If you've picked up our Spring issue you may have read the sidebar in our “Option Overload” Line Item ("Cell Capture") where Dutch filmmaker Cyrus Frisch describes how he made his latest film Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad In Afghanistan with a cell phone. Which as far as we know is a first.

It goes without saying that this is a shooting format that’s probably a decade before its time (at the least), but after seeing the film at the Tribeca Film Festival (it made its World Premiere at Rotterdam) the other day, this extremely experimental film running 70 minutes long with almost no dialogue is one of the most creative things I’ve seen done with cinema in quite some time.

Frisch plays a troubled Dutch soldier living in Amsterdam who is a prisoner in his own mind as the war has scared him to the point where it’s a struggle just to leave his apartment. Using a Sharp 903 cell phone with a 3.2 megapixel camera, Frisch records what he sees from his second-floor balcony: kids roughhousing, construction workers, a drunk screaming in the middle of the night. To the viewer it may not be much, but for the Frisch character it brings horrible flashbacks to when he was on the frontlines.

Now I’ll be honest, it’s quite a challenge to watch the film. If there isn’t enough natural light the shots are hard to see and you are forced to use your imagination to understand what’s going on. But when the light is just right and the camera phone is steady, Frisch is able to accomplish some beautiful images. One that sticks out in my mind is when he’s walking outside and stops to stare at a steam pipe. Ever so slightly Frisch moves the phone towards the sky and suddenly the steam turns into a helicopter. We learn quickly that the camera (his mind) can flashback to the war at any moment.

Before going into the screening I talked to Frisch, who said using the cell phone “Is the only way this film could have been made.” And after seeing it I agree. The camera phone gave Frisch the freedom that no mini-DV can. Walking through markets, busy sidewalks or while driving, he is able to capture reality without ever drawing attention to himself (do you ever think twice when you see someone pointing a camera phone?).

Is this the future of filmmaking? Not the near future. I believe most people will find Why Didn’t Anybody… very difficult to watch, but with technology only getting better and more advanced, this film’s premise will blaze a trail for new ideas and new stories that will be molded and improved through Internet-obsessed teens and find its way back to the big screen later down the road. Get ready.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/28/2007 10:24:00 PM Comments (2)

Sad news that arrived shortly after this year's SXSW Film Festival was the sudden death of actress Lily Wheelwright, who starred in Ry Russo-Young's Orphans. Wheelwright gave a tough and honest performance in the film, which won a Special Jury Prize at the fest.

Here's what writer/director Andrew Bujalski had to say about the movie:

"A sensitive & peculiar pastoral, Orphans manages to derive as much compelling energy from its locations & spaces (of the wide open & claustrophobic variety alike) as from its two terrific lead actresses, a rarity these digital days.

The film will receive a special screening in memory of Wheelwright at New York's IFC Center on Monday, April 30, at 10pm. To purchase tickets click here. And here is the film's trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/28/2007 10:22:00 AM Comments (3)

Over at The Street.com, Jonathan Blum goes to NAB to discover "the future of media." He lists three developments. The first, that Apple with its Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Studio is turning amateur filmmakers into pro-quality producers, is not so new and interesting. The second, that local broadcast television will be feeding itself to your cell phone in about a year's time, is a little bit more newsworthy. But the third, dealing with HD radio, told me something I didn't know. He says to forget all the news about XM and Sirius and to concentrate on the untapped potential of HD radio networks.

From the piece:

Why is HD radio so cool? First off, ignore the radio industry's complete misbranding of the technology. Yes, HD radio can be high definition. It can provide excellent sound quality. But what is far more important is that HD radio is digital radio.

Just like cell-phone networks that made the transition from analog to digital in decades past, new digital broadcast networks will provide a full range of new services. Conditional access will allow for highly targeted radio feeds to groups as little as a few hundred. Forget KROK. You'll get YourROK.

Your radio will learn what you like to listen to and feed you that content. There will be content tied to positional information such as GPS systems and in-car navigation. There will be graphics, links to Web content and probably most important of all, coupons. Discounts will be fed on the fly to listeners as they approach, say, a McDonalds.

Factor in that radio penetration is 100%. There are easily 1 billion radios in U.S., and billions more worldwide. Everybody has a radio. Imagine what happens when they all go digital -- which is only a matter of time -- think of the reach of even the most basic discount coupon promotion.

Drive by this McDonalds. Get a $1 off a Big Mac if you are within a 10-block radius. Can anybody say that is not marketing gold?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/27/2007 10:00:00 PM Comments (0)

Merrick over at Aint It Cool News posted a very fun piece of geek-out film news: Ridley Scott has completed reshoots of the Joanna Cassidy replicant shootout scene for the upcoming DVD final "director's cut" of Blade Runner. He links to Film Ick, which provides details:

The shots are for the sequence in which Cassidy's character Zhora is chased through the streets. In the original film, the chase shows Zhora in flat boots but previously we saw her put on heels - the reshoots feature heels; the control wires for the squib that released Zhora's blood was previously visible - not any longer; a wound make-up that was missing in some angles is now in place; Zhora gets a second shot in the chest now, whereas she didn't before; the lighting is much improved; several new angles have been taken and, depending on the edit, the sequence could end up looking rather different overall.

A subsequent posting clarifies that the material does not consist of replacement shots but "replacement shot elements" and that Cassidy re-suited in her clear vinyl outfit for the scene.

The story gives AICN the opportunity to link to a bunch of cool Blade Runner stuff, including a rarely seen deleted scene and, in multiple links, the British doc On the Edge of Blade Runner in which the filmmakers discuss whether or not Deckard is a replicant.

For now, I'll leave you with the original Joanna Cassidy scene:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/27/2007 03:59:00 PM Comments (0)

A number of things that have dominated the news recently - most notably the tragic events at Virginia Tech and the death yesterday of former MPAA honcho Jack Valenti - got me thinking about censorship and the perceived effect of films on viewers.

If we are to believe the news media, Park Chan-wook's Oldboy is (at least partly) to blame for the VT killings, a claim that not only reeks of sensationalism but, as Dave Kehr said, is "faintly racist." Sky News has said that Cho Seung-Hui "repeatedly watched [Oldboy] in the days leading up to the massacre", something which in turn reminded me of an incident in my native Scotland back in 2002.

After killing his life-long friend, Thomas McKendrick, Allan Menzies pleaded diminished responsability - despite admitting that he "drank his blood and ate a bit of his head ...and I buried him up the woods." The excuse Menzies gave was that he had watched the film Queen of the Damned (based on Anne Rice's vampire novel) over 100 times and that Akasha, a character from the film played by the late Aaliyah, had told him that McKendrick and another friend were planning to kill him, and that if he murdered someone he "would be made immortal in the next life - a vampire, basically."

Pointing the finger at films like Queen of the Damned and Oldboy may make for a good story, and "explain" to some people the root of certain horrific events, but ultimately it only distracts from the fact that anything can trigger the psychotic actions of severely disturbed people. Queen of the Damned, for example, had a 15 rating in the U.K., and no one voiced the opinion that it was legitimately to blame for Menzies' deeds. And any attempt by censors to try and anticipate the effect of similar Hollywood vampire moives on the insane would be ridiculous.

But when it comes to sane minds, censors are second-guessing and "protecting" audiences - with unfortunate results. Shane Meadows' latest film, This Is England, is released in Britain today. However, because it is about skinheads and deals with racism, the film has been given an 18 rating by British Board of Film Classification, the U.K.'s equivalant of the MPAA, on the basis of its "realistic violence and racist language."

