Our colleague Ray Pride got hit with a particularly lengthy bout of server outage over at this blog at Movie City News. After almost two months, though, he's back with his typically exhaustive and thought-provoking series of links and postings. Welcome him back by busting his bandwith and clicking above.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/30/2005 03:29:00 PM Comments (0)

If you haven't checked out the Web site for Dana Brown's Baja motorcross documentary Dust to Glory, then you're missing one of the best marketing campaigns for a film we've seen to date. Among the site's many cool features is the Make Your Own Movie page where you can assemble sound and picture from a range of scene selects to create your own trailer for the film. If the film is half as cool as its Web site, IFC Films has a hit on its hands.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/30/2005 12:27:00 PM Comments (0)

Listen closely and you'll hear cheers echoing the corridors of cyberspace.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, owner of 2929, HDNet, Magnolia Pictures and the Dallas Mavericks, has announced on his blog that following a request from the Electronic Frontier Foundation he'll be financing Grokster's legal bills in MGM vs. Grokster, a case that winds up at the Supreme Court this Tuesday.

The case revolves around the question of whether or not file-sharing services and peer-to-peer networks can be sued if their technology allows users to download or trade copywritten content. The entertainment industry is hoping to overturn a 1984 verdict in a pre-internet version of this debate involving the Sony Betamax recorder.

Read Cuban's entire post, which is a cogent and measured discussion of the case and his "little content company." Here's an excerpt:

"We are a digital company that is platform agnostic. Bits are bits. We don't care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants to receive it, when they want to receive it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business.

Unless Grokster loses to MGM in front of the Supreme Court. If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only.

It won't be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology-oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios won't sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their U.S. digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them...

This isn't the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me, Mark Cuban and my little content company. It's about our ability to use future innovations to compete v.s their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. It's that simple."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/27/2005 10:32:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at IndieWIRE, Eugene Hernandez polls indie distributors to get their reaction to the announcement on Tuesday of HBO and New Line's acquistion of Newmarket's theatrical fim division.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/25/2005 12:40:00 PM Comments (0)

Via Wiley Wiggins comes the following item from the Fox News channel:

"Last week... Paul Schrader took a gamble. He showed his version [of Exorcist: The Beginning] at the [Brussels International Festival of Fantastic Film]. He and the cast, [which includes Stellan Skarsgard, Billy Crawford, Clara Bellar, and Gabriel Mann], all showed up -- on their own dime, since no studio now identifies itself with the movie.

The bet worked. Critics wrote admiring reviews. Variety, in particular, sang Schrader's praises: 'Schrader's intelligent, quietly subversive pic emphasizes spiritual agony over horror ecstasy, while paying occasional lip service to the need for scares ... Schrader has delivered a 100-percent Paul Schrader film, drenched in the spiritual and moral angst that's watermarked his career.'

The payoff is that Morgan Creek and Warner Brothers are going to release Paul Schrader's Exorcist: The Original Prequel in the next two months.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/24/2005 05:22:00 PM Comments (0)

"New Line and HBO have acquired Newmarket's theatrical distribution unit from co-founders William Tyler and Chris Ball," reports Variety today. "The deal effectively shutters Fine Line, which served as New Line's indie arm."

Newmarket's Bob Berney will run the new entity, which will operate out of New York

"The deal marks a major foray by Time Warner into the indie arena," according to Variety, "and effectively shuts the door on Paramount's efforts to reinvent its presence in the same indie space." (Paramount reportedly had its eye on Newmarket prior to New Line and HBO's acquisition of the company.)
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/24/2005 11:06:00 AM Comments (0)

According to Variety, the Cannes Film Festival will launch a new section this year for smaller films "that may have done well in their own country of origin but have never been seen elsewhere, or films that are almost finished and that illustrate the creativity of local filmmaking":

"Fest organizers on Tuesday announced the launch of Tous les Cinemas du Monde, giving six countries a day the chance to screen recent or even unfinished movies [in a 170-seat temporary theater that will be constructed next to the city's Old Port]...Countries taking part [this year] include Morocco, Sri Lanka and Austria... New fest appointee Serge Sobczynsi, a former culture adviser for the Provence-Alpes-Cotes D'Azur region, is organizing the event."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/23/2005 11:04:00 AM Comments (0)

The Strand, directed by Dan Myrick (The Blair Witch Project), "is an uncensored look at the lives of several off-beat characters that inhabit the unique world of Venice Beach, California, and how they are all interrelated. Utilizing many of the method-film techniques that were incorporated into Blair Witch, The Strand maintains a sense of authenticity that cannot be found in large-scale productions. Real people and actors populate a fictional world in which spontaneous as well as scripted dialogue bring a sense of unpredictability and realism to the characters and situations."

Produced by Myrick's company Gearhead Pictures, The Strand is one of the first full-length, live-action, independently produced episodic narratives intended specifically for the Web utilizing a micro-payment system -- hence the term "webisodic."

The flagship show premiered online March 15 free-of-charge. Audiences will be asked to pay $0.99 for each subsequent webisode using BitPass digital payments technology.

