Amir Bar-Lev
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Dispatches from San Francisco, Visions du Réel and Big Ears
San Francisco International Film Festival Celebrating its 60th edition, the San Francisco International Film Festival — now rebranded as the hashtag-friendly SFFILM Festival — impressed this first-timer not as a hoary institution, recumbent upon its laureled legacy, but as a festival keen to stake out vibrant new tangents, mindful of its city’s history (cinematic and otherwise) and full of surprises. Both those qualities were abundant in the closing night spectacle: The Green Fog, which celebrated San Francisco’s indelible place in a century of movies in an appropriately twisted manner. The festival commission brought filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 16, 2017 -
PORTENTS OF GREEK CRISIS IN IMAGES FROM THESSALONIKI DOC FEST
I’m covering the Thessaloniki International Film Festival for Filmmaker right now, and some images from the March documentary event seem prescient in the light of the hour-by-hour unfolding of events in Greece, where the fall of a government could affect all of Europe, the world economy, and by extension, filmmaking everywhere. Here are some of my photos. Thessaloniki is a palimpsest, a city written upon other cities, incarnation atop incarnation. The history of this far northern Greek city since first dredged from the sea by Alexander the Great has been one of fall and rise, of fire and […]
by Ray Pride on Nov 9, 2011 -
WEINSTEINS TO FIGHT “TILLMAN” RATING
Over at Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke reports on The Weinstein Company’s announcement today that they will be appealing the MPAA’s “R” rating that they have bestowed on Amir Bar-Lev‘s doc The Tillman Story. The MPAA says they have given the rating based on the film’s excessive language. Granted, the Tillmans do throw out a lot of F-bombs in the film (and you may recall that the original title was I’m Pat F______ Tillman, which in fact are the last words Pat Tillman said before he was killed) but there’s a difference between a Kevin Smith profanity-laced film and this family’s […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Aug 11, 2010 -
SUMMER ISSUE ONLINE
Select stories from our Summer issue are now available, including this year’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. (Read the press release here.) You can now read online our interviews with Amir Bar-Lev on his new doc, The Tillman Story; Gaspar Noe talks about his psychedelic look at the afterlife in Enter the Void; we look at the latest innovations in DSLR cameras; and some of our friends give their favorite apps, program and Web services. Plus, Lance Weiler’s Culture Hacker column focuses on transmedia while Anthony Kaufman’s Industry Beat looks at the realities of the Do It With Others […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 20, 2010 -
THE FOG OF WAR
In his gripping documentary, The Tillman Story, Amir Bar-Lev investigates the cover-up of the death of football star turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman.
by Jason Guerrasio on Jul 20, 2010 -
“THE TILLMAN STORY” | director, Amir Bar-Lev
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Saturday, Jan. 23, 3:00 pm – Temple Theatre, Park City] Here’s a challenge I faced making The Tillman Story: As a documentary filmmaker making a movie about Pat Tillman, I’m expected, of course, to get to bottom of who he really was and to leave no stone unturned in presenting his biography and character to my audience. Pat Tillman is synonymous with sacrifice and unflinching patriotic duty because it’s generally accepted that he was so moved by the events of 9/11 that he dropped everything, quit his football career, and enlisted in the Army Rangers. However the more […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Jan 23, 2010
