Manohla Dargis notes the passing of film historian, critic and filmmaker Paul Arthur in the New York Times.

An excerpt:

He was first published in the early 1970s, and over the next few decades he wrote fluidly and accessibly on a range of topics, notably avant-garde cinema but also film noir and documentary. His work appeared in publications including Artforum, Film Comment, Cineaste, The Village Voice and USA Today magazine. For several years starting in the mid-1980s he served on the board for two venerable avant-garde film institutions in New York: the Collective for Living Cinema, an adventurous screening space, now closed, and the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, a nonprofit film-rental library.

Mr. Arthur also ventured behind the camera. In 1970 he began his first short, “Correspondences,” which he shot in 8-millimeter film and finished some five years later. He completed 14 other films, including a 1986 feature-length work called “(Late) of the Primate’s Palace,” which he described in the Film-Makers’ Cooperative catalog as an autobiographical travelogue and which was dedicated to his father.

Update: Arthur's family has posted a lovely remembrance at the New York Times death notices section, and one of his former students, Ian Hill, posts in the comment section below this link to his own piece on Arthur, a long blog entry that captures the intelligence and passion of his teaching.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/30/2008 01:09:00 PM Comments (2)

Here's a roundup of some stuff that caught my eye in the blogosphere this weekend.

There's a lively discussion going on over at Indiewire regarding the Tribeca Film Festival's "embargo" rule that attempts to prohibit press from writing about pre-screened films until after their Tribeca premiere. Of course, in the world of mainstream journalism, embargos happen all the time; what irks a pretty passionate group of responding posters is the TFF's attempt to be strict with this rule when it comes to the online journalists who can often positively motivate a fan base leading up to a film's fest premiere.

Speaking of Tribeca, Twitch has rounded up a bunch of links related to the fest's various films.

Over at the Spout Blog, Karina Longworth has a very clever post that riffs off of a NY Times review of MTV's The Hills in which the critic referred to the show as "Antonionesque." Along with a clip from Red Desert, she comes up with five ways in which that analogy is true.

There has been much writing this week about film critic Nathan Lee's firing at the Village Voice for economic reasons. The conversation over at The Reeler has wound through waves of attack and even hurt feelings to conclude (for the moment) with a long post by Kent Jones on the cultural authority of Pauline Kael. There's more at The House Next Door, particularly a series of post that discuss, in various degrees of either dismay or "who cares"-ness, the financial viability of being a film critic.

The liveliest talk-back thread around, however, belongs to Deadline Hollywood Daily and Nikki Finke's take on the weekend box office. Yep, her trade analysis is up to 700 replies as I write this, and if she approves more comments I'm sure that number will soar even higher. Causing all the ruckus is a link from the Drudge Report, which picked up on her headline that Kimberly Peirce's Stop Loss was "DOA" at the box office, and filling up the comments section are conservative and largely pro-war posters attacking "liberal Hollywood" for its perceived biases. The signal-to-noise ratio is pretty low on the thread, but it is worth skimming through for a taste of opinion from outside our little glass-coned film blogosphere.

Speaking of blog invective, French director Erick Zoncka has a cranky rant on U.S. and Mexican crews and how he didn't get what he wanted when making his latest film, Julia. It can be found at the English-language side of the Dissidenz site.

The Workbook Project has a new podcast -- an interview with Dan Goldman: "Dan Goldman is a critical acclaimed comic book artist and illustrator. His most recent project Shooting War went from being a free online comic to sparking a bidding war. Various major publishing and production interests battled it out for the publishing and film rights. Goldman is a strong believer in the concept of crowdsourcing and micropatrons and a number of his new ventures are embracing the concept of audience as collaborator.

Agnes Varnum announces the summer season of POV.

You can obviously take it with a grain of salt given that he owns a cable TV network, but Mark Cuban has a sharp post arguing that digital TV is better than internet TV. I'm not sure I agree it's an all or nothing thing. Cuban bases his argument on the inherent technical speed bumps in reliable internet delivery -- he calls the internet a "best efforts" medium -- and argues that anyone interested in delivering television will necessarily wind up on the more-secure, always-on closed-network side of the equation. That's fine for delivering sports and live content, but independent filmmakers -- and fans -- can probably endure those speed bumps or the time-delay in order to receive their favorite specialized content.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/30/2008 11:29:00 AM Comments (0)

Celebrating its tenth year, the organization Arts Engine, which produces, supports and distributes social-issue media, has announced today that it will be expanding its services to include DocuClub, the 14-year-old program dedicated to nurturing documentaries that are works-in-progress.

DocuClub's first screening of '08 will be recent "25 New Faces" Kimberly Reed's Prodigal Sons, taking place next month in New York City.

Arts Engine is also re-launching its fiscal sponsorship program, which has provided services for films such as My Kid Could Paint That, God Grew Tired of Us, The Story of the Lost Boys of the Sudan, The Trials of Darryl Hunt and Favela Rising, to name the most recent.

To learn more about Arts Engine's fiscal sponsorship or becoming a DocuClub member, contact Felix Endara -- felix@artsengine.net or 646.230.6368 x 221.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/28/2008 01:07:00 PM Comments (0)

Generous liquor sponsors + talented filmmakers = very good evening. The Gen Art Film Festival puts this theory to the test next week beginning April 2nd, kicking things off with Steppenwolf vet Terry Kinney's film, Diminished Capacity. The other six features, many of which have already gained significant buzz on the festival circuit, include Sundance darlings like Jennifer Phang's Half-Life and debuts packed with emerging indie stars like Steve Clark's Frost. Tickets to any of the features include a short film and entrance to the subsequent after-party, which, like the films they celebrate, is guaranteed to be stocked with top shelf goodies and very well-attended.

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 3/28/2008 08:13:00 AM Comments (0)

With Austin's SXSW 2008 now a memory, perhaps it's appropriate that Spencer Parsons' essay on the changing topography of the city itself has just gone up at the FilmInFocus site. The critic, professor and filmmaker (his feature I'll Come Running, starring Melonie Diaz, should appear on the festival circuit this year) pens an ode to the places the city has lost since Rick Linklater's Slacker memorialized a whole stretch of its countercultural topography. And despite the inherent whiff of nostalgia, Parsons finds much to like in Austin today while writing more broadly about the ways artists appropriate and create from within their hometowns.

Here's a graph:

I would like to be able to tell you in this space to seek out the new equivalent of Les Amis, but there isn't one. The hole that it left is part of what made it special. So you really did miss it, and so did I, but it's not the end of the world, and what about now? Speaking only for myself and my own agenda as a filmmaker, I do work with an eye firmly fixed on setting the action in meaningful spots worth promoting or preserving in a film, so consider this a location scout.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/26/2008 01:42:00 AM Comments (0)

Sometimes people approach us at Filmmaker who need, simply, a filmmaker -- someone to do for-hire work documenting some aspect of their life. For all of these folks and as a public service we pass on the following video, linked to at Boing Boing and which there is an extended discussion about here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/25/2008 04:43:00 PM Comments (2)

Over at his Esotika Erotica Psychotica blog, Mike explains why he's been slacking on posting and watching Lost instead. His explanation contains a great passage from Raul Ruiz's Poetics of Cinema that makes me want to dust off my copy.

