Layoffs, firings, demotions, sick leaves, and retirements haven’t faded American film critics to black--at least not in a year that saw five of them drawing notices for movies of their own.

Both documentary vets, Time’s Richard Schickel and Variety’s Todd McCarthy returned to the director’s chair for feature-length portraits of Hollywood auteur Steven Spielberg and French cineaste Pierre Rissient, respectively. (Alas, neither Schickel’s Spielberg on Spielberg nor McCarthy’s Man of Cinema: Pierre Rissient has appeared on DVD as yet.) Of first-time documentarians, Film Comment’s Kent Jones and The Independent Weekly’s Godfrey Cheshire stuck relatively close to familiar turf--Jones with his Martin Scorsese-produced ode to psycho-thriller producer Val Lewton (The Man in the Shadows, which airs January 14 on Turner Classic Movies before hitting DVD), and Cheshire with his Moving Midway, which tenderly charts the geographic and political relocation of his family’s plantation in North Carolina.

But the ultimate film critic’s film of late is For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism, which the Boston Phoenix’s Gerald Peary premiered in Telluride as a work in progress and has been tweaking and selectively screening since. Well-named for having occupied Peary and producer Amy Geller for the past seven years and counting, Love of Movies devotes itself equally to spanning a century of print reviewing, lingering just a tad partially on Andrew Sarris’s long volleys with opponent Pauline Kael (Peary is a self-described “Sarrisite”), and to interviewing critics about their objects of desire, obscure and otherwise.

It’s on the latter count that Peary’s rough cut best makes the case for print critics’ survival into the digital age, even though the film favors passion over polemics and scarcely if ever acknowledges mounting threats to the profession. Peary collects smart and thoroughly entertaining testaments to cinema’s supernatural power from the likes of Lisa Schwarzbaum (still freaked by The Boy With the Green Hair), Molly Haskell (ditto Diabolique), and J. Hoberman, whose childhood memory of animals fleeing the train wreck in The Greatest Show on Earth is so intense that he has stubbornly refused to diminish it with repeat viewings.

Peary, speaking by phone on New Year’s Eve, says the moral of The Story of American Film Criticism is “Never make a movie with [film] clips unless you pay for them up front”--which it may well be for him, though for me and anyone who’s reading between the lines, it’s that there’s no substitute online or anywhere else for critics whose preoccupations are articulated with literary wit and flair. If anything, the aforementioned talking heads in Peary’s movie--performance artists onscreen, as on the page--are lively enough to send us not reeling, but reading.

# posted by Rob Nelson @ 12/31/2007 06:42:00 PM Comments (1)

I usually spend the last few weeks December putting together a compilation of my favorite music of the year, but this year thought I'd also create a round-up of choice tidbits from the Director Interviews I've done over the course of 2007. Rather like an end of year mix tape, the selections I've made are not straightforwardly indicative of what I liked most, but what translated best to the short quote format. (All of this year's interviews can be found here.)

Incidentally, the most fascinating interview I did all year was not, in fact, a Director Interview. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was, for my money, the best film of this year, but frustratingly my request for an interview with its writer-director, Andrew Dominik, was not responded to until after my deadline. Ultimately, I did the interview after the movie had already opened, and ran an almost unedited transcript as a Web Exclusive. To this date, it remains the only interview I am aware of that Dominik has done in the American press, a sign of just how little desire Warner Bros. had to publicize the film.


Mike White (on going to the Oscars):
“I’ve never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition.”

Edgar Wright (on Grindhouse):
“I got asked to do it in 2005, when they were first starting to develop it. I was in L.A., and out with Quentin [Tarantino] and Eli Roth, and he said, “We're doing this Grindhouse thing. Do you two want to do trailers?” And we both went, “Uh, yes please!” So, [I was] very, very flattered to be asked. I wrote the script in December 2005 and sent it to Robert [Rodriguez] and Quentin. I got an email from Robert saying, 'Oh, that's great. Perfect, perfect', and a phone call from Quentin saying, [he mimics Tarantino's voice] “You know, the funny thing is, like uh, these are the first completed pages of the script!” They hadn't finished either of their screenplays, so I felt like the school swot because I'd turned my Grindhouse stuff in first.”

Christoffer Boe (on his obsession with films):
“I seem to wonder if we can reach some kind of new destination with cinema, or touch upon human existence in a different way to what cinema usually does in its very schematic and sometimes very controlled, plot-oriented ways of thinking. Sometimes I feel like I've found the holy grail, and next week I think it's a complete mistake and I need to try something completely different. It's an ongoing process.”

Hal Hartley (on Fay Grim):
“9/11 was my first day teaching at Harvard University. My classes were all canceled and I got back to town two days later. I'm one of those people who doesn't think the world has changed any at all since 9/11. It just seemed to be almost inevitable, something like that. That's one of the reasons why the backstory of Fay Grim goes all the way back into the '80s. I was trying to sketch out the continuity of all this hanky-panky between the security agencies of the world.”

Lars Von Trier (on the plot of “Occupations”, his contribution to Chacun Son Cinema):
“It's the opening of Manderlay in Cannes, and I'm sitting next to this guy who's writing for a tiny fictitious French paper called On the Sunny Side, and he's writing a review on the film, and he's obviously bored. Then he tells me about all the cars he owns, and how rich he is, and all these things. So, at a certain point, he says, “So what do you do?” Then I take out this very strange hammer we have in the Danish building business, and I say, “I kill.” And then I kill him. It is as stupid as it sounds.”

Judd Apatow (on Pineapple Express):
“It's a very strange, demented Abbott and Costello movie, with a lot of action and comedy and violence. [laughs] Something I always dreamt of doing, an action movie where the leads are high the entire movie. It always struck me as funny since I saw Brad Pitt in True Romance, when I thought, “I wish this movie was about his character! I want to follow him around for a while.” ”

Todd Rohal (on The Guatemalan Handshake being called a “mumblecore” movie):
“Somebody in L.A. came to see The Guatemalan Handshake, and they were like, "I thought this was going to be like Andrew Bujalski's film, and then it opens up and it's widescreen anamorphic film." Right in the first two minutes, they said, "There's no logic to whatever that Mumblecore thing is." ”

Taika Waititi (on the comparisons between Eagle vs. Shark and Napoleon Dynamite):
“It was never part of my thinking that we had to watch out not to be compared to Napoleon Dynamite, because we were making a small New Zealand film which I thought was only going to play in festivals. But it's not a bad thing, there are worse things to be compared to. I mean, imagine if it were being compared to Big Momma's House 2?!”

John Dahl (on why he turned down The Punisher 2):
“The idea of doing a really nasty vigilante movie that had a sense of humor was appealing, but I guess I wasn't convinced I could get it to that point. No matter what I would have done, it would have been Punisher 2. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to do [the original] Punisher, because politically incorrect as the idea is of a guy in a leather trench coat just wasting dozens of drug-dealing scum in an instant, like stamping out rats, I just think it could have been pretty funny. Funny and grim at the same time. You know, like you're laughing because somebody just got shot in the face? That kind of funny.”

