Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy, the producing duo behind Gotham Award Best Picture winner and Oscar nominee Beginners, have signed an output and development deal with sales, finance, and production company K5 Media Group. The deal marks an alliance between two rising indie powerhouses. Knudsen and Van Hoy have been building their reputation for the past ten years. In 2004, they founded production company Parts & Labor and steadily accumulated a body of festival circuit sleeper hits including Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, Cam Archer’s Wild Tigers I Have Known, and Nik Fackler’s Lovely, Still. More recently, the duo produced […]
SXSW has announced their complete 2012 feature film slate. Over 90 films will screen across the festival’s ten categories, including the already announced opening night premiere of Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods and a special preview screening of Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls. New additions include the sixteen films premiering in narrative and documentary competition. The eight films competing on the narrative side include Booster, directed by Matt Ruskin, Eden, directed by Megan Griffiths, Gayby, directed by Jonathan Lisecki, Gimme the Loot, directed by Adam Leon, Los Chidos, directed by Omar Rodriguez Lopez, Pilgrim Song, directed by Martha […]
Well after a great holiday, and another Sundance, we are back for a new season of the conversation. This year we’re going to try and expand the definition of micro and see it as more of a state of mind and community, as oppose to a budget. I’m looking to hear from more filmmakers, see how they are expanding the limitations of technology, and see how the new model is effecting the old. We are also working on a project you’ll be hearing more about as the months roll on. Our hopes is that it will be some of the […]
February is going to be a busy month. We are getting ready to premiere two new films simultaneously, one at Rotterdam the other in Berlin. The first, The Patron Saints, is a hyperrealistic portrait of a nursing home and its inhabitants, and will have its international premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The second, our narrative feature Francine, a film about a recently released prison inmate with a complicated affinity for animals (played by Melissa Leo), heads to the Berlin Film Festival for its world premiere in the festival’s Forum Section. Preparing for festivals is a lot of […]
Sundance announced their award winners on Saturday night and, as usual, the festival’s mission of inclusivity was in full bloom; over 25 films were handed a prize from the podium, which is great for everyone involved. There is no harm in recognizing great work, and the more Sundance laurels on trailers and posters going forward, the better for all, but given the festival’s reliance on very specific categories and competitions (World Dramatic, World Documentary, U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, Next, Midnight, Spotlight, New Frontiers and Shorts), several great films went unrecognized. I am not sure if the festival’s programming categories are […]
One of my biggest complaints about Broadway theater is the lack of artistic risk. (Indeed, one could make the case that Julie Taymor’s cursed production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark had the media riveted more by its performers’ injuries than by its Hollywood blockbuster budget. The safe Great White Way had become dangerous again!) Which is why it’s been like a breath of fresh air to take in several English-surtitled productions from Toneelgroep Amsterdam (headquartered a very easy hour’s train ride away from the International Film Festival Rotterdam), where in lieu of bodily harm to actors there’s a couple […]
Although Sundance is predominantly known for indie dramas and social issue documentaries, the New Frontiers section provides a loving home for particularly odd ducks. Unlike many projects in New Frontiers, which are presented as installations or other new media formats, Eve Sussman’s whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir was screened in a conventional theater. However, the film’s text, 300 bits of voiceover, 150 pieces of music, and 3,000 images are live-edited by an algorithmic computer dubbed the Serendipity Machine that creates a randomized sequence, meaning each screening is entirely unique. Not only does Sussman’s piece turn the idea of the mystery genre on its ear, […]
One of the trickier things about reviewing movies at a festival is that your identity isn’t exactly a secret. You’ve got a press pass with your name and the name of your outlet on it, so a lot of conversations you have with filmmakers revolve around that very fact. Or you end up in a long conversation at the Kickstarter party with the director of a film you hated. But my philosophy is if you can’t stand face-to-face with someone and defend your opinion of their work, then you have no business telling it to anyone else. Comments and critiques […]
A dubious term to be sure, it seems that one of the pre-reqs for hipster certification is denying that you actually are one. Based on this criterion, Brook, the main character in Destin Daniel Cretton’s feature debut, definitely qualifies. But I Am Not a Hipster is not so much concerned with labels as it is with crafting an intimate, small-scale character portrait. Adrift in San Diego’s music scene, Brook’s lackadaisical lifestyle is interrupted when his family visits with the intention of spreading his late mother’s ashes. Cretton, who made a splash at Sundance in 2009 with his Grand Jury Prize […]
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, January 27 6:30 pm –Eccles Theatre, Park City] There are so many reasons why we chose film as our medium to tell stories. The fact is we’re children of our culture (how could we not be?) a culture of the mash up: of so many forms of expression constantly mixing and intertwining in all of our daily lives. Well, film is the only medium where you get to combine so many of these forms of expression simultaneously: literature, music, photography, visual art and theater, all in your own unique way to create a singular vision that can […]