"While the entertainment industry continually grows more risk-averse, the Internet still beckons with its promise of becoming the great equalizer," says Myrick (seen above right directing Peter Pasco in an episode of The Strand). "BitPass enables independent production companies like [ours] to make a show 'for the people, by the people,' where production is sponsored by people who watch it, leaving its destiny in the hands of those who care most about its future."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/22/2005 12:07:00 PM Comments (1)

Interesting article by Anne Thompson in today's Hollywood Reporter. Her lead: "You can laugh about it. Fantasize about it. Be punished or killed for it. But what you can't do is take sex seriously at the movies."

She goes on to examine the box-office fate of a number of sexually provocative serious-minded films and gathers some thoughts by industry types on why eroticism seems to fail in the theatrical marketplace.

From producer Peter Guber:

"If you spell fun, it sells. Sex inside a comedy candy-coats sex and allows the audience to feel comfortable. Laughter covers up insecurity. Sex sells, but not serious sex. Films can be sexy, but they can't portray the sexual intimacy most people crave. In the movies, you have to have safe sex palatable to a younger audience. The portrayal has to be violent or funny."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2005 11:48:00 AM Comments (0)

As reported by Wired.com: "Israeli troops are now wearing gear that Dick Tracy would be proud of: tiny video screens, worn on the wrist, that display video shot by unmanned airplanes.

"Similar screens have been in use for close to a year in the Israeli military's attack helicopters, helping pilots identify and strike Palestinian targets within seconds. The technology, also used in tanks and armored vehicles, was a closely guarded secret until the company that developed it offered reporters a rare glimpse at the system this week.

"'We are fulfilling the science fiction movies that we see,'" said Itzhak Beni, chief executive of the Elisra Group's Tadiran Electronic Systems and Tadiran Spectralink companies....

"The company also showed off a system resembling a video game that allows soldiers to control unmanned ground vehicles. The green console has a small flat screen and two joysticks, one on each side. One joystick controls the vehicle, while the other controls the items on the vehicle, such as its cameras. The computer screen shows other information, including video footage from drones and detailed maps of the battlefield."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/17/2005 10:35:00 AM Comments (0)

I had no idea that in addition to pictures and profiles of charmingly tattooed and pierced young women who call themselves things like a "full-time artfag film student and part-time superbitch", the Suicide Girls Web site features regular and rather interesting interviews, many with indie film personalities like Danny Boyle and Campbell Scott.

From the current discussion with Chloe Sevigny, who talks about her work with Woody Allen in Melinda and Melinda and Lars von Trier in Dogville and the upcoming Manderlay:

"Lars is very personal and he gets in your business and there's a lot of chit chatting and Woody is very much just like a working experience. You go to work, do your job and you leave. Lars is a lot more joking around and teasing you and stuff like that. It's two very different environments and plus working on the two films that I worked on with Lars, Dogville and Manderlay, we were on a soundstage. So we're all kind of stuck in there together which added to the sort of strangeness."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/16/2005 09:35:00 PM Comments (0)

Jake Brooks provides the first media coverage of the IFP's Producer's Group, a gathering of some 50+ Gotham producers gathered last year to discuss the high costs of indie shooting in New York. With IATSE hiking pension and welfare benefits to over $100 per day per IA crew member, a group of producers, spearheaded by Jason Kliot, Joana Vicente, and Gretchen McGowan of Open City and HDNet and including such folks as John Penotti and Tim Williams of GreeneStreet, Ted Hope and Anthony Bregman of This is That, and John Sloss of Cinetic Media, met to discuss ways in which the collective power of the group could promote changes making easier to shoot low-budget films in New York.

Details Brooks about the forming of the group:

"The e-mails that bounced from inbox to inbox had the urgency of distress signals. Last year, during the typically serene summertime for moviemakers, the independent film community in New York City was responding to a call to arms. Over 50 independent producers and members of local production companies gathered far from the public eye in the Soho basement of the HERE arts space. While noshing on pretzels and Cheetos and drinking soda out of Styrofoam cups, they discussed their one common agenda: reducing the cost of film production in New York City.

'This is the first time I've seen everyone in one room without a cocktail in your hands,' said HDNet Films' Jason Kliot jokingly over the drone of the A/C. Sober and determined, they went to work."

Read Brooks' article for more...
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/16/2005 08:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Documentaries about kids triumphing (or sometimes not) within educational endeavors have been big hits recently, from Spellbound to the current festival favorite Mad Hot Ballroom. With its SXSW Special Jury Award, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's doc The Boys of Baraka should deservedly achieve the same level of recognition. Original, visually elegant and with an uncommonly ambitious narrative sweep, The Boys of Baraka was shot over a two-year period and makes a real investment in its subjects, an investment that pays off for the filmmakers.

I met Ewing and Grady, who together run the New York production company Loki Films, just before the festival and traded some emails with them about the film. In their words:

"On September 12, 2002 twenty 'at risk' 12-year-old boys from the tough streets of inner-city Baltimore left home to attend the 7th and 8th grade at Baraka, an experimental boarding school located in Kenya, East Africa. Here, faced with a strict academic and disciplinary program as well as the freedom to be normal teenage boys, these brave kids began the daunting
journey towards putting their lives on a fresh path.

The Boys of Baraka focuses on four boys: Devon, Montrey, Richard and his brother Romesh. Their humor and explicit truthfulness give intimate insight into their optimistic plans, despite the tremendous obstacles they face both at home and in school. Through extensive time with the boys in Baltimore and in Africa, the film captures the kids' amazing journeyŠ and how they fare when they are forced to return the difficult realities of their city.