Asger Leth (on the premiere of The Ghosts of Cité Soleil):
“I was scared shitless. I was hiding out in the theater and after the screening I didn't really want to hear what people had to say about the film, but then everybody left. 15 minutes later I went out, and outside were two of my big heroes, Werner Herzog and [Alejandro González] Iñárritu, both of them totally fucking crazy about the film, attacking me and saying it was “Amazing!” After that I was like, “I don't care what reviews I get, that's all I need.” ”

Cherie Nowlan (on not being able to turn off):
“When I'm making a film, I direct myself in my sleep – it's infuriating. I think, “You don't have to direct this scene, you're just sleeping,” and there's literally a camera at the end of my bed. It is really annoying when I film myself in my sleep – it's like, “Get the crew out of my bedroom!” ”

Milos Forman (on the perils of period movies):
“We were shooting Amadeus in one of a couple of the remaining 18th Century theatres in Europe. We had chandeliers and thousands and thousands of candles burning, so we had 30 or 40 firemen all over the stage and in the theater. We had 600 hundred extras in the audience in period costume, and dancers and singers and an orchestra. We lit the candles and had the camera rolling. The music started and the singer was in the ecstasy of performing – and nobody noticed that he had made a wrong step. He had a hat with huge feathers, and they caught fire. Now everybody — hundreds of people — sees, but he didn't know it because he was in the ecstasy, and it was behind his back. Nobody moves — everybody is watching it! It took a long time — five, six seconds and lasted an eternity — until finally one young fireman stuck his head out of the wings and said, “Mr. Forman, could you please stop the camera? Your actor is on fire.” ”

Julie Delpy (on firemen):
“I don't know any woman in France who doesn't talk to firemen and smile at them, because they're always so sweet, and they're wearing those tight pants. Even my dad looks at their ass when they walk down the street!”

Greg Mottola (on the decision to call his film Superbad):
“Definitely a few times we looked at each other and said, “Do we really think this is a good idea?” There was one day I was driving with the crew going to the location and the teamster driver who was taking us was on the phone with a friend, and I overheard him saying, “I'm working on this movie. It's called Superbad, and it is.” I thought, “This could have been a big mistake...” ”

John Turturro (on Christopher Walken)
“He would say, “I don't want the choreographer to tell me things.” I said, “OK, do you want to try stuff?” He said, “No, you do it and then I'll watch you. If I like what you do, I'll steal it from you.” He made me dance, and he'd be “Oh, I like that, I'll do that.” We get along very well, but he has the things that he needs. He doesn't like to drive and act anymore, I don't know why. “You got to be parked, that's the only thing.” He likes the old rear-projection system.”

Tony Gilroy (on “adapting” Robert Ludlum's trilogy of Bourne novels):
“We didn't use the books. The first ten minutes of the first film is out of the book, but after that it's mine. No one ever thought there would be a sequel of that first movie. I'm not going to get into all the production insanity and everything else but, believe me, I never would have killed Clive Owen or Chris Cooper if I thought there was going to be a sequel. The minute there was a sequel, I went back and put the tape in to see if there was any way that Clive could have crawled out of that field. We never, ever thought there would be a sequel, so once we had to go on we couldn't use the books. There was nothing.”

Robert Sarkies (on the sacrifices necessary for success):
“I saved up my 50 cents a day lunch money when I was 10 years old to be able to afford a movie camera. I went hungry. I was a real thin child, [laughs] and I used to eat quite a lot of cereal when I got home. Literally for four years, my parents didn't realize that I didn't spend any of my lunch money on lunch. Once I combined birthday money and Christmas money and lunch money, I could afford to buy a camera every year and a half.”

Julien Temple (on his first encounter with Joe Strummer):
“I first met him in Chalk Farm in the rehearsal space that the Clash had. There was no one there in this big, open warehouse space, except there was this really weird smell and there was this table with a plastic tablecloth over it, and the smell seemed to be coming from there. When I lifted up the tablecloth, there was Joe asleep. He still had his boots on, and was not very happy to have been woken.”

Noah Baumbach (on Peter Bogdanovich):
“I cast him in Mr Jealousy, and we became friends during that. I was a huge fan of his. When Wes[Anderson] and I became friends, soon after that he met Peter separately so the three of us often get together. I call him “Pop” and he calls us his sons and it’s a sort of a cinema family.”

Crispin Hellion Glover (on shock tactics):
“I really have zero interest in shock. I think right now in corporately funded and distributed film, anything that can possibly make an audience uncomfortable in any way is necessarily excised, and I think that’s a very bad thing for the culture. It’s the moment when an audience sits back in its chairs and looks up at the screen and says, “Is this right, what I’m watching? Is this wrong, what I’m watching? Is the filmmaker right or wrong? Should I be here or not?” It’s at the moment that these genuine questions are being asked that true education can happen. And true education isn’t happening in the cinema right now in this culture.”

Esther Robinson (on her cinematic epiphany)
“The first movie that changed my life was Stranger Than Paradise when I was 15 years old. There's this moment where it goes to black in between scenes, and I remember sitting in this black theater thinking, “Holy fuck! You can do that?! You can just go to black?!” It literally changed my life.”

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 12/30/2007 08:44:00 PM Comments (0)

... then become a fan of Filmmaker.

Okay, I know the "fan" terminology is annoying, but, trust me, we're not asking for adolescent idolatry. In fact, I had us all set up with a nice-looking Group page, but was then counseled that, for a magazine, the Page/Fan structure was the way to go (thank you, CineVegas). In addition to being able to send you individually messages and bulletins, there's a bunch of apps and functionalities that can be added vid the Page/Fan structure, so the page is something we can grow into. And, other cool sites are set up this way, like The Auteurs (no, not the great English band led by Luke Haines but the new online movie download/streaming site). Visit them on Facebook here, where they are currently streaming their movies prior to their hard launch at the Berlin Film Festival, or on the web here.

I'm sure we'll have more about The Auteurs in the days ahead. (Oh, and to learn more about Haines's band, click here.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/30/2007 08:03:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at the Emerging Pictures blog, Ira Deutchman responds to Stephen Holden's review of John Sayles's Honeydripper, in which Holden finds stereotypes in the film's 1950s' Southern characters.

From the Deutchman blog post:

Why is it that every African American audience we show the film to is thanking us for its realistic portrayal? Is it that the Jim Crow era is just so loaded with baggage that it is not acceptable to portray a small story within that era without showing the lynchings? Is it that a white writer/director is tackling this subject?

I ask these questions merely to provoke some discussion. The real question is, do people show their own ignorance–and even racism–when they have a kneejerk reaction to a story that, while set in a certain time and place, is trying to get to something a little different from what is expected? Is the viewer the one guilty of stereotyping? I'd like to challenge Stephen Holden to see the film again. Perhaps the power of the individual characters in the film will be clearer once he is more familiar with the film's own rhythms. And I'd like to challenge audiences in New York and Los Angeles to go check it out this weekend and come back here and tell me your thoughts.

Deutchman also quotes from Killer of Sheep director Charles Burnett, who posted on the Emerging blog after seeing the film this fall. Here's what Burnett wrote:

"Honeydripper" is an appealing story set in the South and it is a fascinating account of a man, Pine Top, who is haunted by events in his past that keeps him from succeeding in the present. The story has many levels and it is a joy to watch Sayles, as he does in his other films, work socially relevant issues into his stories without compromising the narrative.

The story is unique. Things are not what they seem and yet, there is a connection with everything and everyone that creates a feeling of magic. The Ominous blind guitar player helps to create a surreal atmosphere. I was drawn to all the characters in the film. However, Danny Glover, who plays Pine Top, is so good that you think the Blues were written especially for him. Pine Top resonates. His desperation leads him to contemplate doing wrong to save his Juke Joint. His defining moment is when he contemplates stealing a dead woman’s ring off of her finger but can't bring himself to stoop so low.