But, I do occasionally "watch TV" via DVD rentals, streaming episodes, and online downloads. For some reason, at the beginning of February, something convinced me to start watching Lost. And then, since February 9th, I've watched the entire first three seasons, plus the five episodes of season four that have aired so far. This amounts to 76 45 minute episodes. That's about 3420 minutes. Which, presupposing that a majority of the movies I watch are around 90 minutes, comes out to be 38 movies. Which, in retrospect, is fairly depressing.

It's not a bad show, it's fairly entertaining, and, all things considered, it's relatively smart. But, while reading Raul Ruiz's Poetics of Cinema this last week I encountered an explanation for why I was finding it so hard to do anything but what a relatively empty show. In the first chapter of Poetics of Cinema, Ruiz discusses Central Conflict Theory, and, in a round about way, his aversion to it. Central Conflict Theory ostensibly posits an A vs. B position, and generally manipulates the audience into siding with one side over the other. This central conflict is the only thing driving not only the show, but the audience's desire to see the show: the audience wants nothing more than to see how conflicts resolve. Here's what Ruiz says in his own words:

Let us return to films that are not boring. Films provoked by the noonday demon. Central conflict theory manufactures athletic fiction and offers to take us on a journey. Prisoner of the protagonist's will, we are subjected to the various stages making up a conflict of which he, the protagonist, is at once guardian and captive. In the end we are released and given back to ourselves, a little sadder than before. There is only one notion in our heads, which is to go [on] another journey as soon as we can.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/24/2008 10:35:00 PM Comments (2)

Scott Timberg's L.A. Times profile of Bret Easton Ellis -- in a piquantly titled column called "Reassessments" -- is worth a read.

It's got this strong section on contemporary storytelling's fixation on defined, understandable characters, which includes quotes by A.O. Scott and Jonatham Lethem:

Of all the things the literary world holds against Ellis, his lack of interest in characters with recognizable psychological depth may be the most unforgivable. His players are impassive to the point of opaque. They resemble each other so completely they almost cease to exist. In "Psycho" and "Glamorama" people are often mistaken for each other: It's as if they're beyond identity itself.

Ellis, Meghan O'Rourke wrote in a Slate defense of the writer, is "challenging the notion that there's such a thing as an authentic self equipped with a compelling inner life that somehow matters."

Said Scott: "From Gatsby to Rabbit to Saul Bellow's characters, the one thing that's prized in American fiction is the creation of virtual characters who are 'more real' than actual people. But you see the impulse to distrust psychology" in a counter-tradition that includes William Burroughs and Joan Didion, Ellis' main influences.

"We're in a culture that congratulates itself on being very surfacey and ironic," said Lethem. "But it's really the opposite -- we're really Victorian: Everything has to have a back story; every movie that's remade has the villain's previously inexplicable motive explained, usually through child molestation."

And then there's this killer closer:

He's realized he's not very good at script doctoring, and he's mostly writing scripts for films that have not been made; the writers strike interrupted four of his projects. Hollywood had seemed like it would be an easy world to navigate. "I found out that it isn't -- much to my surprise because I'd grown up around it. But I didn't know it was going to be as difficult or stressful as it turned out to be."

While he hardly seemed depressed -- he's recovered from a long, hard-drinking, itinerant meltdown that followed the death of his boyfriend in 2004 -- he offered, half-jokingly, that he's in a "lost period." He had the look of a man still unsure whether his life's work adds up to anything, but who'd like to put off worrying about it for a little longer.

"I always thought this was going to be Jay McInerney's second act and not mine," Ellis, finishing his cappuccino and preparing to stand up, said of his old friend and rival, who in 2006 married Anne Hearst.

"I though he was going to become the alcoholic screenwriter and I was gonna marry the heiress."

Ellis is currently working on a sequel to Less than Zero -- same characters, 20 years later.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/24/2008 09:16:00 PM Comments (0)

The Tribeca Film Institute announced the projects for its 2008 Tribeca All Access program today. The program is designed to "help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities," according the the press release. Tribeca All Access will provide the filmmakers workshops and opportunities to present their works in one-on-one meetings with more than 100 potential investors, development executives, producers and agents. The six-day event will take place during the Tribeca Film Festival in late April.

The 37 narrative and documentary projects selected (the largest showing ever) are listed below.

NARRATIVE

Bardos, Anslem Richardson (Writer)
Two family men are forced to continuously alternate fates after a tragic car accident – while one family lives, the other's must die – but what happens when one of them is no longer willing to give up his wife and children?

Billy Bones: A Cautionary Tale for Adults, Deborah Chow (Writer/Director)
Left behind at school by her divorced parents, Isabel walks into the path of a stranger who whisks her away to a world where frightening reality and fantasy clash.

The Conqueror, Alka Raghuram (Writer/Director)
When an old feud between two villages brings tragedy to his family, a young boy must decide whether to avenge his loss or try to break the painful cycle of violence.

Creve Couer, MO, Marilyn Agrelo (Director); Stephanie Sanditz (Writer); Mia Riverton (Producer); Blye Faust (Producer)
Sixteen-year-old Alex Lawry struggles to find beauty and romance in small town Missouri, while contending with her dysfunctional family, a clique of mean girls, and a local bad-boy rocker.

Darkland, Phillip Van (Writer/Director)
A thriller set in Vietnam War-era Laos, in which a young US AID worker gets swept up in a dangerous love affair with the head of a government dam building operation, who is secretly funding attacks on the villagers she works to save in order to complete his dam.

Day Dream, Rodney Evans (Writer/Director)
Take a dazzling trip to New Orleans, the home of Buddy Bolden, the forefather of modern jazz, and Billy Strayhorn, the openly gay composer of numerous Duke Ellington tunes.

$Free.99, Pete Chatmon (Writer/Director), Candice Sanchez McClaren (Co-Writer)
In a complicated bank heist, twelve hostages quickly realize that their captor is more than he appears.

Full, Nanobah Becker (Writer/Director)
Brandon, a 20-something queer Navajo living it up in New York City, is offered a chance to reconcile with his estranged brother back home.

Games Men Play (UK), John Akomfrah (Writer/Director); Lincia Daniels (Producer)
An ambitious basketball coach discovers he has a talented but wayward son and puts his life on the line to stop the youngster from killing or being killed.

Heavy Metal Indians, Nathan Young (Writer); Kade Twist (Writer)
When the path of a young and rebellious American Indian crosses with a group of strung-out misfits the coincidental collision leads to an unexpected act of violence that changes each of their lives forever.

The Infinite Life of Stuart Hornsley, L. Dana Jackson (Writer/Director); Moira Griffin (Producer)
On a mission to travel back in time to win the girl that got away, Stuart Hornsley finally completes his time machine in a race to succeed at love before his life goes totally awry in the present.

Meadowlandz, Moon Molson (Writer/Director)
With his drunken stepfather passed out in the back of his car, Markees comes face to face with the opportunity to make him disappear from his life once and for all.

Motordrome, Antonio Sosa (Writer)
The year is 1912. Two brothers leave their small South Carolina town and head north to make their dreams of racing motorcycles professionally come true.

Mudpuppy, Garret Williams (Writer/Director)
A brown comedy about a lonely man who finds love in the toilet.

