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BERLINALE PANORAMA SELECTION
In its Main Program and two other series, Special and Dokumente, the 2004 Panorama of the 54th Berlin International Film Festival will present 34 features and 16 documentaries.
The Panorama's Main Program will open on February 5 with Walk on Water by American-born Israeli director Eytan Fox, whose film Yossi and Jagger premiered in last year's Panorama to great acclaim, and was subsequently released in the U.S. by Strand Releasing. Walk on Water tells the story of a Mossad agent and a German tourist in Israel who uncover the truth about the "last Nazi".
The Panorama Special section will open on February 6 with two films: the angst-driven arthouse indie A Problem with Fear -- or Laurie's Anxiety Confronting the Escalator by the Canadian director Gary Burns (Lions Gate), and with Untold Scandal by E J-Young, a rising star of Korean cinema.In addition, the Panorama will enhance the Festival's special focus this year on Latin America with three political documentaries and two fiction features: Mexican director Felipe Cazals's Digna hasta el ultimo aliento, and Che -- The Last Hours by Romano Scavolini, from Italy -- along with three films from Brazil: the documentary Fala tu by Guilherme Coelho and the features O outro lado da ruaby Marcos Bernstein and Contra todos by Roberto Moreira.
And finally, the Dokumente program of the 19th Panorama will offer ample opportunities for exploration and debate on a wide variety of subjects -- from Woody Harrelson's passion for green issues and an anarchistic political satire on the WTO to the illumination of politically uncharted regions in Latin America, to portraits of artists like Klaus Nomi and The Ramones, and new essay films by Bruce Weber and Romuald Karmakar.
Complete list of feature film titles:
BRAZIL
Contra todos/Up against them all by Roberto Moreira with Silvia Lourenco, Giulio Lopes, Leona Cavalli, Ailton Graça, Martha Meola, Dionisio Neto
Fala Tu/Fala Tu -- Lives of Rhyme by Guilherme Coelho/Brazil
BRAZIL / FRANCE
O outro lado da rua/The Other Side of the Street by Marcos Bernstein, with Fernanda Montenegro, Raul Cortez, Luis Percy, Laura Cardoso
CANADA
A Problem with Fear -- or Laurie's Anxiety Confronting the Escalator by Gary Burns, with Paulo Costanzo, Emily Hampshire, Camille Sullivan, Willie Garson, Benjamin Ratner, Keegan Connor Tracy, Jennifer Clement
La face cachee de la lune/Far Side of the Moon by Robert Lepage, with Robert Lepage, Anne-Marie Cadieux, Marco Poulin, Celine Bonnier
Go Further by Ron Mann
DENMARK
2 ryk og en aflevering /Kick'n Rush by Aage Rais-Nordentoft, with Jacob Oliver Krarup, Esben Smed Jensen, Cyron B. Melville, Marie Bach Hansen, Niels Ellergaard, Ann Eleonora Jorgensen
FRANCE
Je suis votre homme/I Am Your Man by Daniele Dubroux, with Catherine Frot, Isabelle Carre, Melvil Poupaud, Francois Berleand, Julie Depardieu
L'Esquive by Abdelatif Kechiche, with Osman Elkharraz, Sara Forestier, Sabrina Ouazani, Nanou Benahmou
Wild Side by Sebastien Lifshitz, with Stephanie Michelini, Edouard Mikitine, Yasmine Belmadi
FRANCE / BELGIUM
Demain, on demenage/Tomorrow We Move by Chantal Akerman, with Sylvie Testud, Aurore Clement, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Natacha Regnier, Lucas Belvaux, Elsa Zylberstein, Dominique Reymond
FRANCE / ISRAEL
