Documentary

MADE IN CHINA & 45365 TOP SXSW AWARD WINNERS

The winners of the SXSW jury and audience awards were just announced and Judi Krant‘s Made In China (pictured right) was awarded Best Narrative Feature while Bill Ross‘s 45365 took home Best Documentary. Another standout is Scott Teems‘s That Evening Sun which won a Special Jury Award for Best Ensemble Cast and the Narrative Audience Award. The complete list of winners are below. Feature Jury Awards DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Winner – 45365Director: Bill RossAn inquiring look at everyday life in Middle America, the film explores the congruities of daily life in an American town Sidney, Ohio. Honorable Mention – The Way […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 17, 2009
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

The goal in any festival director transition: to maintain the quality of a festival and begin to put one’s personal stamp on it while not slowing its momentum or dampening its good will. Mid-way through SXSW, I’d say that for new director Janet Pierson, pictured here at the BMI dinner, that mission has been handily accomplished. Attendance is up; audience reaction to a good number of films is positive; the panels are informational and packed; there’s the requisite fanboy buzz from the opening night I Love You, Man plus today’s sneak of some of the Bruno footage; and there are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 16, 2009
@SXSW: FOR THE LOVE OF FAIR USE

Sub-theme for me at SXSW this year: Fair Use. A day after posting my article on Tommy Pallotta about his American Prince, which employs a Fair Use strategy to include film clips illustrating doc subject Steven Prince’s life in the movies and relationship with Martin Scorsese, I run into Gerard Peary, who is here in Austin with his doc For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism. His film includes interviews with critics like Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, Harry Knowles, Karina Longworth and Elvis Mitchell, and it also includes clips from the films they talk […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2009
“ST. NICK’”S DAVID LOWERY By Alicia Van Couvering

There is almost no dialogue in the first half of David Lowery’s feature debut, St. Nick. A young boy and a girl enter an abandoned house, clean it up, build a fire, forget to open a window and fill the house with smoke, figure out a chimney and watch the embers turn into flames. They sleep, they forage for food; somehow they survive, until reality starts bearing down on them. It’s not clear why they ran away, or if anyone is looking for them. The film is stark and the house feels haunted, but you can’t stop thinking: this was […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 15, 2009
BROCK ENRIGHT’S JODY LEE LIPES By Alicia Van Couvering

When Jody Lee Lipes set out to follow his friend Brock Enright prepare a solo art show for the prestigious Perry Rubenstein gallery, he knew he wasn’t going to change anyone’s opinion about contemporary art. If you hate the art world, you might still hate it after watching Enright’s strenuous, stressful and altogether bizarre chronicle of several months putting a solo show together. But you have probably never seen art-making this up close; probably never witnessed the day-to-day negotiations for resources and time between an artist and gallery; probably never seen someone try to justify their art to their girlfriend’s […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 14, 2009
‘AMERICAN PRINCE”‘S TOMMY PALLOTTA By Scott Macaulay

Even if you consider yourself a literate, well-viewed, cinema completist, you may not remember the name “Steven Prince.” I could jog your memory and tell you that he was influential to the films of Quentin Tarantino, Rick Linklater, and, most directly, Martin Scorsese, and the name still might not ring a bell. If that’s the case, don’t stress — I didn’t recognize the name either, even though I vaguely remembered that there exists a Scorsese film, American Boy, that I’ve never seen, and that Prince’s one scene in Taxi Driver, in which he plays Easy Andy, a fast-talking gun dealer, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2009
“RIP!: A REMIX MANIFESTO’”S BRETT GAYLOR By Alicia Van Couvering

It was a calculated move on Brett Gaylor’s part to not only make a movie about fair use, intellectual property and copyright, but to make a movie that you could dance to. It begins as a case study of the mashup musician Girl Talk, whose music is comprised of thousands of samples from artists as disparate as Madonna, Elton John, Rihanna, the Jackson 5 and Muddy Waters (and doesn’t hesitate to try to make you dance). Then Gaylor jumps off into his Remixer’s Manifesto, the points of which are: 1. Culture Always Builds on the Past. 2. The Past Always […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 14, 2009
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Tokyo Sonata

KYÔKO KOIZUMI, INOWAKI KAI, TERUYUKI KAGAWA, AND YÛ KOYANAGI IN DIRECTOR KIYOSHI KUROSAWA’S TOKYO SONATA. COURTESY REGENT RELEASING. Over the past decade or so, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has established himself as one of the most interesting genre directors in world cinema. The Japanese writer-director was born in Kobe in 1955, and first made 8mm shorts while studying Sociology at Rikko University. He began directing features in the early 1980s, working on direct-to-video titles, including yakuza movies, and studied under the tutelage of directors Shinji Somai and Kazuhiko Hasegawa. He then had minor successes with films like the college-set drama The Excitement […]
by Nick Dawson on Mar 13, 2009
ALEXANDER THE LAST’S JOE SWANBERG By Alicia Van Couvering

If there were to be a mumblecore parade, Joe Swanberg would be the man in the shiny red convertible, waving to onlookers and trailing a team of baton twirlers in his wake. His films – LOL, Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights & Weekends – have helped to define a genre that was never supposed to be a genre at all. Alexander the Last, his latest, was executive produced by Noah Baumbach and stars Jess Weixler (Teeth), Barlow Jacobs (Great World of Sound, Shotgun Stories), Amy Seimetz and Justin Rice (Mutual Appreciation), as well as Jane Adams and Josh Hamilton. It’s […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 12, 2009
“BREAKING UPWARDS’” DARYL WEIN & ZOE LISTER-JONES |
By Alicia Van Couvering

Originally posted in our SXSW 2009 coverage, Breaking Upwards opens in select theaters this Friday. In Breaking Upwards, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones play a young New York couple named Daryl and Zoe. The film was written by the two of them, plus Peter Duchan, directed by Wein, and produced by all three. Zoe plays an actress, starring in an Off-Broadway play; Julie White plays Daryl’s mother, and was cast after appearing in an Off-Broadway play with Lister-Jones. To say that this film is autobiographical is, to be brief, an understatement. It’s a romantic comedy that borrows its hyper-articulate, hyper-intellectual […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Mar 12, 2009

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