Netball (Australia), Leah Purcell (Writer/Director); Bain Stewart (Producer)
In a small Queensland country town, five Aboriginal and two White female netball players are on a mission as the Maneaters from Nogrum. This is their story.

Raisins not Virgins, Sharbari Ahmed (Writer); Susan Cartsonis (Producer)
Amidst Jihads, Holy Wars, and the Manhattan skyline, a Muslim woman tries to find her faith.

Red Velvet Girls (Canada), Claudia Molina (Writer/Director); Larisa Andrews (Producer)
18-year-old Julia is under great pressure as the last pureblood Andalusian female vampire. But when her desires conflict with the ancient traditions enforced by her mother, she must battle to love and live on her own terms.

The Rhythm of Chaos, Sarah Knight (Director); Sarah Skibinski (Writer)
An alcoholic social worker merrily wreaks havoc upon the lives of a dysfunctional suburbanite couple when she decides to seek retribution for her sister's death.

Sight Unseen (Canada), Shannon Masters (Writer); Jennifer Podemski (Producer)
A Cree teenager has a spontaneous vision that unlocks a family secret, transforming her from a lost child to a visionary young woman who brings healing to the family.

The Suffering, Aleem Hossain (Writer)
Two LAPD detectives searching for a missing informant are attacked by the mysterious residents of a remote town.

Untitled Standing Bear Project, Valerie Red Horse (Director/Producer); Bart Daly (Writer/Producer); Terry McMahon (Writer); Ross Raventos (Writer)
When a Ponca chief is denied a trial on the grounds that he is not a human being, an unlikely group of characters rallies to seek justice.

We Can, Paola Mendoza (Writer/Director); Gloria LaMorte (Writer/Director);
An immigrant mother and her two children struggle to survive in the United States and chase after their American dream after their husband and father abandons them.

White on Rice, Shawn Ku (Writer/Director); Christina Piovesan (Producer)
When his adopted mom dies, 14-year-old Ricky has to move in with his grandmother in a small whitewashed town in Oregon and start his life over.

DOCUMENTARY

25 To Life, Mike Brown (Director/Producer); Emily Chang (Associate Producer)
William Brawner, who has lived in secret with HIV for over two decades since a young child, seeks redemption from his promiscuous past and embarks on a new phase of life with his wife, who is HIV-negative.

Beijing Taxi, Miao Wang (Director/Producer)
Buckle your seatbelt and take a ride with three taxi drivers from Beijing, whose lives are changing at a dizzying pace along with 15 million other hosts of the 2008 Olympics.

Evolution of a Criminal, Darius Monroe (Director)
A filmmaker turns the camera on himself to find out how a sixteen-year-old honors student with a loving family turns into a bank robber, and then back to an upright citizen.

Family: The First Circle, Heather Rae (Director/Producer); Randy Redroad (Co-Producer/Editor); Russell Friedenberg (Writer)
How does the current foster care system deal with children falling at the intersection of drugs and recovery through Western and Native American traditions?

Give Up Tomorrow, Martin Syjuco (Director/Producer); Michael Collins (Co-Director/Producer); Ramona Diaz (Executive Producer)
When a teenager from a political family in the Philippines is accused of a double murder, the country’s entire judicial system is put to the test after years of alleged corruption.

Inside The Creole Mafia, Royce Osborn (Director); Roger Guenveur Smith (Producer); Steven Adams (Producer); Bob L. Johnson (Producer); Terry Scott (Producer)
Writer/Performers Roger Guenveur Smith and Mark Broyard take us through the streets of post-Katrina New Orleans as they re-enact the scenes from their play Inside the Creole Mafia in the city that inspired it.

Invisible Beauty, Bethann Hardison (Co-Director/Producer); Jeff Zimbalist (Co-Director); Selina Lewis Davidson (Producer)
An intimate look at the current fashion catwalk where black women are becoming invisible, despite the accomplishments of several black supermodels in previous decades.

Off and Running, Nicole Opper (Director); Macky Alston (Executive Producer); Sandra Itkoff (Executive Producer); Sharese Bullock (Producer)
Avery, a 17-year-old African American track star and adopted daughter of two white Jewish lesbian moms in Brooklyn, embarks on a quest to meet her birth mother in Texas.

Oscar's Comeback, Lisa Collins (Co-Director/Producer); Mark Schwartzburt (Co-Director/Writer/Producer)
Through a unique, “mom-and-pop” style festival, a small predominantly white town in South Dakota celebrates its most famous native son, Oscar Micheaux, a pioneering African American filmmaker of the early 1900’s.

The Row, Camila Martins (Director/Producer); Alexis Beauford (Producer)
Beyond the picturesque beaches of Malibu and spotless shopping havens of Beverly Hills, we meet the men and women of a forgotten neighborhood, Skid Row.

She Wants To Be A Matador, Gemma Cubero del Barrio (Co-Director/Producer), Celeste Carrasco: (Co-Director/Producer/D.P.)
As a woman, being a matador not only means facing an angry bull charging at you at full speed, but also fighting the prejudice and preconception of gender roles.

Untitled Dafen Project, Francisco Bello (Co-Director/Producer); Tim Sternberg (Co-Director/Producer)
Decades after the making of Western style art was declared illegal in China, the suburb of Dafen finds itself a leading producer of reproduced paintings through individual and corporate commissions.

The Prime Minister, the Shah, the Ayatollah and I, Caveh Zahedi (Director)
A personal essay film about growing up Iranian-American at a time when the U.S. and Iran went from being allies to enemies.

Women On Waves, Karin Williams (Director)
Come and ride the waves with a group of women, who are carrying on the true spirit of surfing as a cultural and spiritual tradition dating back for centuries.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/24/2008 03:08:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at his Cinema Echo Chamber, Brandon Harris interviews Tom Quinn, writer/director of the excellent indie feature The New Year Parade, which screens tonight at the IFC Center. The film won the Grand Prize at Slamdance this year and is also a graduate of the IFP Rough Cuts Lab, which is where I originally encountered it.

Harris originally wrote about the film here on the Filmmaker blog, and in the intro to the interview at Cinema Echo Chamber he dubs the film a "naturalistic, emotionally resonant look at the year long dissolution and repair of a South Philadelphia Irish family, a less mannered, blue collar The Squid and The Whale." I'll concur with that and highly recommend that you catch the film at its only NYC screening tonight at 8.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/24/2008 01:20:00 AM Comments (0)

Screen Daily today runs a must-read edited excerpt of financier Ben Waisbren's recent remarks in Berlin about film financing, the credit markets, slate deals, and the movie business overall.