In the end, "Honeydripper" is a story about redemption. Sonny, played by Gary Clark Jr., is a fascinating character who finds himself at the doorsteps of Pine Top’s Honeydripper Juke Joint hoping to find a job playing his guitar, which is the only instrument that Pine Top hates.

In spite of where and when the story takes place, the story takes one on pleasant journey that shows us that people have to do what they have to in order to survive.

Deutchman starts his post with a trenchant comparison, noting Janet Maslin's review of the pioneering New Queer Cinema picture Parting Glances in which she called the film out for a "parade of homosexual stereotypes." He notes that the film died a quick theatrical death only to now be recognized for the great film that it is. Obviously, the same fate could occur to Honeydripper, and I really hope that won't be the case. Ireally liked Honeydripper, had no problems with its pacing (Holden dubbed it "slow"), and didn't feel the need to dub the characters either "archetypes" or "stereotypes." In some ways, Honeydripper tells a familiar story (most movies, in fact, do), but it never felt to me that Sayles was just building his story from cultural tropes or self-consciously folkloric ideas. The emotional beats felt honest to me, and the music -- wonderfully arranged and deliberately rough around the edges -- provided all the necessary payoffs.

Honeydripper is currently playing in New York and L.A. and expands nationwide beginning mid-January.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/30/2007 11:35:00 AM Comments (2)

There can be no greater statement about the impending supremacy of user-generated, viral, and online video over what we now quaintly call "cinema" than this news from the Criterion Collection that the tony, canon-certifying brand is embracing the best of the Web. Below you can find the "Criterion Edition" of the already classic short The Landlord, with star Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay's video commentary track embedded.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/25/2007 03:56:00 PM Comments (2)

I'm editing now James Ponsoldt's interview with Paul Thomas Anderson that will appear in our Winter issue, and I've seen There Will be Blood twice so far, once at a screening and once on a DVD screener. I'll try to write a few thoughts about it in the coming days, but, for me, and definitely after the second viewing, upon which it gets even better, it is my #1 film of the year.

Here's Paramount Vantage's internet clip announcing this weekend's nationwide midnight sneaks. (Hat tip: Movie City News.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/24/2007 05:54:00 PM Comments (4)

In the midst of shopping, cooking and, yes, trying to close the next issue of the magazine, which ships at the end of this week, I want to take a second and wish all of our readers a great holiday and New Year. We really appreciate your readership and look forward to bringing you lots of great stuff, both in the magazine and online, in the coming year.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/24/2007 04:10:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at his Scanners blog, Jim Emerson has gone to greater lengths than most while compiling a list of his favorite films of the year. The results of his hard work and creativity can be seen below.



Emerson explains that the video is his "hommage to the ending of the late Michelangelo Antonioni's The Eclipse and to the writers who are currently on strike. ...The effort was to look at my favorite movies of the year (inspired, to begin with, by the opening of No Country for Old Men) solely through establishing shots, architecture, landscapes, inanimate objects... and a few glimpses of extras and motionless actors who don't speak."

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 12/20/2007 11:31:00 PM Comments (0)

Writing in Salon, Andrew O'Hehir captures what a lot of people are thinking: it wasn't a bad year for movies, but when it comes to independents, the long-form theatrical experience may be on its way out. There are no grand conclusions here, but O'Hehir talks to the right people -- IFC's Jonathan Sehring, Killer Films' Christine Vachon, Milos Stehlik of Facets -- in his attempt to assess the healthiness of independents surviving on the other side of the mini-major divide.

An excerpt:

Milos Stehlik, director of the Chicago-based video distributor and art-house proprietor Facets Multi-Media (which occasionally dabbles in theatrical distribution as well), has been observing the transformation of the indie-film niche for many years. The studio specialty divisions, he says, "release a lot of good movies, and that's terrific. But they are the big gorillas in this little pond, and the way they can play the economics is very different. If something doesn't work, they can absorb the loss. When something does work, they can maximize it and reap the payoff. Their business model is very different from anything a true independent with meager resources can muster."

So the mini-major studios are implacably shoving the genuine indie distributors out of the marketplace they created; isn't that just capitalism at work? Beyond empathizing with a few people's bruised egos and disordered career paths, why should you care about this? That's an open question, but my own hunch is that, Into Great Silence aside, certain kinds of unconventional and demanding films, the ones the specialty divisions don't know how to package and present as spiritually beneficial holiday fare, will get driven even further under the radar than they are already. In my conversation with Stehlik, we began wondering whether filmmakers like Andrei Tarkovsky and Krzysztof Kieslowski (not that they were ever so wildly popular) would even get noticed if they were working today.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/20/2007 06:50:00 PM Comments (1)

A few months ago, Scott blogged about the first artwork that had surfaced for Pablo, the animated biopic of artist and filmmaker Pablo Ferro currently in the works from Richard Goldgewicht and Jeremy Goldscheider, the director-producer double act who were chosen collectively as one of our current 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Earlier today, I was sent the first clip of the film's animation, which is being developed by J.J. Walker.



Look out for more updates as the project progresses towards completion.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 12/18/2007 04:16:00 PM Comments (0)

I received an email from writer/director Maria Maggenti (Puccini for Beginners) announcing the launch of A Working Writer, a website that she and writer Michael Seitzman have launched during the midst of this current WGA strike. The site will feature short video interviews of writers discussing their work and their thoughts about being working writers. First up: Eva Saks.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/18/2007 02:13:00 PM Comments (0)

I want to take a moment and tell you guys about a new website that Peter Bowen, Nick Dawson and I from Filmmaker are involved with.

First, the history. In the late Spring of this year Peter and I had several conversations with Focus Features president James Schamus about film websites — what's good out there, what's not, and, most specifically, what's missing from the film blogosphere. James talked to us about his vision of a site that would be dense with original content appealing to both cineastes as well as a more general audience enthusiastic about specialty film. Intrinsic to the idea was linking well and often so that the site offers a place for internet readers to learn more about the web's vast array of film resources.

These conversations led to Peter and I being asked to co-edit FilmInFocus, which launched today. Click over to the site and check it out. There's a lot of stuff already up and more to come in the weeks and months ahead. But back to the overall concept of the site for a moment. There's obviously much to read about Focus releases, and we've commissioned articles that, we hope, provide thoughtful discussions about these films while frequently pursuing interesting tangents suggested by them.

And there's a ton of non-Focus content on the site as well. Our partner on FilmInFocus is Faber & Faber, and it's been a real thrill for Peter, myself and Nick to collaborate with Walter Donohue and Richard Kelley from that great publisher of film books. FilmInFocus is hosting Faber's U.S. online site, and we have reprinted material from their back catalog, preview excerpts from their upcoming books and original, web-only content.

It's almost easier to explain the site by guiding you through a bit of what's on there already. Linked to from the main page is an excerpt from Michael Deely's upcoming Faber & Faber book Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies, in which the veteran producer describes the process of casting Harrison Ford in Blade Runner. As part of a regular series of articles dealing with new technology, Smart Bomb author Heather Chaplin profiles Ian Bogost, the writer, critical theorist and video game designer whose very clever politically-minded Flash games enliven the online New York Times editorial page. There are the first entries in a series in which notable artists give us their "Five in Focus" -- lists of five favorite films related to a particular theme or topic. Composer and vocalist Diamanda Galas gives us her top revenge flicks (a particularly nasty list including Vigilante, Pyro and I Spit on your Grave); novelist Alan Furst offers up his top spy movies; director Justin Lin punches out his favorite fight scenes; and novelist Ian Rankin essays his most well regarded British crime films.