The Boys of Baraka zeros in on kids that society has given up on - - boys with every disadvantage, but who refuse to be cast off as 'throw-aways.'"

Funded by ITVS, The Boys of Baraka will be broadcast on POV in summer, 2006, but should receive further big-screen play in the months ahead.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/16/2005 12:17:00 AM Comments (8)

IndieWIRE editor Eugene Hernandez, who moderated a panel discussion with producer Christine Vachon at the SXSW Film Festival, has posted some of her comments online:

"'Filmmakers are starting to realize that [by] getting your film [on HBO], more people are going to see it that way than are going to see it at the Angelika [Film Center] with the subway rumbling underneath -- I am starting to think, let's get off the theatrical high horse.'

"Continuing she explained, 'Ultimately I guess I feel like independent distribution and exhibition is really changing and I don't want to be a dinosaur about it, and if I am faced with a little release in like 10 theaters with my movie [versus] a nice splashy cable release, I am going to go for the cable release.'"
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/15/2005 12:58:00 PM Comments (0)

Andrew Gurland and Huck Botko's Mail Order Wife, covered in the current issue of Filmmaker, opened this weekend at the Angelika, and its first weekend performance will have a lot to do with how widely this perversely funny and disturbing mock doc plays around the country. We'd tell you all the reasons to see it, but Moriarty at Ain't It Cool News presents a much more detailed and coherent argument that we're able to muster this late at night...
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/13/2005 01:12:00 AM Comments (1)

The International Center of Photography in New York will present the first American retrospective of the work of Larry Clark, one of the most important and influential American photographers of the second half of the 20th century, from March 11 through June 5, 2005.

The exhibition, Larry Clark, will include the full spectrum of Clark's work, spanning five decades and as many media.

Clark is currently in postproduction on his sixth feature, Wassup Rockers, which Palm Pictures had initially inked a deal to produce, but they pulled out days before the start of production, according to Clark. The film is now being produced by Henry Winterstern (Wicker Park, Underworld) through Capital Entertainment/Dual Films; Clark is scheduled to complete editing in mid-May.

According to the Killer Movies Web site, "Like Clark's controversial Kids, Rockers will feature street kids in leading roles. This time, the story is set in South Central Los Angeles and follows a group of largely Hispanic teenagers who, instead of conforming to the hip-hop culture of their neighborhood, ride skateboards, listen to punk rock and wear their clothes tight.

"Constantly harassed, they take buses to Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Hollywood, where they skate and catch the attention of the local rich girls, inevitably leading to trouble with parents, police and boyfriends."

In conjunction with the ICP retrospective, the Pioneer Theater in NYC will screen Clark's films over four nights in mid-May. (No word yet on whether Ken Park will be included in the Pioneer program.)

On a related note: Vincent Kartheiser, star of Clark's second feature, Another Day in Paradise, will join the cast of the Off-Broadway theater production Slag Heap at the Cherry Lane Theater (38 Commerce Street). The play begins previews on March 29th and opens on April 13th.

"Set in Manchester, England, Slag Heap is the strangely hilarious yet moving chronicle of teenage prostitutes, born from Thatcher's politics in the aftermath of Britain's Industrial Revolution in a world where the buying and selling of humanity has become the primary industry."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/10/2005 12:20:00 PM Comments (1)

Our friend Travis Crawford, who appears often in our pages, drops from view in the late winter and early spring when, as associate director of programming for the Philadelphia Film Festival he puts together his Danger After Dark program. And now, in what has become an annual tradition, he re-emerges with an e-mail in which he sneaks his program to his friends a few days in advance of the official announcement.

If you are a devotee of outre genre films -- and even if you don't plan to attend the festival -- check out Crawford's program, below. His wonderfully descriptive and witty blurbs for the films constitute a kind of "all-you-need-to-know cult cinema primer" for the current festival season. And as I'm throwing this up on the web moments after receiving it, check back in a few days to see whether we've come up with some good links for the below titles.

Writes Crawford:

Danger After Dark titles for PFF 2005:

ARAHAN (South Korea): Adrenaline-pumping contemporary urban martial arts eye-candy supreme, with a bullied young cop discovering he is actually a secret ch'i master. Wirework and CGI overload, but refreshingly witty and clever; no Ryuhei Kitamura movie this year, so this will have to do as your substitute. (U.S. Premiere)

CUTIE HONEY (Japan): A candy-colored and comedic fantasy-action film about a sexy female superhero (exuberantly incarnated by Eriko Satoh), this FX-filled spectacle is like an anime come to life. The best movie in the whole wide world if the whole wide world happened to be exclusively populated by 12-year-old boys -- and that's meant as a compliment. (Philadelphia Premiere)

FLOWER AND SNAKE (Japan, pictured at right above): Ahhh, I can't wait to see this with an audience. An opulent but thoroughly brutal and un-PC example of Japanese S&M sexploitation from Takashi Ishii, this story of a wealthy trophy wife's abduction and sexual slavery is the Danger After Dark film most likely to appal. Bring your own nipple clamps. (US Premiere)