Avanim by Raphael Nadjari, with Asi Levi, Uri Gabriel, Florence Bloch, Shaul Mizrahi
Zohre & Manouchehr by Mitra Farahani
GERMANY
Die Spielwutigen/Addicted to Acting by Andres Veiel
Die Mitte/The Center by Stanislaw Mucha
Freedom2Speak V2.0 by Markus C. M. Schmidt, Christoph Gampl, Brigitte Kramer, Marc Meyer, Uwe Nagel
Land der Vernichtung/Land of Annihilation by Romuald Karmakar
The Nomi Song by American director Andrew Horn
The Raspberry Reich by Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, with Susanne Sachsse, Daniel Batscher, Andreas Rupprecht, Dean Stathis
Texas -- Kabul by Helga Reidemeister
Was nutzt die Liebe in Gedanken/Love in Thoughts by Achim von Borries, with European Film Award 2003 winner Daniel Bruhl, with August Diehl, Anna Maria Muhe, Thure Lindhardt, Jana Pallaske
GERMANY / SWITZERLAND /FRANCE / ITALY / THE NETHERLANDS / UK
The Stratosphere Girl by M. X. Oberg, with Chloe Winkel, John Ng, Tuva Novotny
HONG KONG / PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Lost in Time by Derek Yee, with Cecilia Cheung, Lau Ching Wan, Daichi Harashima, Paul Chun Pui, Louis Koo
ICELAND / GERMANY / NORWAY / UK
Kaldaljos/Cold Light by Hilmar Oddsson, with Ingvar E. Sigurosson, Aslakur Ingvarsson, Kristbjorg Kjeld, Ruth Olafsdottir
ISRAEL / GERMANY
Lalecet Al Hamaim/Walk On Water by Eytan Fox, with Lior Ashkenazi, Knut Berger, Caroline Peters, Hanns Zischler, Carola Regnier
ITALY
Le ultime ore del Che/Che -- The Last Hours by Romano Scavolini
Mi piace lavorare/Mobbing (I Like To Work) by Francesca Comencini, with Nicoletta Braschi, Camille Dugay Comencini
JAPAN
A Day on the Planet by Isao Yukisada, with Rena Tanaka, Satoshi Tsumabuki
Akame shijyuyataki shinjyumisui/Akame 48 Waterfalls by Genjirou Arato, with Takijirou Onishi, Shinobu Terajima, Michiyo Okusu, Yuya Uchida
MEXICO
Digna hasta el ultimo aliento/Digna -- Worthy to Her Final Breath by Felipe Cazals
THE NETHERLANDS
Shouf shouf habibi! by Albert ter Heerdt, with Mimoun Oaissa, Touriya Haoud, Najib Amhali, Bridget Maasland
PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Jing Zhe/The Story of Er Mei by Wang Quanan, with Yu Nan, Yan Ming
POLAND / CZECH REPUBLIC
Nienasycenie/Insatiability by Wiktor Grodecki, with Cezary Pazura, Michal Lewandowski, Weronika Marczuk-Pazura, Katarzyna Gniewkowska, Leon Niemczyk
RUSSIA
Ja ljublju tebja/You I Love by Olga Stolpolskava, Dmitri Troitsky, with Ljubowj Tolkalina, Jewgenij Korijakowskij, Damir Badmajew
SOUTH AFRICA / CANADA Proteus by John Greyson, with Rouxnet Brown, Shaun Smyth, Neil Sandilands, Kristen Thomson
SOUTH KOREA
Chosun Nam Nyo Sang Yeol Jisa/Untold Scandal by E J-Yong, with Bae Yong-Jun, Lee Mi-Sook, Jeon Do-Youn, Cho Hyun-Jae, Lee So-Youn
SPAIN
Cachorro/Cachorro (Bear Cub) by Miguel Albaladejo, with Jose Luis Garcia-Perez, David Castillo, Diana Cerezo, Mario Arias, Arno Chevrier, Ampar Ferrer
The Machinist by American director Brad Anderson, with Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon
THAILAND
Beautiful Boxer by Ekachai Uekrongtham, with Asanee Suwan, Sorapong Chatree, Orn-Anong Panyawong, Nukkid Boonthong
UNITED KINGDOM
Death in Gaza by James Miller
Trollywood by Madeleine Farley
USA
A Letter to True by Bruce Weber
Anonymous by Todd Verow, with Todd Verow, Dustin Schell, Sophia Lamar, Shawn Durr, Craig Chester
Brother To Brother by Rodney Evans, with Anthony Mackie, Roger Robinson, Aunjanue Ellis, Larry Gilliard Jr.