As Meadows wrote in The Guardian earlier this week,

"This means that the film is now unavailable to the audience it will benefit the most. It's like I've somehow overachieved. By having one piece of violence and one piece of really acute verbal violence I've managed to get an 18 certificate, whereas someone else can slay thousands of people in a single film and that's OK. To be honest I don't understand it because, yes, the film is affecting but I think it's something that someone of 15 can cope with. It's not like it's a film about the 80s that has no value; it's incredibly relevant politically. It's as much about Iraq as it is about the Falklands. It's as much as about England in 2007 as it is about England in 1983."

Meadows' words on the double standards of censorship bodies echo the sentiments of Kirby Dick's brilliant study of the MPAA, This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which is pretty much essential viewing for anybody interested in film. Jack Valenti's death is a reminder that his legacy, namely the system he created at the MPAA, has always favored studio films while, as Dick's potted history of the MPAA's "quirky" decisions reveals, indie filmmakers have been the ones disadvantaged by the censors' double standards. And no doubt will continue to be.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/27/2007 11:25:00 AM Comments (1)

Over at the The Chutry Experiment, Chuck Tyron is soliciting cyber help on a paper he's researching on gender and film mash ups with an interesting inquiry:

I know that slash fiction, for example, is more frequently done by female authors, but I'm wondering if fake trailers are more commonly identified with male producers. The reason I ask is that I see these trailers as participating in the ongoing process of canonization of certain films by well-established directors. Of course, the parody wouldn't work if audiences were unfamiliar with the original film, so maybe these choices reflect a canon that has already been established.

The responses to the question are as intriguing as the original inquiry, and none more so than Karina Longworth at Newteevee . After "looking for female created and/or female genre-dependent trailer mashups" she admits she was ultimately "disappointed." So many of the supposedly "female" films set up for parody are ultimately masculinized either through genre or tone.

Two of note are Rocky Queen (a smash up of The Queen with the very male boxing film) and the more famous "Scary Mary Poppins":



But ultimately, for Longworth, the question remains a good question to ask:

So why do mashups––and, really, all subgenres of comic online videos–tend to skew masculine? Maybe it’s partially indicative of the general paucity of media made for women today; obviously, pop culture parody makers can only mine what the mainstream media gives them to work with. But I also agree with Tryon that a good mashup incorporates a basic affinity for its source, and a lot of the pop culture that is produced expressly for women is often so inherently silly that there’s a sense that it doesn’t need to be subverted, as if the joke is already on anyone who takes it seriously.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/27/2007 11:07:00 AM Comments (0)

I received this email of an obituary that Jackie Raynal wrote for Joe Saleh, who died at 73 last week of complications from a stroke in Paris. Saleh produced many Merchant-Ivory movies and also founded the Angelika movie theater.

Joseph J.M. Saleh who produced many of the Ivory-Merchant movies, created and founded the famous Angelika movie theater multiplex in New York, died in Paris last wek.

Saleh financed the documentary STREETWISE which received the 1985 Academy Awards Nomination. He was also resposible for the developing the first network election night forecasting system in 1964.

He was born January 18th,1934 in Hamadan, Iran and came to New York in the 40's. After graduating from Colgate University he did graduate work in sociology at Columbia University.

He became an associate Director of Research at CBS, Where he had the opportunity to develop the first network election night forecasting system in 1964. He later had a position with Columbia Pictures as Director of Research.

In the 70's he produced four feature films,including BOMBAY TALKIE and SAVAGES with the filmmaking team of James Ivory and the late Ismail Merchant.

He was also a successful real estate developer during the 1980's. It was during this period that he created and build the first multiplex Movie Center in Soho that showcased independent films and created a social climate for exhibitions and "Cafe Dialogue".

Together with his booker, Jeffrey Jacobs, he helped launched such commercial hit as DRUGSTORE COWBOY, THE CRYING GAME and PULP FICTION at the Angelika Theater.

Mr. Saleh was also responsible for the distribution of over 70 films in the US. among them: SWEET LORAINNE, THE SUICIDE CLUB (he produced and financed those two films ) and the Italian classic masterpiece WE, THE LIVING. He also distributed ON VALENTINE DAY,1918 (written by Academy Award Wnner Horton Foote), LIQUID SKY and END OF THE LINE among others.

In 1994 he received an award from the City of New York as Cinematic Entrepeneur of the Year.

He is survived by his daughters Jessica and Eva Saleh,his first wife Angelika, his sister Angela, his mother Naima Saleh of Fort Lauderdale and his second wife Jackie Raynal who is a filmmaker and prior owner of Bleecker Street Cinemas and the Carnegie-Hall Cinemas.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/27/2007 12:05:00 AM Comments (0)

Adam Dawtrey in Variety has a piece up today noting that digital download service Jaman is offering for free download six films screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.

From the piece:

Under the pact with Tribeca, six films screening at this year's fest, which opens Wednesday, will be offered simultaneously for free download by users anywhere in the world for a period of seven days.

Deal is believed to mark the first time a major festival will have given online exposure to part of its full-length feature program at the same time the movies unspool at the fest....

The six films available for download are Russian/Uzbek doc "Between Heaven and Earth," Hungarian animation "A Guest of Life," Serbian drama "The Optimists," classic French crime movie "The Pelican," experimental U.S. feature "Razzle Dazzle" and Argentine doc "The Tree."

Jaman signed another deal with the new Dream Machine (the merger of Celluloid Dreams and Hanway) to present a number of their titles:

Meanwhile, Jaman has acquired U.S. Internet rights to an initial batch of 42 films from Dreamachine, the company formed from the merger of Celluloid Dreams and HanWay Films.

Pics in the deal, which is intended to be the start of a longer-term relationship between the companies, include works by directors such as Walter Salles, the Dardennes brothers and Takeshi Kitano.

Jaman, based in San Mateo, launched to the paying public in February after a year in development. It's a peer-to-peer service using proprietary technology to deliver world cinema in what it describes as "better than DVD quality." It also aims to be a social networking site for fans of arthouse movies.

It has accumulated a library of around 1,300 films, which it offers either to rent for $1.99 or to buy for $4.99. It offers some titles free in a promotional effort to attract users. Jaman carries no advertising on its Web site as part of its strategy to present itself to filmmakers as a high-quality environment for their work.

Its proprietary P2P technology is attracting favorable reviews both for quality and level of security. Execs at both Tribeca and Dreamachine cited that technology, along with Jaman's dedication to bringing world cinema to a wider audience, as principal reasons they chose Jaman as an online partner.

The different digital download distributors are in the midst of a slow-speed landgrab at the moment, and these two developments, particularly the one with Dream Machine, seem like significant ones from Jaman in terms of demonstrating its appeal to both industry and potential audience.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/26/2007 10:10:00 AM Comments (0)

In the comments section of my post on the passing of Jim Lyons, Josh Apter notes a podcast he's put up of Lyons at the website for the Manhattan Edit Workshop. Click over to the site and into the section on Jim and you can download a podcast of him discussing the craft of editing. And here's what Apter wrote in his post:

Jim's viewpoint and candor were always refreshing, and his commitment to process had a devilish enthusiasm. Whether screening an ancient 16mm copy of Jean Genet’s Un Chant d'Amour or deconstructing Roland Barthes' essay on Greta Garbo’s face, his methods were curious and his curiosity endless.

I hope to share some of Jim’s insight through the lectures he gave at the Motion Picture Editors Guild. Though only a fraction of the man in person, Jim’s take on the craft of editing is full of vitality, humor and honesty.

With the belief that anything you do can be elevated to an art form, Jim’s life was his art, both in the way he lived it and how fully he shared from it.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/25/2007 02:58:00 PM Comments (2)

The problem with our sound-bite culture is that stuff that's not a sound bit rarely makes it onto a news. But as any good film director can tell you, sometimes a person saying nothing can communicate so much more than an actor delivering the most eloquently written monologue.

