The Structured Finance Institute (SFI) has announced the schedule for its 5th Annual Film & Television Finance Summit, March 7 - 9, 2005, at the Regency Hotel in New York.

"This conference brings together a senior roster of international film finance professionals. These financiers, independent producers, legal advisors, and studio executives provide 'hands-on' practical experience and technical knowledge on how to obtain financing for film projects."

Among the topics the finance summit is expected to cover are:
- Utilizing commercial bankers to secure financings
- Examining how Investors can minimize their risk in investing in film
- U.S. state and federal tax incentives for film and TV production
- What's happening in the domestic and international film finance markets
- The role of music rights in increasing the worth of a film

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/31/2005 06:21:00 PM Comments (2)

Barry Le Va, who is the subject of a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania entitled Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va, on view through April 3, "has used broken glass, meat cleavers, wool felt, ball bearings, powdered chalk, cast concrete, paper towels, linseed oil, a typewriter and a gun, among other things, to make his art," which is "synonymous with the scatter -- a Postminimal gesture now ubiquitous to Postmodern art," according to a recent press release.

"Part of a generation intent on knocking art off its pedestal, Le Va claimed the floor as his field of operations by scattering massive amounts of materials, or forms, to create works which he called 'distributions.' Apparently random, even chaotic, these installations are in fact premeditated and executed according to plan. Not surprisingly, drawing plays a significant role in the work of this artist whose formative training is in architecture.

But perhaps surprisingly, film also serves as a key reference point for Le Va, "who cites Peter Greenaway, Jean-Luc Godard and Orson Welles among the directors whose work he had looked at intensely over the years."

In conjunction with the ICA exhibition, International House, Philadelphia will present a screening of Welles's The Lady from Shanghai on Wednesday, February 2 at 7 p.m., preceded by an introduction by Timothy Corrigan, professor of English and director of cinema studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

"A classic film noir expose of the evils of greed and lust... Welles's oratory on sharks in The Lady from Shanghai is as thrilling as the final shootout in a Hall of Mirrors -- an imagery that evokes Le Va's art", such as the piece "On Center Shatter -- or --Scattershatter (within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts" (pictured, top right), from 1968-71.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/31/2005 02:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Cinema is full of failed literary adaptations, attempts by famous directors to translate the work of their favorite novelists into images and screen action. Most of these films crash, however, by the sheer weight of their ambition. Tackling a writer's best known book, they invariably disappoint his or her hardcore partisans when what's particularly riveting about the work becomes less interesting when it's visualized.

Japanese director Jun Ichikawa avoided all of the Great Author-to-Film pitfalls with his Tony Takitani, an adaptation of a story by the great Haruki Murakami. Not so much a film as a celluloid ode to Murakami and his oeuvre, Tony Takitani is based on a slender short fiction but the material somehow encapsulates many of the author's recurring themes: loneliness, the loss of a wife, cultural estrangement, jazz, and even a fetish for designer clothing. The story is a simple one. Tony Takitani, an industrial illustrator, has a quiet life and beautiful wife. His only problem is her shopping addiction, which consumes much of his money. And her racks of designer-wear take up a separate room in his house. After her accidental death, Takitani tries to escape his depression by hiring a housegirl who he'll pay to wear his dead wife's clothes. Of course, such coping mechanisms are not so simple...

Ichikawa captures Murakami's essence by overlaying his hypnotic prose, in voiceover, over a series of tableaus, each containing a single dramatic moment which is often filmed in one shot. The camera dollies left-to-right from one tableau to the next, giving the film the feel of a particularly elegant graphic novel. There's little dialogue, but sometimes the voiceover will break and the next line will be said by the actor in the scene. Throughout it all Ryuichi Sakamoto's jazz piano winds its way, announcing a theme, departing from it, and then welcoming us back to its emotional space at a key moment in the story. (The film is also a model of low-budget ingenuity, using archival stills to zip through period backstories and using one single set, continually redressed, for all of its interior locations.)

I'm sure that there are filmmakers after such Murakami classic novels as Hard-Boiled Wonderland or even his new Kafka on the Shore, but I can't imagine any of them being more successful at capturing his particular voice within a different medium than Ichikawa. His Tony Takitani will be released by Strand this June.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/27/2005 01:41:00 AM Comments (2)

Saw back to back screenings in the Sundance "experimental" Frontier section to kick off my festival moviewatching this year. Frequently ignored by most industry, the Frontier section always contains a few real discoveries by filmmakers the fest tags as "experimental" but who will go on to make the mark in the indie scene. A few years ago J.T. Petty debuted his chillingly simple near-silent ghost story Soft for Digging in the section and last year Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation screened there as well.

This year the Frontier "filmmaker to watch" may be Kyle Henry, whose Room is an excellently directed and acted portrait of a working-class woman's flight from the reality of her Texas home and family life to some kind of "Destination: Metaphor" in New York City.

Henry previously worked as an editor -- he cut Eric Eason's feature Manito -- and the film pulls you along with a sophisticated montage that overlays the "white noise" of daily terror alerts and Iraq war news onto this lower-class bingo parlor worker's (played superbly by Cyndi Williams) quotidian existence. After suffering a series of blackouts, she impulsively abandons her husband and kids and hops a plane to the big city where she looks for some kind of white and open interior space she's imgained in her mind's eye.

At the Q and A, Henry referenced Carl Jung and spoke of his desire to make cinema that was "like a dream" and which could "allow a personal interpretation" for each viewer. Central to Henry's film is the idea that changes in politics and technology can trigger personal change as well, a thought that figures in novels by Don Delillo and philosophical science fiction but which rarely is referenced in a feature film.

As the film progresses, though, its ties to a physical reality become increasingly tenuous, and it ends with a 2001-ish headscratcher. Given the clarity of the film's first act, with its incisive portrait of working-class America, it is disappointing when Room ultimately gets lost within a fun-house New York and its own very abstract metaphors. Despite this final detour, however, I recommend Room and think that Henry is a director to watch.

A single room -- in this case, a particularly disgusting and fetid one -- is the sole locale for Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley's Sugar, which plays like a Cinema of Transgression remake of Roman Polanski's Repulsion. There's virtually no dialogue to this tale of a single woman who rents a decaying street-level apartment, finds a body in a crawlspace and gradually loses her mind. Jumping back and forth from color to scratchy black and white, its camera slowly tracking over piles of trash, peeling wallpaper, dirty dishes and undefinable stains over a soundtrack drone by J.G. Thirwell, it's almost as much a filmed gallery installation as a feature narrative. (In addition to making several short films, the directors have exhibited visual art pieces around the world.) But while the relentless Sugar can be hard to sit through at times, it makes a virtue of its theatricality and contains genuinely terrifying sequences -- I was on the edge of my seat during one disturbing interlude in which our heroine of sorts becomes slowly trapped by a puddle of seeping water and a thrashing electric fan. Recommended.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/27/2005 01:08:00 AM Comments (0)

For years, the only op-ed conservative voice I've enjoyed has been William Safire's at the New York Times, and this is despite the fact that I disagree with many of his positions. So, I took note of the columnist's four-piece departure in the Paper of Record this past Monday and recommend, while it's still free, this final column and thoughtful discussion of the need for perpetual personal change.

Writes Safire:

Combine those two bits of counsel - never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping - and you can see the path I'm now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy.

We're all living longer. In the past century, life expectancy for Americans has risen from 47 to 77. With cures for cancer, heart disease and stroke on the way, with genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and organ transplants a certainty, the boomer generation will be averting illness, patching itself up and pushing well past the biblical limits of "threescore and ten."

