Penny Lane
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Five Questions with Our Nixon Director Penny Lane and Co-Producer Brian L. Frye
While it’s widely known that Richard Nixon was an obsessive self-documenter, what is less well known is that three of his top aides – H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin – were as well. Mad for Super 8, the three men obsessively documented their everyday lives as they toiled away, unaware that their idealistic zeal for a corrupt administration would land them in prison. Directed by Penny Lane and co-produced by Brian Frye, Our Nixon is an all archive documentary that uses this footage to create a complex portrait of one of the most notorious administrations in the […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Mar 8, 2013 -
“25 New Faces” Alums Our Nixon and Blue Caprice Bookend New Directors/New Films
The current class of “25 New Faces” continues to make headlines, this time bagging opening and closing night spots at the upcoming New Directors/New Films being works by 2012 alums. Penny Lane and Brian L. Frye‘s archival doc Our Nixon kicks off the MoMA/FSLC-housed festival, while Alexandre Moors‘ Beltway sniper drama Blue Caprice closes the event. Other U.S. indies at the 2013 edition of ND/NF include Joshua Oppenheimer’s buzz doc The Act of Killing, Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and Shannon Plumb’s Towheads, while additional standouts include festival favorites like Tobias Lindholm’s A Hijacking and Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell. The […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 22, 2013 -
Critic’s Notebook: In Rotterdam, a Strong Crop of American Indies
With its famously catholic tastes and sprawling slate, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is a place to get lost. A week into its 10-day run, a fairly subdued 42nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam has unfurled a smattering of buzz-worthy world premieres and its usual mix of budding talents from unusually farflung spots on the globe, high-art provocations, exhaustive considerations of an emerging national cinema or two and obscure auteur retrospectives. However, I’ve found that it’s always the surprises here that grab you, little films you’d otherwise never see except in this context, that make the trip worthwhile. I […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 30, 2013 -
“25 New Faces” Update: Our Nixon at MoMA, Kickstarting F to 7th, Borscht Commissions, Mayer Erases the Web
I’ve not been posting as regularly recently as much of my focus has been on the redesigned Filmmaker website, which will be launching in the very near future. But, on this quiet Friday afternoon, I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide a few quick updates on the current class of filmmakers in our “25 New Faces,” who are a very productive bunch. Firstly, New Yorkers should head to MoMA this Sunday, October 28, for The White House Home Movies: Richard Nixon on Super-8, a screening which is part of the 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. There will be clips […]
by Nick Dawson on Oct 26, 2012 -
PHOTOBLOGGING THE “25 NEW FACES” IN TACOMA
The funny thing about film festivals is that there never seems to be enough time to talk about the films you’ve just seen. Distribution strategies, yes, industry gossip, most definitely, but the actual creative decisions and approaches involved in making the films themselves – barely! So the Grand Cinema’s mini-festival celebrating Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in Tacoma, WA, last month felt like a truly rare treat. Bringing together 14 of the actors and filmmakers or filmmaking teams on the list, including myself and Katherine Fairfax Wright, my directing partner on Call Me Kuchu, The Grand Cinema scheduled […]
by Malika Zouhali-Worrall on Sep 5, 2012 -
IFW: EAVESDROPPING
I am writing this from the crowded “lobby” area at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, where the Spotlight on Documentaries forum is going hot and heavy. The noise in this room is beyond description. It is such an overwhelming cacophony that try as I might, I can’t eavesdrop at all. This is disappointing, because eavesdropping is one of my most favorite pursuits and would surely have given me great material for you, dear readers. Alas. As promised, now I will share some key lessons from the original self help masterpiece, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence […]
by Penny Lane on Sep 26, 2011 -
IFW: A TRUE LOVE CONNECTION?
Day One of Film Week is complete! Wow, did we ever get better at talking about Our Nixon today. Ten back-to-back 30-minute meetings with brilliant people who are really interested in your film will do have that effect. Did Our Nixon make a true love connection? Who knows, but sparks were definitely flying. And it’s all about getting to the second date. We came into this week with a lot of meeting requests, and although I was fairly flabbergasted by the interest we elicited, I really shouldn’t have been. Because Our Nixon has a really fantastic premise: it’s a feature […]
by Penny Lane on Sep 22, 2011 -
IFW: “OUR NIXON”
Next week, my husband Brian and I will take our first documentary feature (Our Nixon) to Independent Film Week. I’ve never been to this event before, or to anything remotely like it, so I would describe my state of mind as Excited Anticipation, tinged with a slightly lesser amount of Bemused Bafflement. For the uninitiated, here is the little that I know about Independent Film Week (I should say more specifically the Project Forum): if you are selected by IFP to participate, you upload information about your film to a top secret server run by elves, and then various species […]
by Penny Lane on Sep 19, 2011
