karin chien
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Karin Chien, Amy Hobby and Tabitha Jackson Are New Documentary Fellows at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center
Harvard’s Shorenstein Center announced today the three film professionals who comprise their Spring 2024 cohort of documentary film fellows. Producer and distributor Karin Chien, producer and former executive Amy Hobby, and former director of the Sundance Film Festival as well as Sundance’s Documentary Film Program Tabitha Jackson will, according to a press release, “join the Center under the auspices of the newly-established Documentary Film in the Public Interest research initiative and will spend the semester conducting research and engaging with the Harvard Kennedy School community about the challenges facing the field and its impact on civic life.” “The Documentary Film […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 9, 2024 -
Producer Reset: Independent Producers Unplug at the Nevada City Film Festival Filmmaker Residency
Borne of what the festival cites as its fun and nourishing values, the Nevada City Film Festival Filmmaker Residency honors the region’s Nisenan and Chinese-American communities by hosting diverse storytellers, with a priority on filmmakers of indigenous and Asian descent. The Residency originated from producer Karin Chien, NCFF Director Jesse Locks and NCFF Founder Jeff Clark. Wrapping its second year this past August, the 2019 Nevada City Filmmaker Residency turned a creative spotlight onto independent producers. NCFF hosted prolific independent producer Zhang Xianmin from Beijing for a three-week residency in Grass Valley, CA. NCFF also hosted four US indie producers […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2019 -
Playing the Long Game: Producers on Sustaining a Career in Independent Film
When legendary producer and studio executive Robert Evans penned his autobiography — later adapted into a documentary — he picked a telling title: The Kid Stays in the Picture. You would think that after producing films like Chinatown and Urban Cowboy, Evans could happily rest on his laurels, but his book’s title, with its defiant use of the present tense, speaks to the ambitions and anxieties affecting every filmmaker with producer DNA. These, of course, are issues of continuing relevance and professional durability — or, to use the independent film parlance of the moment, sustainability. Contrary to the imagination of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
A Worthy Kickstarter to Show the Shuttered Beijing Independent Film Festival’s Selections in the US
With 20 days to go, the Kickstarter launched by producer/distributor Karin Chien, critic/curator Shelly Kraicer, and filmmaker/anthropologist J.P. Sniadecki has already hit its initial target goal for the purpose of organizing a series showcasing some of the best films shown at the Beijing Independent Film Festival. These works — including People’s Park, a personal favorite film of the last few years co-directed by Sniadecki and Libbie Cohn — were all once screened at the Festival, which was shut down completely last year by Chinese authorities. (You can read more about that here.) The initial funding goals focused on bringing over […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 16, 2015 -
THE PGA RESPONDS TO KARIN CHIEN’S OPEN LETTER
On Monday we published producer Karin Chien’s open letter to the Producers Guild of America about the exclusion of her feature, Circumstance, from awards eligibility due to it being filmed in the Farsi language. Here is their response Producers Guild of America response to Karin Chien’s open letter: We appreciate the passion and commitment behind responses such as Karin Chien’s, who has every reason to be proud of her work and the acclaim her film is receiving. Unfortunately, the Producers Guild has not recognized foreign language films as eligible for its awards because of the unique position the Guild holds […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 15, 2011 -
An Open letter To The Producers Guild Of America From Producer Karin Chien
The following is an open letter producer Karin Chien (Circumstance, The Exploding Girl) is addressing to the Producers Guild of America. An Open Letter to the Producers Guild of America. Recently, a film I produced with Melissa Lee and Maryam Keshavarz, CIRCUMSTANCE, was submitted for the Producer’s Guild of America’s awards consideration. CIRCUMSTANCE is a hard film to categorize: it’s a story of teenage love and personal freedom set in Iran, filmed in Beirut, edited in Chile, finished in France, and financed primarily by U.S. sources. And the film is in Farsi. We knew we were a long shot to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2011
