film business. To screenwriters in Hollywood, it means toiling under the tutelage of a team of business people, endeavoring to give them what they want, all the while realizing that there is little chance that their script will ever get made. To development executives, it means finding an idea, novel, or original screenplay and then having to work with a writer who can be alternately moody, recalcitrant, or even lazy – and then being disappointed with the results. For the studio executive, development […]
by Barbara Schock on Jan 19, 1995 -
The Cannes Film Festival 1994
The strapless celebutante, doused in an atomic shower of paparazzi flash, scales a palatial stairway with her impossible heels and perfect smile. At the summit, she joins her seventh husband, a vaunted master of European cinema sporting an ill-fitting tuxedo. He is fondly recalling an afternoon extolling the virtues of a since-denounced Communist film bureaucrat to an enraptured Van Nuys-based creator of erotic thrillers, himself bankrupted by the two watery cappuccinos just purchased from a surly waiter who undoubtedly will have better seats than any of them for tonight’s film. All four have great tans. An, hypocrisy, cash and glamour; […]
by Noah Cowan on Jun 15, 1994