Over at The Huffington Post, director Alex Gibney blogs about his new doc, Taxi to the Dark Side, and, more specifically, Alberto Gonzalez. He poses the question, "Is Alberto Gonzalez stupid?" and wonders whether the Attorney General's testimony last week is truly as hapless at it appeared or whether there was a grand strategy at work.

Here's an excerpt from his posting about Gonzalez and then a clip with the A.G. from Taxi, which has its premiere at Tribeca this week.

[Gonzalez's] brilliant moment in Taxi to the Dark Side comes when he is being grilled by Senator Carl Levin and Senator John McCain about the rules of evidence proposed by the administration in its version of the Military Commissions Act. Sen. Levin recites a litany of torture techniques - including waterboarding and forced nudity - and asks Gonzales if testimony obtained through these techniques would be admissible in the military commissions proposed by the Bush Administration. "Well sir, I think most importantly, I can't imagine such testimony would be reliable," says Gonzales. He cleverly sounds like he has answered the question, but he hasn't, and so the proceedings move along.

Then John McCain asks Gonzales if testimony obtained through illegal inhumane treatment would be prohibited. After this question, Gonzales pauses, starts to speak, stops, seems to search for mendacious inspiration - does he hear the words "my precious"? - tries to speak again and then finally, after a chilling pause of 20 seconds he answers, "The concern that I would have about such a prohibition is what does it mean, how you define it?"

Brilliant! Torture: it depends on how you define it. The answer is insipid, immoral and obscene.

But, in a Machiavellian context, it is not wrong.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/25/2007 02:33:00 PM Comments (1)

On Saturday, April 28 the IFP will be doing a special Producing 101 panel with Waitress producer Michael Roiff, and veteran producers Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Namesake) and Big Beach’s Peter Saraf (Little Miss Sunshine). The three will be sitting down to discuss Roiff’s first producing effort with Waitress, written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly, along with talking about some of the challenges producers face — developing material, finding money, building a strong team to get the project from script to screen.

The panel (with reception to follow) takes place at the Helen Mills Theater (137 West 26th St (btw 6th and 7th)) from 3:00-4:30. Tickets are $25 with all proceeds being donated to the Adrienne Shelly Foundation.

For tickets call 212-465-8200 x218 or rsvp@ipf.org

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/24/2007 10:43:00 AM Comments (2)

With the Tribeca Film Festival a few days away, Anthony Kaufman has a great piece over at indieWIRE about the rivalry between Tribeca, SXSW and LAFF. As the three fests are scheduled so close to one another, most of the times they are fighting for the same films (and leaving regional fests like Sarasota, Florida Film Festival and Independent Film Festival Boston with little to choose from). This causes headaches for filmmakers who due to premiere-crazed programming aren't choosing a festival that's best for their film but what fest will give them the most exposure.

Here’s an excerpt:

"’Call me a wimp, but I wasn't willing to take my chances and show it in Sarasota,’ says Jon Frankel, who withdrew from the Florida fest to premiere his Harlem football documentary Hellfighters at Tribeca because programmers ‘asked me not to show it at Sarasota,’ he says. ‘This is my first experience with festivals. I just didn't want to piss them off.’”

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/23/2007 04:08:00 PM Comments (0)

In 2005 Filmmaker selected Rachel Boynton as one of our "25 New Faces of Independent Film" based on the advance knowledge we had on her completely excellent doc Our Brand is Crisis, which was successfully released in theaters last year.

Today came more great news for Boynton and her doc. Pamela McClintock and Adam Dawtrey report in Variety that Warner Brothers has picked up feature remake rights to the doc for George Clooney and his Smoke House production company. According the trade paper, the film will be "reimagined as a dark comedy," which is not much of a stretch if you've seen Boyton's tragi-comic skewering of U.S. political advisors muddling about in Bolivian politics.

(Boynton is photographed here by Matt Mahurin.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/23/2007 01:56:00 PM Comments (0)

There's been so much in the mainstream media in the last week about the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech -- much of it rather soul deadening in its own right -- that I hate to direct you to one more story. But if you've been following the MSM coverage you've probably come across a quote from or reference to Paul Harrill, an independent filmmaker who teaches film at the school. Harrill was the one who discovered a similarity between the images in Park Chan-wook's Old Boy and the homemade videos of the killer. On his blog, which I've linked to several times before, Harrill provides context for his commentary, discusses the coverage of the tragedy, and also tells you what you can do to help.

First, on the Old Boy comparison, which I'm going to quote at length:

Last night, I was disgusted that the various media outlets were giving airtime, ink, and webspace to the videotape and writings of the person behind the massacre here at Virginia Tech.

Amidst the images I saw on the New York Times website, one that stuck out as odd — an image of the young man brandishing a hammer. To me, the image called to mind a still from a movie — at first, I thought, something from a Gasper Noe film. Then, later, I remembered it was the revenge movie, Old Boy.

For others, the image might have suggested something else, but I am a filmmaker and I suppose I am inclined to make comparisons between images of cinematic texts, if one can use such coolly academic terminology for a killer’s self-taped imagery. Both images feature people looking into a camera’s eye brandishing a hammer and, importantly for me, both images are “revenge texts.” The fact that both images are of Asian males was largely inconsequential to me; if either person had been of a difference race, nationality, etc. I would have, I feel, made the same connection. As I said, at first I thought the image came from a French film.

Certainly, I thought, some readers and viewers would be perplexed by such an image, and I wanted to suggest a possible reference. Mainly, though, I wanted to use this opportunity of having the Times’ attention to tell them how I would prefer that they did not show such images in the first place. This message was included in my email to them though, perhaps not surprisingly, they chose not to acknowledge that comment. I believe that giving airtime to a killer’s ramblings does a disservice to those of us here in Blacksburg who are deeply, actively grieving; I also believe that it likely gives the killer the attention he so desperately desired. For me, sharing these images publicly goes beyond pornography.

How misguided and naive can a person be, particularly in light of the comments in my last post? I should have said nothing, done nothing, and ignored it all. I made the mistake of attempting to make sense of the nonsensical, assuming that my comment could be a simple footnote to a single still image, and above all, presuming that a person can have any control over any comment he feeds to the Media Machine.

This morning I awoke to several emails and blog comments accusing me of everything from racism against South Koreans to blaming cinema for the carnage on Monday. And all day I have been courted by several major media outlets salivating for an interview with me, as if I could somehow explain the events of Monday to them by way of a movie. How sad. How absurd. The answer to all of these individuals has been “No.”

Let me be clear: My comparison of these two images was not meant to suggest in ANY way that movies, any movie, “made him do it.” Likewise, my comparison of these two images is IN NO WAY an attempt to make ANY generalizations based on racial, nationalistic, or any other sorts of lines.

The fact that the comparison of these two images has been co-opted in various ways is extraordinarily painful to me, particularly the accusations of racism. Anyone who knows me knows that this truly, truly breaks my heart. As if it weren’t already broken.

To everyone outside of Blacksburg, the events of the past few days are a circus, an opportunity to use others’ tragedy for their own ends. It is not a circus for me. There is only the event, the profound sadness of its aftermath, and the utter confusion about what has happened.

I am mourning the loss of my colleagues, friends, family, and students. Here in Blacksburg we are all grieving. Deeply. The headline writers for many news outlets have determined that today “The Healing Begins.” It has not.

If what was intended to be my tiny footnote on a minor point has stirred up passions in you, I truly regret that. If you have taken my comment to be implicitly or explicitly racist, I hope you can believe me when I write with utter sincerity that this was never the intention.

And if you are with the media, do not bother contacting me. I have learned my lesson.