As the Focus release Eastern Promises is set in the world of the Russian mob, we commissioned In These Times editor Joel Bleifuss to outline a history of the Russian mafia, charting its growth and influence in both the real world and in Hollywood fictions. Also related to Eastern Promises, I wrote about the Russian criminal tattoo sub-culture, examining how the tattoos in the film were researched and created. In the piece I interview producer and filmmaker Alix Lambert, whose Mark of Cain is the seminal documentary on the subject. We link to her site, where you can buy her film, and stream excerpts from it at the FilmInFocus Screening Room. And too at the Film in Focus Screening room: four short films by Jamie Stuart in which our favorite short-film journalist profiles the Fall Focus directors: David Cronenberg, Ang Lee, Terry George and Joe Wright.

Another regular column will be something we call "Movie Cities" — essays which offer personal views of the writer's home town through the prism of the movies. We launch with director John Waters talking about the old porn theaters in Baltimore and critic Kevin Conroy Scott taking us on a cinematic walk through the neighborhoods of Pigalle and Montmartre in Paris.

Focus has Atonement out now, and the site has Peter Bowen's article on Sarah Greenwood's production design, my interview with composer Dario Marianelli, and Nick Dawson's long interview with James McAvoy on the craft of film acting.

Because the Focus release Reservation Road contained an interesting sub-plot in which Joaquin Phoenix's character connects over the internet with other parents who have lost children in hit-and-runs, we asked Alicia Van Couvering to explore how the internet is changing the process of grieving; her piece links to a number of grief support groups that can be found online. And because Ang Lee's Lust, Caution is set against a complex political backdrop, we asked Joel Bleifuss to explain to us what Shanghai was like in 1942. We also have novelist Rick Moody, whose novel The Ice Storm was made into a film by Ang Lee, writing about the process by which the director explores his own cinematic landscapes.

Keeping with the site's goal to connect with other sites across the internet, we have a regular feature, "Behind the Blog," which profiles different film blogs and the blogger behind them. The series launches with — who else? — David Hudson of the must-read Green Cine Daily. We also have the second installment up with Andrew Grant of the blog Like Anna Karina's Sweater.

There's a lot more, but this post could go on forever so I'll just recommend again that you check it out. (You can post your comments and thoughts on the FilmInFocus message board.) And, finally, one more thing — Filmmaker is a "strategic partner" on the site, meaning each of us is going to help get the word out about the other through links and possible shared marketing efforts. So, because there's an obvious conflict of interest when it comes to Focus releases and this magazine, we're going to refrain from feature coverage of Focus movies for the foreseeable future, a policy we initiated a couple of issues ago when we began talks about this venture.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/17/2007 09:24:00 PM Comments (0)

At the recent Monterey Jazz Festval, two film legends -- Clint Eastwood and John Sayles -- talked about about the blues in an onstage discussion. The clip is below.

Eastwood's love of jazz and blues music is well known and can be felt through his numerous film scores. Sayles's take on the art form can be best seen in his forthcoming film, Honeydripper, which is one of his best and hits theaters this holiday season.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/17/2007 07:16:00 PM Comments (0)

After making their theatrical debut last year Wild Tigers I Have Known director Cam Archer and cinematographer Aaron Platt have been busy making music videos for the likes of Emily Jane White, Six Organs of Admittance and Mick Turner/Tren Brothers.

Although Wild Tigers was no Little Miss Sunshine indie-cash explosion, it gained a significant amount of critical attention and Aaron Platt even garnered an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his photography.

It might not be for all tastes, but there's a definite style Archer and Platt are developing laden with lonely individuals against luminous landscapes. Here's a sample of their latest:

Video for Six Organ's of Admittance - Shelter of Ash:


Video for Emily Jane White - Dagger:



Their websites are also good time:
Cam Archer
Aaron Platt

# posted by Benjamin Crossley-Marra @ 12/17/2007 12:52:00 PM Comments (0)

Sadly, this just in from Adrienne Jones, Treasurer and Membership Director of the Black Documentary Collective:

We regret to inform everyone that St Clair Bourne, our founder, has passed away.

Details of his passing will follow. Also, information about his memorial service will be sent as soon as we have it.

Members have expressed interest in making donations to the family. We would like to contribute money through our BDC/St Clair Bourne fund. If you wish to make a donation, please forward payment to:

BDC
P.O. Box 610
Hamilton Grange Station
New York, NY 10031.

In the memo line please write BDC/St Clair Bourne Fund.

At the Renew Media blog, Agnes Varnum has more and collects several links about the great documentary filmmaker and his career, including this piece on the Media Rights website:

Over the past 35 years, St. Clair Bourne has been the producer, director and writer of some forty-five film productions, including documentaries for HBO, PBS, NBC, BBC and National Geographic in addition to his own independent work. He has produced the feature-length documentary Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks for HBO. With actor Wesley Snipes as narrator and executive producer, Bourne directed John Henrik Clarke: A Great and Mighty Walk and also directed Paul Robeson: Here I Stand!, a two-hour documentary for the “American Masters” PBS series. He was also a co-producer on the HBO dramatic feature Rebound, the true story of playground basketball legend Earl “The Goat” Manigault as well as Woodie King’s independent theatrical feature The Long Night. Bourne is the executive producer for Visitors, Melis Birder’s documentary about the family and friends of the incarcerated and Filiberto: Dead or Alive about the Puerto Rican nationalist Filiberto Ojeda Rios. Bourne is currently shooting a film about veteran photographer Ernest Withers and a documentary series about the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party for PBS.

In a short piece by Chester Higgins in The New York Times, Bourne said about his work, "What I do is explain people's lifestyles and choices, and I show the consequences of those choices." Discussing his film on Paul Robeson, he says, "You get a portrait of an individual, but at the end of the two hours you end up knowing why Paul Robeson does all the things he does, even some of the things that are negative, and you can understand why he does them." The New York Times also produced a short video featuring Bourne discussing his work; it can be seen here, and he also maintained a blog, which be read here. And on his blog, Chuck Tryon has a comment.

Labels: obituaries

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/16/2007 02:38:00 PM Comments (4)

Filmmaker's Managing Editor, Jason Guerrasio, returned from the film festival in Dubai this weekend and, like most visitors, he was knocked out by the pace of construction there. (See his photo-essays, below). In fact, a discussion of Dubai's explosive growth -- the political, social and design repercussions of such -- is a hot topic at the moment, and two very different takes on the build-up of Dubai can be found online. The current issue of Metropolis contains three articles on Dubai, one of seven states belonging to the United Arab Emirates. (Thanks to Bergen Swanson for the link.) The first, "Beyond the Spectacle," by Stephen Zacks, views Dubai as an example of a kind of progressive hyper-capitalism.

From the lede:

Fifty years from now, New York will be considered the economic and cultural capital of the previous century, fille d with quaint artifacts of another time and places to visit for the sake of nostalgia, but not the center of world culture— somewhat like how we think of Paris today compared to 100 years ago. Federal immigration restrictions, the religious police, and the protection of large corporations from foreign competition will have cut off our biggest sources of wealth—invention and innovation—and historic preservation will have saved the unique character of neigh borhoods and conserved innumerable buildings but killed the spirit that made the city the greatest of its time.

The megacity of Dubai, one of the seven federal states of the United Arab Emirates, will be the new economic and cultural capital of the world, spanning its neighboring emirates of Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and beyond in one urbanized mass, rich in the biggest source of renewable energy—sunlight—a pioneer in sustainability and new technology, and conveniently located within easy travel distance of a population of more than two billion in the Middle East, Europe, India, and Africa. In the six years since the Twin Towers fell, a thousand skyscrapers have been rising on the Arabian Gulf.

