6576 Results for “production”
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15 Picks for the 2015 SXSW Film Festival and Conference
The SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festivals and Conferences haven’t even begun yet, and there’s already been one corporate contretemps (sponsor McDonald’s attempt to get bands to play for free), and the app of the festival has already been decided upon (it’s Meerkat, if the wi-fi in the Austin Convention Center holds up). As always, though, the films are mysteries. On paper the ’15 lineup looks like a good one, with several high-profile titles I’m really looking forward to, some first-time features that seem like real discoveries, and a number of returning veterans with films that seem very promising. I […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 12, 2015 -
What Does It Mean to be a Producer?
Alongside her current Kickstarter campaign for Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck’s God Bless the Child, producer Laura Heberton pens this guest essay for Filmmaker reflecting on the many different ways one can be a film producer in our Internet age. Both God Bless the Child and another picture produced by Heberton, Alison Bagnall’s Funny Bunny, premiere at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival. This coming Friday, at about 2 o’clock in the morning, I will finally get to meet, in some (probably nondescript) lobby of a hotel in Austin, Robert Machoain and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck — in person and for the very […]
by Laura Heberton on Mar 11, 2015 -
Not a Deleuze Lecture, but What? Thom Andersen’s The Thoughts That Once We Had
I’ve heard many mistake the voiceover in Los Angeles Plays Itself as belonging to its writer-director Thom Andersen when it’s actually Encke King. A fair assumption — King speaks in a first person voiceover in a rather curmudgeonly monotone, fitting for the film’s occasionally cantankerous examination of the relationship between the physical spaces of Los Angeles and the way Hollywood films have portrayed them. The real Andersen is a more elusive character. His voice is more casual but less direct, his articulated knowledge of his own projects is tempered, bouncing around a given topic than directly addressing it. He pauses […]
by Peter Labuza on Mar 11, 2015 -
“I’m Pretty Sure She Saw Something”: David Robert Mitchell on It Follows
Lo-fi horror films have enjoyed a modern renaissance ever since The Blair Witch Project, and while the quality of the genre is often overcast by the sheer quantity of its offerings, the profit margins all but ensure Blumhouse and comrades’ staying power. As such, it’s nice to see an aesthetically exacting, relatively high-concept pallet cleanser take its turn in the spotlight. Last year, we had The Babadook, and this year, all signs point towards David Robert Mitchell’s absurdly entertaining, expertly crafted It Follows as the genre’s banner breakout. Mitchell’s sophomore film has myriad virtues — a Carpenter-worthy score from Disasterpeace, and a foreboding use of wide pans, for starters — but it’s […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 11, 2015 -
“As Spare and Sparse as Possible”: Peter Suschitzky on Maps to the Stars
Before David Cronenberg evolved – or rather, in keeping with Cronenberg’s preoccupations, mutated – into a respected auteur, he rose to prominence as the purveyor of a distinct subset of genre films labeled as “body horror.” At the heart of his early tales of transmogrification, decay and disease lay an innately human fear of mortality. In Cronenberg’s latest, Maps to the Stars, the director explores a uniquely post-millennial form of mortality he has christened “pre-death.” In a culture obsessed with recording and sharing, to not be photographed is in some sense to cease to exist. That existential crisis runs through […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Mar 10, 2015 -
Exclusive Clip: Dennis Hopper in The Last Film Festival, His Final Movie
A few years ago, director Linda Yellen met her hero, Dennis Hopper, at the Sundance Film Festival. As she writes on the Kickstarter page for The Last Film Festival, “Sundance is simply one of the best film festivals in the world, and I wondered what the worst would be like? Dennis turned to me and said ‘That’s a great idea kid, you write the script and I’ll do it.’ And he did!” From the page: The Last Film Festival is a feature length comedy starring Dennis Hopper, written by Michael Leeds and me. Dennis plays Nick Twain, a big-time Hollywood Producer […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Mar 10, 2015 -
Can a Filmmaker Balance Movies with a Full-Time Teaching Career?
Selected for Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces series, filmmakers Robert Machoian and Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck are currently on Kickstarter via producer Laura Heberton’s campaign to cover festival expenses for their latest feature, God Bless the Child. In the below guest essay, Machoian, who works as an adjunct professor, ponders the current dilemma in his life: should he accept a full-time teaching position that will necessarily change the rhythm of his filmmaking? Read on, and check out the film’s campaign on Kickstarter and consider donating. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” This is a phrase I hear thrown around often, I […]
by Robert Machoian on Mar 10, 2015 -
Directors and Producers Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein on The Amazing Randi Doc An Honest Liar
I’ve been a fan of Tyler Measom’s work ever since I wandered into a screening of his and Jennilyn Merten’s nail-biting portrait of teen exiles from the FLDS Church, Sons of Perdition, at Tribeca five years back. (The doc ultimately went on to be picked up by the Oprah Winfrey Network for broadcast the following year.) Now Measom has teamed up with producer Justin Weinstein (a scientist turned filmmaker and both executive producer of Ryan Murdoch’s Bronx Obama and writer/editor of Constance Marks’s Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey) to craft another festival success story. An Honest Liar is an up […]
by Lauren Wissot on Mar 6, 2015 -
R.I.P., Documentary Great Albert Maysles
The legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles passed away last night, reported The Criterion Collection on the day it is rereleasing one of his most indelible and influential works, Grey Gardens (co-directed with David Maysles, Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer). He was 88. With David, his brother, Albert Maysles made “direct cinema” documentaries that were politically and socially impactful upon release and aesthetically groundbreaking for generations of filmmakers to follow. The 1969 documentary Salesman (co-directed with Charlotte Zerin) captured the everyday sorrows of ordinary people — in this case, door-to-door Bible salesman — toiling in the shadows of both the American […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 6, 2015 -
Five Views of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2015
On the basis of the five films I sampled in the 20th edition of Lincoln Center’s annual “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” series, I’m not inclined to make any diagnoses of either the state of French cinema or even this year’s edition. All five were worth seeing but only one skirted essential status, so let’s start there. Inelegantly labeled 40-Love in English (the French title, Terre batue, translates as “clay court”), Stéphane Demoustier’s first feature grows logically from his documentary short Fille du calvaire, a look at the long and difficult path awaiting young men training to be tennis pros. 40-Love initially appears to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 6, 2015