Here's how they intro his piece: "In a prescient speech more than a month ago in Berlin, financier Ben Waisbren talked of impending calamity for the US wave of slate financing – banks won't touch such mega-deals again until there is more transparency and a better alignment of investor and studio interests."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/21/2008 05:30:00 PM Comments (0)

One of our 25 new faces from last year, Philip Van, is one of five directors who recently participated in an omnibus short film project based loosely on the French parlour game Exquisite Corpse. The incredibly stylish series of narrative shorts were produced by Little Minx, an offshoot of Ridley Scott's Ad agency RSA, where Van and the four of the agency's other emerging directors (Laurent Briet, Josh Miller, Chris Nelson and Malik Hassan Sayeed) are currently represented. You can see the films here and over at Cinema Echo Chamber, you'll find interviews with four of the five participants.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 3/21/2008 08:37:00 AM Comments (0)

Asia Argento -- the writer, director and actor -- has been justly celebrated this week by Nathan Lee in the Village Voice on the occasion of her starring role in Olivier Assayas's latest thriller, Boarding Gate. Lee calls her "not only the most fearless actor of her generation, but also one of the most intelligent and commanding," an assessment with which I concur. His piece is hard to excerpt, so I suggest you simply go to the link and read the whole thing. Also look for Travis Crawford's piece on Mother of Tears, her father Dario's latest feature in which she stars, in the next issue of Filmmaker. And, after reading Lee's piece, you might check out Crawford's 2000 interview with Asia that appeared in our pages. It's online -- with more photos from Richard Kern, who took the pic here -- at this link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/21/2008 12:10:00 AM Comments (0)

Serious fans of experimental cinema have a few benchmarks among them – not just a fervent love of unusual work in filmmaking and performance – but good transportation and a librarian’s sense of investigation. You need to be a fucking art detective at times in order to find great events.

There are many established outlets for the experimental world but consistency is difficult. Museums and film festivals are often event based and deal with high profile press and premieres to get folks in the door. Underground microcinemas are great but bills are tough to keep up with and getting the word out to fans across a big city is not cheap or efficient.

Which is why the new venue Light Industry is so exciting. Based in Brooklyn, the multimedia space is being invented by stalwart experimental cinema champions Thomas Beard and Ed Halter. Focusing on a weekly schedule, each event will be organized by a different artist, critic or curator. You may see an artists’ own collection of shorts, or a writer’s favorite lost film, or a collection of silent boxing movies discussed by a curator working in an entirely different field.

"There's such a rich and varied body of film and electronic art being shown in the city right now, but the audiences for, say, contemporary art or experimental cinema or new media don't overlap nearly as often as they could and should," says Beard. "I feel like there's something really exciting about the prospect of having all this different work under one roof, with the freedom to do things that might not make as much sense in more institutional contexts."

Even in New York where experimental worlds have flourished. Series like the Robert Beck and Ocularis are defunct, MOMA and the Whitney create a single explosion and push it for months, and the New York Underground Film Festival is having its last fest this April.

"Right now, there's nothing happening like this on a consistent, weekly basis,” Halter adds. “Particularly in Brooklyn, where is where the majority of these artists and curators now live."

Beard and Halter have been pillars for experimental work for years. Beard is formerly a Program Director of Ocularis and a programmer at Cinematexas. Halter programmed and oversaw the New York Underground Film Festival from 1995-2005, wrote for the Village Voice, currently teaches at Bard College and wrote the book Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games. Both are currently editing books on aspects of experimental film exhibition – Beard on Live Cinema: A Contemporary Reader and Halter on Small Cinemas: American Avant-Garde Film Exhibition from Ciné Clubs to Microcinemas with Andrea Grover.

All events will take a place on Tuesdays at 8PM in Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn that's home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists.

Opening night March 25 features the program “The Blazing World,” compiled by Beard and Halter. Pitting the love-all world of the avant hippie with AA-meeting views of today, the compilation is stunning, from 70s work by Kurt Kren, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson to a 2007 short by wunderkid Michael Robinson.

Get more info on all upcoming shows at Light Industry: www.lightindustry.org

# posted by Mike Plante @ 3/20/2008 09:25:00 PM Comments (0)

In her Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke links to and comments on a Bloomberg.com report that states that the Sundance Channel is for sale and that Cablevision, which already owns the IFC, may be a potential buyer.

From Andy Fixmer's Bloomberg report:

The Sundance Channel, the cable network built around Robert Redford's annual film festival, is for sale and Cablevision Systems Corp. may be the eventual buyer, according to Pali Research.

Owners General Electric Co., CBS Corp. and Redford are seeking $400 million to $500 million for the channel, which has 26 million subscribers, Richard Greenfield, an analyst at Pali Research in New York, wrote today in a report, citing sources he didn't name.

Finke headlines her piece "Don't Do It, Robert Redford!" I'm also a little confused as to why Cablevision would make this play. (As is the Pali Research analyst, who recommends selling Cablevision on the news.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/20/2008 01:58:00 PM Comments (0)

I had a business meeting last week in which there was an honest discussion about whether the "Two Girls, One Cup" phenomenon was played out or not. I'll say no more. Apparently, though, it has not, as the internet meme has crossed over into the old-media world of Esquire magazine.

Karina Longworth reports over at SpoutBlog:

I’m fairly certain Cary Grant was never asked by an interviewer to watch internet scat porn so that his word-for-word reaction could be printed in a major magazine, but poor George Clooney lives in a different time. Presumably because there’s very little new to say about Clooney––he’s good looking! He’s liberal! He’s an Oscar winner prone to making casually derogatory gay jokes about Brad Pitt!!!––and yet, there’s endless demand for his silver foxiness on magazine covers, Esquire’s AJ Jacobs spent a day with the actor. Surfing the internet.

She goes on to write about Clooney's reaction and notes that he is part of a long line of viewers who have reacted violently to the noxious clip... although Esquire, apparently, did not have the foresight to catch Clooney on webcam.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/20/2008 01:15:00 PM Comments (2)

Over at his DIY Filmmaker blog, Sujewa Ekanayake posts a long interview with Barry Jenkins (pictured) about his Medicine for Melancholy, one of the real discoveries (and a film I very much liked) out of SXSW. He talks about Godard, being inspired by Claire Denis's Vendredi Soir, and whether Medicine for Melancholy is, in Sujewa's words, "the Barack Obama of indie films." Here's his response to the latter -- specifically, whether or not his film can "cross over" from the typical "multi-ethnic but largely white" base of indie film to reach more diverse audiences.

"The Barack Obama of indie films." Man, that's some shit. But you know what, Barack's doin' alright for himself so I'll take that, I'll take that. And to go farther down the rabbit hole you've opened, I'll take a page from the Obama playbook and stress that Medicine For Melancholy isn't a race based film, nor is it an anthropological study of black hipsters. The issues of race are present because they drive the character Micah, and in so much as he's a character we come upon in a moment of intellectual crisis, whatever notes on race that can be gleamed from the film are chaotic and shifting, not at all a thesis statement. Class politics drive the film just as much as race, but the issue of race is such a provocative subject it overwhelms all else. That's fine. It'd be untruthful of me to say the issues of race discussed in the film aren't important to me, but I think what comes across in the reviews —which thus far have nearly ALL been written by white reviewers — is that the film is about identity above all else, about resolving one's perception of class and race within the rubric of a setting, the city we choose to spend our lives in (something often taken for granted when we discuss identity), in this case San Francisco, and coming to a point where you're simply comfortable with yourself. What human being on this planet hasn't at some point struggled to come to terms with their identity? It's in this way that the film reaches some notion of the universal experience, and I think that's why the people you mention, the supposed "cross-over" crowd, have responded so favorably.

And here's the film's trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/19/2008 08:33:00 PM Comments (0)

The social marketplace site, IndieGoGo, has announced the first film to reach its funding goal on the site. Titled, The Lilliput, filmmaker Minna Zielonka-Packer raised $10,000 through the site and will use the proceeds to film a sneak peak of the film. Here's the synopsis of the film from the site:

An American filmmaker travels to Poland to make a film about Gombin, the town her father was born in, as a memorial to him and to the Holocaust. Poland 2008 is a country of contradictions where the invisible torture of the past meets the hope of the future.

