Aaron Katz
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New Model Army
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 25, 2010
Making a business out of independent film is harder than ever. But still, great films are being made. In this series of short profiles, Filmmaker asked a number of leading independent producers about their producing models and how they’re finding everything from financing to material to office space. -
SARASOTA KICKS OFF A FUN 10 DAYS WITH “THE EXTRA MAN”
In its 12th year the Sarasota Film Festival has established itself as an important regional festival stop. Wedged between SXSW and Tribeca, Sarasota’s 10-day event is filled with festival circuit favorites, access to industry folk for the area filmmakers and lots of parties. [Full disclosure: I’m on the jury for the Independent Visions award this year.] Kicking off last night with Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini‘s The Extra Man, the film stars Kevin Klein and Paul Dano as unlikely roommates living in Manhattan, one an aging playboy (Klein) the other a dreamer trying to find his place in life […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Apr 10, 2010 -
AARON KATZ’S “COLD WEATHER”|
By Scott Macaulay
The group of filmmakers dubbed “mumblecore” is known for many things, but visual resplendency is not one of them. In fact, some of the movement’s biggest names proudly announce their disinterest in design, careful framing, and the dramatic effects of controlled lighting. From the outset, however, Aaron Katz has been an exception. Even when operating on the tiniest of budgets — as he did when shooting Quiet City for $2,000 — he has paid careful attention to the expressive potential of his characters’ surroundings. The nighttime industrial Brooklyn streets of Quiet City are not the harsh jungle of much urban […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2010 -
Trumping Trump
The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz’s first film, Dance Party, USA. Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 28, 2008