Late in the article, Zacks concedes that "Dubai’s progressive policies exist only within well-defined urban zones" but views equality between the country's residents and its foreign workers as something history will correct: "...with the vast majority of the population made up of foreign workers, it may ultimately be difficult to maintain the separation — especially if there’s an economic decline and the one million noncitizens are less content with their situation."

In his "Fear and Money in Dubai," published in New Left Review, critic and theorist Mike Davis captures in his prose Dubai's almost hysterical cultural and economic post-modernism:

Thanks to [Emir Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum's] boundless enthusiasm for concrete and steel, the coastal desert has become a huge circuit board upon which the elite of transnational engineering firms and retail developers are invited to plug in high-tech clusters, entertainment zones, artificial islands, glass-domed ‘snow mountains’, Truman Show suburbs, cities within cities—whatever is big enough to be seen from space and bursting with architectural steroids. The result is not a hybrid but an eerie chimera: a promiscuous coupling of all the cyclopean fantasies of Barnum, Eiffel, Disney, Spielberg, Jon Jerde, Steve Wynn and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Although compared variously to Las Vegas, Manhattan, Orlando, Monaco and Singapore, the sheikhdom is more like their collective summation and mythologization: a hallucinatory pastiche of the big, the bad and the ugly.

He also discusses the labor that led to the creation of all these big buildings and discusses the circumstances in which the formation of a group of Zacks' "less content" workers might -- or might not -- arise:

Dubai, together with its emirate neighbors, has achieved the state of the art in the disenfranchisement of labour. In a country that only abolished slavery in 1963, trade unions, most strikes and all agitators are illegal, and 99 per cent of the private-sector workforce are immediately deportable non-citizens. Indeed, the deep thinkers at the American Enterprise and Cato Institutes must salivate when they contemplate the system of classes and entitlements in Dubai....

The unruly voice of labour echoes louder in the deserts of the UAE than it might elsewhere. At the end of the day, Dubai is capitalized just as much on cheap labour as it is on expensive oil, and the Maktoums, like their cousins in the other emirates, are exquisitely aware that they reign over a kingdom built on the backs of a South Asian workforce. So much has been invested in Dubai’s image as an imperturbable paradise of capital that even small disturbances can have exaggerated impacts on investors’ confidence. Dubai Inc. is thus currently considering a variety of responses to worker unrest, ranging from expulsions and mass arrests to some limited franchising of collective bargaining. But any tolerance of protest risks future demands not just for unions, but for citizenship, and thereby threatens the absolutist foundations of Maktoum rule. None of the shareholders in Dubai—whether the American Navy, the Saudi billionaires, or the frolicking expats—want to see the emergence of a Solidarnosc in the desert.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/16/2007 12:01:00 PM Comments (0)

This series of photos will show you Dubai outside the festival walls.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/14/2007 11:54:00 PM Comments (1)

The Dubai fest kicked into another gear Thursday night as the work week for Emiratis came to a close (their weekend is Friday and Saturday). With a performance by Gloria Estefan at Media City (her husband Emilio Estefan has his doc, 90 Millas, in the fest) and a gala reception highlighting their "Building Cultures" theme that went on until the wee hours, it was a fitting end to my week in Dubai.

Though there were so many things that I wasn't able to do and places I didn't have time to visit, during my time here I met friendly people from all over the world, saw engaging films that most people in the States will never see (and that's very sad) and met the Arab filmmaking community that is driven to make itself known internationally.

Here are some images that recap my time here. A wrap up piece on the fest will be online in a few weeks.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/14/2007 07:50:00 PM Comments (0)

While at the Bahamas International Film Festival this week I had the chance to chat with Daryl Hannah, who was given a "career achievement award" at a reception Saturday night. A devoted environmentalist, Hannah has spent much of the past year highlighting the work of various like minded individuals, whose work to stymie climate change, create renewable energy sources or make artwork out of plastic garbage bags make up the content of the weekly doc pieces she posts on her website dhlovelife. Check out a full interview with her here.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 12/12/2007 05:26:00 PM Comments (0)

There's a very popular phrase used in the Arab world that usually ends every statement. And I've heard it a lot during my time here in Dubai.

"The screening will begin at 7:00, insha'Allah." "Your welcome pack will be in your room tonight, insha'Allah." "The shuttle is on it's way, insha'Allah." (though, the constant gridlock on the three main roads in Dubai is a big proponent for the lack of shuttle service. Monorail service begins in 2009!)

Translated in english insha'Allah means God willing and for most who work or live here the phrase is just part of everyday life. A good friend of mine who lives in Dubai gets a chuckle out of my questioning why there isn't a more structured schedule at the fest. He says he gets it at his job (Q: Am I going to get those figures? A: By the end of the day, insha'Allah.) and it's just a cultural thing.

That's not to say people here aren't hustling to accommodate everyone. Yesterday morning, as I and the other members of the press were waiting for the shuttle that takes us from our hotel to the Madinat Jumeirah (the main resort where most of the festival is taking place) our liaison was rippin' this guy a new one trying to get answers to why the shuttle wasn't here yet. The outcome: we were whisked away in three towncars.

More posts to come (and pictures!)... insha'Allah.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/12/2007 03:07:00 AM Comments (2)

As today is Human Rights Day, the 49th anniversary of the U.N.'s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it's a good time to link to Witness.org, the organization founded by musician Peter Gabriel that, as it explains on its home page, "uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change."

Witness recently launched The Hub, which it calls "the first global platform dedicated to human rights media and action." This section of the Witness sites allows uploading and sharing of videos that document human rights abuses around the world. The current "editor's pick" are three videos about which The Hub writes:

Wael Abbas and other bloggers have been campaigning for an end to police brutality in Egypt by releasing a disturbing series of videos online. Egyptian police officers filmed these three videos on their cellphones. They're so graphic that YouTube temporarily shut down Abbas' channel. It's now back up - but shows the importance of a place like the Hub to house this material in context.

Visit the site to see these videos and learn more about Witness. And, I'm embedding the organization's 60-second informational trailer below. (Hat tip: Ted Hope.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/10/2007 05:02:00 PM Comments (0)

One of the twentieth century's great artists, the composer and electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen, died last week. Pitchfork has a short appreciation, and our memoriam, his Helicopter Symphony, is below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/10/2007 11:23:00 AM Comments (0)

It's my first day here in Dubai and my initial observations are the obvious ones: beautiful sights, impeccable service and construction (I mean a lot!). For those who don't know a lot about this jewel of the United Arab Emirates, imagine Las Vegas before it became the tourist trap it is now, but instead of it built on mob money, this playground for adults is blossoming from the wealthy sheiks whose palaces are buried behind high gates along the coast.

The picture above (not taken by me, but my images will appear in future posts) highlights the coast with Dubai's main beacon the Burj Al Arab in the foreground. Some of you may know this as the only 7 star hotel in the world (I've learned a big reason it gets this distinction is because all the rooms are duplexes and because of that it passes the 5 star rating).

The opening night gala took place just down the beach from the Burj after a screening of Michael Clayton. George Clooney was in attendance, and yes, the women are as crazy for him here as they are in the States.

I'm excited to see the Arab films that are here as I'm beginning to learn that this fest, (though running against Marrakech fest at the same time) is the only real avenue for local filmmakers to not only get noticed by an international crowd but if they win a competition prize receive some much deserved cash, as distribution avenues for most filmmakers here are still just a pipedream. The festival also is doing its part to help mold producers as well. Today, they are doing a "coaching for Producers" session on script development.