To learn more about The Lilliput, as well as IndieGoGo, click here.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/19/2008 02:45:00 PM Comments (0)

Let me start off by saying I'm not a fan of award shows. And in no way am I speaking for the magazine, I personally don't like them. How you can rate films (or music, or anything in the arts for that matter) is just beyond me. But there's one thing that an award show can do if done right and that's bring a community together. That's what the inaugural Cinema Eye Honors did last night in New York City.

Created by filmmaker AJ Schnack and Stranger Than Fiction founder Thom Powers (and sponsored by IndiePix), this celebration of non-fiction films, which was pulled off in the span of 3 months(!), will hopefully be the start of a much needed ceremony that will continue yearly. (If you're curious how this all began, check out my post on the announcement on the awards.)

Nine awards were handed out at a mostly packed IFC Center with Jason Kohn's Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) taking way the big prize of the evening, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Nominated for six awards, it won two others, Outstanding Editing and Outstanding Cinematography.



Alex Gibney walked away with the award for Outstanding Achievement in Direction for Taxi To The Dark Side, while the first prize of the night, Outstanding Debut Feature, went to one of our recent "25 New Faces of Independent Film" Jennifer Venditti for Billy The Kid.







The other winners included: Outstanding Achievement in Production (Ghosts of Cite Soleil), Outstanding International Feature (The Monastery-Mr. Vig and the Nun), Outstanding Graphic Design and Animation (Chicago 10) and the Audience Choice Prize went to The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

With a quick running time of two hours, the mood in the theater was light and in no way competitive. The one thing that may have slowed things down was a Director's Roundtable moderated by Powers in the middle of the awards, which I felt really killed the show's momentum. But that's just one example of how the creators were thinking outside the box. There was also a DJ in the corner spinning great songs in between awards and background music for the presenters. While Schnack and Powers were understandably nervous as hosts, they did an impressive job, with Schnack even doing a Billy Crystal-esque song of the nominees. There were also moving moments as well -- a tribute to two filmmakers who recently passed away -- Tony Silver, director of the groundbreaking doc, Style Wars and Nonso Christian Ugbode of the National Black Programming Consortium cut together a tribute to mentor St. Clair Bourne.





The evening ended with an after party at a plush bar in the Meatpacking District. Having said while accepting the award that he made Manda Bala "out of anger" towards how difficult it is to make a documentary, Kohn says he's currently working on a narrative script. While further down the bar, Barbara Kopple (who's got a few docs in the pipeline), the presenter of the final award, gushed to me about how much she loved the event. "But you know the one thing it was missing," she added. "There was no Best Character award. I would have loved to see that."

So there you go AJ and Thom. Another award to hand out for next year. I wonder who would have won it this year? My vote would be Billy Mitchell from King of Kong.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/19/2008 11:00:00 AM Comments (0)

The Film Panel Notetaker has an interview up with filmmaker Leah Meyerhoff, who is bringing a retrospective of her short films to the Boston Underground Film Festival this weekend. She is also beginning work on her first feature, Unicorns, which she hopes to begin shooting this summer. Here's Meyerhoff answering the question of what made her want to be a filmmaker:

I originally thought I wanted to be a marine biologist, something totally not in the arts at all. Then I went school at Brown and started taking film classes. I started with film theory, kind of more on an intellectual basis and then began taking film production classes at RISD which was this art school nearby. I continued to make sculpture, painting, photography and other kinds of visual art for years and went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for a year. It was almost a half-creative and half-practical decision to go into filmmaking, a way of doing something that I love while also having an impact on the world. I enjoy the collaborative aspect of filmmaking rather than being in a tiny studio all day painting by yourself. It also has a potential to reach a wide audience and affect social change on a level that other art forms aren’t capable of. The distribution system can be mind-bogglingly complicated, but it’s also great because if you can tap into that, you have the chance to really change the way people think. That is part of the reason why I’m particularly interested in coming of age stories about teenage girls. That was the age range for me when I was figuring out who I was in the world and what it meant to grow up as a female in this society. I didn’t see myself reflected in the media. To me, all the TV shows and films I saw were not my reality. Now that I’m older, this idea of creating characters that young girls can look up to or can identify with is a powerful idea.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/19/2008 10:43:00 AM Comments (0)

I haven't seen Doomsday yet, but I want to -- I loved Neil Marshall's Descent, and despite the 28 Days Later meets Resident Evil meets Road Warrior mix-and-match vibe of the trailer, I can't believe this director doesn't deliver something interesting with this new film. Filmmaker contributor Travis Crawford, who has seen the film and sent the below in an email, corroborates my feelings that Doomsday may offer more than people are giving it credit for.

From Crawford:

I felt that it was a very self-knowing, vintage Verhoeven-esque PARODY of the ultra-violent futuristic action thrillers from which it admittedly derives much inspiration -- I found it often hysterically funny, and a more authentically post-modern satire of the genre than people are giving it credit for being. I also find it incredibly ironic that it opened on the same day as the loathsome, patronizing FUNNY GAMES remake -- DOOMSDAY seemed to me to be a much more intelligent critique of the exploitation of violence in cinema, but it so perfectly and organically internalized the visual vocabulary of the very genre that it was satirizing that I think people missed the point of the whole exercise. Meanwhile, more blatantly "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" post-modern media critiques like HOT FUZZ (which I mildly enjoyed, but it ends there) and DIARY OF THE DEAD (which I actively disliked) get acclaim only because they're so obvious in their self-referential back-patting smugness that everyone is in on the joke.

I think that the "problem" with the satirical elements in DOOMSDAY is that this is a film that, forgive the sports metaphor, showed up on the playing field willing to play the game on the game's established rules -- it doesn't hover above the spectators to deliver ironically detached commentary in the vein of DIARY OF THE DEAD, because it attempts to engage you in the Ritalin-riddled, rapid-fire spectacle while it simultaneously points out the absurdity of it all (think STARSHIP TROOPERS). Still, I can't fathom that a nation of film critics appeared to just seriously regard a film wherein an anorexic girl in a tank top and skin-tight pants defeats a medieval knight in full armor and horseback within an ancient castle courtyard presided over by a fur coat-clad Malcolm McDowell, and then proceeds on to an ultra-futuristic car chase; pardon me while I hold the necessary funeral for irony. The satire in DOOMSDAY might have escaped a lot of critics because it's both meta-cinematic (she wears a Plissken-like eye patch because one of her eyeballs is a camera!) and politically metaphorical (despite being set entirely in the U.K., I think Marshall is remarking on post-9/11 American isolationism and fear-mongering). And I do think that the ultra-ADD editing is Marshall's way of poking fun at the Michael Bay aesthetic of action sequences today.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/19/2008 12:27:00 AM Comments (1)

As David Hudson wrote at GreenCine, there's a leisurely paced quality to SXSW that creates a general sense of conviviality among not just its filmmaker attendees but also its journalists. Like Hudson, I still have several films to write about, and I'll to get these thoughts online sometime soon. But, in the meantime, there's this really nice video by Mike Hedge that I post below. He's created a hypnotic montage of his own festival moments, including some that I shared.


