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ON THE COUCH
At Filmmaker, we've interviewed documentarian Joe Berlinger and his partner Bruce Sinofsky several times over the years, and the two are always great explicators of the filmmaking process. Now Berlinger with co-writer Greg Milner has authored Metallica: This Monster Lives, the story of his and Berlinger's making of the rock'n'roll-meets-therapy doc. And if you bookmark this blog page and skip over Filmmaker's home page, then you've probably missed this downloadable Chapter Five book excerpt, in which Berlinger talks about submitting himself to therapist Phil Towle to discuss his post-Blair Witch 2 issues.Also worth noting in our on-line features section is Jeremiah Kipp's interesting interview with Jim Van Bebber about his cult epic The Manson Family.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 11/13/2004 02:39:57 PM Comments (0)
TRANSLATION
I received the following e-mail recently and have decided to pass it on in the event that an enterprising filmmaker or two may want to take advantage of Valerie's offer to translate their film into French:
"Hello,
I'm a French student in my fourth year of college and I have to do a translation paper (60 to 80 pages long) which can be made of several short film translations or/and analysis of it. I would love to translate an English short film into French. I can not find in France any English short film and i wanted to know if you had any idea of a filmmaker who would allow me translate his short film, someone I could get in touch with. I am very open minded concerning the type of film ( except horror or extreme genres). I would need both the film and the script and it's very hard to find via the Internet.
I thank you for the attention you have paid to my request."
Valerie
zazouille2000@aol.com
zazouille2000_1@hotmail.com
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 11/11/2004 10:52:29 AM Comments (0)
One New York indie I've been tracking over the last year is Kevin Jordan's Lobster Farm, the story of two generations of one Brooklyn family struggling to hold onto the family business, a Sheepshead Bay lobster shop. Jordan's previous pic, Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire, received much festival acclaim, and as he readies his new one for a fest premiere, he's already picked up one high-profile supporter. Reports Michael Fleming in Variety, Martin Scorsese has agreed to put his "Martin Scorsese presents" label on the film, assuring it some degree of critical buzz. Jordan connected with Scorsese when he was a student at NYU; he sent him one of his student shorts and Scorsese liked it enough to give him a scholarship and invite him onto the set of Kundun.Lobster Farm stars Danny Aiello and Jane Curtin and was filmed at a real lobster store, which happens to be owned by Jordan's parents. He says profits from the independently financed film will go towards saving the store, which, paralleling the film's storyline, is up for auction.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 11/11/2004 01:18:28 AM Comments (0)
CELLUAR ENTERTAINMENT
Via Variety comes this interesting subscription-only piece announcing a new spin-off for Fox's espionage TV series 24 which reachers viewers via cell-phone.
Writes Josef Adalian, "In a first-of-its-kind deal for a U.S. TV studio, 20th Century Fox TV has greenlit production of a live-action 24 spinoff skein that will be produced exclusively for cell phone users. Dubbed 24: Conspiracy, the show -- featuring original characters separate from the Fox TV skein -- will unfold over 24 roughly one-minute episodes; one seg will be downloaded to subscribers' phones every week."
Premiering in the U.K., where cell phone use and 3G technology is more established than in the States, in January, the series is expected to hit American users in the spring or summer.
Continues the trade, "Industry soothsayers are already predicting so-called '3G' cell phones will open up a significant new market for studios and networks. In the same way American Idol helped text messaging take off in the U.S., it's expected that within a few years, it won't be uncommon for consumers to watch videoclips or entire mini-shows and movies on their phones. One Swedish broadcaster attracted thousands of subscribers to a cell phone live feed of Big Brother.
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 11/10/2004 11:34:43 AM Comments (0)
THE FOREIGNNESS OF FILM
In B. Ruby Rich's keynote address on the State of Cinema at the 2004 San Francisco International Film Festival, she writes: "In an environment in which marketing drives film exhibition, consider the notion that film festivals have become a global circuit that competes with Hollywood's marketing juggernaut -- an alternate worldwide circuit that allows films outside the U.S. to find recognition. And Audiences. Awards. Buzz. Marketability. Fame and renown. The film festival circuit is the cultural World Cup, unpredictable in its stars and scores, exciting, with a climax of national triumph and personal victory... Consider the film festival as a political intervention into the market monopoly, a thorn in the side of [former MPAA head] Jack Valenti, a counter-offensive of imagination and difference. And of language, above all language. Cinematic language, yes, but also the language spoken by those billions of the people in the world who do not speak English. 'Everyone in the world is basically the same,' my partner Mary's mother loves to say, she who hardly ever travels. And Mary, who has always traveled, always answers, 'No mother, they are all different.'"
"I've recently written a chapter for a new anthology, Subtitles, edited by filmmaker Atom Egoyan and Canadian scholar Ian Balfour," writes Rich, "on the subject of the foreignness of foreign films. I have been fascinated by a U.S. phenomenon of the past two decades: the crafting of film trailers that make it appear that films from Italy, say, or Japan, actually have English as their dialogue language. Not dubbed, but not subtitled either. What on earth do American audiences think? For that essay, I've studied the marketing habits of the '80s and '90s, interviewed some of the principals, and drawn some conclusions of my own about the connection between the monolingual habits of my country and its foreign-policy disasters."
In Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film (Alphabet City Media book with The MIT Press, 544 pages, $35), an indispensable and provocative addition to the small canon of books dealing with cinema as a global cultural artifact, Egoyan and Balfour take B. Ruby Rich's position even further: "Every film is a foreign film," they write, "foreign to some audience somewhere -- and not simply in terms of language, The essays, interviews, and artworks in this collection [by Russell Banks, Patricia Rozema, Claire Denis, Jorge Luis Borges, Raymond Bellour, Hamid Nanficy, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Slavoj Zizek, Issac Julien, B. Ruby Rich, Jack Lewis and John Greyson, among many others] take the figure of the subtitle as a point of departure in exploring the idea and varieties of foreignness in film."
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 11/8/2004 03:47:34 PM Comments (0)
Chris Gore, author of The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide (Lone Eagle Publishing Company, $21.95), has been chosen as a keynote speaker at the inaugural International Film Festival Summit, which takes place at the Hudson Hotel in NYC from December 7-8.
"Film festivals are exploding across the United States and worldwide," said Gore, "so it's about time the industry had its own event. The economic benefits for cities lucky enough to have a hot film festival are obvious, and the benefits to independent filmmakers seeking adoring audiences are enormous."
According to a press release: "The International Film Festival Summit will be the largest ever gathering of professionals from the film festival industry. This is not a place to watch films or meet with filmmakers, but a place where film festival professionals, local government and corporate marketing executives can dialog with their peers, share insights and gain knowledge that will help them grow their film festival and keep it thriving or help understand the value of festival sponsorship opportunities and the impact on economic growth in communities.
Festival founder Todd Brockman from the Entertainment Technology Alliance has been going to major film festivals for over thirteen years and he realized that there was a need to build stronger alliances if the festival community is going to continue growing at the rate that it currently is. According to Brockman, "The film festival industry needs a way to share information and create better efficiencies, it is our intention that this annual event will create an environment where everyone is welcome to collaborate, learn, and share information."
Lone Eagle Publishing Company is part of the publishing division of IFILM Corp., which was purchased earlier this year by The Hollywood Reporter.
# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 11/8/2004 11:25:40 AM Comments (0)
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