D.E.B.S. by Angela Robinson, with Sara Foster, Jordana Brewster, Meagan Good, Devon Aoki, Jill Ritchie, Geoff Stults, Jimmi Simpson, Jessica CauffielEnd of The Century -- The Story of the Ramones by Jim Fields & Michael Gramaglia
Gettin' The Man's Foot Outta Your Baadassss! by Mario Van Peebles, with Mario Van Peebles, Joy Bryant, Nia Long, Khleo Thomas, Ossie Davis
The Graffiti Artist by James Bolton, with Ruben Bansie-Snellman, Pepper Fajans
Quattro Noza by Joey Curtis, with Brihanna Hernandez, Victor Larios, Robert Beaumont, Greg Leone, Fabiola Barrios
The Yes Men by Dan Ollman, Sarah Price & Chris Smith
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/23/2004 06:00:23 PM
THE (LEAD) TIMES WE LIVE IN
In the first post on this new Filmmaker blog, I wrote about how we'd use this space to break out of the quarterly confines of the magazine's publication schedule. Well, that's still the intention, but after a few days here at the Sundance Film Festival, this blog has been filling up with news items filed by the New York office while the Sundance-attending staff has been seeing the movies, going to the parties, but not quite figuring out how to get into the rhythm of daily online journalism.
One of the good things about publishing quarterly is that it allows time to let film reactions gel over a period of weeks. One of the bad things about publishing quarterly is that it encourages a kind of OCD-ish approach to writing. Opinions can be futzed over for months -- one Filmmaker writer typically sends me as many as 26 self-generated revisions of a single article -- and then spastically reworked one last time in the days before press.
But this Sundance, I thought, would be different. And each day, I'd work out a lead paragraph in my head while riding the shuttle busses from theater to theater, struggle to remember it through the nightly parties, return home, and then -- and here was my mistake -- would scan online film sites like Moviecity News to check out what I'd missed that day before writing. And suddenly, the jazzy lead that seemed pithily entertaining on the bus would read painfully dull and obvious as I'd realize that countless versions of it were already all over the web. Like the Dean scream, news blips involving the Biskind book (included in the Diesel/Cinetic party gift bag but not, as many claimed, discussed here all that much), Paris Hilton, The Motorcycle Diaries (the raves for which are truly deserved, as I'll post here soon), and Redford sightings would surface, quickly scour the internet and then be replaced by the next celebrity mix-up or tidbit of acquisitions news.
Which is why the film I feel like writing about first is one that's somewhat invisible to the hype merchants. Alison Maclean and Tobia Perse's Persons of Interest is an hour-long series of interviews with innocent Muslim Americans detained and locked up by the FBI and U.S. Justice Department in the days following 9/11, The material is sad, disturbing and usually shocking. A guy with a rented car gets picked up in front of a Burger King and locked up for weeks before he's released; a father is dragged out of his home and incarcerated when police find a videogame flight simulator on his son's computer; an American-born wife learns that her imprisoned husband was suddenly deported and must decide how -- and where -- to raise her family now that he's gone. Maclean -- whose previous fiction films include Crush and Jesus' Son -- and Perse intercut their stories with televised statements by John Ashcroft in which the Attorney General makes clear that sweeping overenforcement is now official policy.Maclean and Perse take a minimalist filmmaking approach to tell these stories. All of the interviews are conducted in a fluorescent-lit white room from a single stationary camera angle. The interviewees often stand uncomfortably before the camera, and almost all clasp their hands behind their back, as if they're handcuffed. The set provides a simple visual metaphor that is made painfully apt when one man describes his months spent suffering sleep deprivation in a perpetually lit cell.
What gives the otherwise austere Persons of Interest the strange rhythms of real life, however, is the directors' penchant for leaving the camera running at all times, capturing their subject's awkward human moments pre and post interview. And when several participants show up with their famililes, Maclean and Perse let the tape roll as the kids mug for the lens, stomp around the room and, in one clip, cheerfully trash the place. Simple and elegant, Persons of Interest is an essential document of our current "war on terrorism."
In a scene from John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore, Laura Dern asks the alienated adulterous college professor played by Six Feet Under's Peter Krause why, if he wants to make a difference in the world, he doesn't work with cancer patients or teach fetal-alcohol-syndrome-damaged kids how to read. "Because those people aren't very interesting," he replies.
Indeed, Curran's and Maclean and Perse's films could easily swap titles. In We Don't Live Here Anymore, scripted by Larry Gross from two Andre Dubus short stories, four rather unlikeable people eventually become "persons of interest" through a penetrating script, sharp performances by Dern, Krause, Naomi Watts and Mark Rufalo, and Curran's bold, musical, occasionally arch direction.