SXSW 2008 from mikehedge on Vimeo.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2008 10:55:00 PM Comments (1)

Over at the main page there are two new web-only pieces that both interview directors whose films open this week and who both quite consciously explore in them issues of borders and identity in a globalist age. One is a new director, Patricia Riggen (a Filmmaker 25 New Face discovery in 2005) and the other is a veteran, Olivier Assayas, and their films couldn't be more different. Damon Smith interviews Riggen about her La Misma Luna, an emotional and affecting mother-son tale that draws from both the Mexican telenovela and the American indie road movie genres. And then there's Olivier Assayas, who is interviewed by Brandon Harris about his film Boarding Gate, which stars Asia Argento and Michael Madsen. In that interview Assayas talks about many things, including the kinds of risks he takes in the production of his films and the ways in which the internet is colonizing our interior space.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2008 10:33:00 PM Comments (0)

Last when I was a mentor for the IFP Rough Cuts labs, one of the most interesting projects was Alex Karpovsky's Woodpecker, a doc-styled feature about those obsessed with the hunt for an ivory-billed woodpecker. I missed seeing the finished film at SXSW and hope to catch up with it very soon. In the meantime, at GreenCine David Hudson has rounded up some links, including this podcast conducted by Aaron Hillis, and has posted his own thoughts as well. Head over there to read more about Karpovsky's fascinating film.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2008 10:25:00 PM Comments (0)

The Nee Brothers, who were two of our "25 New Faces" in 2006, have made a lovely music video for the band Terrene which is up for a Yahoo Best Indie Music Video award. You can watch it below, and if you like it you can vote for the Nee's here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/18/2008 10:17:00 PM Comments (0)

Last week, The Musuem of Modern Art, in association with TeleFilm Canada and the Canadian Consulate General in New York, opened its annual survey of recent Canadian filmmaking, Canadian Front, with Clement Virgo's tale of boxing and revenge Poor Boy's Game. The seven day affair runs from March 13th through the 20th. While most of the films screen twice over the seven days, Virgo's film, one which includes some terrific performances by Danny Glover, Tonya Lee Williams and Rossif Sutherland, will screen daily.

Other notable titles on tap for the seven day event include Bruce MacDonald's hotly anticipated adventure in split-screen filmmaking The Tracey Fragments, starring academy award nominee Ellen Page, Denys Arcand's new film Days of Darkness, billed as the final piece of the trilogy that he began with The Decline of the American Empire and continued to great effect in his Cannes and Oscar winning The Barbarian Invasions and Laurie Lynd's Breakfast With Scot, about an ex-NHL enforcer who has recently climbed out of the closet. The film, despite being a relatively light hearted Queer comedy, has been at the center of the controversy surrounding a proposed bill in the Canadian parliament, C-10, that would give the Canadian government a greater say in the content of films and TV shows that are made with the assistance of state funds.

On Friday, a contingent of Canadian film personalities, many the producers and directors of the films screening at MOMA over the next week, were treated to a US Industry Immersion sponsored by IFP. The day long affair provided four panels on various aspects of the American film industry, with such indiewood notables as IFC's Arianna Bocco, Magnolia's Tom Quinn, Koch/Lorber's Richard Lorber, This Is That's Ted Hope, Cinetic Media's Sarah Lash and ThinkFilm's Ben Stambler participating in discussions led by Filmmaker's own Jason Guerrasio and Peter Bowen.

While acknowledging the bleak outlook for traditional specialty film distribution, IFC and Magnolia's representatives both trumpeted the day and date distribution model as having helped find audiences for films that otherwise would have been unreleasable. Lance Weiler and IndieGoGo's Slava Rubin each offered their thoughts on alternative modes of distribution for indie films. Many of Weiler's web 2.0 saavy ideas about online distribution can be found in this article he wrote for Filmmaker's Winter 08' issue. Weiler summarized the thoughts of most of the panelists during an early session when he chimmed in, "The democratization of the tools has created a surplus of films in the market place. Its the best of times and the worst of times."

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 3/18/2008 12:22:00 PM Comments (0)

Of the fifteen features I saw at this year's SXSW Film Festival, only one was announced as an award-winner on Tuesday night (Jeremiah Zagar's In A Dream). But despite their not winning official accolades, several of the other films I saw were nonetheless intriguing - in some cases wonderful.

Something that's stayed with me since leaving Austin is how utterly grounded many of the narrative films were in the performances of their female leads. Whether dealing in realism or more avant-garde experimentation, these films are not merely showcasing strong work by young female actors, but in fact reveal a tendency in their directors to really rest the entire energy of the stories on these performances. Whether quiet and nuanced or over-the-top, they're pushing their cameras in close and recording the rhythms of their heroines in ways that both electrify the stories, and place the films firmly in the more personal storytelling traditions of independent cinema.

Mary Bronstein's Yeast is probably the most vivid example, one whose strengths truly rely on its three female leads, played by Bronstein herself and Amy Judd (both pictured at left), and Greta Gerwig. A loosely-sketched portrayal of three friends unleashing verbal, physical and psychological abuse on one another, it's an empathetic challenge from beginning to end, one that can only draw strong reactions. Mary, whose husband Ronnie's Frownland elicited similarly polarized responses after his SXSW screening last year, has made an incredibly aggressive and brave debut feature. The world she creates is voiced not with conversational realism, but rather with a reactive, tweaked-out, primal scream. Between the actors - in the subversive anger that gets tossed back and forth - is the real energy of this film.

One of the sweeter films I saw this year, Josh Safdie's The Pleasure of Being Robbed, is similarly grounded (actually, lifted off the ground) by the performance of his lead actress, Eleonore Hendricks (right). She's charming and childish, elusive and infuriating, scurrying around the streets causing trouble. Safdie's moody, observational photography, and the tangential pacing and switchback whimsy are all totally in tune with her. There's a dance between actress and camera in this film that's effortlessly enjoyable.

Two films that focus on more intimate moments between couples (and that could easliy face comparisons over the next few weeks, as the merits of this year's SXSW narrative selections are debated), also rely on strong deliveries by their respective female leads.

Nights and Weekends, the latest from SXSW alum Joe Swanberg, was co-written and co-directed by Greta Gerwig (who rounded out a trifecta at the festival this year with the Duplass Brothers' Baghead). Nights and Weekends is Swanberg's most mature and sensitive film yet; there's a sincerity that critics of his earlier work have longed for. More importantly, Gerwig's contributions to the emotional arc of the film far outpace what we've come to expect from her. It's arguably the best acting she's done on screen to date, pulling her wry, offbeat charm down deeper into something tangible and raw. Swanberg's films have traded in the relatable and the familiar; in this case, he and Gerwig (left) have crafted characters who struggle to conceal their true feelings for the sake of remaining friendly - sometimes in ways all too familiar.

Barry Jenkins' thoroughly engaging Medicine for Melancholy is a two-character tour through the race and class dynamics of modern-day San Francisco, a story in which the heaviness of culture weighs down the simplicity of love. Tracey Heggins' Joanne (right) is in many ways the emotional and moral core to the story, and the further I get from this film the more I think about her. To be sure, Wyatt Cenac gives a strong performance as well - his Micah is enigmatic and fiery, but also easily absorbed. Hers is a slow burn that remains undetected through much of the first half, but which smolders into the film's final sequence and beyond.

