Project Forum, part of IFP‘s Independent Film Week which will take place Sept. 19-23, is the centerpiece of IFW, designed specifically as a place for industry to meet with new talent, as well as discover fresh projects from emerging and veteran filmmakers. 150 projects have been selected for this year’s Project Forum, and will be spread out over its four section — Emerging Narrative, Independent Filmmaker Labs, No Borders International Co-Production Market and Spotlight on Documentaries. Some of the established names showing new work this year include producers like Howard Gertler & John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus), Lynette Howell (Half Nelson), […]
Spike Lee was our cover in Winter, 1996, and there were two tie-ins. First, his movie Girl 6 was about to be released. And, second, John Pierson’s Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes was just being published. For Filmmaker, Pierson gave us an expanded version of a talk he had with Lee and Kevin Smith that includes this interesting note from Lee. I had forgotten that Lee’s intended first feature was Messenger, an autobiographical tale about a young bicycle messenger. The film collapsed in pre-production when financing was pulled. Kevin: I want to do goofy young filmmaker questions, the kinds of […]
Here’s what piled up in my Instapaper this week: Director Armando Iannaccui on the proposed shutdown of the UK Film Council: An excerpt: Here’s what happens when you try to make a film. You have no money, but you have an idea. You need people, helpful, experienced people, to guide you to where the money is, fit you up with the best sort of financial backing, who understand the film you want to make, can nudge it in a direction that will see it gets the audience it merits. That’s what the UK Film Council built up 10 years of […]
A number of cool things about our Fall, 1995 issue. First, the cover portrait of Tim Roth was an original by Nan Goldin, which was a pretty amazing coup for us at the time. Roth was one of the stars of Four Rooms, a now barely-remembered omnibus film all set in a hotel with segments helmed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. Roth had shaved his head for a part when this photo was taken, so he was kind of unrecognizable, but we were still thrilled to have an original of Nan’s. L.M. Kit Carson did […]
Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb was our cover story in Spring, 1995. Consensus was that our cover, which was an illustration by the film’s subject, R. Crumb, didn’t really work. Newsstand distributors mistook the issue for a comics magazine, leading to retail confusion. Also in the book: Swimming with Sharks, Basketball Diaries, My Family, and Berenice Reynaud interviewing filmmaker Lourdes Portillo about her The Devil Never Sleeps. Liza Bear interviewed Atom Egoyan about his Exotica, who spoke of the film and his impending fatherhood: Filmmaker: You were becoming a father while Exotica was in production. What effect did being an expectant parent […]
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was our Summer, 1994 cover. The film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May and was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. I didn’t go to Cannes and saw the film with only a few other people a couple of weeks later at the Magno screening room. I completely loved it, wanted it for the cover, but, for reasons I can’t remember, we couldn’t get an interview with Quentin. Nor could we get good original art. So, we commissioned a cover from Mark Zingarelli , interviewed the producers (Lawrence Bender and Stacy […]
Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Today’s is Spring, 1994. The first ticking clock…. Rose Troche and Guinevere Turner’s Go Fish was our cover story, Spring, 1994, and I think may have been our first original piece of cover photography. Holly Willis’s story was a comprehensive account of the film’s production and sales process, charting the film’s beginnings as a no-budget feature begun alone by Troche and Turner to one produced by Christine Vachon and Tom Kalin and sold by famed producers’ rep John Pierson to Goldwyn in […]
Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Today’s is Winter, 1994. Today, most of our Filmmaker covers are original photography, but back in the day, we didn’t have the budget and were forced to work with supplied art from distributors. Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who went on to The Deep End, Bee Season, and, most recently, Uncertainty, made their debut with Suture, a formally challenging meta-thriller with a wobbly poster that produced for us a somewhat inscrutable cover. We took their key art, cropped it, colorized it yellow […]
It’s nice to end the week on some good news. From an email I received from the New York State Governor’s Office of Film and Television: New York State’s Film Production Tax Credit Program has been extended and expanded to provide multi-year support of $420 million per year. New York State also introduces its first free standing post production credit. New York State’s 2010-2011 Executive Budget includes a multi-year agreement to extend and expand New York State’s Film Production Tax Credit Program, sustaining the state’s 30 percent Film Production Credit program for another five years. In addition, a new incentive […]
Leading up to our 18th birthday, I’ll be revisiting on the blog one issue of Filmmaker a day. Today’s is Fall, 1993. Peter Bowen interviewed Derek Jarman about his Wittgenstein for our Fall, 1993 cover. Holly Willis interviewed D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus about their doc on the Clinton Presidential campaign, The War Room. And there is still some useful advice in this article by Daniel Einfeld, a producer of the indie hit My LIfe’s in Turnaround, on bartering and production placement. (In the Filmmaker office, this article is kind of infamous for having what is perhaps our worst article […]