A couple of popular festivals had parties last night on the east side to kick off the '08 season. The
Woodstock Film Festival, October 10 - 14, has a great program scheduled this year and some of their sponsors, including
indiepix, hosted a little shindig at Libation to
fete filmmakers and staff. This young fest is very popular with filmmakers, as is the
True/False Film Festival. T/F hosted a special screening of one of last year's faves,
Super Amigos by
Arturo Perez Torres at the IFC Center.
Chicago 10 director,
Brett Morgen, did a Q&A with Torres following the screening, followed by an intimate party on Broome Street with all the usual suspects in attendance.
This morning at the market, the UK Film Council and UK Film Council US hosted a preview of new work from film projects supported by the Council's New Cinema Fund, followed by a brunch in the lobby of the Angelika Film Center. An excited
Lenny Crooks introduced the show reel with scene selections, trailers, and screen tests of projects currently in production, most of which looked fresh, provocative and exciting. I was especially taken with
Chris Waitt's
A Complete History,
Sarah Gavron's
Brick Lane (gorgeous cinematography),
Peter Greenaway's
Nightwatching (also gorgeous) and
Noel Clarke's
Adulthood. Good stuff.
Crooks, the new head of the Fund said that over the course of the next three years, he's very keen on creating collaborations with UK and US indie filmmakers/producers. With 14 films currently in production, he's anxious to fill a near-future slate with quality independent fiction and nonfiction co-productions.
After brunch, I went back downstairs to watch a work-in-progress doc called
Paolo by filmmaker
Andrea Franco Batevsky. Then back to the Puck Building for a sit-down with IFP's documentary programmer and Doc Spotlight director,
Milton Talbott. In a few days, on this blog, I'll be posting our conversation about the current state of nonfiction, and how the documentary strand at the market has changed and grown over the years.
I followed Milton over to 4th street where the doc spotlight meetings were taking place--a smaller, quieter (but just as intense) version of the narrative and No Borders meetings between sales agents, producers, filmmakers and financiers.
Judith Helfand was there representing
Chicken and Egg Pictures, as was
Diana Holtzberg of
Films Transit International (both as a director/producer and an acquisitions and sales agent). I also saw
Peter Broderick and others conducting meetings. As I was leaving, a very excited sales agent came running up to Milton and shared the news that she'd just closed a great deal with a documentary filmmaker.
I met
Simon Kilmurry, the executive director of
PBS' POV series in the elevator on the way back down to the lobby and we chatted on the walk back to the Puck Building. He'll be one of the panelists for the "Public Television in the 21st Century" panel tomorrow as part of the market day that focuses on documentary. I interviewed one of his team members recently, producer
Yance Ford, for Renew Media. You can read the interview
here.
I spent the afternoon in the viewing library and watched these WIP docs:
Samantha Buck's
21 Below;
Cathryne Czubek's
A Girl and a Gun;
Virginia Williams'
Frontrunner; and
Matt Boyd's
A Rubberband is an Unlikely Instrument (Jem Cohen's partner-in-crime and a wonderful filmmaker in his own right).
Some great panels coming up this afternoon: "Show Me the Money": Where are today's indies under $2 million finding their budgets? Learn how independent filmmakers find the money--through grants, private foundations and fiscal sponsorship programs--they need to get their movie made.
Following that will be the last panel of the day moderated by
indieWIRE's
Eugene Hernandez called "The State of Independents." How has independent film changed in the last five years? Where are we headed--and how can distributors and independent filmmakers work together to tweak old platform models in a landscape of shrinking windows and increasingly elusive audiences to get their work seen by global audiences?
Eugene is pulling double-duty today. After the panel, he'll be heading over to the
Apple Store in Soho to have a conversation with filmmaking partners
Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente at 7:30. Also tonight,
Rooftop Films, in conjunction with IFP, will be hosting a free screening of "Sneak Previews from the IFP Narrative Rough Cut Lab." Live music and never-before-seen films under a clear autumn sky--sounds good to me. Come out and join the festivities.
# posted by Pamela Cohn @ 9/19/2007 12:56:00 PM
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