Sundance By Scott Macaulay “Can’t we just try to have a good time?” The plea so often heard when going on a family trip — or an evening out with a couple you don’t like so much, or when indulging your partner on a trip back home — is terrible advice for a journalist attending a film festival, especially Sundance. You see, as long as your tickets are in order, you can quite easily have a good time at the Park City festival. By “good time,” I’m speaking in film festival terms, which means “see good movies.” The destination for […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Apr 28, 2014Full disclosure: I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal. This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. (Greene’s written for Filmmaker about deciding to premiere his fourth feature at this year’s True/False.) Burre is introduced in a bright red dress standing before a kitchen sink, moving in ambiguously charged slow-mo. Is it true that, as she muses, “I tend to break […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 5, 2014Halfway through, it’s too early to take the overall temperature of True/False 2014 in its 11th year (my fifth attending, each year with the hotel paid; full disclosure). All smooth so far, though it’s early going, so let’s forego atmospherics at this point and jump into one of the festival’s world premieres, Approaching The Elephant. (“Thanks for everyone being here for basically the highlight of my life,” director Amanda Rose Wilder said in her introduction.) The subject is “free schools”: further left on the continuum than Montessori, and (at least as practiced by the subject school’s founder Alex Khost) an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 1, 2014Despite its stated policy about not announcing a film’s premiere status, is the True/False Film Fest the new place to launch your documentary? In part one of a three part series, filmmaker and writer Robert Greene will chronicle the fortunes of five films that will world premiere at the 2014 True/False Film Festival, including his own, Actress. No film festival has meant more to me than True/False. My last two films (Kati with an I and Fake It So Real) began their lives in Columbia, MO — in front of the festival’s famously engaged crowds, amidst its street parades and […]
by Robert Greene on Feb 25, 2014This should be fun. For “Gimme Truth!,” an off-kilter game show at the True/False Film Festival, attending filmmakers (or celebrities, depending on your definition) judge 10 two-minute short films not on quality, but on their persuasiveness. The objective is to craft a scenario that is 100% false and convince the judges it’s 100% true, and vice versa. The three winning films will receive passes to next year’s festival, with the first place netting a RED rental package and four-hour color grading session, among other prizes. Head to their site for more information on how to submit. The deadline is February […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 13, 2014The True/False Film Fest today announced its full 2014 program, just days after grabbing headlines for its innovative Pay the Artists! program.The festival takes place in Columbia MO, between February 27 and March 2. Among the 43 films unveiled are a number of world premieres, including Robert Greene’s Actress, a portrait of Brandy Burre (best known for The Wire) which seems perfect for the fest’s embrace of the blurring of lines between nonfiction and fiction, and Kitty Green’s Ukraine is Not A Brothel, about the radical feminist nudist group Femen. Also playing for the first time are Amanda Wilder’s film […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 6, 2014Today, the True/False Film Fest‘s Paul Sturtz and David Wilson announced the launch of their organization’s innovative (and highly laudable) “Pay the Artists!” program. The heads of the 10-year-old Columbia, MO-based festival (which runs February 27 – March 2), initiated the patronage program as a way of helping to sustain the documentary film ecosystem, and this year will be offering $450 to the filmmaking teams who attend the festival. (T/F already covers travel, accommodation and food expenses.) It is Sturtz and Wilson’s hope that in the next few years, this amount will increase to $1,000. There has long been a […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 4, 2014