Gross began writing this script in 1969 -- yes, 1969 -- and it's definitely of a piece with other works of marital discord like John Cassavete's films Faces and Husbands, Whose Afraid of Virigina Woolf, but also "suburban fiction" like Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road. Like Virginia Woolf, this is a "two couples" movie, and we instinctively know that somehow the deck will be shuffled on these four lost souls and that when the dust settles, some characters will fare better than others.
The challenge facing a film like this is the one posed by Maclean and Perse's movie. Should we care about relatively privileged characters such as these in times like this?
To answer, the same question can be asked -- but somehow isn't -- about the misfits in Napoleon Dynamite or dreamers of Garden State. Watching We Don't Live Here Anymore, one senses that Curran and Gross understand the challenge and have responded by throwing down the gauntlet in return. On the one hand, the film is really just about hunkering down with these four actors as they unravel the neuroses and compulsions that make their characters tick. On the other, Curran's technique is far from invisible. The movie is fabulously visual -- Maryse Alberti's cinematography has a burnished elegance, and the editing by Alexandre de Franceschi is exceptionally fluid, cutting from tense moments to symbolic imagery. (A red light at a train crossing is a recurring shot.) Most boldly, Lesley Barber's original score consistently affects one's point-of-view in the film, adding a mock solemnity, distancing humor, or sometimes just a queasy empathy to the scenes. But as the film progresses, the distancing elements fade away. One comes not to "like" or "bond with" any of these characters but to recognize and perhaps guiltily understand their behavior.
Female executives at a couple of distributors told me that they loved the film and argued about it with their male colleagues. The Bush administration can continue to wage their "war on terror" -- and filmmakers like Maclean and Perses can respond -- but for Warner Independent, let's hope that the age-old "war between the sexes" still retains its power to shock and awe.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/22/2004 05:10:34 PM
Warner Independent Pictures made its first feature film acquisition yesterday at the Sundance Film Festival, purchasing all rights in North America and the UK to We Don't Live Here Anymore for $2 million. The film is directed by John Curran from a screenplay by Larry Gross, based on two short stories by Andre Dubus (who also wrote the story that inspired In the Bedroom).
Front Street Productions's Harvey Kahn and Jonas Goodman reportedly hammered out deal points with William Morris agent Cassian Elwes and Mark Gill of Warner Independent, while cast members Naomi Watts, Mark Ruffalo and Laura Dern sequestered themselves in a stairway of the Wireimage Portal Studio for more than six hours at last night's premiere party for the film, which debuted in Competition.The film tells the story of two couples in a New England college town whose lives become inextricably intertwined and turned upside-down in a tide of passion, suspicion, humor, anger and stunning revelations.
"We are really pleased to be the first [finished] film to be acquired by Warner Independent," said John Curran. "Their passion was clear after the first screening, and is evident in their plans for its release [later this year]."
Warner Independent Pictures, founded in August 2003, finances, produces, acquires and will theatrically distribute up to 10 feature films per year largely budgeted under $20 million. It is a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company based on the Studio lot in Burbank.
In 2004, Warner Independent Pictures will also release Richard Linklater's Before Sunset which debuts in Competition in Berlin; first-time director Gregory Jacobs's Criminal starring John C. Reilly, Diego Luna and Maggie Gyllenhaal; Michael Mayer's A Home at the End of the World with Colin Farrell, Robin Wright Penn, Dallas Roberts and Sissy Spacek; first-time director Jordan Roberts's Around the Bend starring Michael Caine, Christopher Walken and Josh Lucas; and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, which is currently in production.
Warner Independent Pictures's The Jacket, directed by John Maybury and starring Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kelly Lynch, Daniel Craig and Kris Kristofferson started production on January 19 in Glasgow.
In other breaking news: CSA: The Confederate States of America, written and directed by Kevin Willmott, was been picked up by IFC Films for North American distribution. The announcement was made by Jonathan Sehring, President of IFC Entertainment, from the Sundance Film Festival where CSA screened to sold out audiences in the American Spectrum section.
Bold, satirical and wildly funny, the film poses the question: What would have happened if the South had won the Civil War? Played as a straight-faced Ken Burns-style documentary with uncanny parallels to our current society, CSA presents an alternative modern day America as a land in which slavery is alive and well throughout the 50 states, other non-whites and non-Christians are relegated to reservations, the country is in an ongoing Cold War with Canada and a Slave Shopping Network plays on TV. In the words of Spike Lee, an executive producer, the film is "eye opening and jaw dropping."Sony Pictures Classics also announced the acquisition of North American rights to Ondrej Trojan's Zelary, which is the Czech entry for Best Foreign Language Film.