But to what purpose? If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind....

In this inaugural winter of 2005, the government in Washington is dividing with partisan zeal over the need or the way to protect today's 20-somethings' Social Security accounts in 2040. Sooner or later, we'll bite that bullet; personal economic security is freedom from fear.

But how many of us are planning now for our social activity accounts? Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind.

Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.

When you're through changing, learning, working to stay involved - only then are you through. "Never retire."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/26/2005 10:34:00 PM Comments (0)

The list of the 2005 Oscar nominees that was unveiled yesterday contained few surprises, several of them pleasant, like Catalina Sandino Moreno's nomination for Maria Full of Grace. Yet there were, in my opinion, several egregious omissions. The deserving Sideways was nominated for five Oscars, and that's great, but how could the Academy overlook Paul Giamatti, perhaps the most worthy member of that film's cast and crew?

Yet Giamatti's snub pales in comparison to what happened to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yes, Charlie Kaufman and Kate Winslet got nods, but the fact that Michel Gondry, Jim Carrey and the film's producers were overlooked for Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture, respectively, is unconscionable. The film is a groundbreaking, near-flawless work, and a stunning example of how technical know-how (which Gondry's got in spades) and nonlinear storytelling can inform and enhance -- not obscure, as is so often the case -- emotional and narrative clarity. And Carrey is a revelation in a performance that is at once understated and heartbreaking. Eternal was also shut out of all the technical achievement categories. Oh well.

# posted by Matthew Ross @ 1/26/2005 01:08:00 PM Comments (0)

"They may as well salute Al Qaeda," a guy sitting behind me at the 40 Shades of Blue press screening quite sincerely grumbled after seeing one of the "Independent" mini-trailers that precede all of the screenings here. These short films, which basically serve as cinematic headers for a credit roll of festival sponsors, occupy a strange place in the festival each year. They're intended to be amusing but innocuous -- little film tidbits to reinforce the idea that "You are at a Film Festival!" -- but their sheer repetition invariably transforms them into gauche cinematic eyesores by festival's end.

This year, the grumbles are starting a bit earlier. "Don't you think there's something weirdly condescending about these spots?" a journalist friend asked me at one screening today. And then there was the guy with the "Al Qaeda" comment, who prompted a whole row of journalists to burst out laughing.

What are these spots? They're these cut-out animation pieces by team at Jib Jab in which people in various professions explain why they're "independent," and they end with this happy music with lyrics like, "He's not working for the Man, he's an independent guy!" The thing is, in the spots I've seen so far, "independence" usually equates to incompetence or criminally malicious behavior. The "independent road striper" paints zig-zag lines all over the highway causing cars to crash and fly off the mountain. And in the "independent demolition expert" spot, which prompted the "Al Qaeda" crack, an Afro'd blaxploitation queen demonstrates her "independence" at blowing up buildings, wrecking a suburban home and then accidentally blowing herself up. And again, the music, this time with a 70's funk arrangement -- "She's not working for the Man, she's independent!" -- after which all the corporate logos appear. To make things perfectly clear, the spots start with letters forming the word "Independent" appearing on screen after which some fade away leaving only the letters forming "Inept." And who said irony was dead?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/23/2005 03:18:00 AM Comments (0)

From a press release rceived today: "National Video Resources (NVR) [has] announced that 16 film, video and media artists will be awarded grants to aid with the completion, transfer and marketing of their projects. Through its Program for Media Artists, NVR will provide 12 technical assistance grants of $1,500 each, two of which for the first time are being given to preserve and archive the projects of past Fellowship recipients that have passed on. Additionally, 4 artists will receive in-kind Web assistance grants for Web site development.

Technical Assistance Grants

Kelly Anderson/Tami Gold
$1,500 towards Spanish translation and subtitling of Every Mother's Son, a documentary about an emerging movement of mothers in NYC whose sons have been victims of the police and who contest official accounts of what happened. The subtitling will help reach Spanish-speaking audiences as part of a community engagement project.

Carlos Avila
$1,500 toward the re-mastering and DVD authoring of Foto-Novelas, a series of short stories that use magical realism, science fiction and fantasy to show life in the Latino community. The preservation in DVD will allow the project to become part of the collection of media libraries across the country.

Seoungho Cho
$1,500 documentation of Desert Project/Death Valley, installation video works about California's Death Valley. Proper documentation will enable the filmmaker to continue promoting the work among galleries, museums and other exhibit spaces in the U.S. and abroad.

Curtis Choy
$1,500 will go toward music composition and acquisition for the feature-length documentary What's Wrong With Frank Chin?, about the controversial pioneer of Asian-American literature, theater and film.

Simin Farkondeh
$1,500 to finalize the postproduction of her narrative feature Who Gives Kisses Freely From Her Lips, a film that looks at temporary marriage in today's Iran.

Thomas Allen Harris
$1,500 for promotion and marketing materials for Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, a film based on the stories of the first twelve South African exiles who left their country in 1960 to keep the anti-apartheid movement alive, among them the filmmaker's stepfather.

Mitko Panov
$1,500 to contribute to the creation of a Web site for Comrades, a documentary portrait of war and friendship in which the filmmaker returns to the former Yugoslavia to find out what became of his young army friends. The Web site would provide an interactive version of the film.

Renee Tajima Pena
$1,500 towards finishing the on-line editing of Calavera Highway, a documentary that traces the odyssey of brothers Armando and Carlos Pena as they carry their mother's ashes back home to South Texas.

Janice Tanaka
$1,500 that will go toward post-production expenses, including digital effects and audio mix of Swimming in Air, an experimental narrative that examines the subject of women and aging. The film is in the final stages before being completed.

Bruce Yonemoto
$1,500 towards transferring to DVD the video and audio materials of Silicon Valley, a multimedia installation in which the atom bomb becomes a symbol of the obliteration of the past by technological progress. The original material exists on Laser Disc and re-mastering to DVD will ensure its preservation and distribution.


Two Technical Assistance Grants were awarded towards the preservation and archiving of Fellowships funded projects by deceased Fellows Juan Downey and Marlon Riggs:

Juan Downey
$1,500 for the re-mastering of Hard Times and Culture, a video work that analyzes history to provide an understanding of the artist's role in society. The re-mastering to Digital Beta will ensure the preservation and proper archiving of Mr. Downey's work.

Marlon Riggs
$1,500 will go toward the preservation of Color Adjustment, a film that illustrates the history of prime-time television's reflection of race and race relations in the U.S. The original tape masters need careful cleaning and re-mastering to ensure the proper archiving of Mr. Riggs' legacy.


In-Kind Web Assistance

In-Kind Web site Assistance (provided by the Program for Media Artists' Web site developer) offers design and technical services free of charge for basic Web site development, implementation or upgrading of a Web site for a Fellowships-funded project or for a Web site promoting the artist and his/her work.

Jem Cohen
Creation of a Web site for the artist, incorporating primarily information about the Fellowships-supported project, Lost Book Found, a visual essay about life in NYC. In addition, the Web site will provide information about screenings and distribution of the artist's body of work.

Sam Green
Creation of a Web site for the Fellowship's funded project The Universal Language, a documentary about idealism and global utopian vision through the lens of Esperanto, the universal language created in the 19th century to end cultural conflicts.

Kathy High
Creation of a promotional Web site for the artist, with particular focus on the Fellowships-funded project, Animal Attraction, a documentary that explores interspecies telepathic communication and leads to discoveries about the complex relationship between people and animals.

