Filmmaker Magazine | The Magazine of Independent Film

“Beyond the Black Rainbow”
Panos Cosmatos, one of 2011′s 25 New Faces, on his debut feature … Read the rest
“Polisse”
Actress/director Maiwenn talks about her police procedural drama … Read the rest
“War Witch”
Kim Nguyen talks about his Berlin and Tribeca prize winner … Read the rest
“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

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, #115
Fri May 18, 2012 Nicholas Rombes
Second #5405, 90:05 Detective Gordon (aka The Yellow Man, or The Man in Yellow, played by Fred Pickler) sits at his desk at police headquarters, where Jeffrey has gone to see Detective Williams. He spots Gordon in his office and, startled that this is the same man he’d seen earlier with Frank, ...read more

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DIRECTOR INTERVIEWS

PANOS COSMATOS, “BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW”
Wed May 16, 2012 Scott Macaulay
It’s a strange paradox of today’s cinema that so many films feature lavish and eye-popping special effects yet are such ordinary viewing experiences. Sure, today’s VFX and surround sound are capable of overwhelming you, of beating you into submission, but, with a handful of ...read more
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

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WEB EXCLUSIVES

KIM NGUYEN ON “WAR WITCH”
Thu May 17, 2012 Anne-Christine Loranger
War Witch is a film about resilience. Resilience of an individual, of a community and even of the architecture of a society. French-Canadian filmmaker Kim Nguyen tells a story that is set to become a benchmark in jungle films. From the painful, complex situation of the child soldiers, he weaves an ...read more
THE POLICE PROCEDURAL BREAKS NEW GROUND IN MAIWENN’S “POLISSE”
Thu May 17, 2012 Brandon Harris
Actress-turned-director Maïwenn, best known to American audiences for a supporting role in her ex-husband Luc Besson‘s The Fifth Element, is poised with her Cannes-winning Polisse, which opens this Friday, to leap into a class of heralded young international auteurs. As much a revealing ...read more
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

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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

LA BARBE’S OPEN LETTER ON WOMEN & CANNES
Fri May 18, 2012 Nick Dawson
The French feminist collective known as La Barbe (French for “The Beard”) printed an open letter in France’s daily newspaper Le Monde earlier this week addressing the complete absence of films directed by women in the Competition section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. La Barbe is made up of actress Fanny Cottençon, writer/director Virginie Despentes and director Coline Serreau, who have also set up an online petition which has been signed by numerous luminaries, ...read more
PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON & ROBERT DOWNEY SR. ON “BABO 73″
Fri May 18, 2012 Nick Dawson
Here’s friends and fellow directors Paul Thomas Anderson and Robert Downey Sr. talking about Babo 73, one of the five early Downey features included on Criterion’s new box set from their no-frills Eclipse series, Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr., which comes out next week on DVD. … Read the rest ...read more
JONATHAN CAOUETTE’S “WALK AWAY RENEE” TO HAVE ONLINE PREMIERE
Fri May 18, 2012 Nick Dawson
When discussing the lineup at the upcoming BAMcinemaFEST a while back, I noted that a new cut of Walk Away Renee, Jonathan Caouette’s long-awaited follow-up to Tarnation, would be playing as part of the festival on June 27. While that’s exciting news on its own, now comes word of a very savvy move by IFC to capitalize on the interest in the film by giving the film a simultaneous online premiere on SundanceNOW’s Doc Club, the SVOD (Subscriber Video-on-Demand) series curated by ...read more
WES ANDERSON IN CANNES AND NYC
Fri May 18, 2012 Nick Dawson
Wes Anderson, the cover star of the latest issue of Filmmaker, kicked off the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday with his new film, Moonrise Kingdom, which opens Stateside on next Friday. (The estimable David Hudson, now operating at Fandor, collects the critical consensus on the movie here.) If you, like me, are not on the Croisette this year, you can still get your Anderson fix via the Cannes website, which takes a special look at Anderson’s body of work through the prism of his use of ...read more
PAJOT AND SWIRSKY’S “INDIE GAME”
Fri May 18, 2012 Scott Macaulay
The following article about Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky’s documentary Indie Game was published during the Sundance Film Festival. The film opens today in Los Angeles, New York (at the IFC Center), San Francisco and Phoenix. For a complete list of venues and upcoming screenings, check out the website. Independent film, depending on how you define it, has had many births. But for the purposes of this blog post, let’s consider the one in the 1980s, just before the launch of this ...read more
WALTER: A NEW WAY TO EDIT
Thu May 17, 2012 Nick Dawson
NYU student Elena Parker has created an intriguing device called Walter (named for the legendary Walter Murch) which tackles editing in an innovative new way. Here’s the description from the university website’s about her “eye-ware kinetoscope”: Walter watches your eyes as you watch a film, and every time that you blink, it edits the video. Based on the theories of Walter Murch in In the Blink of An Eye, I’ve transformed the subliminal action of blinking into a method ...read more
“THE COLOR WHEEL” – A HAMMER TO NAIL REVIEW
Thu May 17, 2012 Tom Hall
(Distributed by Cinema Conservancy and Factory 25, The Color Wheel opens theatrically in NYC at BAM on Friday, May 18, 2012. It world premiered at the 2011 Sarasota Film Festival and co-shared the Best Narrative award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival before screening at BAMcinemaFest and many, many more festivals throughout the world. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. NOTE: This review was first published on June 22, 2011.) Full disclosure: I first met Alex ...read more

Editors' Picks

LOAD & PLAY

Filmmaker's look at movies on DVD.

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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