Set against the backdrop of Nazi occupation in the Czechoslovakia during World War II, Zelary is the story of a unique love brought together by two clashing cultures -- a free-spirited man of the mountains and a scholarly nurse devoted to the resistance. After he is brought into her hospital with fatal injuries, she saves his life by sacrificing part of her own. Set on the very edge of civilization, Zelary is a love story born of the common will to survive.
First Look Media acquired worldwide rights to Persistent Entertainment and Complex Media's American Spectrum entry September Tapes.
Peter Lawson, VP, Acquisitions, and Bill Lischak, President of First Look Media negotiated the deal on behalf of First Look. ICM's Shaun Redick and Linda Lichter of Lichter/Grossman negotiated on behalf of Persistent Entertainment's Matthew Rhodes and Judd Payne and Complex Media's Christian Johnston and Brent Henry.First Look Pictures will distribute September Tapes theatrically in North America. The film debuted in Sundance in the American Spectrum program.
A blend of factual activities in post 9/11 Afghanistan with dramatic overlays throughout, September Tapes, the debut feature of director Christian Johnston, fashions an authentic and powerful look at a single man's quest for answers to the current state of the world.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/22/2004 10:48:14 AM
BERLINALE 2004 COMPETITION
The selection of films for the Competition of the 54th Berlin International Film Festival -- which opens with Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain -- is now complete.
Twenty three of the twenty six films selected will compete for the festival's highest prize, the Golden Bear. (Three films will be shown out of competition.)
The films are from 18 countries; 19 are world premieres, two are directing debuts.
The Korean star director Kim Ki-Duk will present the world premiere of his film Samaria in which two teenage girls turn to prostitution to earn money for a trip to Europe.
Another world premiere screening in the Competition is the Hong Kong production 20:30:40 by Sylvia Chang. Set in the bustling city of Taipei, the film details the travails of three women in different phases of their lives. Director Sylvia Chang, who is herself an extremely popular actress and entertainer in Asia, co-stars in her own film with Ren Liu and Lee Sinje.
Two productions in the competition represent the Festival's special focus on Latin America this year:
Daniel Burman, one of the stars of New Argentine Cinema, will present the world premiere of El abrazo partido. His protagonist's world is the small, seedy shopping center in Buenos Aires where his mother runs a laundry -- a world of despair and decay from which many young people try to escape by reclaiming the nationality of their European ancestors.
The U.S./Colombian co-production Maria Full of Grace, by Joshua Marston, tells the story of seventeen-year-old Maria, from a small town near the Columbian capital of Bogota, who feels oppressed by the strict work regime at a flower plantation and the cramped situation of her family. In a desperate attempt to escape these conditions, she becomes a drug runner. Produced by Paul Mezey with funding from HBO, Maria Full of Grace debuted in Competition at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
The 26-year-old American director Omar Naim, who was born in Lebanon, will present the world premiere of his directing debut, a science-fiction thriller entitled The Final Cut. Alan Hackman (Robin Williams) works in a new field of technology. Anyone who has enough money can have a chip implanted which is capable of storing all the emotions and experiences of a lifetime. Hackman is a pro at his job, but one day when he is editing the memories of a stranger, he comes across "footage" from his own childhood. Robin Williams, Jim Caviezal and Mira Sorvino co-star.
Among the other American films in competition are Patty Jenkins's directing debut Monster, featuring Charlize Theron; Nancy Meyers's Somethings Gotta Give, starring Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Keanu Reeves and Frances McDormand; Ron Howard's The Missing, with Kate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones; Antonine Fuqua's concert film Lightning in a Bottle featuring blues legends B.B. King, Solomon Burke, Natalie Cole and The Neville Brothers, which was filmed live at Radio City Music Hall; and Richard Linklater's Before Sunset which reunites audiences with the protagonists from Before Sunrise, winner of a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 1994. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) meet again in Paris, nearly ten years after their romantic encounter in Vienna, and spend an afternoon together. Before Sunset is a world premiere in Competition.The Competition will conclude with the world premiere of the Belgian-French-Spanish co-production 25 degres en hiver by Stephane Vuillet. His first full-length feature film is an urban road movie with comic undertones featuring Jacques Gamblin, winner of a Silver Bear for acting in 2002, along with Carmen Maura, Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Raphaelle Molinier.