Susan Meiselas
Creation of a Web site that will promote at the same time that it serves as archive for the Fellowships-supported project Kurdistan (www.akakurdistan.com), a collection of images from around the world that form a living testimony to the long, suppressed history of the Kurds.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/20/2005 04:45:00 PM Comments (1)

A little over a year ago Filmmaker ran a feature entitled "Who Inspires Us?" [Summer 2004] in which we asked filmmakers to list current inspirations on their own work. Manito director Eric Eason cited the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who was actually a recommendation to him from our own Managing Editor Matt Ross. Anyway, I hadn't read any of Murakami's work but the citing stuck in my head and I wound up buying his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle this fall at a time when I particularly needed something great to read. 600-plus pages later I'm a die-hard Murakami fan, and as I'm about to crack open his new Kafka on the Shore I receive an Indiewire news alert that Tony Takitani, the Jun Ichikawa picture based on a Murakami short story receiving its American premiere at Sundance has just been acquired by Strand Releasing.

Writes Tony Rayns in the London Film Festival catalog about the film, "It's almost unknown for Haruki Murakami to allow film adaptations of his fiction; there were two brilliant shorts by Naoto Yamakawa in the early 1980s, [Panya Shugeki (The Bakery Attack), based on "The Second Bakery Attack," and 1005 no Onna no Ko (The 100% Girl), based on "On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning" in A Fine Day for Kangarooing], and this equally brilliant feature by Jun Ichikawa is the first since then. ... Each shot is like a waking dream, many scenes are sequence-shots, most colour is drained away, and the soundtrack collages together dialogue and voice-over. It's certainly striking, but the key thing is that it coheres as a filmic equivalent of Murakami's deadpan prose. One of the films of the year, and Ryuichi Sakamoto's piano score is just perfect."

For a taste of Murakami's prose, click on the link above where Random House has posted the first five chapters of the new novel, or read the short story the film was based on in The New Yorker.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/19/2005 08:28:00 PM Comments (0)

Leave it to the boys at Vice magazine to compile a list of the best "outsider" video clips, a genre that has exploded thanks to the advent of cheap DV cameras, high-speed Internet connections, and more than a few bored film editors with access to company tape archives. If you like Jackass! -- or if you always wondered how Orson Welles made it through those embarrassing Paul Masson wine commercials in the early 80s -- you'll love these gems.

# posted by Matthew Ross @ 1/19/2005 01:18:00 PM Comments (0)

At Filmmaker we've been trying to figure out editorial synergies between our daily blog and our quarterly magazine, but the below is not exactly what we had in mind.

In the issue of the magazine that comes off the press today, attorneys Steven Beer and Maria Miles haved penned an article explaining the new Federal tax breaks for independent film, hailing it as a landmark windfall for independent film producers and investors. Today via Variety comes this disappointing article by William Triplett titled "Congress likely to take back indie tax break."

"Possibly as soon as next month, Congress will consider dramatically reducing two key provisions that independent film producers hailed as major victories in last year's corporate tax bill," writes Triplett.

"After years of lobbying, indies rejoiced upon learning in October that President Bush had signed the bill, which included a sweeping tax break for filmmakers and an incentive for financiers to invest in indie films. But congressional staff members now say the two provisions appear to be 'oversights' that should be 'corrected.'...

'This was a bona-fide tax subsidy to encourage film financing in the U.S.,' said Schuyler Moore, an entertainment industry tax expert. 'It's very hard to raise money for these films, and this is just what was needed'.... But Moore said he recently learned that Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation believes the provision was unintended, and that profits should be taxed at 35%, the normal income tax rate for million-dollar sums. 'If that happens, they will eliminate the tax-savings incentive for raising money,' Moore said. 'They said they want to amend the statute, but they might as well just repeal it.'"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/19/2005 01:12:00 PM Comments (0)

We were happy to read via Variety that former Miramax acquisitions exec Arianna Bocco, who recently left the company, has landed at Gershs' New York office where she will head "an independent feature film packaging unit" with a special emphasis on bringing international filmmakers into the Gersh fold. An admirably straight shooter in the tangled world of acquisitions, Bocco was a tenacious exec for both Miramax and her previous employer, New Line, and worked on such films as City of God.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/18/2005 10:37:00 PM Comments (0)

A pioneer of avant-garde cinema in the 1950s and author of Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets,
the notorious director Kenneth Anger returns to New York for a rare apearance this Thursday, January 20 to present four new films at the Museum of Modern Art as part of its ongoing Premieres series.

Anger, who the Guardian has described as an "auteur, occultist, Hollywood scandal-spreader" and "famously irascible old man," will introduce the premiere of his new work Mouse Heaven (2004), featuring the Mel Birnkrant colection of 1930s Disneyana, as well as The Man We Want to Hang (2002), Anger Sees Red (2004), and Elliott's Suicide (2004).

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/18/2005 03:34:00 PM Comments (0)

The Berlin International Film Festival has announced the projects selected to participate in its second annual Co-Production Market.

"Out of nearly 230 submissions, 24 projects have been selected with budgets between two and ten million euros, of which at least 30 percent had to be already in place. 'We've chosen exciting topics from around the globe and, from a cinematic perspective, interesting projects of all genres -- from historical thrillers to fantasy. At the moment, coming-of-age stories seem to be particularly in vogue,' says Sonja Moerkens, head of the Berlinale Co-Production Market."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/18/2005 01:26:00 PM Comments (0)

The enterprising and publicity-savvy filmmaking duo of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato have an entertaining Web site up for their Sundance entry Inside Deep Throat, a Brian Grazer-produced doc on the infamous porn film (number 50 on Filmmaker magazine's "50 Most Important Independent Films" list almost a decade ago) that will hit theaters this spring. The directors post a blog on the site as well as some interesting links, the most fascinating of which is this link to local Park City paper The Park Record. Titled "Sundance documentary reveals local's role in Deep Throat," the article is a portrait of local realtor Harry Reems. Yes, that Harry Reems. "He changed his life but not his name," the article says about the male lead in the most famous porn film of all times who now turns over condos in Park City.

Quoted in the article, Barbato points out that Reems, who was only paid $100 for his work in the film, is something of a "free speech hero" as it was he who was charged with "distributing obscene material" -- the only actor ever charged that way -- and who testified during the film's winning obscenity trial in Memphis.

Reems moved to Park City in 1986 -- "a low-bottom alcoholic, a blackout drinker," he says -- and after a run-in one night with Park City police joined the Park City Community Church, kicked booze, and married a local woman. The article says the producers flew Reems and his wife to L.A. recently to see the new documentary. "I am very impressed with it," Reems is quoted as saying. "The story is not the Harry Reems story, it is about Deep Throat and its effect on our culture."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2005 08:42:00 PM Comments (0)

I know as a blogger I'm supposed to ferret out obscure links from publications you've never heard of. But here I go again -- two links in a row from the New York Times. Still, if you're a producer you'll be interested in this sobering piece about Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8, proving that the producing biz is a tough one even if you're an Oscar-winning director and matinee-idol movie star.

An excerpt:

"[Says Soderbergh,] 'I think you could make an argument that it is not important to have too much taste as a producer if you are working for a large company. It's hard to find commercial stuff that doesn't make you feel bad in the morning.'

As such, producing quality movies, which means securing financing, overseeing scripts and coddling the insecure actress or director on set when needed, has proved a hard education for the two men. 'There is the weird paradox of having a company like this if the personalities are like mine and George's,' added Mr. Soderbergh. 'If you are going to do something and do it well, you have to apply yourself. But we both have day jobs. It has become overwhelming. We both talk about how can we sustain it. It's just such a mountain of work.'"

