(This Is Not A Film begins a two-week engagement at Film Forum today, courtesy of Palisades Tartan. The movie will then open in other U.S. locations, starting with Los Angeles in early March. Go to the film’s website for details.) For those unfamiliar with the backstory: Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most acclaimed directors (The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold, Offside), was arrested in 2009. A known supporter of the opposition movement, Panahi was charged with “activity against national security and propaganda activities against the regime.” Despite domestic and international outpourings of support, he was sentenced in 2010 to […]
by Nelson Kim on Feb 29, 2012When is a film not a film? In one of the triumphs of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the remarkable documentary This is Not A Film, by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, asks this question and more as it portrays, diary-like, a day in Panahi’s life awaiting trial at his home in Tehran. Panahi talks on the phone with friends, illustrates with tape the boundaries of a future film set, chats with a garbage man who has just earned his Masters degree, and is kept company by his daughter’s free-roaming and giant pet lizard, Igi. If one is forbidden by law to make movies for 20 years, if one […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on May 21, 2011Checked out the Cyan Pictures site and discovered several new postings, the most interesting of which is the announcement of Long Tail Releasing, the Manhattan-based production company’s new distribution arm. Long Tail plans to release from 15 to 25 films in its first year and gear up to the release of an astounding 250 films annually, all by economizing and compacting the costs of distribution. Writes Cyan’s Josh Newman: “Long Tail started from a simple question: what costs make up that $250,000 [the initial releasing costs of a low-budget arthouse film], and how can we drastically reduce, share or eliminate […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 7, 2005