The award ceremony of the 54th Berlin International Film Festival will be held on February 14, 2004.
The complete program of the Competion:
20:30:40, Sylvia Chang, Taiwan/Hong Kong
25 degres en hiver/25 Degrees in Winter, Stephane Vuillet, Belgium/France/Spain
Ae Fond Kiss, Ken Loach, Great Britain
Beautiful Country, Hans Petter Moland, Norway/USA. Starring Nick Nolte, Tim Roth and Damien Nguyen. (Sony Pictures Classics)
Before Sunset, Richard Linklater, USA (Warner Independent Pictures)
Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella, USA (out of competition, opening night)
Confidences trop intimes/Intimate Strangers, Patrice Leconte, France
Country of my Skull, John Boorman, Great Britain
Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder/Nightsongs, Romuald Karmakar, Germany
El Abrazo Partido/Lost Embrace, Daniel Burman, Argentina
Feux rouges/Red Lights, Cedric Kahn, France
The Final Cut, Omar Naim, USA
Forbrydelser/In Your Hands, Annette K. Olesen, Denmark
Gegen die Wand/Head-On, Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey
La vida que te espera/Your Next Life, Manuel Gutierrez Aragon, Spain
Lightning in a Bottle, Antoine Fuqua, USA (out of competition) (Sony Pictures Classics)
Maria Full of Grace, Joshua Marston, USA/Columbia
The Missing, Ron Howard, USA
Monster, Patty Jenkins, USA
Om jag vander mig om/Daybreak, Bjorn Runge, Sweden
Primo Amore/First Love, Matteo Garrone, Italy
Samaria/Samaritan Girl, Kim Ki-Duk, Korea
Something's Gotta Give, Nancy Meyers, USA (out of competition)
Svedoci/Witnesses, Vinko Bresan, Croatia
Trilogia: To livadi pou dakrisi/Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow, Theo Angelopoulos, Greece/France
Triple Agent, Eric Rohmer, France
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/21/2004 11:17:50 AM
NEW HORIZONS
As reported on Ratchet Up, John Schott's excellent blog about digital arts and culture, Hans Nyberg's panoramas using Quicktime are a real treat.
"This 360-degree Quicktime image of Mars has to be some kind of a landmark in photography, taking its place in a line that goes back to the great landscape photographers of the American west. Posted, ironically, as a new form of digital image display in the same week that Kodak announces it will no longer make traditional film cameras for the U.S. market."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/20/2004 04:28:39 PM
A debut feature 19 years in the making, Jonathan Caouette's "brutal and spellbinding musical-docudrama" Tarnation premiered as a rough cut at Mix 2003 and screens in the Frontier section of this year's Sundance Film Festival. (Tarnation was substantially reedited following its debut at Mix, and is tipped for the Director's Fortnight at Cannes following its screening in Park City.)
As per the Mix Festival's write-up: "Tarnation weaves a psychotronic whirlwind of snapshots, Super-8 home movies, old answering machine messages, video diaries, early short films, snippets of '80s camp pop culture and dramatic reenactments drawn from Caouette's entire life."
"It's kind of a fucked-up genius documentary/drama," says John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angy Inch), who signed on as an editorial consultant after seeing an early version of the film. "[Jonathan] sent in an audition tape for my latest film that incorporated footage from Tarnation and it blew me away," says Mitchell. "He's been documenting his life with his beautiful, tragic, schizophrenic mom since he was 10 and this film is the incredible result. Example of a typical scene: a video diary entry of Jonathan at 11 in drag as his mother talking to the camera about being beaten up by her new boyfriend. He's been working on the film for many years and it was made on Apple's iMovie (editing, effects, sound & mix!) for about 200 bucks and change. He lives with his mom and boyfriend in Queens, New York now and has been supporting them -- as well as a son from a former marriage -- as a 5th Ave. boutique doorman. He had to quit to edit and is hoping they'll take him back (they have a good health plan).""I think Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation is the shit," adds Gus Van Sant, the film's executive producer. "I have always been waiting to see someone make something as moving as Jonathan's film with as little as he has had to make it. I knew something like this would appear, and I am glad that is has finally has."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/20/2004 02:13:28 PM
After reportedly receiving threats of intimidation from conservative religious groups, Madstone Theaters has cancelled its upcoming Salt Lake City engagement of TLA Releasing's newest film, Latter Days, which tells the story of a young closeted Mormon who falls in love with another man while serving his missionary assignment in Los Angeles.