The piece goes on to talk about the financial risks involved in producing and gives another viewpoint on the much-discussed firing of writer/director Ted Griffin from Warner's Untitled Ted Griffin project. ("'It is a scarlet letter for the company,' Soderbergh said. 'It shouldn't have happened...')

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2005 01:05:00 PM Comments (0)

From a press release received earlier this week: "Writer/director/producer P. David Ebersole today announced the launch of Macrocosm, a new and innovative consortium of independent filmmakers and creative artists dedicated to bringing independent projects to stage, screen and television. With an open-ended organizational structure and the motto, 'Power in Numbers,' Macrocosm has been brought into being to build on the existing creative relationships of its core members in order to bring their projects to fruition. Macrocosm's kick-off will be celebrated at a party during the Sundance Film Festival on January 24... with an extravagant and flamboyant live concert by another Macrocosm member, singer/songwriter Jinx Titanic.

"In addition to Ebersole and Titanic, the founding Macrocosm members are writer/director Todd Hughes, producer Gwen Field, producer Carol Ann Shine, cinematographer/filmmaker Larra Anderson, writer/actress Jamie Tolbert, writer/director/performer Shaz Bennett, writer/director Tim Kirk, actor/producer Brian Newkirk, production designer/producer Candi Guterres (whose film, Between, is in competition in Sundance this year); and documentary filmmaker Julianna Brannum.

"With several projects in the works, the inaugural Macrocosm production is Hot Chicks, a live-action feature based on the religious comic book tracts from Jack Chick, with segments directed by Macrocosm members Ebersole, Franklin, Hughes, and Kirk. Self-financed by Macrocosm, Hot Chicks is currently in production, slated for festival release in 2005.

"Macrososm members Ebersole and Field are also announcing the financing of the film noir thriller, Oceanside, for Here!/Regent Entertainment, with Ebersole on board as writer/director, and Field as producer. In Oceanside, a crooked lawyer gets shot full of lead, and two men come in to confess, even though, apparently, neither one committed the crime.

"Other projects in the pipeline with Macrocosm members in key positions include:

Out There, a pilot in development at VH1, which Ebersole created, and for which he will be executive producer. Out There chronicles the trials and tribulations of a 15-year-old Jewish boy from the suburbs who has to attend a Catholic high school when his new school burns down. But that's the least of his problems, now that he's hitting puberty and can't decide if he likes girls...or boys.

The Creek Runs Red, a television documentary from director/producer Juliana Brannum. The ITVS-funded project examines Picher, Oklahoma, a mining town the EPA calls the most toxic place in America, and which a dwindling population still call home. Today the town is divided by fears of serious health risks, environmental politics, civic pride and old racial tensions between Indian and white society. The Creek Runs Red explores the human response to an environmental disaster and the complex connection between people and place.

After producing for the theatre, Brian Newkirk is producing his debut film, Dirty Back Roads, which he stars in and has co-written, with Todd Hughes directing. Think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Race With The Devil as two work partners, one gay and one straight, hit the road in an RV with their bickering spouses. When they witness what appears to be a Satanic sacrifice, the foursome find themselves on the run for their lives.

Following up on their Sundance hit Punks, Carol Ann Shine is set to produce Patrik-Ian Polk's new series, Noah's Arc, for MTV's new Logo Channel, [which last week announced the delay of its launch until June 2005]. Billed as America's first black gay series, the story revolves around a black gay man named Noah and his eclectic group of friends who are all 'in the life.' The premise: What if Queer As Folk met Sex In The City and crashed into Soul Food?

Jinx Titanic is the creator of The Jinx Titanic Variety Half Hour, currently in development with Killerpix Global Media Filmco. Is America ready for a wild rock and roll variety show featuring Chicago's openly gay punk rock sensation Jinx Titanic as host? Titanic and co-creator/executive producers Ebersole and Hughes say yes!"

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/17/2005 11:35:00 AM Comments (1)

Actor and director Crispin Glover has a Web site up for his latest feature What is It?, which looks like one particularly bizarre and interesting entry in what seems like a very strong Park City at Midnight lineup. (I've seen Old Boy, and it's pretty great, and while I'll write more about David Slade's Hard Candy later, I have a feeling that by fest's end folks will both be wondering why it wasn't in Competition and will be shortlisting actress Ellen Page as a future star.)

[N.B. the Quicktime movie trailer on Glover's site doesn't always work, possibly due to site traffic. Be persistent. It's worth it.]

As Trevor Groth writes in the Sundance catalogue: "After 10 years and numerous incarnations in the making, we are euphoric to present the world premiere of Crispin Hellion Glover's What Is It?... an aptly titled film that defies easy summarization but is a triumph of cinematic irreverence and uncompromising creativity.

"The film (which contains graphic sexuality) flows between controversial imagery and story lines: a minstrel in blackface who aspires to be an invertebrate by injecting snail enzymes into his cheek; a Shirley Temple dictator in Nazi garb; a naked man with cerebral palsy lying on a giant seashell, being fondled by a naked woman wearing a monkey mask; talking snails getting repeatedly salted; and watching over all, an enthroned Glover in a full-length fur coat.

"What Is It? is a Dadaist deconstruction of the hero's journey as well as a hallucinogenic trip deep into the mind of its bizarre creator. It is a thoroughly challenging visual experience as well as a compelling allegory for society and its outcasts. As the visual absurdity of the film rides along at a fever pitch, Glover's innate humanism injects the seemingly inhuman scenario with a deep pathos that captures the viewer' attention and consideration. Truly one of the most original films ever created, What Is It? will shock, intrigue, confound, disturb, and amaze even the most jaded viewers."

Another Sundance trailer on the Web is for John Maybury's The Jacket. Maybury, a British music-video director whose first feature, the Francis Bacon-biopic Love is the Devil I thought was pretty wretched, takes Adrian Brody and Keira Knightley through a dark time-travel storyline. The script's been floating around for a couple years and apparently Brody's character, originally a Vietnam war vet, is now a Gulf War veteran. The project has a trio of heavyweight producers: the Section 8 team (Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, and execs Jennifer Fox and Ben Cosgrove), Mandalay's Peter Guber, and the 2929 pair of Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner, among several others.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/16/2005 03:51:00 PM Comments (1)

Somehow, I don't think the folks at Apple promoting iMovie had this in mind.

From today's New York Times comes this very disturbing article by Fox Butterfield about the methods by which youth gangs are threatening grand jury witnesses. (Times registration required.) The article talks about a two-hour DVD doc entitled Stop Snitching being distributed "grass-roots style" in local neighborhoods which puts out a threatening message to witnesses of violent crime.

After detailing several instances where witnesses around the country have been murdered because of their grand jury testimony, the article notes:

"And in each city, CD's and DVD's titled Stop Snitching have surfaced, naming some people street gangs suspect of being witnesses against them and warning that those who cooperate with the police will be killed. To underscore its message, the Baltimore DVD shows what appears to be three dead bodies on its back cover above the words 'snitch prevention'... [The DVD] features young men smoking marijuana, flashing wads of $100 bills, waving guns and making violent threats, some against specific witnesses. 'He's a rat, a snitch,' one man sings, continuing with obscenities. 'He's dead because I don't believe he's from the 'hood.'

The maker of the DVD has said he was only documenting the attitudes and concerns of people in West Baltimore."

The article goes on to talk about the DVD's celebrity cameo:

"The DVD has drawn particular attention because of the appearance on it of Carmelo Anthony, 20, a National Basketball Association star with the Denver Nuggets who grew up in Baltimore. Mr. Anthony does not make any threats in the DVD.

