Filmmaker Magazine | The Magazine of Independent Film

Oscar Preview: 'Il Divo'
Paolo Sorrentino on his Italian blockbuster, which is up for Best Makeup.
Oscar Preview: 'Inglourious Basterds'
Quentin Tarantino talks about his ultraviolent look at World War II.
SXSW LINEUP
119 films will head to Austin in March.
'Barefoot in Timbuktu'
Martina Egi follows doc subject Ernst Aebi as he tries to save the less fortunate.
Academy Awards Nominations Announced
Avatar and The Hurt Locker will go head to head, and a few surprises. Read full list of nominees here.

The Guide

READ: Erik Gandini talks about his Videocracy in Director Interviews Wed.
WATCH: Catfish directors talk
IN THEATERS: October Country opens at IFC Center Fri.

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OSCAR PREVIEW

PAOLO SORRENTINO, IL DIVO | By Nick Dawson
Monday, February 08, 2010
Leading up to the Oscars on March 7, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Il Divo writer-director Paolo Sorrentino for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Il Divo is ...read more

DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS

MARTINA EGI, BAREFOOT TO TIMBUKTU
Wednesday, February 03, 2010 Brandon Harris
Ernst Aebi, the subject of Martina Egi's keenly observed new documentary Barefoot to Timbuktu, is something of a renaissance man. Artist, SoHo real estate pioneer and social activist, he is full of paradoxes: easy going yet driven, humble yet self-assured, a man of much wealth who nonetheless ...read more
JUDITH EHRLICH AND RICK GOLDSMITH, THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA
Wednesday, January 27, 2010 Damon Smith
As a history lesson, Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s enthralling new documentary, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, is as solid as a textbook, stitching together old broadcast footage, first-person testimony, tart excerpts from the Nixon White ...read more

more director interviews...

WEB EXCLUSIVES

VIEWING ZEITGEISTS AND THE BEST U.S. INDIES OF THE DECADE | By Jason Sanders
Thursday, December 31, 2009
To try to recall your favorite films from an entire decade (and then to limit them to only ten titles) is to immediately set yourself up for uncertainty and ridicule: first off because it's hard enough to remember what you saw ten days ago, much less ten years ago, and secondly because to limit the ...read more
IT WAS THE AUGHTS, AND I WENT TO THE MOVIES | By Brandon Harris
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
It was the aughts, and I went to (and made a few) movies. I did it mostly for pleasure, sometimes for distraction, often to see what others thought of the wild world around us; by the end, I did it simply because it was the only way I saw fit to make a living (sort of). It was a bell curve of sorts, ...read more

more web exclusives...

OUR VIDEOS

NEW BREED VIDEO REPORT FROM PARK CITY

We and The Workbook Project team up to film this open discussion on the new ways indie filmmakers can get their work to audiences.

FESTIVAL COVERAGE

PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | By Graham Flashner
Friday, January 15, 2010
Now in its 21st year, the Palm Springs International Film Festival Festival (Jan. 5-18) continues to be the place to be seen for foreign film Oscar contenders, 41 of which screened in this year’s Festival. U.S. films, for the most part, take a distant back seat, since most serious American ...read more

PLUS: Festival Ambassador - The latest news from the film festival circuit

more festival coverage...

THE BLOG

BEIJING TAXI: THE METER IS RUNNING
Tuesday, February 09, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Filmmaker Miao Wang, a Beijing native now based in Brooklyn, is currently racing to finish her feature doc Beijing Taxi in time for SXSW, where it's scheduled to world premiere. She needs to raise $11,000 to cover post-production expenses and is just under half way there with five days left to go at Kickstarter. From the Kickstarter page:BEIJING TAXI is a feature length documentary that vividly portrays Beijing undergoing a profound transformational arch. Through a humanistic lens, the intimate ...read more
A DIFFERENT KIND OF CLIP REEL
Monday, February 08, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Most movie-moment montages work an A-B-A structure in which "A" is sentimental uplift. This montage by Paul Proulx goes for something different. (Hat tip: Anne Thompson.)the films of the 2000s from Paul Proulx on Vimeo. ...read more
DAVID LYNCH ON MAKING A GOOD MOVIE
Monday, February 08, 2010 Scott Macaulay
...read more
HOW COOL IS INDIE FILM?
Monday, February 08, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Indie film champions are often fond of comparing what we do to indie music. If bands can tour, why can't we? If bands can sell merch, then we should too. If recording artists can form boutique labels, then why can't film distributors? Like, for example, Oscilloscope, the film label of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch.At Flavorwire, Judy Berman takes this assumption to task in a piece called "Why is Indie Film Dying While Indie Music Thrives?" She bases her assessment of indie film's slow-motion death on ...read more
PAOLA MENDOZA ON BIG ART, LITTLE DEBT
Sunday, February 07, 2010 Scott Macaulay
In the new issue of Filmmaker, Esther Robinson penned "The Big Art/Little Debt Plan," which discusses the relation of filmmakers to risk, their films, and their money. She reached out to several filmmakers by email, and their responses helped shape her article. We are running several of the responses Esther received here on the blog. Below is the one from Paola Mendoza, director of Entre Nos. What strategies did you employ to stay no/low debt during your production? My strategy was pretty ...read more
MASSIVE ATTACK COLLABORATES WITH GEORGINA SPELVIN, HOPE SANDOVAL
Sunday, February 07, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Bristol's Massive Attack return this week with a new album, Heligo Land, and word has it that the band that once invented trip-hop and now is probably best known for providing the theme music for House may be revisiting the former glory of their classic albums Blue Lines and Protection. Preceding the album is this website, Massive Attack Tweatre, which is unveiling seven music videos commissioned for the album. Three are up so far, and the grabber is "Paradise Circus/Life of a Pornstar." It's a ...read more