I'll try to post as much as I can with highlights of the area and culture leaving a more detailed report on the festival when I return home in a week.

To be continued...

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/10/2007 04:51:00 AM Comments (3)

Cynthia Lester's film My Mother's Garden has been selected for the Slamdance Documentary Competition and will premiere at Park City in January. The film has a MySpace page which streams the extraordinary show reel (also embedded below) and contains this summary of the film:

My Mother's Garden explores one woman's extreme attachment to material objects and her emotional struggle to let go of them. My Mother's Garden is the story of Eugenia Lester whose hoarding disorder has entered a dangerous and life threatening stage. Directed by her daughter Cynthia, it documents how one family comes together to cope with their mother's disorder and rebuild a lost sense of family. Through tracing Eugenia's history we learn how the past has shaped her current situation. Born in Poland during the Polish uprising of 1944 and raised by a Holocaust survivor in communist Poland, where hoarding marerial items was a way of life, she is overwhelmed by the excess of our consumer driven society. At its heart, My Mother's Garden is the story of a strong, intellegent woman who must undergo a deep metamorphosis to save herself from the depths of mental illness. For more information please visit: www.mymothersgardenmovie.com.

Interestingly, while it may seem that the psychological disorder experienced by Lester's mother -- compulsive hoarding -- is a strange and obscure one, it's apparently not. Family Resource Community for Compulsive Hoarding is a support group for families faced with this illness and they have a message board on which people are beginning to post their interest in seeing this film.

And here is a Reader's Digest article from March discussing the film and the illness. An excerpt:

Cynthia's upcoming documentary, My Mother's Garden, records the long, painful process of separating Lester from most of her possessions during the summer and fall of 2005. It took Lester's children about eight weeks and some $20,000 simply to empty the place. Lester's disorder made her anything but grateful when she returned home after the cleanup. "I hate you people; you robbed me," she shouted, then started weeping. A few weeks later, Lester was so depressed and suicidal that she needed emergency care.

More than a year after the painful intervention, Lester seems to be doing much better in a board-and-care facility. "I think our family and my mother are in a much better space," Cynthia says. "We are closer and happier." But Cynthia is still trying to arrange appropriate treatment for her mother's disorder.

Here's the trailer:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/09/2007 05:20:00 PM Comments (4)

Last winter in a Filmmaker article recapping 2006's most notable trends in independent film, I used as my lede a discussion of metrics -- how, in every business, there's some kind of unit of evaluation, but how in independent film that yardstick is often hopelessly confused. First-time filmmakers exorcising personal demons or doc makers espousing outside-the-mainstream viewpoints are later shocked and disheartened when their films don't get picked up by a mini-major and gross Michael Moore numbers. Why don't, I wrote, filmmakers consider things like the importance of transmitting the film's message and their own enjoyment and personal growth as valid metrics when making a film? Why make a film independently and then become a slave to the logic of the market thereafter?

So, I was interested to receive an email containing a copy of an editorial from the November/December 2007 issue of Documentary Magazine by Nanking producer Ted Leonsis, who is the subject of a big feature in today's New York Times.. Leonsis is a former vice-chairman of AOL and "sport-franchise mogul" who is now diving into the world of documentary film with not only production dollars but also a paradigm-shifting message.

From Dave Itzkoff's New York Times piece:

“If your metrics of success are return on investment or risk-to-reward ratio, you wouldn’t make a film like this,” Mr. Leonsis, 51, said. “I have enough investments where if I put in $2 million, I expect $20 million back. This one is all about the psychic and goodness returns.”

Mr. Leonsis seems sincere in his aspirations that Nanking will raise consciousnesses and effect social changes. But it wouldn’t be a Ted Leonsis production if it were not underpinned by a business goal: the hope that “Nanking” will pave the way for a new model of making and distributing nonfiction films.

Leonsis dubs his practice "filmanthropy" and on his website he writes about it in a series of posts, including this link to the Powerpoint presentation he gave at Silver Docs this year.

Here are excerpts of his comments in the Documentary piece:

The most important thing about Filmanthropy is your metrics of success. I spent two years making Nanking -- traveled to China, attended five film festivals, worked my behind off and put up significant financial resources to get it made. And to date, there have been minimal revenues. If I looked at this movie like I do my other business investments, I'd never have done it.

What we need are new metrics for success. Filmanthropy is not about box office receipts, but about things like:

Audience size and reception-how many people and influencers saw the film?

Did the film make a difference?

Did it start debate?

Did it activate charitable giving?

Did people volunteer their time for a cause?

Did it right a wrong?

Can it break even with the creation of new media revenue streams?

And:

Let's say you create a documentary that generates $10 million at the box office. That means about a million people saw it, which would make it one of the top 10 documentaries of all time. But before the filmmaker sees a penny, the theater takes approximately half. Then the distributor takes 20 percent of the remainder. On top of that, you have print and advertising and production costs. So in the end, your hit documentary can very easily leave you in the hole.

Then there's what I call "the documentary funnel." There are thousands of filmmakers out there, but just a dozen cable channels, 25 distributors, 500 theater owners and only a few significant film festivals that reach a small group of filmgoers. At the same time, there are a billion people on the Internet. With the broadband Web now widespread, the potential exists to fundamentally change the economics of documentaries.

Think about it: If you could get five million people to watch your documentary for free on the Internet, you can make $1 million through advertising, search and commerce revenues. If you made the film for $500,000, you'd be profitable. You could donate those dollars to charity, or you could fund yet another Filmanthropy project. Since many films are shot on HD, we already have the digital product. We just need to find a way to get it to the many millions of people online, instead of into a couple hundred theaters.

Nanking can be seen at the Film Forum beginning Wednesday, December 12. Its trailer is below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/09/2007 01:14:00 PM Comments (1)

I stopped by Other Music this weekend and discovered on the racks photographer Paula Court's book, New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88. I first moved to New York during those years and became Programming Director at The Kitchen during the tail-end of that span, and for me the book, full of striking, energetic portraits of NYC's key downtown art players, was not just a nostalgic blast-from-the-past but also a welcome confirmation that, yes, there was something special and perhaps unrepeatable about that scene and its casual cross-pollination.

The Times Online has an article and photo gallery on the book, and this excerpt of David Byrne's comments is a great summation of the times:

“During that time I lived in about five different places – Lower East Side, Upper West Side, East Village, NoLita. Never got to call any one place home. New York was a scary and legendary place – and downtown was like a Bohemian living museum, which was pretty thrilling for an aspiring artist and musician.

“Legends walked the streets – well, from a skewed boho POV. It was all very new and exciting, at least for me – and it was incredibly funky, the sleaze and poverty were everywhere. There were more beggars and homeless than on the streets of Mumbai, and that’s saying something. The cheapest hookers in town were on Chrystie Street, where Talking Heads once shared a loft. Now there’s a Whole Foods and luxury condos on the corner.

“I’m not complaining or nostalgic for the bad old days – some things are genuinely better – I feel no nostalgia for the old Times Square, for example. What might have gotten lost was that one could incubate one’s work inside the supportive bubble of a close and sometimes desperate community. Now that period of incubation is incredibly short, the chicks are thrown out of the nest immediately.

“There was a nice rubbing together between disciplines during the latter part of that time – borders were definitely fuzzy, which was inspiring. Sometimes there were collaborations – but even when there weren’t there was an awareness of what was going on outside your own field, which is healthy. But it took its toll – look at the tiny numbers who survived to have an ongoing creative life and career – a few handfuls, that’s it! Maybe that is all that ever survives and flourishes in any generation, but it seems harsh. I think some of the artists have fared better in the long run than the majority of the musicians.”