Calvin Andrews, Mr. Anthony's agent, said, 'He was not aware a DVD was being produced. He was just hanging out with some guys from the neighborhood who had a video camera.' Mr. Andrews added of Mr. Anthony: 'He doesn't condone the message about intimidation.'"

A column by Gregory Kane in the Baltimore Sun details another side to the story:

"Rodney Bethea feels there's something not quite right with us media types. Bethea is the co-producer -- with Skinny Suge -- and editor of Stop Snitching. He sells the DVDs in his Frederick Road shop for 10 bucks a pop. Bethea isn't a happy camper these days. He feels the news media have misrepresented the video, which Bethea said was made for 'entertainment purposes' and is basically a documentary about what's happening on Baltimore's streets.

'It's no different than a documentary about a serial killer,' Bethea said Sunday afternoon inside the One Love Underground store. Bethea didn't say much more than that. In fact, he was reluctant to sell me a copy of Stop Snitching. His attorneys had advised him not to talk to the news media. Bethea was worried that there would be more misrepresentation of Stop Snitching. I assured him I wanted not only to get his side of the story, but to watch the video and judge for myself if folks have legitimate reason to worry."

Kane goes on to watch the video and while he does not exactly give it a "thumbs up," he does discuss how the threats contained within it are, in parts of the piece, clearly "nothing more than part of the macho posturing common to today's hip-hop culture."

Kane's article wraps up, though with a closer that has the punch of an urban-themed Ring:

"When I asked a group of six students at Southwestern High School if they had seen the video, five said they had. Two boys said Stop Snitching isn't the only video of its kind, that they're quite common and that they are the only type of movies they watch."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/16/2005 02:28:00 PM Comments (0)

A small addition to the world's very strange weather woes of the moment, this news out of Park City. One and possibly two skiers have been trapped in a giant landslide in Park City, Utah near the Canyons Resort, just days before this year's Sundance Film Festival.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/14/2005 06:45:00 PM Comments (1)

Well done piece by Eddie Borges in the New York Observer about Blueprint, the new New York-based collaboration between Initial Entertainment's Graham King and former Miramax exec Rick Schwartz, famous for his supporting role in Project Greenlight.

Writes Borges, "And so, earlier this year, Blueprint opened its sparsely furnished offices in a second-story loft overlooking Mercer Street in Soho, marking the arrival of a new big fish in the small pond of Manhattan's film world. For, despite the apparent frugality of its offices, as a subsidiary of Mr. King's Santa Monica-based film sales company, Initial Entertainment Group, which just secured a $220 million credit facility from J.P. Morgan Chase, Blueprint just became the best-financed independent film company in New York.

"Instead of using up their credit on fancy furnishings, the partners are spending their money on talent. They've signed development deals with Mr. DiCaprio, Mr. Scorsese, Johnny Depp and Nicole Kidman -- all of whom were nominated for Golden Globe awards earlier this month. They are already developing the novel Shantaram for Mr. Depp. It's about a heroin addict who escapes prison to become a doctor in Bombay and then a gun-runner in Afghanistan."

The piece goes on to detail Schwartz's rise at Miramax and his partnering with King in a breezy but relatively substantive piece on making a career in the film business.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2005 01:13:00 AM Comments (0)

Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, in his keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, said "2005 is going to be the year of high-definition video" according to MacCentral.

As per the Macworld site: "Jobs introduced Final Cut Express HD, a new High Definition version of Apple's mid-range prosumer/professional digital video editing capabilities. It adds LiveType for animated titling, Soundtrack for creating custom music soundtracks, integration with iMovie files, and project integration with Motion. Available in February, 2005, Final Cut Express HD will still cost $299.

"Sony President Kunitake Ando took the keynote stage after Jobs lauded Sony's new $3,499 HDV camcorder. He got laughs from the crowd after he noted that Jobs likes Sony products, but not all Sony products -- a sly reference to Sony's Connect music service, a direct competitor of Apple's iTunes Music Store.

"iMovie, the consumer-grade video editing application included with iLife, also gets the HD treatment."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/12/2005 03:53:00 PM Comments (16)

IFP/New York's Project Involve is a program "for filmmakers from cultural, racial and ethnic minorities, designed to foster mentorship and industry placement opportunities for mid-career filmmakers.

"Included in the program are a series of networking workshops with industry professionals on topics ranging from fundraising to distribution that promote new industry relationships for narrative and documentary filmmakers. Honorees meet writers, producers, directors, entertainment attorneys, cast members, talent agents, distribution companies, grant managers, sales agents, sound designers, composers etc. and learn from their experiences."

Application Deadline - Feb 1, 2005
Submission Guidelines and application form.

Information Session for Project Involve: New York
January 17, 2005 6-7 pm
IFP/New York Office
104 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10001
Email Pooja Kohli, IFP/NY Member Outreach Coordinator: pkohli@ifp.org

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/12/2005 02:07:00 PM Comments (0)

From January 19 - 21, 2005, New York's Scandinavia House will offer a unique opportunity to see films chosen by Nordic countries for consideration for the Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category -- including Aleksi Salmenpera's Producing Adults (Finland), Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions (Denmark), Hilmar Oddsson's Cold Light (Iceland), and Kay Pollak's As It Is In Heaven (Sweden).

Also, starting on February 2 through May 18, Scandinavia House presents a survey of recent Scandinavian cinema, including:

from Sweden, Mikael Hofstrom's Drowning Ghost on Feb. 2; Kristian Petri's Details on Feb. 9; and Colin Nutley's Paradise on Feb. 23

from Norway, Torun Lian's The Color of Milk on March 3; Petter Naess's Just Bea on March 9; and Morten Tyldum's Buddy on March 16;

from Finland, Markku Polonen's The Dognail Clipper on March 23; Perttu Leppa's Pearls and Pigs on March 30; and Johanna Vuoksenmaa's Upswing on April 6;

from Iceland, Hilmar Oddsson's Cold Light on April 13; Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's Niceland on April 20; and Ragnar Bragason's Love is in the Air on April 27;

and, from Denmark, Hella Joof's Oh Happy Day on May 4; Max Kestner's Blue Colar White Christmas on May 11; and Nikolaj Arcel's King's Game on May 18.

Tickets to screenings are $8.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/12/2005 01:22:00 PM Comments (0)

Filmmaker readers should check out two essential articles in the Village Voice this week by friends and colleagues Anthony Kaufman and Ted Hope. Both deal with the relationship between our current political climate and the state of indie filmmaking today.

Kaufman, who gives up his "NY Scene" column in our magazine this month due to his move to Chicago, asks the question, "Reagan-era callousness sparked an indie film renaissance. Will Bush 2 inspire another?" Kaufman's piece winds its way through discussions with Christine Vachon, James Schamus and Jeff Levy-Hinte before concluding with a trenchant inquiry by HBO's Colin Callendar: "Whether a Bush II cinematic renaissance arises out of technology-based grass-roots movements or from within the studio system itself, Callender places the onus on today's culture creators. 'What is an independent movie?' he asks. 'Is it about the artist as agent provocateur or the artist as apologist for the status quo?'"

In producer Ted Hope's piece, Hope remembers the politically engaged filmmaking of the '80s and '90s but doesn't seen a corresponding movement now:

"I have always felt the HIV scandal -- the government's complete indifference to everyone's health and life -- was a great stimulus to indie film production. Whether you were gay or straight, the message was clear in the Reagan-Bush era: The government not only didn't care about anyone who was different from the old boys, but actively wanted the 'outsiders' removed. Recognizing this neglect as an act of aggression encouraged all to embrace new aesthetics, new subjects, new methods, and new technology. The threat of extinction upped the urgency. You were either on the bus or a complete roadblock.

