Filmmaker Magazine | The Magazine of Independent Film

“Patience (After Sebald)”
Grant Gee discusses his creative new documentary … Read the rest
“Meet Me in Montenegro”
Alex Holdridge on his upcoming film – and leaving L.A. behind … Read the rest
“Adam Yauch (1964 – 2012)”
Scott Macaulay remembers the late, great Beastie Boy … Read the rest
“You Hurt My Feelings”
Steve Collins discusses his tale of emotional dislocation … Read the rest
“Tribeca Critic’s Notebook”
Brandon Harris looks back on this year’s festival … Read the rest

The Guide

READ: Photos and Notes from the Maryland Film Festival
WATCH: NoBudge Screening Series
IN THEATERS: Beyond the Black Rainbow, The Color Wheel and Polisse open this week.

THE BLUE VELVET PROJECT

THE ‘BLUE VELVET’ PROJECT, #113
Mon May 14, 2012 Nicholas Rombes
Second #5311, 88:31 1. This frame is from around twelve seconds into a thirteen-second shot, just before the screen goes black. Jeffrey sobs. The unflinching, unmoving camera eye does not look away. There is no soundtrack. There is nothing ironic or postmodern about this moment. 2. Paul Virilio, ...read more

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DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS

GRANT GEE, “PATIENCE (AFTER SEBALD)”
Wed May 09, 2012 Damon Smith
One of the great European literary figures of the past half century was the German writer W.G. “Max” Sebald (1944-2001), a late bloomer who fused essay, history, memoir, and meditative fiction into an unclassifiable weld of eloquently bewitching prose in four major works (Vertigo, The ...read more
STEVE COLLINS, “YOU HURT MY FEELINGS”
Wed May 02, 2012 Brandon Harris
Steve Collins’ You Hurt My Feelings is the story of emotionally remote and unavailable people, a trio of wounded individuals who fail to connect with one another. Though Collins’ film deals with familiar subject matter, its tale is told with such clever minimalism and discernible ...read more

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WEB EXCLUSIVES

MARK ELIJAH ROSENBERG TALKS ROOFTOP FILMS
Thu May 10, 2012 Lauren Wissot
As a writer and filmmaker just beginning to branch out into indie festival programming, I’ve been looking for an excuse to chat with Mark Elijah Rosenberg for quite some time. The man behind the granddaddy of open-air cinema (hard to believe Rooftop Films is now in its 16th year!) has seen his DIY ...read more
ALEX HOLDRIDGE: “I’LL NEVER GO TO LOS ANGELES AGAIN”
Mon May 07, 2012 Nick Dawson
I fell in love with Alex Holdridge’s gorgeous, smart black-and-white LA-set romantic comedy In Search of a Midnight Kiss when I saw it on the film festival circuit in 2007, and later interviewed Holdridge for Filmmaker when Kiss was released theatrically in 2008. In the intervening years, ...read more
COPY THAT: ON THE TRANSFORMATIVE EFFECTS OF INDEPENDENT FILM PRODUCTION
Thu Apr 26, 2012 Filmmaker Staff
You don’t have to be British royalty to find a cure for a speech impediment through film. High school senior Daniel Altman wrote the below account of his work on an independent feature as his college essay. It was subsequently published on the Stuttering Foundation website, where it has ...read more
GOOD THINGS COME IN SMALLER PACKAGES: LARGE-SENSOR CAMERAS, ONE YEAR LATER
Wed Apr 11, 2012 David Leitner
For those of us excited by the advent of large-sensor motion picture cameras, this past year has been the Great Leap Forward. Signs are everywhere. ARRI’s ALEXA swept TV series production in the U.S. Canon harnessed Hollywood pomp to launch its C300. RED placed an eight-page glossy fold-out to ...read more

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COLUMNS

THE MICRO-BUDGET CONVERSATION: THE END
Thu Apr 19, 2012 John Yost
“Filmmaking is a visual medium. Is it a gimmick that I care about aesthetics in a visual medium? I think a well-shot film looks beautiful. I think well shot digital looks adequate. It’s simply a preference. Truth be told, I’ve always thought the idea of micro-filmmaking was ...read more
LADY VENGEANCE: A GENRE FAN’S GUIDE TO 2012 NEW DIRECTORS / NEW FILMS
Fri Mar 23, 2012 Farihah Zaman
New Directors/New Films is known for bringing some of the freshest, boldest films to light, and not necessarily just for New York audiences. Arthouse theaters around the country often make selections from this well-regarded festival’s programming. The relatively high-brow co-presentation of the ...read more