The book contains a couple dozen short essays like Byrne's and then Paula's black-and-white portraits and performance shots of artists like Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Ethyl Eichelberger, Robert Longo, Beth and Scott B, Amos Poe, Madonna, the Squat Theater, Glenn Branca, Fab Five Freddy, David Cale, George Clinton, Robert Ashley, Howard Brookner (pictured with Brad Gooch on Thanksgiving Day, 1979), William Burroughs, Lou Reed, Michael Stipe and so many more. If you were in New York in those years -- and even if you weren't but are just interested in the roots of the NYC scene -- then I really recommend it. (Also, the preceding series of New York Noise CDs are equally great.)

P.S.: A number of pictures in the book document the making of The Kitchen Presents: Two Moon July, an hour-long special produced by the organization right around the time I started my first job there as Development Associate. Thanks to YouTube, I found this trailer for the show, which I'm almost hesitant to post due to the awkwardly misguided voiceover that was someone's idea of how to market experimental art to the masses.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 12/09/2007 12:11:00 PM Comments (0)

On my daily Youtube trawl today, I came across a video for the late, great Elliott Smith's song Son of Sam, recently uploaded by his record company, which is clearly inspired by Albert Lamorisse's wonderful classic short, The Red Balloon.




I'd never seen the video before and the timing seems particularly apt given that Janus Films have just re-released Lamorisse's movie theatrically along with the director's other shortform masterpiece, White Mane. You should definitely see this double bill on the big screen - a list of playdates can be found here - but if you aren't near any of the theaters listed, you can also watch The Red Balloon in four parts on Youtube.



Another reason the Smith video is so relevant right now is that Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, another homage to Lamorisse's movie, is to be released next year through IFC First Take. I sadly missed the film when it played at the New York Film Festival a few months ago, but am very excited by the prospect of the movie, which you can see a trailer for below.



Incidentally, The Red Balloon was also the first film that Esther Robinson, director of the excellent A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory (out this Friday), ever saw. Look out for an interview with her later this week.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 12/09/2007 01:59:00 AM Comments (0)

The Slamdance Film Festival announced the titles for its 14th year. The festival will run alongside Sundance in Park City, Utah Jan. 17-25. This year's Opening Night Film is Randall Cole's Real Time. The full list is below.

Narrative Feature Competition

FIX, (USA) Written/Directed by Tao Ruspoli
This darkly comedic road movie journeys from Beverly Hills to Watts over the course of 12 hours, as documentary filmmakers Bella and Milo race to get Milo's brother Leo from jail to rehab before 8 p.m. - or Leo goes to prison for three years.

FROST, (USA) Written/Directed by Steve Clark
When a Manhattan playboy learns his childhood love is engaged he is forced to face the demons of his past and grow up.

GLORY BOYS DAYS, (USA) Written/Directed by Paul Encinas
A story about a group of young adults in the prime of their lives, in a time where being young makes you invincible, and being invincible makes you complacent.

JETSAM, (UK) Written/Directed by Simon Welsford
Starring Shauna Macdonald and Alex Reid
An amnesiac woman is washed up on a beach and attacked by a man who washed up next to her. On the run from this stranger, she pieces her life back together, uncovering a world of spies, obsession and betrayal.

HOW TO BE, (UK) Written/Directed by Oliver Irving
A wry comedy about twenty-something Arthur who moves back in with his parents, hits a quarter-life crisis and enlists the help of a live-in self-help guru. A timely look at the increasingly common phenomena of grown-up children living at home, frustrated creativity, and self-help.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, (USA) Written/Directed by Oren Peli
A supernatural thriller featuring shocking footage of a demonic haunting.

PORTAGE, (CANADA) Written/Directed by Matthew Miller, Ezra Krybus, Sascha Drews
In this sensual, intense drama, a quartet of teenage girls embark on a canoe trip with a male guide. After his accidental death, they find themselves trapped in the wilderness and have to fend for themselves to find their way back to safety.

THE PROJECT, (USA) Written/Directed by Ryan Piotrowicz, starring Michael Stahl David, Matt Servitto, and Juelz Santana
Three film student graduates move to New York City to make a documentary about inner city life, where they soon find themselves becoming active participants in a world they hoped to only observe.

NEW YEAR PARADE, (USA) Written/Directed by Tom Quinn
In the first year of their parents' separation, two siblings struggle for confidence in their own relationships.

UNDER THE SNOW, (SPAIN) Written/Directed by Candela Figueira and Maitena Muruzabal
Following the unusual connection made between four workers at different stages of their lives, capturing factory life in a way rarely seen: personal, flirtatious, introspective.


Documentary Feature Competition

CIRCUS ROSAIRE, (USA) Written/Directed by Robyn Bliley
For nine generations the Rosaire family has entertained audiences all over the world with their legendary animal acts. However, the circus industry is changing and attendance has dramatically declined. The Rosaire's livelihood and future are at risk as they struggle to continue the family tradition.

I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW, (USA) Written/Directed by Sean Donnelly
Labeled "stalkers" by the media, Jeff and Kelly profess their love for the 80's pop icon, Tiffany.

MORE SHOES, (USA) Written/Directed by Lee Kazimir
The story of one individual's 3,000-mile trek across Europe on foot from Madrid to Kiev.

MY MOTHER'S GARDEN, (USA) Written/Directed by Cynthia Lester
The story of one woman's extreme attachment to material objects and how her estranged children reunite to help her let go.

NEO-LOUNGE, (CHINA) Written/Directed by Joanna Vasquez
Arong An Italian aristocrat, a Bulgarian jazz singer, a Colombian coroner, a French hair salon entrepreneur, all together for a short moment in time at Beijing 's hippest nightspot Neo-Lounge.

PAGEANT, (USA) Written/Directed by Ron Davis and Stewart Halpern
In the talented world of female impersonation, this story follows the lives of five ordinary men as they go to extraordinary lengths to be crowned the 34th Miss Gay America(R).

SONG SUNG BLUE, (USA) Written/Directed by Greg Kohs
The alternately inspiring and tragic love story of Lightning & Thunder, a home-grown Milwaukee husband and wife singing duo, who pay tribute to the music of Neil Diamond.

SYNC OR SWIM, (USA) Written/Directed by Cheryl Furjanic
A splashy look at a marginal sport: U.S.A. 's top synchronized swimmers endure rigorous training and overcome unthinkable obstacles to compete for Olympic glory.

VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: STORIES FROM KOSOVO, (USA/KOSOVO) Written/Directed by John Ealer and Laura Bialis Peace
Told through the first person stories of Serbs, Albanians and Roma (Gypsies), this documentary juxtaposes the nightmares and dreams of Kosovars as it portrays a society trying to build a future while inextricably bound to the past.

WESLEY WILLIS'S JOYRIDE, (USA) Written/Directed by Chris Bagley and Kim Shively
An underground rock icon and revered artist, the late, great Wesley Willis attracted and offended people from all walks of life. The film follows the prolific and controversial artist on his journey from obscurity to cult hero.


Narrative Special Screening Features

REAL TIME, (CANADA) Written/Directed by Randall Cole
Starring Randy Quaid and Jay Baruchel
A comedic drama about a compulsive gambler who is given one hour to live by the hitman hired to kill him.