"Yet I have not felt a similar effect from the equally reprehensible policies of today, be it the invasion of Iraq, the blatant lies to the public, the inequitable redistribution of wealth, the hypocritical morality of the 'values' coalition, the invasion of our privacy and reduction of our civil rights, the continued neglect of Africa, the rise of American 'empire,' etc."

Kaufman's piece is more of a survey of viewpoints, opinions which open up onto some intriguing new ideas and directions of thought, while Hope's is both sober assessment and call to arms. Read them both and post your thoughts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/12/2005 01:20:00 AM Comments (0)

Ratchet Up has an interesting item on its site about new and unusual projection surfaces, including:


FogScreen, an invention that replaces a conventional screen with fog.

"The basic components of the [FogScreen] are a laminar, non-turbulent airflow, and a thin fog screen (or any particles) injected into and inside a laminar flow. Created this way, the fog screen is an internal part of the laminar airflow, and remains thin, crisp, and protected from turbulence.

"The FogScreen works very much like an ordinary screen in terms of projection properties. It can be used for both back- and front-projection"



I02 Technology's Heliodisplay -- an "interactive free-space display" or "floating touch screen" -- does away with the screen altogether, "[projecting] TV, streaming video and computer images into free space (i.e. mid-air).

"It's not a holograph. It's even possible to grab the free-floating image, or wrap your hand around it."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/10/2005 04:13:00 PM Comments (0)

The International Film Festival Rotterdam announced today that "Thirty-two short films from twenty-three countries have been selected for the [festival's] first TV5 Tiger Cub Awards Competition...

"The competition will be screened in five compilation programmes before a jury consisting of Kathleen Forde (USA, exhibitions and program coordinator for the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology in New York), Mariska Graveland (The Netherlands, journalist and film critic of Dutch monthly magazine 'De Filmkrant') and Kerry Laitala (USA, filmmaker and teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute).

"Three Tiger Cub Awards, to be presented during IFFR's Awards Ceremony on February 4, 2005, will come with a prize of Euro 3,000 each."

TV5 Tiger Cub Awards Competition, IFFR 2005

Competition Programme I

TOZ (DUST) - H. Fatih Kizilgok (14 min., 35mm, Turkey), world premiere
DIMMER - Talmage Cooley (12 min., video, USA), international premiere
ELENI'S OLIVES - Yianna Americanou (19 min., 35mm, Cyprus / UK), world premiere
BREGMAN, EL SIGUIENTE (AS FOLLOWS) - Federico Veiroj (13 min., 35mm, Spain), European premiere
SZERELEM MEG HAL (GETTING EVEN) - Barnabas Toth ( 29 min., video, Hungary), world premiere

Competition Programme II

A ESPERA (THE WAITING) - Ernesto Sollis (8 min., 35mm, Brazil)
LATA AT TSINELAS (CAN & SLIPPERS) - Khavn De La Cruz (2 min., video, Philippines) world premiere
ESH (THE DONKEY) - Areg Azatian (10 min., video, Armenia), world premiere
TLAHUELPUCHI - Fabiola del Carmen Ramos (8 min., video, Mexico), international premiere
SUBROSA - Karoe Goldt (3 min., video, Austria), world premiere
PJATNATCAT LET (FIFTEEN YEARS) - Aslan Galazov (18 min., 35 mm, Russia), world premiere
DAJANG SOEMBI: THE WOMAN WHO IS MARRIED TO A DOG - Edwin (7 min, video., Indonesia), international premiere
DA JANELO DE MEU QUARTO (FROM THE WINDOW OF MY ROOM) - Cao Guimaraes (5 min., 35mm, Brazil), international premiere
LA GUERRA DE LOS GIMNASIOS (THE WAR OF THE GYMS) - Diego Lerman (28 min., 35mm, Argentina)

Competition Programme III

CELLULE 719 (CELL 719) - Annik Leroy (15 min., video, Belgium), international premiere
NUUK - Thomas Koner (6 min., video, Germany), world premiere
LOY FAH (TO INFINITY AND BEYOND) - Sompot Chidgasornpongse (18 min., video, Thailand), international premiere
IN THE MIDST OF... - Pieter-Paul Mortier (18 min., video, Belgium), world premiere
BEACH BOYS VS GHETTO BOYS - Cory Arcangel (3 min., video, USA), international premiere
RIAU - Zai Kuning (30 min., video, Singapore / Indonesia), world premiere

Competition Programme IV

VEERE - David Lammers (10 min., 35mm, The Netherlands), world premiere
A TREE IN TANJUNG MALIM - Tan Chui Mui (24 min., video, Malaisia), European premiere
FARA BENE MIKLES (BEING GOOD AT MIKLES) - Christian Angeli (17 min., video, Italy)
SHENG RI (BIRTHDAY) - Bertrand Lee (30 min., 35mm, Singapore),

Competition Programme V

TUBE - Christopher Steele (8 min., 16 mm, UK), world premiere
RESONANCE OF TEARS - Atsuhiko Watanabe (11 min., video, France), world premiere
MIO FRATELLO YANG (YANG, MY BROTHER) - Gianluca & Massimiliano De Serio (15 min., 35mm, Italy), international premiere
NOC V HOTELI (NIGHT IN A HOTEL) - Matus Libovic (9 min., 35mm, Slovakia)
INTERLUDE - Joost van Veen (3 min., 16mm, The Netherlands), world premiere
NIGHT SCHOOL - Simon Green (14 min., video, UK), international premiere
RINGO - Conall Jones, Alfred Secombe (5 min., video, USA), international premiere
HANASHIM SHEL YOM SHLISHI (TUESDAY'S WOMEN) - Oded Binnun, Mihal Brezis (20 min., 35mm, Israel)

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/10/2005 02:40:00 PM Comments (1)

One topic Graham Leggat's Game Engine column in Filmmaker regularly returns to is the rise of "independent gaming" in the videogame world. Just as independent filmmakers reacted against studio monoliths in the '80s to start a new wave of indie production, there is now a slowly emerging groundswell of developers doing something similar in the world of videogaming.

From the Guardian's gaming weblog comes this beginning-of-the-year piece, "Nine Foolish Videogame Predictions for 2005." One of these predictions is "The Rise of the Indie Scene":

"The dominance of EA doesn't necessarily mean the death of smallscale videogame production. Far from it. independent developers who distribute their wares via download sites will find that the combination of exploding broadband use and consumer alienation with asinine sequels, licenses and entrenched genres, will provide them with a growing audience. Check out sites like DIYgames and MadMonkey for more info. This year may well see the first genuine breakthrough indie hit, perhaps something like Zap from GarageGames, a vector-based multiplayer shooter melding iconic eighties visuals with modern gameplay depth. All that's required is a little canny word of mouth marketing. And an astonishing game, of course."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2005 01:02:00 PM Comments (1)

23-year-old Cam Archer has created a series of surreal mini-films, "The Johnny Spots," to promote his latest film American Fame Pt. 2: Forgetting Jonathan Brandis, about the child former child actor who committed suicide last year. The film premieres at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

"I have my actors in the film wearing masks, writes Archer on his Web site. " I did this deliberately. I want people to see that fame, this thing (beast) that so many obsess over, is not as 'person specific' as we might think. Jonathan [Brandis] could've been any kid that got a lucky break and had pushy parents. So, once again, I had my main actor wear a faceless, or 'all-white' mask, the idea of it not really mattering as to what this character looked like underneath."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/07/2005 04:16:00 PM Comments (0)

The AFI Silver Theatre with XXIV/VII Africa will co-present a celebration of some of the best films from the Nigerian ("Nollywood") Film Industry, every Saturday at 5 p.m., from February 5 - 26.