The most quietly impressive performance I saw this year - and my favorite film of the festival - was that of Jeannine Kaspar (pictured, top right) in Paper Covers Rock, the first in director Joe Maggio's planned Kieślowski-inspired ten-part series. The film follows a young woman just released from a hospital after unsuccessfully attempting suicide, and her measured steps towards reclaiming her life, and her daughter.

Paper Covers Rock is the most traditional of this group, mostly in the arc and scope of the film. It's given a humble but powerful realism by Kaspar, on which Maggio remains focused throughout the length of the film. There's a straightforward honesty to Kaspar that's most watchable; even her moments of frailty and confusion have a lucidity that's magnetic. David Lowery at Spout has compared moments in her performance to that of Damien Lewis in Lodge Kerrigan's Keane. Paper Covers Rock is a well-written and confidently-directed film, one whose final moments are truly haunting, and which leave its lead performance all the more unforgettable.

# posted by Durier Ryan @ 3/14/2008 03:12:00 PM Comments (0)

Everything is connected. While the Elliiot Spitzer call-girl scandal seems to be providing cable news with a pre-Pennsylvania election break and bloggers with plenty of new linking opportunities, it's impacting the film business as well -- specifically, the successful NY tax credit program which has been up for an expansion. In the Hollywood Reporter, Gregg Goldstein writes about how "Spitzer exit threatens his tax-credit plan."

Here are two key graphs, but read the piece for the whole thing:

By the end of Wednesday, both the Republican-led state Senate and Democratic-led Assembly had unveiled proposed budgets with their partisan versions of the legislation Spitzer spearheaded. The outgoing governor proposed an extension of the current 10% state tax credit on below-the-line production costs, upping it to 15% of all production costs (including above-the-line costs for actors, producers and directors). He also pushed for an incremental bump in the benefit cap from $60 million to $75 million by 2011.

The tax credits, initiated in 2004, have bipartisan support, but the Senate and Assembly have much different takes -- and price tags -- on the bill. The Assembly agrees with Spitzer's caps but wants an increase to 30% of productions cost with no above-the-line credit, taking about $100 million from the budget. The Senate agrees with Spitzer's overall 15% plan but wants to "blow the cap out" -- as proponent Sen. Martin Golden puts it -- at an estimated $300 million budget cost.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/13/2008 10:41:00 PM Comments (0)

We've been covering on this blog the intersection between politics and user-generated video, most often by posting some of the better campaign mash-ups that have been posted to YouTube this season. But now, however, anyone (well, any Obama supporter) can go legit with their political ad by taking part in "Obama in 30 Seconds." The contest is being sponsored by MoveOn.org, and it assembles an incredible panel of judges (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Lawrence Lessig, James Schamus, Ted Hope, Russell Simmons, Oliver Stone, Moby, Tom Ortenberg, John Legend and DJ Spooky are a few) to pick the best submitted Obama 30-second spot. The winner receives national exposure for his or her ad, a $20,000 gift certificate towards video equipment, and, of course, the civic benefits of political engagement.

The message from Move On is embedded below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/13/2008 10:07:00 PM Comments (1)

Jamie Stuart emailed the following observation about No Country for Old Men after rewatching the film on DVD:

I rented No Country yesterday. I'd read a few complaints on Anne T.'s blog about the scene where Bell goes to the motel room -- and Chigurh is supposed to be behind the door (people were complaining that Chigurh seemed to have vanished).

I always thought Chigurh was simply hiding behind the door, since that's where he's shown during the initial cross-cutting. But watching the DVD -- and even brighting the image all the way -- Chigurh IS NOT THERE when the door opens. There's nobody in that corner. Nor would he even physically fit in that space, especially if he had the bag.

Was this a blooper? Bad direction? Is he a ghost? Is Bell imagining somebody he's never met? No. It seems to me to be an intellectual exercise at breaking the fourth wall and giving the audience the middle finger. It's setting the audience up for the confrontation they want, then taking it away. Sort of like Haneke rewinding the shotgun in Funny Games.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/13/2008 06:44:00 PM Comments (3)

Producer Keith Griffiths forwarded the below article about the great Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul and censorship of his latest acclaimed feature, Syndromes and a Century, released in the U.S. by Strand Releasing. He also forwarded the accompanying photos, which are of the actual censorship in progress. Read on...

In his review of Syndromes and a Century the Guardian Film Critic Peter Bradshaw, wrote that the film was “Profoundly mysterious, erotic, funny, gentle, playful, utterly distinctive, it is the work of the Thai director and installation-artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who now has a claim to be approaching the league of Kiarostami and Haneke, as one of modern cinema's great practitioners.”

The film was one of six, commissioned under the artistic banner of New Crowned Hope, a festival of new and distinctive films from around the world, made under the Artistic Directorship of Peter Sellars and Executive Produced by myself, and my producing partner Simon Field. The whole project was acknowledged with a Special Citation at the L.A. Critics Awards this year for the production of “works marking major achievements in current world film”. Syndromes and a Century was also selected by many critics worldwide as one of their Top Ten choices of the year, and the film was one of the five short listed films for the BBC’s World Cinema Awards.

However, at his home in Thailand the situation has not been so comfortable for either the film or its Director and a threat of censorship has hung over the film for months before a release in the cinemas could be ratified. Four scenes in particular seem to have rattled the Thai guardians of public taste: a Buddhist monk strumming a guitar, two monks playing with a remote-controlled flying saucer in a park, a doctor kissing his girlfriend and a group of doctors sharing a bottle of whiskey in their hospital basement.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul has resisted cutting these scenes, and both he and his Producer have argued forcefully that far more violent and degrading films are approved every week for wide general release. Now their second appeal has been rejected after a ten-person committee screened the film in order to re-evaluate it. After the screening the filmmakers were permitted to defend their creative efforts, explain the background to the project as a whole and its inspiration. The committee comprised of representatives from the police, the Thai Film Federation, a Film Scholar, the Journalist’s association, a Consumer watch group, the Sankha (Buddhism) council, the Medical Council, and a “film expert”. Regretfully their “considered” reactions were not positive and summarised read like scenes from a play of the Theatre of the Absurd.

It was alleged that the film not only depicted Thai society in a bad light, but that it should not be shown to “outsiders” as it had no artistic merit. The filmmaker’s parents (the film was partly made as a tribute to them) should feel ashamed that their son exposed them in such a bad, distasteful and un-artful manner. However, a monk seen playing a guitar was acceptable, because foreign viewers might conclude that the monk was not from Thailand, but from Laos or Burma.

The previous censorship committee originally asked Apichatpong Weerasethakul to cut the four noted scenes from his film. But, after this fresh “appeal”, two more were added. Exhausted, depressed and humiliated by the whole experience, they finally agreed to accept the verdict and followed the print to an editing room, in the same building, where they were able to observe the objectionable scenes being removed. They documented this “cleansing” of the film with photos taken on their mobile phones.