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (US/UK): Asia Argento's bold, blistering portrait of child abuse and hallucinatory psychological torment, adopted from the fearless writings of J.T. Leroy, this uncompromising little familial shocker might tie FLOWER for the highest number of angry audience walkouts - that's meant as a compliment too, you know. (Philadelphia Premiere)

IZO (Japan): This one is likely to strongly divide people -- it's among my favorite Takashi Miike films to date, but its aggressively non-narrative experimental structure is bound to cause some viewer frustration. A samurai travels through time with just one goal: to kill every human on the planet. Miike's most radical, insane film yet. (Philadelphia Premiere)

KARAOKE TERROR (Japan): Adapted from a cult novely by Ryu Murakami (AUDITION, TOKYO DECADENCE) this savagely satirical pitch-black comedy follows a gang war between a gang of occasionally cross-dressing teen toughs and a group of wealthy middle-aged women. Ultraviolence and apocalyptic ramifications ensue. Formerly titled THE COMPLETE JAPANESE SHOWA SONGBOOK for you Vancouver fest attendees. (US Premiere)

KONTROLL (Hungary): An award-winning multi-festival favorite, this surreal odyssey through Budapest's sinister subway system is a fast-paced, darkly comic delight, and on its way to becoming The Little Cult Movie That Could. (Philadelphia Premiere)*

MACKED, HAMMERED, SLAUGHTERED & SHAFTED (US): Bad Azz Mofo zine editor David Walker's long-awaited documentary on 1970s blaxploitation cinema, with an exhaustive wealth of action-packed clips and insightful interviews - and a deft analysis of the cultural politics that goes beyond funk and fashion. (East Coast Premiere)

MAREBITO (Japan): Takashi Shimizu's best film by a mile. The director behind all of those JU-ON films (and the American GRUDGE remake) delivers an eerie, dreamlike chiller (shot on digital video in eight days) about the relationship between a cameraman (director Shinya Tsukamoto) and a fanged feral girl from hell. (East Coast Premiere)

OLDBOY (South Korea): Park Chan-wook. Cannes Grand Prix winner. Revenge thriller. Best film ever made, of course. Haven't you all seen this by now? Well, perhaps not on the big screen, and it's worth it. (Philadelphia Premiere)*

ONE MISSED CALL (Japan, pictured at right): More Miike, this time as straightforward and mainstream as he's ever been. Perhaps the ultimate final word on the creepy post-RING Asian ghost story film, as an enigmatic cell phone message forecasts death for its unlucky recipients. Admittedly it's no ICHI, but Miike still manages to bring a subversive wit to the proceedings. (US Premiere)*

PINK RIBBON (Japan): An appropriately explicit (and rewardingly thorough) documentary chronicling the history of the Japanese sex film industry, with a wealth of rare clips, interviews (Kiyoski Kurosawa and Koji Wakamatsu among them) and contemporary behind-the-scenes footage (from the set of a film called PRIVATE TUTOR'S LOVE JUICE, which likely tells you all you need to know). Go ahead, take a date to see this and FLOWER AND SNAKE! (US Premiere)

R-POINT (South Korea): The year's big Korean horror hit, this is a genuinely suspenseful tale of a platoon of soldiers encountering a mysterious supernatural presence on an island during the Vietnam War in 1972. Moves away from the typical RING-styled ghost story film into more traditional haunted house territory, and rewardingly so. (North American Premiere)

SPIDER FOREST (South Korea): This year's UNINVITED/SUICIDE CLUB/TALE OF TWO SISTERS-styled head-scratching "Huh?" Danger After Dark title (that's meant as a compliment too), this enigmatic mystery from the director of FLOWER ISLAND follows a tormented car accident survivor haunted by visions of murder. A dreamlike thriller, and a challenging audience puzzle. (US Premiere)

SURVIVE STYLE 5+ (Japan): SEE IT IMMEDIATELY! Just incredible. Five fantastical tales of Tokyo crime and mayhem intersect in this absurdist comedy that has more inventive storytelling and surreal imagery than a dozen Miike movies (and it has Tadanobu Asano and Sonny Chiba to boot). Like a Japanese crime movie equivalent to something from the Kaufman/Gondry/Jonze camp, with a production design style that makes Wes Anderson's films look like Ken Loach. (East Coast Premiere)

THROW DOWN (Hong Kong): Johnnie To's best since THE MISSION. A stylish, slick ode to judo, Akira Kurosawa, and the most gorgeously photographed nocturnal streets of Hong Kong, this is a dynamic and oddly affecting genre masterwork. (US Premiere)

*Titles marked with an asterisk indicate three films that will be in general theatrical release in NYC and L.A. during the month of April, so those of you coming to the fest from those more enlightened urban areas should feel no need to see those films in our festival.

That's it -- sixteen Danger After Dark films in all, our biggest line-up ever (not counting the Shaw Brothers spin-off sidebar two years ago), and one which will hopefully be as enthusiastically supported by festgoers this year as in years past. Sorry about no CALVAIRE, BORN TO FIGHT, 2001 MANIACS, GIGANTOR, DEVILMAN, CASSHERN, WOLF CREEK, et al. I tried, it didn't happen, couldn't be avoided. Bring those films up to me during the festival, and see if you get either a wry smile and entertaining anecdote about the vagaries of festival programming, or a swift kick in the shin.

