6583 Results for “production”
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“A Filmmaker Lives in a Suitcase”: Guillermo del “Toronto” Speaks During TIFF
At the end of a one-hour chat held on the first full day of TIFF, an audience member suggested that the Mexican director of Pan’s Labyrinth be renamed Guillermo del Toronto. The sentiment behind this fanciful idea lay in the fact that del Toro keeps returning to Toronto to film here, most recently the $250-million mega-actioner, Pacific Rim, and is now prepping the horror flick, Crimson Peak, before cameras roll next spring. “I’ve lived in L.A., Madrid, Budapest,” del Toro recalled before an invited audience at the Trump Hotel. “[A filmmaker] lives in a suitcase.” The Canuck version of the […]
by Allan Tong on Sep 15, 2013 -
Low & Outside: Lessons for Indie Filmmakers Pitching to the Studios
Filmmaker is sponsoring this week’s pitch panels at IFP’s Filmmaker Conference. Tomorrow morning at 11:00 AM will be The Art of the Narrative Pitch, Monday the 16th at 11:00AM will be Wild Card New Media pitches, Thursday the 19th at 11:00 AM will be the Art of the Documentary Pitch,. In each session, filmmakers will present short, two-minute pitches, and a panel of experts will dissect them, giving you, the audience, a master class in how to present your material to funders and producers. I’ll be introducing tomorrow’s session, and Nick Dawson will do Monday’s. Thinking about the art of […]
by Douglas Tirola on Sep 14, 2013 -
“It’s a Nice Little Movie, But It Isn’t Commercial:” The Theatrical Self-Distribution of Northern Lights
The following is an abridged version of a report on the self-distribution of the 1978 U.S. indie Northern Lights, directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, written shortly after the film’s release by Hanson himself. The winner of the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1979, Hanson and Nilsson’s film is being released by Artists Public Domain/Cinema Conservancy and opens at Film Forum on September 2o. The distribution of Northern Lights was both unusual and unique. Instead of opening in New York, getting reviews, moving to the biggest cities in the country and gradually spreading out to the […]
by John Hanson on Sep 13, 2013 -
From Small Town to Big Buzz: How Wadjda Became the Realization of Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Hollywood Dreams
Growing up in Saudi Arabia, writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour didn’t have access to movie theaters (there aren’t any), but she was still raised on a Hollywood diet. She ate up all the popular cinema she could via home video, and began forging a long-term love affair with the kind of infectious traditions found in big-budget American films. Those same traditions have spilled over, somewhat, into Wadjda, Al-Mansour’s groundbreaking debut feature, which is both the first movie filmed entirely in Saudi Arabia, and the first feature to be helmed by a female Saudi director. An arthouse release that premiered at the Venice […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Sep 12, 2013 -
Blood on the Motorway: Alexandre Moors on Blue Caprice
The title character in Alexandre Moors’ frequently stunning feature debut Blue Caprice is a mid-sized sedan, the type used by police departments across America as the principle member of their fleet, its steely menace a constant presence as it winds its way through nondescript, wan-looking American streets. The sedan in question in Moors’ film was also a police car, at least before it was retrofitted for terror by John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who drilled a whole in the trunk from which the 17-year-old Malvo, at the ex-U.S. Army marksman Muhammad’s urging, shot 10 people to death during the […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 12, 2013 -
Five Questions for 1982 Director Tommy Oliver
Premiering at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival is 1982, the directorial debut of noted independent producer Tommy Oliver (Kinyarwanda). Set in Philadelphia in the year of the film’s title, 1982 is the story of a father (an affecting Hill Harper) torn between his love for his wife, who has descended into crack addition, and his responsibilities to his young daughter. Set during the start of the crack epidemic, 1982 is an intimate film that returns us to a time, pre-The Wire and and all of the other drug dramas of the last three decades, when crack changed the character […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 12, 2013 -
Five Questions with Life of Crime Director Daniel Schechter
After two small-scale New York indie features, set in the world of standup comedy (2007’s Goodbye Baby) and low-budget film (2012’s Supporting Characters), writer/director Daniel Schechter has made the unlikely but extremely welcome step up to a very different kind of movie. Life of Crime, which closes the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend, is not only based on a novel (The Switch) by the late, great Elmore Leonard but boasts a high-caliber cast featuring Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, Isla Fisher, John Hawkes, Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def), Will Forte and Mark Boone Jr. A dark crime comedy, Schechter’s film […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 12, 2013 -
Filmmaker Conference Chat with IFP’s Rose Vincelli Gustine
IFP’s cornerstone event, Independent Film Week, is less than a week away. The event is made up of Project Forum, which showcases in-progress projects from emerging filmmakers, and the Filmmaker Conference, which stages numerous panels and events to help filmmakers with myriad aspects of their work. In anticipation of Film Week, Filmmaker spoke with IFP’s Producer and Program Manager, who oversees the Conference, about what it has to offer this year. N.B. Filmmaker magazine readers can use the code 13Friends13 to get a special discounted price for tickets to the Filmmaker Conference. Filmmaker: First up, can you tell me about […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 11, 2013 -
CRIME: The Animated Series Hits Toronto
Documentarian, director, visual artist, and author Alix Lambert has yet another new project making its way around the world. CRIME: The Animated Series — directed in partnership with award-winning animator Sam Chou — debuted as part of MOCAtv in Los Angeles back in July (here’s Filmmaker’s post about that event). One of these animated tales, CRIME: Joe Loya — The Beirut Bandit, is playing the Toronto International Film Festival this week (click here for dates and times) and is sure to have audiences talking about just more than it being the shortest film to screen at TIFF. In the two-minute short, […]
by Lisa Y. Garibay on Sep 10, 2013 -
Writer/director John Ridley Talks about his Hendrix Pic, All is By My Side
With so many overstuffed biographical dramas barreling from cradle to grave, the creative possibilities of the intimate biopic, one focused on a formative and often little known period in a subject’s life, are often neglected by writers and directors. Thankfully, though, that’s the approach taken by screenwriter and second-time director John Ridley to one of the most iconic and fan-obsessed-over cultural figures of the 20th century, Jimi Hendrix. Starring André Benjamin (Outkast’s André 3000) as the iconic singer and guitarist, All Is By My Side focuses on a year or so in Hendrix’s life and how a song written for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2013
