The IFP have announced they have teamed up with fellow organizations Shooting People and New York Women in Film & Television to lead the first-ever U.S. delegation to Hot Docs. The members of these organizations will get to attend the Toronto Documentary Forum, International Co-Production Day, and be featured in the Digital Doc Shop market. In addition, the delegation will receive other perks: access to all 255 screenings, Digital Doc Shop screenings, and all Hot Docs discussions, including the Kickstart panels, Hot Docs Talks, CoffeeTalks, and Micro Meanings. There will be over 1,900 documentary professionals from around the world, over […]
For a filmmaker approaching L.A.’s Ambush Pictures with a new project, “greenlit” is the happiest word in the English language. For Ambush Entertainment co-founder Miranda Bailey, an executive producer of The Squid and the Whale and a producer of the upcoming Super, the word came to mean something very different as she made her directorial debut. Greenlit is its title, and it refers to Bailey’s commitment to “green” the company’s The River Why by hiring an environmental consultant during production. While there’s been much documentation about greening the motion picture business, Bailey brings a perspective that’s both practical and irreverently […]
As the current Massa Meltdown demonstrates, a lot of crazy talk can come out of legislators’ mouths. (For some of that crazy talk, I will definitely be tuning into Glenn Beck tonight when Massa is on for the full hour.) So when I was forwarded this link from Think Progress about a Florida state representative, Stephen Precourt, proposing a change to Florida’s film tax incentive that would deny the credit to films espousing “non-traditional” family values, I assumed it was just one guy shooting his mouth off and that it wasn’t really worth mentioning. But, as the post as well […]
Receiving its U.S. premiere at SXSW is Jukka Karkkainen’s The Living Room of a Nation, a documentary about six Finnish living rooms. From the production company’s website: The documentary film The Living Room of the Nation opens a portrait-like view into six Finnish living rooms. A collage of everyday events, the film is a story of changes, loneliness, responsibilities and the unavoidable passing of time. The trailer is below. The film plays Saturday, March 20, at 6:15 PM at the Alamo Lamar 3.
Filmmaker Marie Losier is well known in her New York for her beguiling experimental films, which include portraits of a number of today’s most unconventional and important artists. For the last four years she has been filming Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, artist and founding member of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, among other ventures. Beginning in 1993, P-Orridge began a radical art project with his wife and artist partner, Lady Jaye, in which they both underwent plastic surgery to resemble each other, creating, they said, “an indivisible third,” a “pandrogyne.” Lady Jaye passed away in 2007, and Losier’s film will tell […]
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow for our Spring 2009 issue. The Hurt Locker is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Bigelow), Best Actor (Jeremy Renner), Original Screenplay (Mark Boal), Best Cinematography (Barry Ackroyd), Best Editing (Bob Murawski and Chris Innis), Best Original Score (Marco Beltrami and Buck Sanders), Best Sound Editing (Paul N.J. Ottosson) and Best Sound Mixing (Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett). Now that the […]
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Jason Guerrasio interviewed Precious director Lee Daniels for our Fall 2009 issue. Precious is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Daniels), Best Actress (Gabourey Sidibe), Best Adapted Screenplay (Geoffrey Fletcher) and Best Editing (Joe Klotz). It’s November 2007 and manager-turned-producer-turned director Lee Daniels is shooting a film in New York City for the first time. Having already been shut down by the NYPD for going over his permit time in Harlem, […]
The desire to be an opera singer is a career path that the broad majority of Americans would probably treat with some skepticism. If you come from Harlem, that skepticism is probably more palpable than most places. Yet the protagonist of Bill Jennings’ winning first feature Harlem Aria finds himself in just such a predicament. Anton (Gabriel Casseus), a dim-witted, twentysomething Harlemite who launders clothes for a living and resides with his overbearing grandmother, is determined to do just that. Despite the bullying of local teens and the entreaties from a local drug dealer (Malik Yoba) to work for him, […]
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Scott Macaulay interviewed Up in the Air co-writer-director Jason Reitman for our Fall 2009 issue. Up in the Air is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director (Reitman), Best Actor (George Clooney), Best Supporting Actress (Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner). Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, which debuted at Telluride and went on to critical acclaim at Toronto, is a perfect film to […]
Are you addicted to large oil drums of coffee? Feel alive only when you’re a sleep-deprived stumbling zombie? Relish your emotions ripping from ice berg to flame thrower? Then you are made for the International Documentary Challenge. Started in 2006, the International Documentary Challenge is a timed filmmaking competition — this year beginning on March 4 — where filmmakers have five days to craft a five-to-seven minute non-fiction film. In the last four years, more than 500 participating filmmakers — more than 125 each year — from some 20 countries chose to forgo sleep and sanity for this the ultimate […]