The general Asian film programming is particularly strong this year: I highly recommend the North American Premieres of Shinji (EUREKA) Aoyama's mystery LAKESIDE MURDER CASE (Aoyama is also slated to attend) and the extraordinary LATE BLOOMER, a dark portrait of disability like no other (director Go Shibata also attending). Also very much worth seeing: Ryuichi (VIBRATOR) Hiroki's excellent albeit grim L'AMANT (US Premiere), Izumi Takahashi's excellent albeit grim multi-fest-award-winner THE SOUP, ONE MORNING (East Coast Premiere), Wu Er-shan's excellent albeit grim triptych of contemporary Beijing murder and madness SOAP OPERA (North American premiere), romantic tearjerker extraordinaire CRYING OUT LOVE, IN THE CENTER OF THE WORLD (Japan's biggest live-action hit last year; East Coast Premiere), and a quartet of Indian films that aren't grim at all, so there: Mani Ratnam's Bollywood film YUVA, the brilliant Buddhadeb Dasgupta's road movie CHASED BY DREAMS (East Coast Premiere; director in attendance), the charming romantic comedy HARI OM, and the searing political drama BLACK FRIDAY (OK, this one is admittedly also grim...). The New Korean Cinema program returns again this year, with the World Premiere of prolific filmmaker Bae Chang-ho's newest film ROAD, and screenings of such other acclaimed titles as Hong Sang-soo's WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN and Lee Yoon-ki's outstanding Pusan fest award-winning THIS CHARMING GIRL, along with the usual selections of crowd-pleasing Korean comedies again this year.

Apparently they continue to make films outside of Asia again this year, though I know or care little about this sort of thing. But, having said that, you might want to check out some of the titles that will be screening in the fest prior to their impending regular theatrical releases: Olivier Assayas' moving CLEAN with Maggie Cheung, Arnaud Desplechin's masterpiece KINGS AND QUEEN, Brit crime thriller LAYER CAKE, the Cesar award-winning GAMES OF LOVE AND CHANCE, Lucrecia Martel's THE HOLY GIRL, Jia Zhang-ke's extraordinary THE WORLD, et al -- all are very much worth your time. And I haven't even gotten into the hundreds of other international films that don't have distributors yet...

Opening Night film is Alex de la Iglesia's comedy FERPECT CRIME, and Alex will be returning to the event for the first time since receiving our Phantasmagoria Award two years ago. Award honorees this year include Steve Buscemi, who will be attending with his film LONESOME JIM and accepting the American Independents Award, and this year's Artistic Achievement in Acting award recipient Malcolm McDowell, who will be discussing CLOCKWORK ORANGE following a screening of that film, as well as his new film EVILENKO, a real-life docudrama about a notorious Russian serial killer. Thelma Schoonmaker will be in town to screen I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! by Michael Powell, followed by a discussion of her late husband's career, and there will also be a small focus on the films of Robert Downey Sr., with Downey in attendance. Other filmmakers confirmed to attend include Todd Solondz, Wim Wenders, Gregg Araki, etc., all attending with their new films.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/09/2005 05:19:00 PM Comments (0)

MediaRights has released a DVD version of its Fourth Annual Media That Matters Film Festival.

The DVD, available for sale through Amazon.com, to educators through National Film Network, and for rental through Netflix, includes all sixteen short films featured in the 2004 Festival.

"This DVD allows us to bring MediaRights's mission of fostering community involvement through media outreach to a wider audience of not only students and groups, but concerned individuals, extending the Festival's life beyond the initial theatrical and Internet screenings," said Nicole Betancourt, executive director of MediaRights.

The sixteen short films included on the DVD tackle topics such as the environment (The Meatrix; Seeds of Hope), criminal justice (Books Not Bars), September 11th and civil liberties (Day of Remembrance; Bush for Peace), AIDS Awareness (I Promise Africa; iThemba), Domestic Abuse (Novela, Novela), culture-jamming (POPaganda: The Art & Subversion of Ron English), immigration (The Sixth Section), the working poor (Struggling to Survive), and childhood obesity and bullying (Laugh at the Fat Kid). Teen filmmakers are also featured with youth produced projects (Children of Birmingham; Lean on Me; Dedicated to My Family; Struggling to Survive).

Offering a "festival in a box," the DVD includes free downloads of information related to the various film topics as well as tips on hosting a Festival screening to encourage community involvement. MediaRights also offers teaching guides on incorporating the films into class curricula through its Web site. All proceeds from sales of the DVD benefit MediaRights's outreach and educational programs.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/09/2005 11:22:00 AM Comments (0)

The Sundance Institute Documentary Fund announced its first round of grants for 2005. Fourteen feature-length documentary films will receive a total of $490,000.

"'Ranging from depictions of the broad topic of globalization to very personal explorations of individual identity, the films in this slate reveal the human stories within larger events and forces that shape our world,' said Diane Weyermann, Director of the Sundance Documentary Program. 'Many of these filmmakers are expanding the art of documentary filmmaking by pushing cinematic boundaries, and the Sundance Documentary Fund is proud to support their new work.'"

The fourteen Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grant recipients are:

WORK IN PROGRESS GRANTS

Deborah Dickson, THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE HMONG (U.S.)
A touching portrayal of the large Hmong refugee communities in Thailand and the United States as a result of the "secret war" in Laos.

