Filmmaker Magazine | The Magazine of Independent Film

The Guide

READ: Rachel Libert's Sundance Lab diary
WATCH: Inside Job trailer
IN THEATERS: Prince of Broadway at the Angelika in NYC

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DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS

LIXIN FAN, “LAST TRAIN HOME”
Wednesday, September 01, 2010 Damon Smith
Not many first-time independent filmmakers land a coveted spot in the Sunday arts section of The New York Times and an interview on The Leonard Lopate Show. But 33-year-old Lixin Fan, a Chinese-born Canadian immigrant who splits his time between Montreal and Beijing, has generated a lot of interest ...read more
CLAUDIA LLOSA, “THE MILK OF SORROW”
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 Brandon Harris
For Claudia Llosa, director of the Berlinale-winning and Academy Award-nominated Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow, magical realism isn’t a literary genre or filmic device, it’s an element of national identity and consciousness. Her film, easily the most critically-lauded film to emerge ...read more

more director interviews...

WEB EXCLUSIVES

DO THE YAM: ASTAIRE & ROGERS, THE COMPLETE WORKS | By Livia Bloom
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
“I wanted to be a dancer,” says Fred Astaire, wheezing out a tune on a harmonica with his gangly frame draped casually over a medical couch. “Till I was psychologized.” Astaire plays doctor—a shrink, of all things—in Mark Sandrich’s Carefree (1953), a little-known screwball comedy gem ...read more

more web exclusives...

OUR VIDEOS

THE NEW BREED L.A. #7: “SCREENING THE CUT”
Monday, August 09, 2010
“Don’t make your festival premiere your first test screening,” I always say to the filmmakers who take the IFP Narrative Lab. It’s sounds basic, but you’d be surprised at how many filmmakers I’ve come across who never properly screen their cuts with an audience ...read more

FESTIVAL COVERAGE

IFP PARTNERS WITH UN FOR ENVISION | By Mary Anderson Casavant
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
This weekend the documentarian as activist was discussed at “Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentaries,” an event presented by the IFP and UN and hosted by The New York Times at The Times Center. In her introductory remarks, IFP Executive Director Joanna Vicente pledged ...read more
CANNES DIRECTORS DIRECTING 2010 | By Livia Bloom
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Each year, before the movies and parties and deals go down at the Cannes Film Festival, thousands of international participants go through the same steps. They complete their registration, receive the color-coded badge that designates their place in a screening hierarchy as rigid as that of a ...read more

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

more festival coverage...

THE BLOG

ETIENNE! PREMIERES AT NEW YORK’S reRUN
Thursday, September 02, 2010 Scott Macaulay
I loved Jeff Mizushima’s delicate, entirely charming, and vaguely emo-ish Etienne! when I saw it last year after its CineVegas premiere. I wound up putting Jeff in our “25 New Faces” simply because the film’s sensibility seemed so different to me. I also loved its formally-bold second-half narrative shift and director Caveh Zahedi’s last-reel appearance in a scene that could have been taken from a Peter Handke novel. The film receives its East Coast premiere at the ...read more
“GET ME MY F*CKING SOY BURRITO!”
Wednesday, September 01, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Producer Gavin Polone’s presumably ex- current assistant has made one of those Xtranormal videos where you submit text and use the service to make a robotically-voiced animated short. This was sent to me this week by a friend who attested to its validity, and now, Nikki Finke gets confirmation from Polone (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Zombieland) himself. He is quoted, “Sadly, it isn’t altogether untrue. People seem to like it. Maybe it will inspire an HBO series about me?” ...read more
WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS
Sunday, August 29, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Here are some links that caught my eye this week. The Workbook Project has a new Transmedia Talk Podcast. Topics include “The Web is Dead,” Foursquare, and the Transmedia panels at SXSW 2011. Also at the Workbook Project, Mark Harris on why he shot his forthcoming The Lost Children fiction feature as a doc. Sarah Kessler at Mashable: “New Neutrality — Seven Worst-Case Scenarios.” There’s been a lot of interest in NYC writer Tao Lin over at The Rumpus. I ...read more
FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: FALL, 1996
Saturday, August 28, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Al Pacino, Robert Young, Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky, Cheryl Dunye, Curtis Charm, Nina Menkes, Alexander Payne, Steve Buscemi, Eric Bogosian and Nick Cassavetes were all featured in our Fall, 1996 issue, an edition that was dominated by one feature: our “50 Most Important Independent Films.” What makes one film more “important” than another? Here’s a portion of my intro: When we sent a letter out to several dozen critics, curators, distributors, and ...read more
SUNDANCE DOC CREATIVE PRODUCING LAB DIARY #2: RACHEL LIBERT
Saturday, August 28, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Here is part two of Rachel Libert’s diaries from the Sundance Labs. Read part one here. The busloads of people arriving at the Sundance Resort for the Creative Producing Summit signaled the end of the Creative Producing Lab. Twenty narrative producers, twenty documentary producers and dozens of high-level industry representatives are sequestered in the privacy of the Wasatch Mountains. We’re participating in an information marathon. We are a think tank in which our collective ...read more
SUNDANCE DOC FILM CREATIVE PRODUCING LAB DIARY: RACHEL LIBERT
Friday, August 27, 2010 Scott Macaulay
Here is the first of two diaries from Rachel Libert, a producer and director who brought her project Semper Fi: Always Faithful to the Sundance Doc Film Creative Producing Lab. I’m on my way home from the Sundance Documentary Film Creative Producing Lab and Summit and struggling to describe the experience. Nearly four years ago I was researching a documentary film about a public health organization and, while the idea was intriguing, it was becoming increasingly obvious that it was an ...read more