Summer 2013
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Foreign Sales 101: What Independents Need to Know About Selling Films Abroad
This article originally appeared in our Summer, 2013 issue. With substantial revenue (sometimes well above 50 percent) coming from exploitation outside of a film’s home country, it is vital that producers know how to target and then structure deals with foreign sales agents. For those beginning to explore international distribution, here are some very basic ideas and concepts about the business of foreign sales to know going in. What is an international sales agent? In simplest terms, an international sales agent is the conduit to your film’s distribution outside of its country of origin. The sales agent will acquire a […]
by Ryan Kampe on Jul 18, 2013 -
L.A. Unplugged: Director Paul Schrader on The Canyons
Stunning black-and-white photos of movie theaters — old-style palaces and tacky multiplexes alike — sit underneath the credits of The Canyons, the 18th feature from veteran director and screenwriter Paul Schrader. Except rather than evoke the majesty of the 20th century’s dominant art form, they depict its collapse. These theaters are guttered, wrecked, their seats torn out, signage empty, neon fixtures torn and dangling from the ceilings. Some of these theaters — vintage single-screen Art Deco houses — are surely no longer viable in the modern era. The demise of the pictured strip-mall multiplexes, however, is most likely the product […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 18, 2013 -
Present Imperfect
James Ponsoldt’s new movie, The Spectacular Now, is hard to talk about. Just describing its plot — a slacker high-school senior on the romantic rebound falls for the school’s shy girl as they bond over parent problems — doesn’t do it justice. And if you throw in notice of lead character Sutter’s drinking problem, then you prompt speculation about Ponsoldt’s choice of material. This is his third movie in the row about an alcoholic! (Full disclosure: Robin O’Hara and I produced the first, Off the Black.) Step into The Spectacular Now, however, and you’ll find yourself drawn into a world […]
by Craig Zobel on Jul 18, 2013 -
Turning the Tables
Nervous laughter fills the air as a box of surgical masks is passed. Everyone is instructed to take one and place it over their mouths. With masks in position, the group of 12 is quickly ushered into an elevator. After a few moments there is a jolt — the doors open and everyone slowly funnels out. The seventh floor of the New School has been transformed into a sci-fi world. Debris covers the ground, and strange sounds echo down the halls. A lone girl staggers forward, her face concealed by a long mane of black hair. With head hung down […]
by Lance Weiler on Jul 18, 2013 -
Tall Stories
Presented as a “live screening,” Katerina Cizek’s Web-based interactive piece, HIGHRISE/Out My Window, was a mesmerizing highlight of the “Expanding Documentary” exhibition at the 2010 edition of IDFA. Now, nearly three years later, Cizek is poised to extend her artistic exploration of urban living to the Web pages of The New York Times. Peeking out from its paywall, the Grey Lady has nabbed the director and her National Film Board of Canada producers to collaborate on a forward-thinking op-ed doc series on the subject of vertical housing. Set to launch in the fall, it consists of four short documentaries, the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 18, 2013 -
The Way It Is Now
For the past half-year or so, I have been in constant dialogue with the distribution and foreign sales companies who are releasing four of my recent productions. While engaging these companies, in conjunction with the four directors, I noticed some patterns emerging that are revealing of the current distribution landscape — patterns that differ dramatically from the old ways of theatrical and home video release. Rest assured, it’s not all bad news. It used to be that foreign pre-sales would help us get our dramas financed. Now we can barely find foreign sales agents for our American independent films, even […]
by Mike S. Ryan on Jul 18, 2013 -
Load & Play
THE HOUSE I LIVE IN Virgil – out now The definitive American documentary about the defining civil-rights issue of our time, Eugene Jarecki’s The House I Live In is a personal epic, a film that takes Jarecki’s relationship with an African-American family, the matriarch of whom used to be his house cleaner as a child, and uses it as a springboard to investigate the dark secret in the American heart that is our disastrous, 40-year-old drug war. Harrowing and sublime, The House I Live In is aided by a Greek-chorus-like narration from ex-crime reporter and The Wire auteur David Simon. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 18, 2013 -
The Day Before: Ryan Coogler on Fruitvale Station
On Jan. 1, 2009, two hours after the New Year’s stroke of midnight, a Bay Area Rapid Transit officer fired upon and killed an unarmed Oscar Grant on the platform at Oakland’s Fruitvale Station. Grant had been returning home to East Bay from San Francisco with friends when a fight broke out in the subway car. Cops pulled a number of people off the train, and with Grant face down and restrained, an officer named Johannes Mehserle shot him in the back. Later, Mehserle would say he meant to draw his Taser instead of his pistol. The incident was recorded […]
by Ava DuVernay on Jul 18, 2013 -
Do No Harm: Lana Wilson and Martha Shane on After Tiller
While making After Tiller, Lana Wilson and Martha Shane struggled to get support from granting agencies cautious about supporting a film about such a hot-button topic as third-trimester abortion. In response to the pair’s bid for support, one major film grant organization said, “We’re waiting to see where this movie comes down.” Or, in other words, “We can’t support the film unless we support the way you depict this contentious issue.” The genius of After Tiller is that it doesn’t “come down” anywhere. It doesn’t make a case or take sides. At a time when documentaries about major political and […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 18, 2013 -
Outlaw Country
David Lowery made waves last year in the independent film world with the news that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — the follow-up to his little-seen $12,000 feature film St. Nick (2009) — had attracted the stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. It quickly became one of the year’s most anticipated independent films, premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critic’s Week. The film begins with a robbery and shootout, and a young couple torn apart. Bob Muldoon (Affleck) is sent to prison, leaving his pregnant girlfriend Ruth Guthrie (Mara) to raise their daughter alone […]
by David Barker on Jul 18, 2013