"We are extremely upset that Latter Days currently has no venue to premiere in Salt Lake City," says Raymond Murray, President of TLA Releasing.
"We picked up the film through our partnership with production company Funny Boy Films, because of writer-director C. Jay Cox's amazing ability to tell a story about a man's struggle in dealing with his sexuality and faith, a subject many gays and lesbians can certainly relate to."Latter Days, the directorial debut of C. Jay Cox (writer of Sweet Home Alabama), had been scheduled to open simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City on Friday, January 30. TLA Releasing reportedly received a phone call from Madstone Theaters saying that they were canceling the film's opening date in Salt Lake City because the company was being threatened with boycotts, protests and membership cancellations from religious groups.
Sources at TLA report that Madstone president Thomas Gruenberg confirmed the threats but denied that they were the cause of the cancellation. "Gruenberg claimed that Latter Days failed to meet the company's standards of 'artistic quality and integrity,' and that the film failed to tell a story that was sufficiently 'compelling' or 'gripping.'"
The release of Latter Days in Madstone Theaters outside of Salt Lake City, however, are still scheduled.
"I find it quite sad that any conservative group would attempt to take such a choice away from the people of Salt Lake City," says Cox. "I truly hope that we will be allowed to screen this movie and give people the opportunity to discuss the issues it raises and to judge its 'artistic quality and integrity' for themselves."
For other news about Mormons and film, check out Ed Halter's fascinating article "Missionary Positioning", about the "unprecedented surge in features films made by Mormans, for Mormans, and set within the Morman World," in this week's Village Voice.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/20/2004 12:16:55 PM
SUNDANCE ACQUISITIONS
Fox Searchlight Pictures and Miramax Films announced yesterday at the Sundance Film Festival that they have aligned with one another to create an unprecedented joint acquisitions agreement for the worldwide distribution rights to Garden State, the directorial debut feature from Zach Braff (television's "Scrubs"), who also wrote the screenplay and stars in the film along with Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard and a strong ensemble cast. (Variety reported that the companies paid $5 million for the film.)
Miramax and Fox Searchlight will share equally in the film's worldwide revenues, and the two companies are currently discussing which entity will distribute in which territory worldwide, based on their respective resources and desires. The film is produced by Camelot Pictures' partners Gary Gilbert and Dan Halsted, along with Pamela Abdy and Richard Klubeck. The film was executive produced by Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher. The film is a romantic comedy about a guy who returns to his hometown for the first time in ten years to attend the funeral of his clinically depressed mother, a journey of self-discovery that reconnects him with the world he left behind and gives him a chance to find love in an unexpected place.
Other Sundance acquistions include Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries, based on Ernesto Che Guevara's autobiographical book The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America, in which a young Che describes his race around South America on a Norton 500 motorbike (nicknamed "The Mighty One") with a best buddy, Alberto Granado, in 1952, making sweeping generalizations along the way on everything from the political underpinnings of Chile to the civility of the police in Peru. Focus Features reportedly paid between $3 and $4 million dollars for the film, which stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna and was executive produced by Robert Redford.Sony Pictures Classics picked up Stacey Peralta's Riding Giants, about American surf culture and the advent of big-wave surfing, which opened the festival to great acclaim. Sony released Peralta's skateboarding doc Dogtown and Z Boys in 2001.
Napoleon Dynamite, the first feature from Jared Hess, who studied film at Brigham Young University, stars Jon Heder as Napoleon, a young man who spends his days drawing magical beasts, working on his computer hacking skills to impress the chicks, and begrudgingly feeding his grandma's pet llama, Tina. The film is an extension of Hess's short film Peluca, based on his experiences growing up in rural Idaho, which also featured Heder in the title role. Napoleon was bought by Fox Searchlight for $3 million following its debut in the Sundance Dramatic Competition.
And finally, Lions Gate Films has reportedly acquired worldwide rights for $2.5 million to Open Water, Chris Kentis's film about a scuba-diving couple who find themselves stranded in a shark-infested ocean. The film, which premiered at the 2003 Hamptons International Film Festival, opened Sundance's American Spectrum section.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/19/2004 12:18:40 PM
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