Finally, to reiterate: My point in all of this, however misguided the effort, was to initiate a conversation about what Jill Godmilow calls “the pornography of the real” — in this case, news outlets using a mass murderer’s fantasies as sick spectacle and — let us never forget — as a source of revenue.

In another post, Harrill elaborates on the "pornography of the real."

The past 48 hours have been one long, ongoing demonstration of what Jill Godmilow, in both her incomparable film What Farocki Taught and her essay “What’s Wrong with the Liberal Documentary?, labels “the pornography of the real”:

The “pornography of the real” involves the highly suspect, psychic pleasure of viewing “the moving picture real” … a powerful pornographic interest in real people, real death, real destruction and real suffering, especially of “others”, commodities in film. These “pleasures” are not brought to our attention. The pornographic aspect is masked in the documentary by assurances that the film delivers only the actually existing real — thus sincere truths that we need to know about.

As I said in my previous post, I think of storytelling as a kind of citizenship, so I don’t blame people for wanting to know the stories unfolding in Blacksburg, nor do I blame journalists for telling those stories. Still, how one gathers the facts, why you gather them, and the way you tell them can’t be separated from the story you’re telling. Sadly I’ve been witnessing firsthand how many journalists, particularly those from out of town, seem to have forgotten that common decency is also facet of citizenship.

Finally, Harrill posts what you can do to help the school, the victims' families, and yourself process the tragedy:

* If you are as concerned and offended as I am about decision of the various news outlets to share the killer’s self-taped images and/or manifesto, let them know your thoughts about it.

* If you have no connection whatsoever to the events of the past week I request that you pause, for at least 24 hours, reading any news stories on the event, especially from news outlets that have featured the killer’s vanity kit. Instead, use that time — even if it’s 5 minutes — to do something positive in the world.

* If you feel compelled to read the news, I encourage you to visit The Roanoke Times, whose in-depth and respectful coverage has been a source of pride for many of us in the area.

* If you are able to do so, I encourage you to donate to one of the many memorial funds set up to honor the victims.

* Finally, if you are a film professional, in the coming weeks I will be looking for internships and summer work for my 26 filmmaking students. It’s vital, to me, to help them find meaningful summer activity, which will move them forward in their career goals and get their minds off of the terrible recent events.

Please contact me directly if you can offer an internship or, even better, paid summer work: pharrill AT selfreliantfilm DOT com

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/23/2007 01:18:00 PM Comments (0)

The Sundance Institute has announced the 13 projects for its annual June Directors and Screenwriters Labs, held May 28-June 28. The Labs have evolved to include filmmakers from around the world, with fellows this year from Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Haiti.

The participants and projects selected for the Labs are:

DIRECTORS LAB

THE CAVANAUGHS / John Morgan (co-writer/director) and Meg LeFauve (co-writer), U.S.A.
When the mother of a deeply evangelical family suddenly rejects motherhood, falls in love with a woman, and disavows her faith, the remaining members of the family are thrown into chaos, forcing each of them to construct new meaning for the ideas of family, love, and identity.

CIRCUMSTANCE / Maryam Keshavarz (writer/director), U.S.A./Iran
In the charged climate of today’s Iran, two girls grapple with their intense, complex relationship during a volatile adolescence.

COLD SOULS / Sophie Barthes (writer/director), U.S.A.
In the midst of an existential crisis, a famous American actor stumbles upon “Soul Storage”, a private lab offering New Yorkers a relief from the burden of their souls.

FARMING / Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (writer/director), United Kingdom/Nigeria
Abandoned by his parents, a young African boy desperately searches for love and belonging within a brutal skinhead subculture where violence becomes his only companion.

HAITI CHERIE / Patricia Benoit (writer/director), U.S.A./Haiti
Three refugees from Haiti wrestle with the effects of exile when they start a new life in the United States, only to find they can’t leave the ghosts of the past behind.

HERE / Braden King (co-writer/director) and Dani Valent (co-writer), U.S.A./Australia
Measurement and orientation break down for a solitary American mapmaker charting the Armenian countryside when he travels with an adventurous landscape photographer visiting her homeland.

SPOONS / Eric Lahey (writer/director), U.S.A.
After years of struggling with addiction, a father reunites with his son, and the two men realize that no matter how far you move from the present, you never live that far away from the past.

WATER & POWER / Richard Montoya (writer/director), U.S.A.
Twin brothers nicknamed “Water” and “Power” from the Eastside streets of Los Angeles rise through the city’s political and police ranks to become players in a complex and dangerous web of the powerful and corrupt of Los Angeles.

SCREENWRITERS LAB

DREAMING IN COLOUR / Tala Hadid (writer/director), Morocco/U.S.A.
From North Africa to the bleak winter landscapes of Northern France, three refugees struggle to find their place in a world without borders.

PARIAH / Dee Rees (writer/director), U.S.A.
A Bronx lesbian teenager juggles multiple identities to avoid rejection from friends and family, but pressure from home, school, and within corrodes the line between her dual personas with explosive consequences.

REFRESH, REFRESH / James Ponsoldt (writer/director), U.S.A.
Three teenage boys in the high desert of central Oregon battle heartbreak and explore the redemptive power of violence when their Marine reservist fathers are called to duty in Iraq. REFRESH, REFRESH is based on the short story by Benjamin Percy.

THIS IS NOT A PIPE: AN IMAGE OF TREASON / JJ Lask (writer/director), U.S.A.
Like the trees that grow in the worst dirt on the streets of New York City, a father and daughter struggle to blossom over the half century from prohibition to Woodstock.

UM HUSSEIN / Mohamed Al-Daradji (co-writer/director) and Jennifer Norridge (co-writer), Iraq/United Kingdom
Twelve years after a soldier is captured by Saddam’s Republican Guards, his mother and son retrace his journey across Iraq in their quest to bring him home.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/23/2007 12:58:00 PM Comments (0)

Below I posted about the upcoming IFP Rough Cut Lab I'm teaching with Gretchen McGowan and a group of fantastic advisors in June. The deadline is April 27 (find more info here) so we're in the final rounds of accepting and looking at material. But if you have a project and have been on the fence about submitting it, here's an email I received from Matt Manahan, who went through the lab last year with his feature The Book of Caleb (pictured). It might help you decide if the process is one that can help you and your film.

The lab experience was very helpful and unique in a variety of ways. After going through this whole process of making a narrative feature for the past six years I've learned two big things.

1. Trying to get people to give you money to "make a movie," at any stage of a project sucks so hard.

2. The sheer value of post-production. Which is not just editing. It's sound design, ADR, color correction, music composition, and music clearance. The way I look at it now, if you don't respect them, it's all these different ways you can fuck up your story. Which is terrible because it's the final draft of your story. It's the last draft before report card time.

This is all AFTER you've survived the rewrites, casting , shooting and problems with money and time. You'd be surprised how quickly that thrill of wrapping production fades.

It becomes more of like, "how can you cover up all the mistakes you made in every other part of the process and still tell a clear coherent story?" and by this point you're pretty exhausted and fucking broke. "What can you do to make everything else work?"

These are the areas the lab focuses on though. You go in with a group of your peers from all over the country.

Independent film too is a weird thing, because often times you feel like you are toiling away in a cave on a mountain somewhere, like completely isolated and everything you do is so hard, you believe nobody else could ever have possibly over come this before.

Then you come to these labs, to New York City and you meet all these people that have the same problems and fears that you do, and they have also found ways to overcome the same issues you have.

It's like a gathering of holocaust survivors. Only everyone has probably gained weight from eating bad craft service and sitting and staring at monitors 12 hours a day.

"How did you survive that?!"

"Oh well, I hide in a latrine for 3 weeks"

"I never thought of that!"

"How did you get away with only paying the guards THAT much?!"