Mark and Nick Francis, BLACK GOLD (U.K.)
An exposition on the relationship between Western coffee consumption and the collapse of the Ethiopian coffee economy, leading to starvation for the farmers and a dependence on outside aid.

Victoria Funari and Dergio De La Torre, MAQUILOPOLIS (U.S.)
The story of globalization and the transformation of Tijuana through the eyes of Mexican women factory workers.

Maria Teresa Larrain, THE TRIAL OF PASCUAL PINCHUN (Canada/Chile)
Focuses on the conflict between landowners and Mapuches (Native people of Chile), when MININCO, a Canadian multinational forestry company, settles in Mapuche land.

Zach Niles and Banker White, THE REFUGEE ALL STARS (U.S.)
Via the Refugee All Star Band, six Sierra Leoneans, who have been living for years as refugees in Guinea, struggle to keep their hope and music alive.

Laura Poitras, THE WAR AFTER (U.S.)
A cinema verite film that explores US Military’s strategic planning and on-the-ground efforts to implement democratic elections in Iraq.

Juan Carlos Rulfo, IN THE PIT (Mexico)
A cinematic eye into the daily lives of construction workers building the Second Deck of Mexico City’s Periferico Freeway.

Rodrigo Vazquez, AN AMERICAN MARTYR (U.K.)
The story of Rachel Corrie, an American peace activist, crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in March of 2003.

DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

Richard Hankin, HOME FRONT (U.S.)
A portrait of a wounded veteran of the Iraq war as he attempts to readjust not only to friends, family and the community but also to his new reality.

Azza el-Hassan, THE FEATHER MAN (Palestine/Germany)
A Palestinian attempt to project, dismantle and interrogate relationships with the other side (Israel) in times of war.

Melissa Kyu-Jung Lee, YUKAI! (Australia)
The abduction of Japanese citizens in the '70s and '80s by North Korean spies and its affect on current Japan/North Korean relations as an extraordinary tale of political maneuverings and international espionage.

Robb Moss and Peter Gallison, SECRECY (U.S.)
An exploration of the fundamental threat to democracy stemming from the exponential growth of systems of classified information.

Jonathan Stack, REBIRTH OF A NATION (U.S.)
Follows the democratization of Liberia as the second installment to LIBERIA: AN UNCIVIL WAR.

SUPPLEMENTAL GRANTS

Cristina Ibarra and John Valadez, THE LAST CONQUISTADOR (U.S.)
Explores the complex legacy of conquest via the controversial construction of a larger-than-life public memorial to Juan de Onate in El Paso, TX and the long-standing racial tension it is re-igniting between the Acoma Indians and Hispanics.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/07/2005 05:56:00 PM Comments (2)

In 2003, we put Thomas de Zengotita in our Super 8 column. (Full disclosure: de Zengotita was one of my high-school professors. Thanks to him, my school offered anthropology (Monod, Malinowsky) and philosophy (Plato) electives to seniors. He was also one of those teachers who could probably run the table on you in a pool game while offering his opinion on why you shouldn't get a girl's name tattoed on your chest.)

For the past few years de Zengotita's influence has begun to spread, thanks to a series of fantastic lead articles in Harper's magazine, where he's a contributing editor. In the coming months his impact as a cultural critic should expand even more, thanks to the publication of his book, Mediated (Bloomsbury, $21.95). An anthropologist by training (he's a former protege of Margaret Meade), de Zanegotita articulates an expansive theory that encompasses, hipsterism, politics, the Internet, and cable TV. It's a devastating, and completely entertaining exploration of a post-9/11 culture in which authenticity is paramount, yet rarely achieved. (For those of you who cringed in fear at theory-based "performance studies" courses in college, fear not: Mediated is rigorous, but not inaccessible.)

De Zengotita has picked up a fan in Norman Mailer, who blurbs the book with the following quote: "Mediated has the same liveliness and intense intellectuality as Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media which is a way of saying there are anywhere from three to ten stimulating ideas on every page. As McLuhan presented us with the realization that modernism was coming to an end, so de Zengotita has a great deal to say about the saturation of post-modernism in our existence today. Let me offer my salute to Thomas de Zengotita."
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# posted by Matthew Ross @ 3/06/2005 02:59:00 PM Comments (1)

It's a cliche to say that independent films are "critic-driven," that they rely on good reviews to combat Hollywood-size P&A budgets and succeed in the marketplace. And while Filmmaker doesn't run reviews per se, it's true that a kind of "critical sensibility" informs our editorial decisions. At the same time, we do try to cover what's going on in the independent scene, so that sometimes means that a film we're not crazy about shows up in our pages.

But I, Filmmaker, and most every other member of the so-called critical establishment have missed the boat entirely on a trio of recent indie-film successes, making me wonder whether "thumbs up" from the reviewers should automatically be considered an indicator of success in the indie arena. Woman, Thou Art Loosed (Magnolia Pictures, $7 million domestic gross), What the #$*! Do We Know!? (Roadside Attractions, gross $11 million), and now Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman (Lions Gate, gross-to-date $29 million) are three are niche-market pictures that survived generally poor reviews to become big hits. Directed by little-known filmmakers, the pictures connected with audiences unserved by Hollywood as well as the supposedly alternative independent scene.

