In partnership with Filmmaker, Cinema Eye Honors announces the nominees for this year’s Heterodox Award, its fourth annual recognition of a narrative film that successfully and imaginatively weaves documentary strategies, content, and/or modes of production into its fabric. The five nominees are Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess; Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow; James Franco and Travis Mathews’ Interior. Leather Bar.; Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds and Carlos Reygadas’ Post Tenebras Lux. These selected films are intended to demonstrate the formal possibilities of non-fiction filmmaking, in addition to probing the ever-tenuous boundary between reality and its embellished analogue. “The 2014 Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox nominees prove once again that […]
DaVinci Resolve began life as a high-end grading tool found in expensive color suites. Its purchase by Blackmagic hasn’t lessened its sophistication – they’ve continued to expand its tool set – but it has seen the software’s price lowered substantially, a free “lite” version released, and a redesign of its UI that has made it a lot friendlier to new users. Resolve is still a complicated and sophisticated tool, and color grading is a skill that can take a lot of study to master, but if you’re doing any image manipulation to your footage you shouldn’t ignore the functionality Resolve […]
“We were getting great feedback, and we thought, ‘Okay, it’s just a couple weeks now until we sell the film! It’s going to sell any second!’” Rola Nashef’s reflection on the waiting period that followed the world premiere of Detroit Unleaded at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival is likely an all too familiar affair. For her feature debut, Nashef and her team thought they had hit the jackpot: acceptance to a prestigious festival, attended by buyers aplenty, and rapturous responses from sold-out audiences. However, the realities of selling the film, a romantic comedy with an Arab-American ensemble cast, set […]
Two highly unique minds converge in Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?, the latest from whimsical visionary Michel Gondry, who aptly subtitles his film, “An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky.” In the works for four years, this self-explanatory project from the artist behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, and a veritable library of music videos is a charming and markedly low-tech doc that literally illustrates the insights of Chomsky, one of the greatest thinkers of our time. Ever-fascinated by the depths of the human brain, and ever-faithful in dressing his films with cartoon-like touches, […]
“I’ve been around so long that I’ve seen the ‘death’ of independent film at least three times” – Christine Vachon, Producing Masterclass Widely regarded as one of the key figures in American independent cinema, Christine Vachon is now well into her fourth decade of film production. Her first feature film as a producer was Todd Haynes’ corrosive, Jean Genet-inspired Poison (1991), which set the tone for the host of fearlessly confrontational films that followed, including Tom Kalin’s Swoon (1992) and Larry Clark’s Kids (1995). In 1996, alongside Pamela Koffler, Vachon co-founded the NYC-based production company Killer Films, which has been […]
If you ask me what’s the biggest difference between studio and independent productions, I wouldn’t answer the length of the shooting schedule or luxuriousness of the craft service. No, I’d say it’s the ability to do reshoots. While studio films can hone their stories through test screenings and additional photography, changing endings (Fatal Attraction) and even entire third acts (World War Z), too many independents wind up with depleted contingencies and unwilling investors when additional photography needs arise in post. Producer Rob Cowan wrote about reshoots today at Hollywood Journal, correctly regarding them not as signs of weakness but as […]
“I feel so sorry for people who are not living in Detroit,” says activist icon Grace Lee Boggs, as she stands before a dilapidated cityscape in the opening sequence of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. A Marxist and lifelong Hegel disciple, the Chinese-American Lee Boggs gained notoriety in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, alongside her husband Jimmy Boggs, in the mid-20th Century. Today, she is still ardently devoted to her adopted hometown of more than half a century, galvanizing the local communities in her effort to revive the industrial wasteland that has become of Detroit. […]
The following is a guest post by writer/director Stelana Kiliris, who previously wrote about the pre-production stages on her film Committed. Picture it: a smooth beige 1958 Mercedes convertible parked in the dust; its plush red interior enveloped by layers and layers of white tulle attached to a bride, sitting next to a man in a dark blue suit. Look closer and you’ll see the sun beating down and ice packs tucked in every crevice while a make-up artist furiously dabs at the couple’s faces. The crew swirls around the car as they prepare for the final shot of the […]
Filmmaker and media activist Laura Hanna — a co-founder of the production company HiddenDriver and director of docs Gattis, James and Hammer — has directed this short documentary about composer and sound artist Matana Roberts’ recent “stop and frisk” encounter on the Williamsburg bridge. Produced by Creative Time Reports and found on their site, it is introduced thusly: As the composer, saxophone player and sound artist Matana Roberts walked across the Williamsburg Bridge one night in May, she asked herself a familiar question: “How am I going to survive as an artist in this town?” It was too enchanting an […]
Daniel Hubbard made a parody of the movie Gravity that has already received a lot of internet attention and over 640,000 views in just four days. The short features two people hopelessly lost in an IKEA store. Hubbard works as a video editor for Broadway.com in New York while studying improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and producing sketches with his group, “sure sure sure.” We asked him to explain how he came up with the idea and how it was shot. Filmmaker: How did you get the idea? Hubbard: I love Gravity, and I thought the trailer was […]