You get to meet these mentors, working PROFESSIONALS who actually get paid to do what they do, and in this small intimate lab environment, you learn. Many of these elements are things you have no prior experience with. The one I remember the most was composer Ed Sheamur. A part of the process I had always feared.

We sat down and looked at scenes from everybody's films and Ed would talk through the scene and how he would go about scoring it. What I really learned about it is that the composer is interested in the subtext of the scene. What is "really" being said between the two characters and how that emotion can be enhanced through score.

You should hear the difference in score on our film before and after. It really planted the seed as far as what to talk about and how to say what you mean.

Then the end of the lab talks about how you can get this movie seen by other people. Things that you maybe wouldn't consider filmmaking. Things like festival strategy, marketing, EPK, distribution and deliverables. Stop kidding yourself. It is part of the filmmaking process. It's the step after "post production," and can be just as creative as your accounting.

At the end it just reenergizes everyone to keep going. gives you a flashlight to take back into your cave.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/20/2007 03:13:00 PM Comments (1)

It was nice to see underground filmmaker Patrick McGuinn get theatrical distribution for his feature Sunkissed last year; despite mixed reviews the psychological thriller found fans with it's striking visuals and story of homosexual obsession. Something of a festival darling, McGuinn has steadfastly continued to make his very personal, very weird films over the years, with barely any concession to commercial parameters... yet the work itself is, oddly enough, quite accessible and fun. We dare-say this is a young filmmaker we'll be hearing a lot more of in the next few years.

For now, a double whammy: Sunkissed gets it's DVD release on Wolfe Video, as does the rather unfortunately titled The Pursuit Of Happyness (yes, it came first), an insightful documentary on Chicago's indie-pop duo The Aluminum Group, from First Run Features. Check out the very cool bonus music videos, which you won't catch on VH1. Yet.

# posted by André Salas @ 4/20/2007 01:44:00 PM Comments (0)

For those who bookmark the blog, head over to the main page where you can see select stories from the Spring issue of Filmmaker, which hits newstands today. Some of the features you can view on the site include an in-depth look by Alicia Van Couvering on the twentysomething filmmakers who’ve been dubbed “Mumblecore,” and James Ponsoldt talks to Charles Burnett on his masterpiece Killer of Sheep, which has finally gotten a theatrical release after 30 years. Enjoy.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/20/2007 10:09:00 AM Comments (0)

In The Guardian, John Patterson wonders if auteurs are all they are cracked up to be.

An excerpt:

The auteur theory, I've finally decided, can kiss my ass. I'm done with it. It bores me. I flee in great haste from the mere mention of its name. It's a cult of personality. It's a marketing scheme. It's become a misleading umbrella-term falsely uniting a diverse body of collectively created work under a single name. And it just encourages the tacky, egomaniacal film-school cult of the writer-director as lone presiding genius....

The "auteurs" are still out there, but most of them bore me. Don't get me wrong: directors all have their moments here and there. It's just that I can't be bothered to wait around for them any more.

Instead, I've been seeking out other ways to discern great bodies of work united by a single, non-directorial figure, but not necessarily dominated by them. I think of someone like Charlie Kaufman, who is far more the auteur than the relatively characterless directors who have so far brought his scripts to life on screen. Or the German cinematographer Robby Müller, whose silvery palette unites films as diverse as Kings of the Road, Repo Man and Dead Man. Right now I'm keeping a weather eye out for anything shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who lensed Ali, The New World and Children of Men, more than enough evidence of quasi-authorship for me.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/19/2007 11:48:00 PM Comments (0)

Understandably, everybody is getting excited about the elite crop of films that will be shown at Cannes. One of the great joys of being a cinema lover is when you find directors that you love, and then can look forward to their next films. Of the Cannes crop, the latest efforts from Wong Kar-Wai, Emir Kusturica, Carlos Reygadas and Harmony Korine particularly excite me. But I'm also looking forward to a number of upcoming films from directors who won't be on the Croisette in May.

First of all, there's the new one from Takeshi Kitano, about a director who attempts to work in seven different genres. Kantoku: Banzai! (which roughly translates as Hooray for the Director!) sees Kitano parodying everything from Ozu-esque 50s dramas to the yakuza movie, a genre he has made his own. It's the first film in which Kitano's Beat Takeshi persona (his zany comic side) is at the fore directorially (rather than his serious, credible Takeshi Kitano persona), and from the Japanese trailer it looks very silly, but very fun. The film will be released in Japan in June, and you can read more about it here.

And then there's Lights in the Dusk, from Finland's finest, Aki Kaurismäki, which premiered at last year's Cannes. It's the final part of Kaurismäki's "unemployment trilogy" - following Drifting Clouds (1999) and The Man Without A Past (2002) - and is about an impoverished nightwatchman lured into crime by a femme fatale. Here's a great interview with Kaurismäki, and you can watch the trailer (with French subtitles, I'm afraid...) here. Strand Releasing puts the film out in the U.S. on June 13.

A few days ago, IFC picked up the U.S. rights to Shane Meadows' latest unconventional take on British life, This Is England. It will get a day-and-date release through their First Take arm in July, but will screen before that (on May 2, 3 and 4) at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival in New York. To get a taste of it, you can check out the film's official site, which has the trailer and numerous other goodies, or read an interview with the always entertaining Meadows.

The Boss of It All looks to be the first film since The Idiots in which Lars von Trier is actually having some fun. The movie has a jaunty little website, which is well worth a look - although you might not want to have the sound on your computer too loud if you're checking it out at work... A safer option would be to read von Trier's feelings on The Boss of It All in a relatively rare interview from last year. The film gets its U.S. release, also through IFC, on May 25.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/19/2007 04:01:00 PM Comments (0)

The Cannes official selection (i.e., Competition and Un Certain Regard) line-up has been announced and as always there's a lot to salivate over. (Here it is at Indiewire.) Wong Kar Wai's Blueberry Nights (pictured) is the Opening Night, and the fest includes films by some of my other favorite directors, including Fatih Akin, Carlos Reygados, Joel and Ethan Coen, Gus Van Sant, Olivier Assayas, Abel Ferrara, Bela Tarr, Mark Pellington, Barbet Schroeder and Harmony Korine (whose Mister Lonely is pictured below), to name a few.

The Competition:

"My Blueberry Nights," directed by Wong Kar-Wai
"Auf Der Anderen Siete," directed by Fatih Akin
"Un Veille Maitresse," directed by Catherine Breillat
"No Country For Old Men," directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
"Zodiac," directed by David Fincher
"We Own The Night," directed by James Gray
"Les Chansons D'Amour," directed by Christophe Honore
"Mogari No Mori," directed by Naomi Kawase
"Breath," directed by Kim Ki Duk
"Promise Me This," directed by Emir Kusturica
"Secret Sunshine," directed by Lee Chang-dong
"4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile," directed by Christian Mungiu
"Tehilim," directed by Raphael Nadjari
"Stellet Licht," directed by Carlos Reygadas
"Persepolis," directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
"Le Scaphandre et le Papillon," directed by Julian Schnabel
"Import Export," directed by Ulrich Seidl
"Alexandra," directed by Alexandre Sokourov
"Death Proof," directed by Quentin Tarantino
"The Man From London," directed by Bela Tarr
"Paranoid Park," directed by Gus Van Sant
"Izgnanie" (The Banishment), directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

And here are the other sections:

Out of Competition

"Sicko," directed by Michael Moore
"Ocean's Thirteen," directed by Steven Soderbergh
"A Mighty Heart," directed by Michael Winterbottom

Midnight Screenings

"Boarding Gate," directed Olivier Assayas
"Go Go Tales," directed by Abel Ferrara
"U2 3D," directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington

Special Screenings
"11th Hour," directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners
"The War," directed by Lynn Novick and Ken Burns
"Retour en Normandie," directed by Nicolas Philibert
"He Fengming," directed by Wang Bing

Un Certain Regard

"Le Reve de la Nuit d'Avant," directed by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
"Calle Santa Fe," directed by Carmen Castillo (first film)
"Munyurangabo," directed by Chung Lee Isaac (first film)
"Et Toi T'Es Sur Qui?" directed by Lola Doillon (first film)
"El Bano del Papa," directed by Enrique Fernandes and Cesar Charlone (first film)
"Bikur Hatizmoret," directedd by Eran Kolirin (first film)
"Mister Lonely," directed by Harmony Korine
"Magnus," directed by Kadri Kousaar (first film)
"Mang Shan," directed by Li Yang
"Mio Fratello E Figlio Unico," directed by Daniele Luchetti
"California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit)," directed by Christian Nemescu (first film)
"La Soledad," directed by Jaime Rosales
"L'Avocat de la Terreur," directed by Barbet Schroeder
"Les Pieuvres," directed by Celine Sciamma (first film)
"Am Ende Kommen Touristen," directed by Robert Thalheim
"Kuaile Gongchang," directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham

Director's Fortnight and Critic's Week will announce in the new few days.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/19/2007 12:58:00 PM Comments (0)

From the very cool folks at Coolhunting comes this posting about a great online music archive.

The French website La Blogotheque is posting a series of "take away shows" which feature musicians doing impromptu gigs on streets, in parks, or, in the case of Arcade Fire, in an elevator.

Here's Coolhunting:

(Take-Away Shows) are a collection of live, unedited videos of musicians playing in unusual settings. The artists' unpredictable interaction with the environment and the reactions of often clueless bystanders result in a genius blend of music video and reality TV.

With a sharp eye for incorporating improvised performances into unexpected spaces, director Vincent Moon creates and captures moments that appear natural and effortless, even ordinary or commonplace. It's as if we're being let in on a secret that all around us everyday life is infused with spontaneous musicality.

And here's Arcade Fire doing "Neon Bible." (Watch below or go to the page to download for your iPod.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/19/2007 11:40:00 AM Comments (0)

As a film festival, Tribeca has always been a bit hard to fathom. Incorporating so many different cinematic points of view, Tribeca makes it often hard to see the forest from the films. But this year, several observers have picked up on one major trend – women directors. As Cyndi Greening points out at Cynematik:

There are 61 films directed or co-directed by women and 15 films, in addition to those with female directors, which have expressly women’s interests. These films delve into topics which push the boundaries and break the molds of what is conventionally thought of a female film.

Even more this is the year of the ingénue. In addition to Sarah Polley’s powerful and mature work Away From Her (which will be on the cover of the upcoming issue of filmmaker, but is not in Tribeca), two films at Tribeca show off the directorial talent of actresses who have stepped behind the camera. Julie Delphy’s 2 Days in Paris, which, while not her first feature, has received glowing reviews since it premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year. (In his Variety review Derek Elley wrote, “The spirit of early Woody Allen is alive and well on the streets of the French capital in "2 Days in Paris," an entertaining, deliciously played walk-and-talker.” Also playing is Cake Eaters, Mary Stuart Masterson’s feature directorial debut about two families and the past they have tried to keep buried.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/18/2007 02:46:00 PM Comments (0)

MOMA this week offers U.S. viewers' a rare chance to see Sophie Fiennes' The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, starring Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek.

From the film's site:

THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA offers an introduction into some of Zizek's most exciting ideas on fantasy, reality, sexuality, subjectivity, desire, materiality and cinematic form. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA applies Zizek's ideas to the cinematic canon, in what The Times calls 'an extraordinary reassessment of cinema.'

The film cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and on replica sets, it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from within the films themselves. Described by The Times as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate genuinely complex ideas. Says Zizek: "My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema."

The film runs today through Monday at MOMA, and DVDs of the film -- which is commercially unavailable in the U.S. -- are for sale at the Museum shop.

To whet your appetite, here's an excerpt in which Zizek takes on David Lynch and Frank Booth:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/17/2007 09:13:00 PM Comments (0)

Indiewire has created a tribute page to Jim Lyons with contributions from John Cameron MItchell, Tom Gilroy, Esther Robinson, Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, Amy Taubin and Marcus Hu. Please click over there and read these very personal and heartfelt remembrances of Jim.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/17/2007 03:40:00 PM Comments (0)

Jim Lyons died on Thursday in New York.

If you didn’t know Jim personally and just recognize his name from movie credits, then you most probably remember him as an editor. His credits include four films by Todd Haynes – Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine and Far from Heaven – as well as Spring Forward, The Virgin Suicides, and Silver Lake Life. Most recently, he was the co-editor of A Walk into the Sea: The Danny Williams Story. The latter, a documentary by Esther Robinson about her uncle’s relationship with Andy Warhol and The Factory, won the Teddy at Berlin this year and receives its U.S. premiere at Tribeca this month. He was also an AIDS activist and educator.

But Jim did many other things – he wrote, acted and had plans to direct – and his great contribution to our world of film lay in his contributions not to any one of these fields but rather across them. Jim was an artist, even when he was editing someone else’s material, and he brought an artist’s sensibility, temperament and questioning to everything he did. Whether it was playing the artist David Wojnarowicz in Steve McLean’s Postcards from America or Billy Name in Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol, or co-writing the story for Velvet Goldmine, Jim's work questioned the social codes and roles that act to define us while also finding the elements of beauty in the spaces in between.

A few years ago Filmmaker ran a piece in which we asked people to tell us what was inspiring them in their work. Jim’s response, excerpted below, is a good illustration of the range and passion of his interests:

"Punk rock and Michel Foucault. I’m writing a script about Foucault’s life and how it intersected with the San Francisco underground sex and music scenes of the early ‘80s while he was teaching at Berkeley. Foucault insisted that philosophical ideas had real-life consequences, something I rarely see addressed in independent movies. He wrote about power and how its best trick was to make itself seem normal and inevitable. He believed that new pleasures and identities and ways of living were always possible because freedom was there for the taking. Unfortunately, they came together during Reagan’s ‘80s, which was the beginning of the national nightmare we are living today."

I worked with Jim twice – he cut two films Robin O’Hara and I produced, First Love, Last Rites, and The Chateau, both directed by Jesse Peretz. Before I hired him on the first one, I called another producer who had worked with him. He told me not to expect a facile technician who would whip out 20 different versions of a scene on the Avid in an afternoon. “What you have to understand about working with Jim,” he told me, “is that sometimes he’ll need to leave the editing room in the afternoon for an hour and walk around the block a few times. But when he comes back, he’ll come back with a great idea that will really improve the movie.”

In the end, that’s what I’ll remember most about working with Jim: his passion for the world of ideas. He was always about discovering the meanings that could be teased out of a cut, a shot, an ordering of scenes or an inflection in an actor’s line of dialogue. I think Jim gave me the best understanding of the goals of editing when he paraphrased one day Roland Barthes’ S/Z. “Editing,” he said, “is all about when and how you ask the question and when and how you answer it.” Elsewhere, he talked about his admiration of Yasujiro Ozu and his belief in the power of silence in cinema ("The less you say in film the better," Jim wrote) and cited Virginia Woolf as an inspiration on his work. Her writing showed, he felt, that "moments of being could embody whole lives if looked at closely and honestly enough."