GOODBYE BABY, (USA) Written/Directed by Daniel Schechter
Starring Christine Evangelista, Kevin Corrigan, Jerry Adler, Alan Ruck, Donnell Rawlings
When Melissa Brooks discovers she can't afford college she moves to New York City and gets a job as a waitress at a comedy club. Living with her eccentric older brother, she enters a love triangle while trying to muster the nerve to get on stage and perform.

JUST ADD WATER, (USA) Written/Directed by Hart Bochner
Starring Dylan Walsh, Danny DeVito, Jonah Hill, Justin Long, Tracy Middendorf, Anika Noni Rose
An offbeat romantic comedy about Ray Tuckby, a decent guy living in the once idyllic, now crime-infested town of Trona , California . After encouragement from a stranger he happens upon, Ray begins to dream about the way things used to be. He musters the courage to recapture his childhood love, topple the town thugs and return Trona to its original splendor.


Documentary Special Screening Features

ADJUST YOUR COLOR: THE TRUTH OF PETEY GREENE, (USA) Written/Directed by Loren Mendell
Narrated by Don Cheadle. The unlikely story of America 's first shock-jock, a black man in a white man's world who battled the system and his own demons during a time of civil unrest in our nation's capital.

DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER, (USA) Written/Directed by Kurt Kuenne
On Nov. 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered by his ex-girlfriend. To memorialize him, his friend Kurt began making a documentary film; then the killer revealed she was pregnant with Andrew's son.

FRONTRUNNER, (USA) Written/Directed by Virginia Williams
A woman's heroic, relentless run for the Presidency of Afghanistan.


Twilight Screening Features

JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER, (CANADA) Written/Directed by Jon Knautz
Starring Robert Englund
Jack Brooks is an angry young plumber who witnessed his family's brutal murder when he was a child. Unknowingly, he awakens an ancient evil which forces him to confront his past and deal with the monstrous reality of the present.

SPINE TINGLER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY, (USA) Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz
A chronicle of the last great American showman, filmmaker William Castle, a master of ballyhoo who became a brand name in movie horror with his outrageous audience participation gimmicks.

TRAILER PARK OF TERROR, (USA) Directed by Steven Goldmann Starring Nichole Hiltz, Lew Temple
Six troubled teens become stranded in a ramshackle trailer park where they meet Norma, an undead, trailer-trash babe with a killer body and a cursed brood of Redneck Zombies.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/05/2007 02:59:00 PM Comments (0)

If you read this blog regularly you've noticed we've been giving updates on the free speech lawsuit the Ann Arbor Film Festival has on the State of Michigan (posts: "Saving Ann Arbor" and "AAFF Update"). Today the festival announced that it has settled its federal lawsuit, filed by the ACLU on its behalf. With the state legislature repealing unconstitutional restrictions on arts funding, AAFF and the ACLU agreed to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit.

According to a statement sent out by the AAFF: "The new guidelines for arts funding, resulting from the AAFF’s lawsuit, mirror the National Endowment for the Arts guidelines, which have been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. These flexible guidelines state that 'Artistic excellence and artistic merit are the criteria by which applications will be judged, taking into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the people of this state.'"

The lawsuit was filed in March and claimed that the State of Michigan unconstitutionally punished the AAFF for screening films that the state deemed "objectionable" by withdrawing undistributed Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs program grants.

After funding was restricted, the AAFF Board voted to forego state funding (which they had received for the past 10 years) and launched its Endangered fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $75,000 by the end of January '08 to offset the financial hardship. According to the AAFF, the campaign had already contributed half the monies needed before this announcement.

To read the Agreement to Dismiss, click here.
To learn more about AAFF's Endangered campaign, click here.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/05/2007 10:34:00 AM Comments (0)

Dutch broadcasting company, VPRO, is developing a new worldwide TV and internet project consisting of filmed personal stories across the globe. The network is considered the most culturally radical group on Dutch television and often collaborates with other European-based broadcasters, such as WDR, BBC and Arte. It is also the first Dutch broadcaster to have an official presence on YouTube.

In a press release disseminated at this year's International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, they announced their new Timbuktu project. Through short video diaries and reports, the new program hopes to be an alternative to mainstream press coverage by using local correspondents.

Set to launch in February of '08, VPRO has a call out for correspondents. The web site will allow viewers to navigate on an interactive Google map to any area of the world where they can find stories and video letters from correspondents that will cover everything from culture, lifestyle, politics, etc., in 5-minute segments. Sounds a bit like CurrentTV.

They will be broadcasting short, personal stories told in an informal style, which essentially targets the young, internet-savvy generation of DIYers and seekers of pertinent news. So if you'd like to work with a high-profile TV internet project, get paid for your work (!) and get a chance to show off your talent to an international audience through this Netherlands-based network, send a resume or CV with a filmography and a description of what kind of equipment, editing and internet facilities to which you have access to this address: timbuktu@vpro.nl.

Time to go international and help ameliorate what passes for "news" these days--let your voice be heard across the pond!

# posted by Pamela Cohn @ 12/05/2007 09:59:00 AM Comments (0)

Surfing around the net tonight I found this amazing homage to Alfred Hitchcock made by Martin Scorsese (and paid for by the champagne Freixenet).

Shot by Harris Savides, with additional lensing by Ellen Kuras, and cut by Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese tells a "documentarian" that he plans to shoot pages of a lost script he found titled Key To Reserva the way Hitchcock would have.

"To preserve a film that has not been made," he says.

Using the familiar music of Bernard Herrmann, Scorsese casts Simon Baker to play the debonair lead and classic sequences from many of Hitchcock's films appear (I caught about four in a span of ten seconds). For any Hitchcock fan it's a real treat.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/02/2007 12:22:00 AM Comments (5)

The week here at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam has flown by, and has been so overwhelmingly busy, that I haven't had a chance to blog much. I've seen dozens of documentaries and attended many panel discussions, the pitching Forum, the Talk Shows, and have talked with many filmmakers, buyers, programmers, distributors and other participants, some of them coming to IDFA now for many years. I'll share their perspectives and my brand-new ones in an extensive report for the magazine's next issue--the trends, the issues, and the prevailing technological frontier (nothing new under the sun, really). The prevailing mood here is a very mixed one, as both filmmakers and sales agents and those that distribute film (in this case, documentary), try to navigate the many sea changes in making, marketing and distributing mass media.

To be perfectly frank, I haven't seen anything quite along the lines of Pernille Rose Gronkjaer's beautiful The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, last year's Joris Ivens prize-winner. The same company, Tju Bang Film, brought a film called Mechanical Love here this year that I liked very much, but the consensus from people I've spoken with who acquire docs for a living, has been that the program of films has been a bit underwhelming. I was noting to a friend, that what I've seen here at IDFA this past week doesn't compare to the many stellar nonfiction films I've seen come out of the US this past year, from neophyte filmmakers like Jennifer Venditti to long-time pros like Doug Block. No film here has startled me with its creativity in pushing the form as Jessica Yu did with her Protagonist, nor really moved me deeply as much as, say, The Bridge did when I first saw that film. It will be interesting to see what the festival programmers take away from Amsterdam to show this year at their own regional fests. In talking to some of them that have been shopping here, there isn't a huge amount that seems compelling enough to be considered a must. We'll see what comes out of Rotterdam and Berlin.

There were a few films that were standouts, of course, and I will write about those in the near future, but this year's IDFA is wrapping up with the awards ceremony tonight and that little fest in Utah will be the focus for most of us right now. I'll post the winners from tonight in a bit. To see the list of nominees, you can visit my site here.

# posted by Pamela Cohn @ 12/01/2007 10:00:00 AM Comments (0)