IFP today announced that its third honoree at this year’s Gotham Independent Film Awards will be Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker. (The previously announced tributes were of Mayor’s Office Media & Entertainment Commissioner Katherine Oliver and writer/director Richard Linklater.) The tribute caps a highly successful year for Whitaker, who won great acclaim for his lead performance in Lee Daniels’ The Butler and produced Ryan Coogler’s Sundance-winning Fruitvale Station. He also appears in the forthcoming 2013 releases Black Nativity and Out of the Furnace. Announcing the tribute, IFP’s Executive Director Joana Vicente commented, “We are thrilled to pay honor to a man whose work […]
by Nick Dawson on Oct 3, 2013No one can say actor/musician Ryan O’Nan didn’t pull his weight in his directorial debut, Brooklyn Brothers Beat The Best, which makes its theatrical debut on September 21 via Oscilloscope Laboratories. Besides directing, writing, and starring in the film, O’Nan wrote and sang most of the songs on the soundtrack (album out 9/18 on ATCO Records). A 2011 IFP Narrative Labs project that premiered at Toronto last year, Brooklyn Brothers is the story of two ne’er-do-well musicians who make an unlikely alliance, embarking on the kind of quixotic journey that’s tailor-made for a buddy movie. But O’Nan’s film finds itself […]
by Jim Allen on Sep 18, 2012In person, Abel Ferrara is a whirlwind of gestures and jokes, of quick smiles and vulgar asides, digressions piled upon digressions, even if he’s much sharper and in control of his staccato New Yorkese vernacular than he lets on. Ferrara, who will turn 60 this year, has had one of American indie cinema’s strangest and most fascinating careers, one which has taken the Bronx native from the old 42nd Street’s row of exploitation and porn cinemas to the Croissette in Cannes. Often we talk of middle-aged artists mellowing, but Ferrara maintains a manic, youthful energy that is both infectious and […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 11, 2011