Variety has an article about the Diary... phenom quoting William Morris agent Charles King:

"'Some people are still clueless,' Perry's agent, Charles King of the William Morris Agency, said Feb. 28, when the calls starting rolling in. 'People keep calling, saying, 'Who is he? I want to see his movie.'

Many callers were execs who just three weeks ago were dismissive when King brought up the subject of Perry.

Yet in fickle Hollywood, today Perry is mentioned in the same breath as Mel Gibson, Michael Moore and the filmmakers behind The Blair Witch Project -- i.e., producers of unusual films that, against all expectations, hit it big."

Variety goes on to quote Perry: "I've never set out to write anything for critics or to cross-over."

Of course, the recent precursor of this new trend -- films emerging from a mainstream critical blindspot -- was My Big Fat Greek Wedding but, ironically, the sheer magnitude of that film's success allowed the press to categorize it as a pop-cult phenomenon and not a film. But with each weekend bringing on a new "came from nowhere" sensation, at least one reviewer is beginning to interrogate his own critical prejudices.

Revisiting Diary of a Mad Black Woman after receiving volumes of angry mail following his negative review, Roger Ebert doesn't change his opinion ("I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot") but he does try to move beyond the charges of his critics (most of whom say something like "White people don't get it") to the aesthetic issues that guided his opinion.

Writes Ebert:

"But the outpouring of dissent about Diary has me thinking in another direction. The assumption beneath my review was that a movie should discover the correct tone for its material, and stick to it. I was grabbed at the outset by the plight of the Kimberley Elise character, was moved by her despair, was touched by the character of her mother, played by Cecily Tyson, and I recoiled every time Madea came charging in like a train wreck.

"Yet the most successful film industry on earth, India's Bollywood, deliberately mixes genres. 'You get everything in one film,' my Mumbai friend Uma de Cuhna told me. Diary of a Mad Black Woman provides melodrama, romance, scandal, the escapism of a lavish lifestyle, a message of forgiveness, and the larger-than-life Madea, whose pot-smoking doesn't seem to bother the Christian church audiences who make up a large part of Perry's fan base.

"It's not supposed to be all of a piece, told with a consistent tone. It's more like a variety show. And Madea is no more supposed to be a 'real' African-American grandmother than Dame Edna Everage is supposed to be a 'real' Australian housewife.

"Okay, I get it. I refuse to accept the theory that I am racist because I disliked the film (many of the Yahoo messages attack the notion that racism belongs in the discussion). But I do realize that Tyler Perry is under the radar of the white-dominated media..."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/05/2005 10:32:00 PM Comments (1)

If the Argentinian newspaper The Post can be believed, creators of "airline versions" of R and PG-rated movies have a new word replacement for a common epithet. In what is, if true, an oddly hilarious example of subversive political commentary, the word "asshole" as uttered in Alexander Payne's Sideways was replaced in actor Thomas Haden Church's airline dubbing with "Ashcroft." The paper's Montel Reel says he heard the word twice in Church's dialogue while on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru.

The Arizona Central, which picked up the story, says calls to Fox Searchlight, which distributed the picture, and our former attorney general himself went unanswered.
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/05/2005 06:56:00 PM Comments (0)

From March 11 - April 12, the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art film department presents "Paranoia Films of the '70s".

"Whether overtly political or simply horrifying, many popular films of the '70s contain an underlying sense of parnoia. A confluence of events -- the political assassinations of the '60s, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and Chappaquidic -- led a number of prominent filmmakers to suggest that authority cannot be trusted and that even the strangest conspiracy theory can have some basis in truth.

"Often focusing on a lone hero, frequently an outsider or an otherwise troubled individual, the films of the '70s were extremely effective at conveying the alienation and disillusionment that followed the euphoria and utopian dreams of the '60s. Paranoia films went one step further: the hero himself was a man of unstable personality and questionable motives who could be manipulated or summarily dispatched at the will of nameless corporations or otherworldly forces.

"Not surprisingly, genre filmmaking received a new energy in the '70s and the era is marked by a series of unsettling and stylistically audacious films noirs, thrillers, horror and science fiction films, and disaster movies that moved well beyond their traditional audience base to become crossover hits (e.g. Chinatown, The Exorcist, Earthquake).

"For filmmakers like Polanski, Friedkin, and Carpenter, it was a small step from paranoid to paranormal; while Penn, Scorsese and Pakula -- all poets of urban anxiety -- contributed to the movement with some of grittiest, sexually explicit, and violent films of their day."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/04/2005 12:29:00 PM Comments (1)

The Tribeca Film Festival has partnered with Amazon.com to launch a short film contest.

Filmmakers with works up to seven minutes in length can submit them now through April 13 to Amazon.com. Submitted films will be posted at Amazon beginning April 18 and will be voted on by viewers to the site. The top-five rated films will be available for viewing through the end of May, when one filmmaker will be awarded a prepaid AmEx card worth $50,000.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/04/2005 10:33:00 AM Comments (3)

The New York Underground Film Festival has announced their lineup for the 2005 edition that runs from March 9 - 15 at the Anthology Film Archives. The festival is bookended by films you've read about in the magazine or on this blog by filmmakers we are big fans of. Asia Argento opens the festival with her J.T. Leroy adaptation, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, and the festival is closed with Crispin Hellion Glover's What Is It?, which premiered at midnight at Sundance this year.