It is the first-of-its-kind showcase of low-budget video films from Nigeria in a mainstream American theater. The series will include guest appearances and films by Tunde Kelani, Kingsley Ogoro, Charles Novia and Simi Opeoluwa.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/07/2005 03:42:00 PM Comments (0)

The organizers of the Berlin International Film Festival, February 10 - 20, 2005, have announced the first films in the lineup of the Panorama, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

According to the festival's press release, the organizers of Panorama 2005 sought to address the following questions: "What preoccupies contemporary filmmakers? What stories motivate them? Which life scripts do they pursue and which filmic forms do they use to tell them?"

The initial selection includes Kevin Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea, Ira Sach's Sundance-bound Forty Shades of Blue, and Sally Potter's latest film, Yes (pictured right), Childstar by Canadian director Don McKellar, and Bruce McDonald's The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/07/2005 02:30:00 PM Comments (0)

From a story in Variety:

"The porn industry's AVN Adult Entertainment Expo has always been a colorful, if slightly tawdry, event, a reliable resource for camera crews looking to goose news ratings in the name of covering the multibillion-dollar adult entertainment industry.

However, in what is the AEE's seventh year since splitting away from Las Vegas's concurrent Consumer Electronics Show, the porn event has begun to look a little more like Park City...

Like the Sundance Film Festival of a decade ago, the once scrappy trade show has begun to make big deals with corporate sponsors. It's attracting celebs who aren't scared to show their faces."

The article goes on to talk about how AVN publisher Paul Fishbein is an Endeavor client and the various mainstream music acts like Smashmouth who are performing at the awards. Pam Anderson is reportedly launching a line of cruelty free clothing there on Saturday night. And the article speculates that next year the AEE will be cablecast and sponsored by mainstream corporations. It closes with a quote from inexplicable NYC cable show host Robin Byrd:

"'I've got respect from Time Warner,' said former porn star Robin Byrd, host of New York's long-running cable access talkshow that features porn stars and strippers. She's also made a deal with Verizon to sell a package of Robin Byrd ringtones.

'They do not hassle me anymore,' she said. 'You work within the system.'"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2005 08:35:00 PM Comments (0)

A few days ago we posted an email from independent producer Tanya Selvaratnum about the devastating effects of the tsunami in her homeland of Sri Lanka. Now, Selvaratnum in conjunction with Syndicate is organizing a benefit in New York on January 20 in which 100% of the proceeds will go towards tsunami relief. There will be appearances from Angela McCluskey, Metro Area (Morgan Geist + Darshan Jesrani), Moby, Vernon Reid, DJ Rekha, Anna Deavere Smith, DJ Spooky, and Colson Whitehead.

The Benefit Committee consists of: Alpana Bawa, Claude Arpels & Winsome Brown, Jennie Boddy, Gabri Christa & Vernon Reid, Nathan Ellis, Ken Friedman, Nelson George, Padma Laxmi, Rekha Malhotra, Sue Marcus, Sia Michel, Paul D. Miller, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mira Nair, Julie Panebianco, Sherwin K. Parikh, M.D., Jesse Peretz, Troy Selvaratnam & Mary Skinner, and Natasha Stovall & Colson Whitehead. The event will be held at Marquee (289 10th Avenue @ 27th Street), Thursday, January 20, 7 - 11 p.m. There is a $30 minimum donation and one can RSVP at tsunami@syndicate-ny.com.

A website is listed -- www.syndicate-ny.com/tsunamirelief -- although when I clicked on it, it wouldn't go through.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2005 07:46:00 PM Comments (4)

I have been intrigued by the Russian Necrorealism film movement since I first read about it in the catalogue to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, exhibition "Gothic" from 1997, but to date I have yet to see any of the films themselves. This year, in conjunction with a focus on "parallel cinema" from Russia at the International Film Festival Rotterdam Film, the festival has selected Yevgeni Yufit, a former student of Aleksander Sokurov and founder (in 1984/85) of the St. Petersburg-based Necrorealism film movement, as a Filmmaker in Focus. The festival will screen eight short films by Yufit and present the world premiere of his Hubert Bals-funded film Bipedalism.

According to this downloadable PDF from a Russian Film Symposium in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 2001:

"Necrorealism appeared in Leningrad at the beginning of the 1980s, when socialism was still alive. As a system, however, it was more dead than alive, and although few believed that the corpse of the system would soon be buried, everyone understood that it no longer showed signs of life, evidenced by the gerintocracy, the death of one secretary general after another, the stagnation in the economic sphere, the negligible number of adherents to the ruling ideology, the absence of any sort of collective enthusiasm, and the demise of the aesthetic principles of socialist realism...

"In these conditions there existed a certain human, asocial mass, oriented away from generally accepted, rational, cultured activities. A portion of this mass was subsequently shaped into the artistic movement known as Necrorealism...

"The theme of death became a nexus of protest..."

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/06/2005 10:25:00 AM Comments (2)

Interesing news via Variety (registration required) today. Producer Michael London is partnering with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner to produce for Paramount "a coming-of-age film about James 'Bubba' Smith, a teen who is to motocross racing what Tiger Woods is to golf." It's interesting not just because this story seems to be staking out some territory before a new Paramount head, presumably Brad Grey, comes in (says Variety, somewhat obliquely, "In an unusual development, Par topper Donald De Line has allowed development to progress without assigning an exec. The producers wanted it that way so they could flesh out their script before delivering it to the studio."), but also because of the other talent behind the camera. Writing the script will be George Washington director David Gordon Green and directing will be Sam Jones, the celebrity photographer who previously helmed the Wilco doc I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.

Apparently, Jones and London had spent two years "winning the trust" of the Stewart family. When Jones photographed Cruise for a magazine cover, he mentioned the project to him. Cruise got excited and jumped in to help seal the deal.

Stewart will be racing in the 250cc supercross class this weekend in Anaheim. Adds Variety, "Jones, who with Green will be in the pits watching Stewart on Saturday, said the film's core will be the relationship between the phenom and his father, James Stewart Sr., a local racer who molded his son to achieve dreams he was denied. The son's sudden success has strained their relationship."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2005 01:14:00 AM Comments (0)

A TV show used to be many years in syndication before it became critical fodder for academics and intellectuals. But as it has swiftly climbed the ratings ladders, Desperate Housewives has also attracted notice from the sorts of writers who wouldn't normally stoop to covering TV. Like Germaine Greer.

Here's the author of The Female Eunuch on the hit ABC show, as reviewed in The Guardian:

"The series has nothing to say about the vicissitudes of the average or even the well-to-do American stay-at-home wife; it is neither feminist, nor pro-feminist nor proto-feminist nor post-feminist. Feminism has as little to do with Desperate Housewives as it did with Sex and the City. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine in either case what outright misogynists would have done differently."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2005 01:24:00 AM Comments (0)

Via press release we learned of producer Effie T. Brown's ambitious new production and development slate -- eight pictures ranging from a horror movie with a black cast to a couple of period dramas. She also announced that her production company, Duly Noted, has a first-look deal with HBO's Original Programming Department.

Brown, who received the IFP Producing Spirit Award three years ago, has been a producer on several HBO movies, including Real Women Have Curves, and The Stranger Inside, and she was also Executive Producer of Jane Campion's hugely underrated In the Cut, which is on cable a lot these days if you haven't seen it. Her new projects are from such directors as Silas Howard (By Hook or By Crook), Jeffrey Blitz (Spellbound), and Ben Berkowitz (Straightman).

