I ran into filmmaker — and Filmmaker “25 New Face” — Kyle Henry at the American Pavilion in Cannes, and I was startled to learn that he was attending the festival… but skipping his screening. He offered to explain in a blog post. Your film gets into the Directors’ Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival, and you can’t stay for your screening… are you crazy? Well, that was my case this year. My film Fourplay: Tampa, a short that is part of the anthology-of-shorts feature Fourplay, got the magical golden ticket to one of the festival sections at Cannes this […]
This week I leave you in the capable hands of our editor Scott Macaulay. One of the exciting aspects of this gig is learning from a fella like Scott. A producer of some of my favorite indie films, he has been a great mentor and producer of this column. I asked him to just go nuts and write what was on his mind. Voila! Last fall, I posted a call for new columnists for this website, and the first to respond was John Yost with the idea for this “Micro-Budget Conversation.” I liked John’s proposal for a number of […]
It seems that this column is really starting to draw out a conversation from us micro-budget folks, and beyond; I couldn’t be happier. There seems to be a lot of dialogue happening in the comments, and I’m getting constant feedback from filmmakers from all over the world who are trying to make a new DIY model work. Every once and a while I get requests from some folks who want to contribute to the column itself. Many times these requests come from publicists, or folks just looking to sell themselves, but every once and a while a real dialogue is […]
The New Studio Indies. By Anthony Kaufman
This column usually focuses on one subject per post that tackles one specific aspect of micro-budget filmmaking. I never wanted it to be a place where we talk about the latest gear or tips on how to get a film done; There are other awesome sites for that. However, after talking with filmmaker Jamie Heinrich, about no-budget filmmaking, he sent me the list of important things to remember below. Jamie recently completed his film I Like You, and after seeing the trailer I can’t wait to check it out. Jamie’s advice is funny, to the point, and no nonsense. I […]
There are at least ten narrative films at SXSW this year directed by women — twice as many as last year. At first glance, they share almost nothing in common. There’s a campy ‘50s-inspired vampire romp My Sucky Teenage Romance, by the 18-year-old Emily Hagins, and Small Beautifully Moving Parts by a pair of married adult women co-directors (each married, not to each other), Annie J. Howell and Lisa Robinson, about a pregnant woman so fascinated by electronic gadgets that she can’t begin to face the organic reality of having her baby. Some films feature male protagonists (No Matter […]
There’s little better at restoring one’s faith in cinema then when a great director returns from the wilderness. Terrence Malick was MIA for 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but Monte Hellman’s time away from feature filmmaking has been even more prolonged. It was as far back as 1988 when Hellman made Iguana, his last “proper” film, but now the director of such cult classics as Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter has happily returned to filmmaking. Last fall, Hellman unveiled Road to Nowhere at the Venice Film Festival – where he won a Jury Award […]
Originally posted online on August 11, 2010. Animal Kingdom is nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver). Like his stunning short films Netherland Dwarf and Crossbow, David Michod’s terrific and terrifying feature debut, the 2010 Sundance World Dramatic Competition winner Animal Kingdom, is a smoothly photographed, moodily scored tale of a trapped, dim and docile young man who suffers at the hands of a careless and, in this case, criminal family. As in his previous work, Michod relies on an insistent voiceover to provide biting interiority while the unrelentingly grim working-class Melbourne milieu is strikingly depicted in slow-motion shots and […]
These past two weeks I’ve been in Rochester, NY working on the Orphaned soundtrack with all the usual suspects and collaborators. (Let me know if there are issues with the feed. This is an ongoing daily live feed where I will eventually be distributing free content…it is part of my MFA thesis.) I had been trying to write a response to the latest “explosion” of indie film acquisitions, the new world models of indie film financing, and the influx of nobody filmmakers. BUT I found that others with something to say, have already said it best, so I scrapped it. […]
Originally posted online on December 16, 2010. Rabbit Hole is nominated for Best Actress (Nicole Kidman). David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize winning play Rabbit Hole might seem like an odd choice for helmer John Cameron Mitchell, a director whose reputation wasn’t gained built on tasteful, upper-middle-class family dramas. Perhaps he’s mellowed, and given the results, why not? The film’s story of parental grief, that of a Westchester County couple (Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman) who, eight months later still lack the emotional wherewithal to deal with the accidental death of their young son, may seem like the stuff of so many […]