In the last couple of years Jim slowed down his work editing other people’s movies and started to plan his own projects. He was going to make a short he had received funding for from the Creative Capital Foundation. It was titled A Short Film about Andy Warhol, and, if I remember correctly, would take the viewer between two moments, one with Warhol at a Factory party and the other, an interior moment with Warhol alone in a taxi on the way home from a social engagement. In its two glimpses, the film depicted Warhol as an icon and as a person, recognizing his status as the former while wondering what it was like for him as the latter. In his grant application, Lyons hoped the project would be "experimental in both film and subject matter, political in intent, poetic in effect." I thought it was a lovely script and I couldn’t wait to see what Jim was going to do with it. That film, the Foucault/punk rock movie, and, most importantly, his overriding intelligence, personal sensitivity and sense of engagement… Our world is diminished now that Jim and his work are no longer a part of it.

His familly is requesting that, in lieu of flowers, donations to the James K. Lyons Memorial Fund, 47 Davis Road, Port Washington, NY 11050, would be gratefully appreciated.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2007 04:29:00 PM Comments (17)

A couple of years ago I worked on a new program with the Independent Feature Project: the Rough Cut Labs. The idea came, in part, from my realization that much of maintaining a filmmaking career involves making a series of mistakes and then remembering not to make them on the next film you do. But if you're making your first film, what if somebody could tell you beforehand what mistakes you might be likely to make? Or, forget mistakes, what if people who have been through the trenches could let you know what to expect as your film moves from the security of its edit room into the dangers of the real world?

The Rough Cut Lab is designed to provide filmmakers in post with their features a program of advice, feedback and guidance tailored to the specific needs of their film. Filmmakers screen their rough cuts for editorial advisors and then take place in a four-day seminar in which industry professionals offer instruction on locking your picture, figuring out your post-production sound, scoring your film, securing music licenses, getting a sales rep, devising a festival strategy and more. This year I'll be teaching it with Gretchen McGowan of HDNet, and we have a fantastic group of generous and helpful people coming in as guests. The Lab takes place in New York from June 12 - 15, and the entry deadline for the Narrative Features is April 27. There is a $30 entry fee, but the lab itself is free.

More info and an application form can be found here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/15/2007 03:42:00 PM Comments (0)

Cinephiles, filmmaker and critics, like Peter Biskind in his seminal history Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-And_Rock ' N ' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood, have long heroicized Seventies cinema. But in England the Seventies were something else. In his piece "Camera Obscurity" in The Guardian this weekend, John Patterson remembers the 70s as the decade that never was. He finds proof of what it could have been in Terrence Davies’ lyrical Distant Voices, Still Lives. (For more on the film, see Adrian Danks’s "The Art of Memory: Terence Davies' Distant Voices, Still Lives" in Senses of Cinema.) Patterson writes:

After the American studios took their money home with them after 1970, thus ending the so-called "British New Wave", the homegrown cinema wilted. The established talent decamped for Hollywood or stayed home and worked as local directors-for-hire to US backers. The up-and-comers who'd later become famous - Mike Leigh, Steven Frears, Alan Clarke - sought shelter in television, or, like Ken Loach, returned there after forays into features. It was as if British cinema had gone into internal exile. Other talent - Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, the brothers Scott - remained in advertising, emerged at the end of the decade with cheesy Hollywood calling-card movies, then flew west once the call came.

see

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/15/2007 08:10:00 AM Comments (0)

We've added two new RSS feeds to the site. One feed brings you our various web exclusives which, right now, include a rough-cut scene from John Sayles's Honeydripper and Ray Pride's feature on Andrea Arnold's Red Road, and the other feed brings you Nick Dawson's weekly "Director Interviews," which this week features Year of the Dog's Mike White.

Click on the RSS symbols, search for them, or cut and paste the code above into your feed reader.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 4/13/2007 09:25:00 PM Comments (0)

For those who bookmark this blog, check out an exclusive clip from John Sayles' upcoming film Honeydripper now on our main page.

The film stars Danny Glover as the owner of a failing juke joint in 1950s Alabama who hires a young electric guitarist in hopes to keep from closing down.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 4/13/2007 09:57:00 AM Comments (0)

Imagine two directors racing to make a film about an out, witty, slightly acerbic gay man whose legacy would forever be defined by his connection to a horrific murderous rampage. No, I am not talking about Truman Capote, for whom two films -- Bennett Miller's Capote and Douglas McGrath's Infamous -- retold Capote’s infamous struggle to write In Cold Blood, the non-fiction novel that secured his literary fame while nearly destroying his sanity. This time it's Harvey Milk.

In Variety yesterday, Michael Fleming and Pamela McClintock reported in their article "Dueling Directors Milk a Good Story" that both Bryan Singer and Gus Van Sant are set to make a film about Harvey Milk. A San Francisco supervisor, and one of our first out gay politicians, Harvey Milk was murdered along with mayor George Moscone on November 27, 1978 when another supervisor Dan White went on a killing spree (supposedly set off according to White's defense team from his eating Twinkies).

Singer has long been attached to adapting The Mayor of Castro Street, the non-fiction account of Milk's life penned by the journalist Randy Shilts (who gained national attention for And the Band Played On, an account of the early days of the AIDS epidemic). According to Variety, "Warner Independent Prods., which brought in Singer two years ago, is near a deal with Participant Prods. to co-finance and with Chris McQuarrie to write the final draft." Elsewhere, Gus Van Sant has now stepped up to direct a different Milk bio-pic, this one written by Dustin Lance Black.

Neither film, however, will be the first to cover Milk's story. Rob Epstein's documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (narrated by Harvey Fierstein) won the 1985 documentary Oscar for its portrayal of the man and his murder. Leon Ichaso directed the 1999 made-for-tv film Execution of Justice based on a play by Emily Mann and starring Peter Coyote as Milk. And in 1995, composer Stewart Wallace (along with Grey Gardens librettist Michael Korie) created and staged the opera "Harvey Milk."

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/13/2007 09:17:00 AM Comments (0)

In our forthcoming Spring issue, there's a fascinating piece on Mumblecore, but over at his blog, SXSW film fest honcho Matt Dentler puts forward a case for Craig Zobel (The Great World of Sound), Zack Godshall (Low and Behold) and Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories) being part of a new North Carolina film movement, which he terms the "Gordon Green Gang", alongside existing bona fide Mumblecorers Michael Tully, Aaron Katz and Nate Meyer.

On David Gordon Green himself, Dentler goes as far as to say that he would

go toe-to-toe with anyone to proclaim that his first two films, George Washington and All the Real Girls, are the first major mumblecore films of the last 10 years. That was where the verite styles of Maysles and Malick, became married with the personal approach of Cassavetes and Rohmer. Since these two films, Green has started experimenting with more traditional narrative structures, but his influence is certainly felt on many of the so-called "mumblecore" features.

No sooner had he written that, it seemed, that Cocaine Angel director Michael Tully responded to Dentler's comments on his own blog, in an entry entitled "Bumblefuckcore" vs. "The DGG Disciples": Consider Me NEITHER.

I know I'm being listed as a member (albeit offshootedly) of this fancy new "film movement" that's being talked about in at least 10% of the indie film blogosphere, and while many aspiring filmmakers would kill to be mentioned in the same breath as these 21st Century cinematic trendsetters (David Gordon Green, Joe Swanberg, Craig Zobel, The Duplass Brothers, etc.), I would like to state, for the record, that I want nothing to do with any of these wannabe-director bozos. UNSUBSCRIBE. Seriously. These people are not my friends, and I am not excited by their movies. I would rather watch "CSI: Des Moines" than sit through another self-absorbed, meandering, unfocused film by one of these male, heterosexual, Caucasian rich kids. The only reason I delivered such a ferociously heroic performance in QUIET CITY was because it was Aaron Katz's birthday. I mean, come on. Give me a break.

