Blog

EXPLORING TERRY GILLIAM’S ARCHIVE

Terry Gilliam’s daughter Holly has created a blog, “Discovering Dad,” dedicated to the exploration of her father’s enormous and rich archive. Here’s her opening post: In October 2011 I took on the mamouth task of organising my father’s archive – all his work from pre-Python days, as a cartoonist, photojournalist & assistnat editor for Help! magazine, through all his original artwork and cut-outs for Python animation, posters, logos and generally everything Python, to his storyboards, designs and sketches for his feature films and other non-film related projects (including his opera of “Faust” and that infamous Nike commercial). Why!? Because I […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 30, 2012
BUILDING COMMUNITY… ONE PROJECT AT A TIME

As the practice of ‘crowd-funding’ has come of age over the past couple years, so has the wide array of opinion about it. Some have called it a ‘game-changer’, especially when it comes to funding films, others seem to think of it as a magical place where free money simply appears from thin air, and yet others are wholly unconvinced, if not fully disdainful, of this practice of ‘organized-begging’. I can sympathize with the latter, seeing how crowd-funding has contributed to the advent of incessant self-promotion via social media sites, and the fact that you feel like everywhere you turn […]
by Gregorybayne on Nov 14, 2011
PLATFORMS, PMD’S & PERPETUATING OBSCURITY

Our innovation is stagnant. Stagnant and boring. Really. Boring. The movies themselves are one thing having long been locked into a race to the bottom with their Hollywood counterparts in an often times futile effort to just be noticed, but most stagnant and boring is the proliferation of new ‘platforms’ on which filmmakers can ‘launch’ their careers. Everywhere I look there is some new upstart looking to get into the digital distribution realm touting how their platform puts the power in your hands and provides a direct gateway for your film to reach an audience. A claim which, of course, […]
by Gregorybayne on Sep 19, 2011
CHICKENS, VINYL AND LOST & FOUND IN AUSTIN: JEANIE FINLAY AT SXSW

My name is Jeanie Finlay and I’m an artist and filmmaker from the U.K. I’m in Austin for my very first SXSW and the world premiere of the feature documentary Sound it Out which I produced and directed. Sound it Out is a documentary portrait of the very last record shop in Stockton-on-Tees in Teesside, my home town. It’s a small shop in a small town. It’s a film about men and music and passion and the North East of England. It’s the most personal film I’ve ever made for the lowest budget and I’m frankly still a bit gobsmacked that my […]
by Jeanie Finlay on Mar 13, 2011
FILMMAKER MAGAZINE’S TOP TWELVE POSTS OF 2010

Via Google Analytics, here are the top ten traffic-getting posts on Filmmakermagazine.com for 2010. (The top traffic getter was actually the final post of 2009, our “Best American Independent Films of the Decade” list. But I’m restricting the ten below to posts that actually went up in 2010.) 1. 25 New Faces of 2010. Our 25 New Faces list is now regularly the mostly widely read piece each year. I was particularly happy to see some of the first-time filmmakers we selected — Victoria Mahoney, Rashaad Ernesto Green, Sean Durkin, Danfung Dennis, to name four — have their films accepted […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 2, 2011
MISSED CONNECTIONS

Over at his blog, Anthony Kaufman is blogging about developments in Net Neutrality:: Yesterday, a Republican-dominated House committee shot down an amendment put forth by a Massachusetts Democrat that would have prohibited broadband providers (such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) from blocking or degrading Internet connections to websites that they may deem as competitors. “Net Neutrality” has suffered a major setback… If you don’t think this affects your livelihood and freedom as artists, consider this similar to the Showtime/Smithsonian deal: It’s all about privatizing and monetizing institutions and archives (be they physical or digital) that should be free and equal […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 27, 2006
AUDIENCE WANTED — APPLY WITHIN

Over at his blog,, Anthony Kaufman cuts loose on what he calls the “woefully underpublicized” Indiewire/Emerging Pictures Undiscovered Gems series, which I blogged about a few posts below. The series opens tonight with a 9:30 screening (repeated tomorrow) of Jem Cohen’s debut fiction feature, Chain. He writes: I wouldn’t have even known of the showing myself had I not received an email directly from the director. Emerging Pictures’ web address http://www.emergingpictures.com/undiscovered_gems.htm doesn’t even work; indieWIRE has no mention of the showing on its website, and the Sundance Channel, another sponsor, gives it no props. Maybe it’s just the crowded New […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 25, 2006
LEGENDS OF DIY

Caveh Zahedi has a blog up promoting his new film, I am a Sex Addict, which is opening from IFC Films next month. So far there’s been a lot of talk about porn star Rebecca Lord’s nipple (which would be pictured, but Blogger’s been having a problem uploading pictures, which is why photo placement on this blog is kind of erratic), but the blog is also prompting discussion of the efficacy of sef-distribution today. Zahedi, you’ll remember, was prepared to go the DIY route with his new I am a Sex Addict until IFC picked up the film following its […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2006
BADA BING!

Over at his blog, Matt Zoller Seitz asks the question that, consciously or not, is in Sopranos fan’s minds as we watch the last season of the HBO series: In this final season, is Chase truly revealing a sense of moral accountability that was often AWOL on “The Sopranos,” or just jerking our chain? In past seasons, the writers and producers responded to audience gripes about dangling plot threads by saying, in essence, “Some episodes of this show are not chapters in a novel, they’re the equivalent of self-contained short stories with recurring characters — we’re not about plot, so […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 20, 2006
“MAKING MOVIES WITH KIDS IS FUN”

From Takashi Miike’s blog covering the production of his new film (helpfully translated and posted by the folks at Japan Film News): “So what’re ya shooting?” It’s a picture about a fierce battle between Aikawa Sho and a bunch of young boys.?So, half the actors are kids. “I’ve said this before but… is that really safe?” This is a wholesomely violent movie. You can revel in excitement that doesn’t fit within established genres, and after watching it I would like people to discuss human suffering with their mates over a few sakes at their local izakaya. Heh heh heh. Next […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2006

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