“Do you have a film in the festival?” The first thing people say to you when they meet you at a festival is usually this question. And for many of us, the answer is a negative. We’ve emptied our bank accounts, called out of our day jobs, skipped out on weekends upstate or by the beach to work on beckoning projects. And when we get rejected by a film festival, it can feel like those sacrifices and hard work were for naught. For new filmmakers like us, festivals, along with a good online distribution plan, are a coveted way to […]

Judging from the slick production values, the leading name actor, the eye-catching poster art, and the stock horror trailer, one might glean the false impression that The Rambler, Calvin Reeder’s sophomore film, might be a more commercial affair than his micro-budget 16mm debut, The Oregonian. But make no mistake, though The Rambler finds Reeder painting with a larger canvas, the film is just as bold, hallucinatory and unrepentantly experimental as any of his previous work. Based off the 2008 short of the same name, The Rambler follows a taciturn guitar-slinger (Dermot Mulroney, taking the role on from Reeder who played […]

I sadly missed Calvin Reeder’s The Rambler when it played at Sundance this January, but the film is having a theatrical release starting June 7 (at the reRun Theater!) so I will be checking it out very soon. This first trailer for the film certainly has whetted my appetite even more, and confirms just how crazy and out there Reeder’s movie really is.

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Monday, Jan. 21, 11:45pm — Library Center Theatre, Park City] I was really lucky and didn’t have to sacrifice too much creatively at all. However, for the first time in my career I was unable to shoot film! It was also the first time I found myself with enough money to have a real crew and pay actors and feed people and blah blah blah, but somehow when it was all run through the budget there was just no room for processing and transfer. I’m still a little baffled by this. I went ahead and shot on the […]

(The Oregonian world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It is being distributed by Cinemad Presents and opens theatrically in NYC at the reRun Gastropub on Friday, June 8, 2012. Factory 25 is releasing the DVD (and currently taking pre-orders for the Limited Edition DVD). It is also currently available for streaming on Netflix and Hulu. If you are not able to see it in the theater, just make sure you play it loud at home!) Calvin Lee Reeder’s The Oregonian is a horrifying film, if not what is commonly perceived as a “horror” film. It is deeply and fundamentally […]

Calvin Reeder’s trippy art-horror film The Oregonian lands in New York today for one screening at Brooklyn’s Nitehawk Cinema. When we selected Reeder for our 25 New Faces series, Mike Plante wrote: “I’m not really sure” how he arrived at his alt-horror style, Reeder says. “Just sorta roll the dice. I do love Sleepaway Camp. I just like to make movies all bent up, I guess.” Originally from Portland, Ore., and living in Seattle up until this year, Reeder played extensively with the great art-punk bands the Popular Shapes and the Intelligence. But he got notoriety, for better or worse, […]

At a Los Angeles press conference today, Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam announced an expansion of the organization’s Artist Services Initiative that will bring independent films to digital platforms. Exclusively partnering with aggregator New Video, Sundance is offering its festival and lab films distribution opportunities on iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and SundanceNOW. Filmmakers will retain ownership and control of their titles, will be free to publicize and market them, and Sundance will conduct its own marketing efforts as well as leverage the potency of its brand to gain the films wider audiences. Commented Putnam, “By acting as a conduit […]

From the shards of our experience shooting interviews and seeing movies at Sundance 2011 comes Jamie Stuart’s “Masterpiece.” With appearances by: Miguel Arteta, Alrick Brown, David Carr, Paddy Considine, Nekisa Cooper, Phife Dawg, Danfung Dennis, Andrew Donsunmu, Sean Durkin, Liz Garbus, Paul Giamatti, Megan Griffiths, Colin Goddard, Rutger Hauer, John Hawkes, Azazel Jacobs, Miranda July, Tom McCarthy, Peter Mullan, Adepero Oduye, Elizabeth Olsen, Jessica Oreck, Lindsay Pulsipher, Michael Rapaport, Calvin Reeder, Dee Rees, Amy Seimetz, Kim Wayans, Vilmos Zsigmond. Shot on the Canon 7D. Download the Quicktime here. (Contains adult language — NSFW.) Look for the longer edits of these […]