Describing the films, the release writes, " The Duly Noted line-up includes a period biopic about a legendary transgendered jazz pianist; a gritty urban drama depicting working class Blacks and Jews living in a Polish neighborhood in Chicago; a satirical comedy about a group of directionless thirtysomethings; a poignant coming of age story that charts the joys and travails of a Puerto Rican boy and his military family living in 1970s Georgia; and a horror film featuring a predominately Black cast."

The first film to be produced is Cold Kiss, directed by Wendy Rubin and financed with funds from the German Hettleman-Berger Film Fund.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2005 12:14:00 AM Comments (0)

The 34th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), January 26 - February 6, has selected fourteen films for its VPRO Tiger Awards Competition.

The jury members choosing the winning films will be photographer Nan Goldin (U.S.), producer Jan Chapman (Australia), Lia van Leer, director of the Jerusalem Film Festival (Israel), filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (Iran), and filmmaker Lisandro Alonso (Argentina).

The three winners will be announced during IFFR 2005's Awards Ceremony, to be held on Friday February 4. Each of the three equal VPRO Tiger Awards comes with Euro 10,000 and guaranteed Dutch television screening by IFFR's main sponsor, Dutch public network VPRO.

The fourteen films in IFFR 2005's VPRO Tiger Awards Competition:
(in alphabetical order by director's name)

O AMIGO DUNOR (DUNOR MY FRIEND) by Jose Eduardo Alcazar (Brazil/Paraguay, 2005), world premiere, Hubert Bals Fund supported film.

EL CIELO GIRA (THE SKY TURNS) by Mercedes Alvarez (Spain, 2004), international premiere.

HAT MUA ROI BAO LAUY (BRIDE OF SILENCE) by Doan Minh Phuong & Doan Thanh Nghia (Vietnam/Germany, 2005), world premiere.

ALLEIN (ALONE) by Thomas Durchschlag (Germany, 2004), international premiere.

ONDE (WAVES) by Francesco Fei (Italy, 2005), world premiere.

LAS MANTENIDAS SIN SUENOS (KEPT AND DREAMLESS) by Vera Fogwill & Martin Desalvo (Argentina, 2005), world premiere.

NEMMENO IL DESTINO (CHANGING DESTINY) by Daniele Gaglianone (Italy, 2004), international premiere. Dutch distribution: Bright Angel Distribution.

SANCTUARY by Ho Yu-hang (Malaysia, 2004), European premiere.

PARADISE GIRLS by Fow Pyng HU (The Netherlands, 2004), European premiere. CineMart 2002 Project. Dutch distribution: 1morefilm.

4 by Ilya Khrzhanovsky (Russia, 2004). Hubert Bals Fund supported film.

BOGINYA: KAK YA POLYUBILA (GODDESS) by Renata Litvinova (Russia, 2004), international premiere.

HAWAII, OSLO by Erik Poppe (Norway, 2004), European premiere. Dutch distribution: A-Film Distribution.

ARU ASA SOUP WA (THE SOUP, ONE MORNING) by TAKAHASHI Izumi (Japan, 2003), European premiere.

FRAKCHI (SPYING CAM) by Whang Cheol-Mean (South Korea, 2004), European premiere.

# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 1/04/2005 05:30:00 PM Comments (0)

Indie producer Tanya Selvaratnum (On Line) sent an email out last week to her friends detailing the devastation that occured in her native Sri Lanka due to the tsunami. Her own family is safe but a number of family friends were lost, and Selvaratnum notes that 1/13th of the country's entire population has been displaced by the disaster.

In trying to figure out the best way to donate relief, she contacted the Sri Lankan government:

"Something hilarious happened when I tried to contact the Sri Lankan government directly. I emailed the Prime Minister asking how we expats can help the most. I received a response saying to make donations directly to a bank account, making checks out to 'The Secretary to the Prime Minister.' I guess the Sri Lankan government has not yet reformed!"

Today she sent out another email with more details from her contacts there:

"I have spoken to my family members many times over the past week. In Sri Lanka, the situation is far more dire than we will ever hear about from our news. In the most devastated areas, it has become Lord of the Flies land. There are cases of looting, robbing from the bodies of the dead, and raping of refugees and local aid workers. But hopefully the international mechanisms will get up to speed soon, and the situation will reach a manageable state. My aunt says that there is almost too much aid pouring into local relief groups, and that it needs to be spread out over time, so that it doesn't get squandered or end up in the wrong pockets. It is important to be careful about which organizations we give to. And what is needed desperately is an increased presence of foreign monitors to facilitate the relief process.

FYI, I have been in contact with Doctors Without Borders. As of today, they are not accepting any more donations specifically earmarked for 'tsunami relief' because they have received such a tremendous influx. They are still accepting donations that are more broadly applicable to 'emergency work.' Aside from Network for Good, you can also look at the sites below for suggestions of where to give:

CNN Quake Aid Sites

U.S. Aid.Gov

I am not traveling to Sri Lanka this week, but instead will organize a benefit of 'Artists for Tsunami Relief' to take place on either January 19 or 20. I will let you know the details."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/04/2005 01:32:00 AM Comments (0)

I learned over the holidays that artist Gretchen Bender, whose intelligent, visually seductive work crossed lines between visual art and film, sculpture and video, died in New York on Sunday, December 18 of cancer. She was 53.

Bender, who, early in her career exhibited at the East Village Nature Morte Gallery and later Metro Pictures, created conceptually concise and elegant work that often critiqued mainstream media and the power imbalances contained within its representations. And while many artists at this time were working with appropriation and engaging in similar sorts of critique, Bender's work always cunningly embodied within itself a kernel of that which she was attacking. There was a cold beauty to much of her work, and its allure to the viewer was very much a part of its oppositional strategy. "If Darth Vader made art, it might look like this," wrote New York Times critic Roberta Smith of one Bender exhibition in 1986.

Bender worked extensively in film, video and theater, creating backdrops for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane dance company and two large-scale multimedia exhibitions, Dumping Core and Total Recall, the latter of which I produced for The Kitchen when I was Programming Director there in the late '80s. The pieces used multiple video monitors and, in the case of Total Recall, multiple film screens against loud electronic rock scores to confront viewers with an intense barrages of imagery, creating visually thrilling experiences out of sometimes troubling source material. This work lead to her working in music video (she directed videos for Babes in Toyland, among others, and edited clips by Robert Longo for REM, New Order and Megadeth), and she also edited opening credit material for America's Most Wanted.

Said Bender in a 1991 interview with Peter Doreshenko, "Given material that is violent, racist, and sexist, I try to make it a little less violent, less racist, and less sexist. I'm still involved in a kind of questionable propaganda, but one small step makes a difference. At first, I turned down that work because of all the complications and all the incredible decisions you have to make about what you're promoting. But I decided to do it because I had a way to do what I considered socially positive propaganda."

I remember Bender as smart, charming and intellectually inquisitive, someone who from the beginning had her finger on the complex issues related to artmaking in a media-saturated world. As she said in an interview with artist Cindy Sherman, "The only constant to the style you develop is the necessity to change it. Style gets absorbed really fast by the culture, basically by absorbing the formal elements or the structure and then subverting the content...It's constantly having to accept the fact that your work will lose its strength...Accepting the fact that your work is going to become neutralized -- faster than you ever dreamed...I don't think the media is something that listens in the way we're talking about. I think of the media as a cannibalistic river. A flow or a current that absorbs everything. It's not "about." There is no consciousness or mind. It's about absorbing and converting..."

Labels: obituaries

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/03/2005 01:02:00 AM Comments (4)