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OUR VIDEOS

KATE LYN SHEIL DISCUSSES ACTING AT SXSW
Sat Mar 10, 2012
With a focused, intense, and somewhat mysterious screen persona, actress Kate Lyn Sheil has stood out in a number of recent independent films, including Silver Bullets by Joe Swanberg and Sophia Takal’s Green. At SXSW this year she arrives with four titles, including Amy ...read more

THE BLOG

JAMES SCHAMUS ON FOCUS FEATURES AT 10
Tue May 15, 2012 Scott Macaulay
Focus Features is celebrating its tenth-year anniversary, and the distributor has just placed on its site a suite of videos in which Focus CEO James Schamus discusses the company’s history through its films. After an intro detailing the transition from Good Machine to Focus, Schamus gives us the back story on Focus titles like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Pianist and The Constant Gardner, among others. For the individual videos in the series, visit the 10-year anniversary page ...read more
NOBUDGE LIVE SCREENING SERIES KICKS OFF TONIGHT
Mon May 14, 2012 Nick Dawson
Just a quick heads up to alert you to the fact that the excellent NoBudge film website — run by indie actor/director Kentucker Audley, one of our 25 New Faces in 2007 — is running an innovative “live screening series” featuring filmmaker Q&As, starting tonight. Eight films will screen during the next two weeks, and each night the director of that day’s featured film will do a Q&A online. Programmed for the next two weeks are the shorts Cochran (James ...read more
IFP ANNOUNCES 2012 DOCUMENTARY LAB SLATE
Mon May 14, 2012 Nick Dawson
This morning, the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced the 10 films selected to participate in its 2012 IFP Documentary Lab, which takes place all this week in New York City. The slate for this eighth edition of the doc labs is very geographically diverse, with participants hailing from Washington, Kentucky and Berlin in addition to the usual indie strongholds of Los Angeles and New York City. Each year, 20 indie films with budgets under $1 million — 10 documentary and 10 ...read more
THE GLOBAL HIGH-CONCEPT GROUP FILM
Mon May 14, 2012 Nick Dawson
New technology is increasingly opening up filmmaking options to people all around the world, and that’s no more evident than in the upcoming The Owner. The movie is first project of CollabFeature, which is described on its website as “a group of independent filmmakers from all over the world who have come together to create multi-director feature films. Each filmmaker writes and directs a segment of the bigger story in his or her own country. By pooling our talents and resources, we ...read more
WHAT YOU’LL SEE WHEN YOU DIE
Sat May 12, 2012 Scott Macaulay
Forget long hallways and white light — in the upcoming Post-Singularity age, death is just another user experience. Welcome to Life is a short film by Tom Scott inspired by the work of Jim Monroe and Rudy Rucker. … Read the rest ...read more
PHOTOS AND NOTES FROM THE MARYLAND FILM FESTIVAL
Fri May 11, 2012 Scott Macaulay
The Maryland Film Festival, which wrapped its 2012 edition on Sunday, is one of the East Coast’s most intimate and engaging film events. With 40 features, over 70 shorts and an amazingly healthy contingent of loyal filmmakers annually making the trip to Baltimore, Maryland functions as both a discovery festival and friendly pit stop for directors on the independent circuit. John Waters hosts a movie — this year Barbara Loden’s seminal and still influential Wanda — and takes the ...read more
FIVE QUESTIONS FOR “THINK OF ME” DIRECTOR BRYAN WIZEMANN
Fri May 11, 2012 Scott Macaulay
Bryan Wizemann’s recommended Think of Me, which boasts an amazing performance by Lauren Ambrose, is tomorrow night’s opening feature for the Rooftop Films 2012 season. The following interview was originally published on the eve of its Toronto Film Festival premiere. One of the more sobering and even painful short films of recent years is Bryan Wizemann’s Film Makes Us Happy. In the 12-minute documentary, Wizemann argues with his wife about his obsession with filmmaking, with ...read more

Editors' Picks

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FESTIVAL COVERAGE

PHOTOS AND NOTES FROM THE MARYLAND FILM FESTIVAL
Fri May 11, 2012 Scott Macaulay
The Maryland Film Festival, which wrapped its 2012 edition on Sunday, is one of the East Coast’s most intimate and engaging film events. With 40 features, over 70 shorts and an amazingly healthy contingent of loyal filmmakers annually making the trip to Baltimore, Maryland functions as both a ...read more
SAM GREEN’S LOVE SONG AT SFIFF
Mon May 07, 2012 Mike Plante
One of the highlights of the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival, which boasted a great lineup of films and filmmakers, was the new “live documentary” by Sam Green, The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller, featuring Green and Yo La Tengo live on stage. The notion of the live ...read more