Writer-director Victoria Mahoney began her artistic career as an actress in theater and then film. “Shelly Winters was my teacher,” Mahoney says. “If you touched your hair too many times in her class, she’d come over and cut off your bangs. She taught me the gift of stillness.” After working off-off Broadway, Mahoney went to L.A., did a number of pilots, a few European films, and a season of Seinfeld (she played Gladys Mayo, owner of the clothing store Putumayo). But then there were all those “ridiculous films I did to sustain myself. And that’s when I began to feel […]
I’ve been interested in the concept of alternative forms of currency, barter and exchange with regards to independent film production and distribution for a little while. Back in November I blogged about a Doug Rushkoff speech on video in which he discussed some of the new start-ups exploring these ideas. I wrote: With two-and-a-half minutes to go, Rushkoff reaches the reason I decided to watch the video: a discussion of alternate forms of currency to facilitate creative value exchange. Of course, the idea of local currency or script, actually being practiced in some communities, has surfaced recently in discussions about […]
Valhalla Rising, which stars Mads Mikkelsen (best known for playing the much more suave devil Le Chiffre in Casino Royale) as a one-eyed, mute, enslaved gladiator who joins a group of Viking Christians on a conquest that turns into an existential journey to hell, is certainly not what one would expect from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn. And that’s part of the beauty of the film. Before this latest atmospheric mood piece containing echoes of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Refn helmed the hyperkinetic Bronson, about England’s most dangerous criminal turned cult hero who never seemed at a loss for […]
The rise of the web has led to an explosion of film writing — Roger Ebert has called it “A Golden Age of Movie Critics.” I don’t disagree with him, but I also think it’s fair to say that with the exception of comments boards and social media, the web hasn’t changed the actual form of film writing that much. A few people (Matt Zoller Seitz, for example), are exploring long-form film criticism online through engagingly edited videos. And, of course, the web has brought David Bordwell’s essential essays exploring films through the history of their technologies, styles, and audience’s […]
Presented by the IFP and UN, Envision is a daylong program dealing with the addressing of global issues through documentary. It takes place Saturday, July 10, and you can learn more here. Jennifer Arnold’s A Small Act is one of two features that will be screened at the event. As an impoverished boy in Kenya, Chris Mburu received the fortune of one person’s small donation. When WWII-survivor Hilde Back anonymously sponsored an African child’s education, Chris not only went through school but also became a Harvard-educated human rights lawyer for the UN, all unbeknownst to Hilde. So inspired, Chris and […]
In retrospect it seems inevitable that some enterprising pornographers in Hollywood’s shadow industry would look to the Coen brothers’ quintessential Venice Beach bum The Dude for inspiration. Not only is southern California the hub of the sex biz, The Dude is SoCal made flesh. And now a company called New Sensations has done just this with The Big Lebowski: A XXX Parody, a passionate, nearly shot-for-shot recreation that shows that cute porn is not an oxymoron. Sure, New Sensations has already tackled pop culture with 30 Rock: A XXX Parody and Seinfeld: A XXX Parody, but The Big Lebowski: A […]
Filmmaker Zeina Durra’s Sundance Competition film The Imperialists are Still Alive! has its East Coast premiere tonight, June 24, in an Indiewire-hosted screening at the 2nd Northside Festival of Film and Music in Brooklyn. The film, a graduate of the IFP Narrative Lab, is an upscale Manhattan comedy of manners with an internationalist flavor and a post-9/11 paranoid bent. It also has the most arresting first shot of the year. Writing for Filmmaker, Eric Kohn said of the film: Consider the revelatory drama The Imperialists Are Still Alive! Like a 1990s-era Amerindie upgraded to post-9/11 concerns, this insightful low key […]
The Sundance Institute has announced the inaugural Shortslab: LA, a three-part, all-day workshop that will offer filmmakers inside guidance through the development, production, and exhibition of short films. Shortlabs: LA will be held Saturday, July 31st at the Downtown Independent Theater (251 South Main Street) in Los Angeles. Tickets are $150. For information or to purchase tickets visit: www.sundance.org/shortslab Here is the workshop schedule: Story Development (9:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.): Acclaimed filmmakers including Sundance Film Festival alumni share their experiences working with short-form during their careers. These tales from the trenches will focus on conceptualization and script development. Participants […]
The recently concluded IFP Narrative Lab was a dense week of study and mentorship as our participating filmmakers, all with films somewhere between rough and fine cut, were given guidance about picture lock, sound design, scoring and music licensing, festival strategy, distribution deals, and DIY, self and hybrid distribution efforts. Amy Dotson and Rose Vincelli from the IFP did a fantastic job of putting the program together. Susan Stover, Jon Reiss and I were the lab leaders. In addition, an inspiring group of editors, filmmakers, producers and industry vets came in to lend their expertise. At the end of the […]
With Jamaica in the American news again (just barely) due to the ongoing siege and popular counter resistance taking place surrounding the attempted U.S. extradition of alleged Jamaican drug kingpin and folk hero Christopher Coke, perhaps there is something timely about the release of Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner’s Wah Do Dem. A winner at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, it stars Sean Bones, a first time actor, as Max, an archetypal Williamsburg Hipster – he’s a skinny, aloof, very pale, self-consciously smug, skateboard riding dufus who attempts to take his girlfriend (Norah Jones) on a cruise to Jamaica. […]