But there is always the possibility of a final twist to this tortured tale, as what they now plan to do is to replace the censored scenes with silent scratched black leader. In total this will now amount to about 15 minutes. This print will then be released in Thai theatres, as the “officially approved version”. Apichatpong Weerasethakul now also intends to present the committee’s comments at the start of the film. Twelve months after the films World Premier in the Official Selection of the Venice Film Festival, the Thai audience will be able to finally see this locally produced and acclaimed masterpiece of cinema, interspersed with intermittent silent black scratched leader. The longest scene of silence will run for seven minutes. It is proposed that this “new approved version” of Syndromes and a Century should be released in a cinema for a week’s run. The Director also intends to donate this special print to the Thai National Film Archive, which one can only presume is what preserving National Heritage is all about. -- Keith Griffiths, March, 2008.

KEITH GRIFFITHS has amassed diverse and in-depth production experience within the independent film and artists film sectors. He has produced the films of the The Brothers Quay. He also produces the films of Jan Svankmajer, Patrick Keiller and Chris Petit and is developing an adaptation of the classic graphic novel SIGNAL TO NOISE by Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman.

In 1994 he was awarded The Observer Newspaper - Prudential Insurance /Arts Council of England Award for Film and this year has been awarded a Fellowship by NESTA (The National Endowment for Science Technology & Arts) to research and develop new publishing concepts for "radical independent cinema" in the DVD market.

He manages ILLUMINATIONS FILMS with Simon Field. Together they Executive Produced the award winning series of feature length films from developing countries for the Festival NEW CROWNED HOPE under the artistic direction of the acclaimed opera & theatre director Peter Sellars.

To learn more about Apichatpong Weerasethakul and his films, visit his website, Kick the Machine.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/12/2008 04:51:00 PM Comments (0)

In a story posted today on Variety's The Circuit, Michael Jones reports that B-Side, the company that gathers audience reactions for thousands of festivals, is now going into the fest submissions game with the announcement that it's creating Submissions 2.0, a site where filmmakers can submit work to multiple festivals without paying a service fee. Set to launch this summer, it will certainly be in direct competition with Withoutabox. Read full story here.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/11/2008 10:27:00 PM Comments (0)

I don't know Chris Doyle that well -- I've met him a few times, have sent him a script, once, I think, and we've run articles on him twice in Filmmaker. (One, an interview with August Doyle, is here; the second, by Matt Ross, is here.) But I do have his email address, and whenever I've sent him a question he's always responded surprisingly quickly -- like two minutes later. So when I read this interview conducted over the 'net with Doyle by Stu Van Airsdale, I immediately recognized the great d.p.'s distinctive cadence and penchant for metaphorical musing. Both, of course, are found in their visual correlatives in Gus Van Sant's great new Paranoid Park, which I can't recommend more highly.

Here's an excerpt of the review over at The Reeler:

R: Gus is a Portland filmmaker; how did his sense of the city and its character influence this film and you, specifically, as a cinematographer?

CD: Portland drips through you after a while. As in Saskatchewan or the Australian desert, the climate has a great deal to do with how a film looks, the way the crew work, the energies of a place (or set). I feel that my Asian experience has taught me to GO WITH what you have, to assimilate it rather than to try to appropriate or overwhelm it. So the style of any of my films is a derivative of logistics [and] color -- the way I assume the work will evolve as much as aesthetics or taste.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/11/2008 05:47:00 PM Comments (1)

In Filmmaker's Fall issue we published And Nothing But the Truth, filmmaker Arne Johnson's thoughtful meditation on issues of truth and reality as they play out in documentary film practice. Now, you have a chance to see how Johnson resolved these issues for himself in his charming and energetic doc, Girls Rock!

The film is currently playing in NY, LA, San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Chicago, Seattle, and Portland. Click on the link above to learn more, and check out the trailer below.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 3/11/2008 03:47:00 PM Comments (0)

Announced today, the new non-profit, Cinereach, has announced the first-ever recipients of The Reach Film Fellowship. Created last fall by a group of young filmmakers and philanthropists, Cinereach's goal is to developing original features that focus on issues of cross-cultural communication, global unity and other matters of social relevance.

The four Fellows, announced in a press release today, will show their work at a reception hosted by Mira Nair in New York City on March 19th. The Fellows were chosen through a judging panel that included Jeffrey Abramson of GenArt, producer Caroline Baron, GOOD founder Benjamin Goldhirsh and associate director or programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Kent Jones. Mentors included filmmakers Albert Maysles, Rachel Grady, Sandi DuBowski and Afia Nathaniel.

Here's more from the release, including the Fellows:

The Reach Film Fellowship is the centerpiece of the nascent Cinereach, whose activities also include grant-making and in-house productions. The grant division has distributed over $1 million to date, and last summer saw the commencement of Cinereach's first in-house feature, a documentary about the Green Long March in China that is currently in post-production.

The Reach Out gala, co-chaired by Kathy Eldon, Bruce Richman, and Jon Turteltaub, will take place at 8:00pm on Wednesday, March 19, 2008, and will feature music by renowned DJ Steve Aoki. The cocktail party will be preceded by a 7:00pm screening of the four short films produced by this year's Fellows:

The Grey Movie, by Nicholas Bruckman
In March of 2003, weeks after the biggest anti-war demonstration in history, the United States invaded Iraq. Using this as a starting point, "The Grey Movie" follows several young activists-turned-revolutionaries who come to believe that tactics far beyond peaceful protest are necessary to change policy. Through their eyes, we examine the state of dissent in America, as they struggle with the consequences of taking their resistance to the streets, outside the police barricades.

Snap-Shot, by Suel Kim
A bigoted sheriff must confront his racist and ignorant views when two photographers "capture" him threatening the safety of his community, and his own child. This narrative short addresses the effects on a community when people in positions of power are crippled by their own hatred.

And So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away, by Annie Waldman
Today, two years after Hurricane Katrina, one-fifth of New Orleans high school students live without their parents. Desiring to graduate high school with their friends, many students return to New Orleans after the hurricane despite their parents' relocation. While some live with close family members, some live on their own. "And So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away" focuses on a group of four students living together without parents as they enter into their senior year.

The Curved Line, by Pilar Zaragoza
The line drawn by poverty is immediately evident upon entering prisons where children are held. Yet, upon closer examination, the curved line on their faces, a smile, tells stories that transcend that of their immediate surroundings. This documentary will explore how poverty cannot defeat the human spirit.

To learn more, go to www.cinereach.org & www.reachfilmfellowship.com

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 3/11/2008 02:24:00 PM Comments (0)

Opening last night and continuing through April 3rd, BAMcinematek will use their screens to channel the mind of luminary film critic J. Hoberman, in their series celebrating his 30 years at The Village Voice.  "I criticize people for thirty years and then everyone's so nice to me," said Hoberman in his remarks for the opening pick, David Lynch's Eraserhead.  Hoberman has spent more than half his life championing the art and artists he knows to be true in print at the Voice, Film Comment and in his many books. Hoberman came of age within the counter-culture, creating his own coverage beat out of the masses of experimental, cult and foreign movies that were barely played, let alone reviewed, when he started writing. 

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 3/11/2008 01:53:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at his CinemaTech blog, Scott Kirsner responds responds to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern entitled "Size Matters." In the article, Morgenstern questions whether the viewing medium of handheld devices will lead to artistic cinematic innovation and seems to think it will not.

I'm incredibly inte