Check out these movies and all the interesting stuff in between!

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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/03/2005 01:07:00 PM Comments (4)

Arizona State University Art Museum will present the exhibition Anthony Goicolea: Photographs, Videos and Drawing from March 5 through June 4.

Goicolea, 33, who lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, grew up in a Cuban-American household in the suburbs of Marietta, Georgia. He creates dream-like works "peopled with multiple self-portraits. Using digital manipulation, Goicolea clones himself and creates scenarios in which he acts out both humorous and horrific childhood incidents."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/03/2005 11:39:00 AM Comments (1)

The smart and charmingly edited Fleshbot -- part of the Gawker empire, a reliable source for Paris Hilton T-mobile hack links, and truly the only "adult" Web site you need to bookmark -- notes today the "porn star documentary craze" and links to a doc produced by the Swedish Grindhouse pictures that tracks down the legendary '70s pornstar Seka.

Titled Desperately Seeking Seka, the pic details a trio of Swedish filmmakers trying to locate and interview perhaps the biggest female porn star of the 1970s. While I wasn't aware that Seka had pulled a Betty Page-like disappearing act, the filmmakers apparently mine some suspense from their quest. And since Fleshbot spoiled the ending, I will too: the filmmakers find Seka, aka Dorothy Patton, cooking pasta in her Chicago kitchen where she proceeds to regale them with stories of the porn's "Golden Age."
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# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/02/2005 03:04:00 PM Comments (0)

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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/01/2005 05:18:00 PM Comments (0)

Omar Elkharraz plays a young Arab boy from a French housing project who tries out for the school play in order to get closer to a girl (played by Sara Forestier, seen below), in L'Esquive (Games of Love and Chance).

L'Esquive, a small-budget drama about alienated youth in a French suburb, was the surprise winner at France's top film awards, the Cesars, on Saturday night, scooping up the coveted award for best French film of 2004, and the best director Cesar for its helmer, Tunisia-born Abdellatif Kechiche, who has lived in France since the age of six.

"As described in the program notes for the forthcoming New Directors/New Films festival, which will screeen the film on March 31 and April 3, "The film's title comes from a fencing term meaning the quick move to avoid an opponent's blade, deflect a thrust, and get out of harm's way -- something its teenage protagonist, Krimo (Omar Elkharraz), does not do. After their long friendship, Krimo recognizes his love for the feisty and determined Lydia (Sara Forestier), and even though he has scarcely cracked a book in two years, he maneuvers his way into the school play in which Lydia stars."

According to the International Herald Tribune, Kechiche had been "trying to make L'Esquive [-- which was filmed in Saint-Denis and Bobigny, northeast of Paris, in the heartland of highrises --] for 12 years, with a script that evolved, and was reworked, and finally resembles the finished project: 'I wanted to talk about the theater, and to make a love story, to talk of the suburbs in a different way, without the stories of forced marriages or the headscarf debate,' a reference to a controversial proposal to ban Muslin headscarves in French public schools.'"

The kids featured in the film, "who were about 14 at the time the movie was made, talk their own language, a hectic, Arabic-accented 'verlan,' or salty French slang that sounds like rap. They also speak the 18th-century French of [Pierre] Marivaux, when they rehearse 'Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard,' their high school play to be performed at the end of the year."

New Yorker Films picked up L'Esquive at last year's Berlin International Film Festival, where it screened in the Panorama, and will release it as Games of Love and Chance later this fall.
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/01/2005 11:45:00 AM Comments (1)

The business section of yesterday's New York Times included an interesting article by Stuart Elliott about the Turner Classic Movies series "Product Placement in the Movies," which will air each Friday in March.

In the article, Eliott writes: "The series is timely because product placement and other methods of embedding advertising within programming are growing more popular among marketers. The goal is to find the most effective way to reach consumers, who are increasingly able to elude commercials and other traditional interuptive sales tactics by using digital video recorders.

"For those marketers and movie buffs who believe that product placement began in 1982 when the Reece's Pieces brand of candy sold by Hershey was featured in E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, the series provides a surprising corrective. It turns out that Madison Avenue and Hollywood have been working together in earnest since the 1930s -- and in some isolated instances, evidence indicates, even before then...

"The earliest example of product placement [found by Jay Newell, an assistant professor at the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, who conceived the series and served as a consultant on it,] involved films from 1896 created by Auguste and Louis Lumiere for Francois-Henri Lavanchy-Clark, the Swiss representative for the Sunlight brand of soap sold by Lever Brothers (now Unilever). One film shows a cart bearing the Sunlight name parked on a street, Mr. Newell said, and another shows 'people doing their wash.'

"To help explain product placement to viewers, [Charles Tebesh, senior vice president of programming for Turner Classic Movies in Atlanta, said the cable station] will run shorts before and after the films [in the series] featuring a longtime specialist in the field, George R. Simkowski, president of a company in Norridge, Ill., named Let's Go Hollywood. Mr. Norris will discuss the practice and present examples."
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# posted by Steve Gallagher @ 3/01/2005 10:18:00 AM Comments (0)