I am not a member of a movement. I am my very own movement. That movement is called TULLYVISION. I am currently working on a revolutionary 28-word manifesto, which will be posted on May 1st, when I return from my next festival jaunt. Of course, at these festivals I'm going to have to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while Swanberg and Zobel and Katz read printouts of the latest blog updates that talk about "how great they are." Believe me, I know what it's going to be like. I was at South by Southwest, remember? Here's a little tip to all of you writers out there who are trying to crack the code of this latest movement: THERE AIN'T NO CODE. THERE AIN'T NOTHIN'. The only filmmaker who is bringing anything worthwile to the table in America right now is M. Night Shyamalan. Without him, you could burn every other American film that's been made this century and nothing would be missed.

If anyone wants to join me at The Tullyvision Estates to see how one person can be so ferociously driven and breathtakingly bold, I am holding my first ever open house during Memorial Day weekend. It only costs $40,000 to attend, which is a steal if you know what's good for you. Fill out the sweepstakes form at www.tullyvision.com for a free pass into the greatest weekend of your life.

Sincerely,

His Highestness, The Honorablest Michael "Tullyvision" Tully

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/12/2007 03:23:00 PM Comments (1)

Last month, moderating a panel for Canadian film I was more than a bit embarrassed when two (of the four) speakers -- a theatrical acquisition executive and the head of cable television network -- spent a large portion of their time thumbing away on their Blackberries under the table. But this behavior has become the norm. Who hasn't attended a movie recently where the dark space of the theater was suddenly set aglow by so many lit PDA screens? As the rudeness of the real world pushes its way into cyberspace, more than a few people are calling for a truce.

Tonight I am attending the book launch party for David Shipley and Will Schwalbe's Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, a guide to how to bring civility and style to cyber communications. While the text promises to be The Elements of Style for a new generation, I wonder how many will really mind their e-manners in the future. And in the New York Times this week, Brad Stone in his piece "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs" surveys the growing call for civility in the blogosphere, and an established code of behavior. In the piece, David Weinberger, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, suggests “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway." On his own site, Joho the Blog, Weinberger makes guests agree to set of guidelines -- for example, "you cannot post hate speech, profanity, abusive language, personal attacks, comments that disrupt the community, sexually explicit materials, ..." -- before they can leave a comment.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/12/2007 09:25:00 AM Comments (0)

Kurt Vonnegut's death Wednesday night really feels like the end of an era. (Obits appear in the New York Times and GreenCine.com.) His metaphysical ramblings and anti-authoritarian sensibility made him the unofficial poet laureate of America's sixties counterculture. And while his novel writing slowed down in the last decade, Vonnegut kept up the good fight, always speaking up for civil rights, intellectual freedom and against the war, especially in his column for the journal In These Times.

In 1972, George Roy Hill adapted his lyrical time-travel, anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five into one of the best -- and least appreciated -- of classic Seventies cinema. Structurally innovative, metaphysically playful, and deeply moving -- along with an entrancing Glenn Gould score -- this allegory of one man's struggle to understand fate (and its inevitable mortal conclusion) is well worth watching, especially today in memory of its author.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/12/2007 07:09:00 AM Comments (1)

Vigen Chaldranian has directed 15 feature films, yet nobody knows who he is. Or rather, nobody who isn’t Armenian. Which is a little odd considering he isn’t merely a part of Armenian cinema; he is Armenian cinema. Furthermore, If you watch the credits roll on any of his films, you'll find that, beyond writing and directing, he manages to assume nearly every level of production. For The Priestess premiered in January at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood to a sold-out crowd of nearly 1000 enthusiastic Armenians, with some regular Americans thrown in for good measure. It had two more showings in Glendale, a.k.a. Little Armenia, to, as you might guess, equally excited sold-out crowds of Armenians. But if this film was meant to be seen by American audiences, you wouldn't know it. Those who called ahead for tickets were met with Armenian instructions. Furthermore, the filmmakers who spoke before the film did so almost exclusively in their native tongue.

The Priestess is about a mysterious woman who was indirectly responsible for the dissemination of Christianity throughout Armenia, by way of feeding the first High Priest, Gregory the Illuminator, while he was imprisoned in a pit for over 10 years. While the historical text which inspired the film only mentions this woman once in a single sentence, Vigen and co-scribe, Anahit Aghasaryan, use her mysterious existence to create an entire film of what-ifs, in order to answer some of Armenia's oldest questions.

After the movie, Vigen was gleefully mobbed by his Armenian admirers. As the film plays in cities across the country, vying for a distribution deal, I have no doubt that it will continue to attract the same enthusiastic Armenian-Americans. As for the general American movie-going public, it seems unlikely that this film will be the breakthrough Chaldranian has been looking for. At least I hope he's looking for it. A one-man show like this deserves to be seen by more than one man. The Priestess, his 15th film, he is credited as writer, director, producer, actor (one of two leads), art designer, and costume designer. Chaldranian is literally a one man show, with a personality that eclipses everything around him. A man fit for the Hollywood vacuum and trapped somewhere beyond its frosted glass borders. Teaming up with Mel Metcalfe III, a Hollywood bred producer, The Priestess is the first ever Armenian-American cinematic collaboration and Chaldranian's finest opportunity to garner recognition this side of the Mediterranean.

# posted by Senator Murphy @ 4/11/2007 11:26:00 AM Comments (0)

After the divine profits of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, whose distribution rollout was shepherded by Indie guru Bob Berney, Christian films have been on the ascension. Last week in Variety, Gregory Ellwood's article "Independent Focus on Faith Films" surveyed the rise of Christian production companies, each which uses the American independent film model to spread the Good Word. And each company has carved out a particular genre and/or market for its faith-based work. Namesake, says CEO Joe Goodman, makes "films that are more in the thriller/horror genre that may have a spiritual theme." Coming up for fall House, a horror film about an un-holy ghost. For Codeblack, on the hand, according to CEO Jeff Clanagan, "our movies under our faith-based banner have a very specific target marketing to the African-American gospel market,"

Christian spirit has now spread to the internet with the establishment of GodTube, a evangelical version of YouTube. As in a parallel universe, GodTube has the same shaky camera, bad singing, and juvenile parodies as its predecessor -- only this time with a message. Check out the Christian (mostl white) rewind of Sir Mix-A-Lot's infamous song "Baby Got Back." Here it is book, not back, that baby's got.

# posted by Peter Bowen @ 4/11/2007 07:24:00 AM Comments (8)

In the issue of Filmmaker we just sent to the printer today (which explains the slacking on the blog), Steve Gallagher interviews Mary Jordan, director of Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis. The doc portrait of artist and filmmaker Jack Smith opens in New York tomorrow at the Film Forum, and I highly recommend it. Here's an excerpt from Steve's piece:

Filmmaker: Were you surprised to discover that Jack Smith’s work is so political?

Jordan: I’m a human rights person. I was a social activist myself before I got interested in Jack. So, for me, this documentary is a human rights film dripping in art. That’s how I’ve always seen it. Some other people might have made a film about Jack Smith differently than I did, they might not have seen his political manifestoes as something to stand on. I find them relevant and I think they are very much a part of who he is. This a guy who is actually very clear on what is going on and who is using himself to expose the way capitalism works. And so for me, Jack was a political activist in the art world. He makes beautiful art, and he’s political.

That’s a very interesting break between Jack Smith and Andy Warhol, for instance. Both reveal capitalism for what it is in different ways. I prefer Jack’s madman to Warhol’s conformist, but these two trajectories in art are interesting to compare. One resists capitalism, goes against it, and works his whole life to expose the duplicity of ownership, and the other embraces capitalism and turns himself into a product.

Filmmaker: I never got to meet Jack Smith, but I always heard stories about how famously difficult he was to work with. And yet, aside from Flaming Creatures, the aspect of Jack’s work that is most influential was his reluctance to start his screen