The plot thickens in Jamie Stuart's second episode, NYFF6 Part 2, from the New York Film Festival. In this short, Jamie finds his contact at the festival, sits in on the Steven Soderbergh press conference and rescues a woman being harassed in a dark alley with some slick Bourne Identity moves. Tune in next week for Part 3.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/30/2008 05:02:00 PM

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"Examining the record of past research from the vantage of contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well. Of course, nothing of quite that sort does occur: there is no geographical transplantation; outside the laboratory everyday affairs usually continue as before. Nevertheless, paradigm changes do cause scientists to see the world of their research-engagement differently. In so far as their only recourse to that world is through what they see and do, we may want to say that after a revolution scientists are responding to a different world." -- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/29/2008 07:59:00 PM

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Film Indepenent's fourth-annual Filmmaker Forum, kicked off with a rally call for a “truly free film culture.” Ted Hope’s keynote encouraged a move from the competitive trappings of the indie industry to a collaborative future. At the core of a “truly free film culture” is the internet. Hope warned that if filmmakers didn’t take an active stance in the net neutrality debate, this window of opportunity would close. Without action, the heart of a new potential film community could stop beating as controlling interests tier bandwidth, create walled gardens, and shut the open gates that enable filmmakers to interact freely with audiences.

# posted by Lance Weiler @ 9/29/2008 09:59:00 AM

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Over on our Web Exclusives page I've posted Ted Hope's just-concluded keynote address at the Film Independent Filmmaker Forum. Please read at this link and post comments if you have them.

Here's how he opens:

I can’t talk about the “crisis” of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren’t in crisis.

The business is changing, but for us –us who are called Indie Filmmakers -- that’s good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an incredible privilidge and we need to accept it as such – and accept the full responsibility that comes with that priviledge.

The proclamations of Indie Film’s demise are grossly exaggerated. How can there be a “Death Of Indie” when Indie -- real Indie, True Indie -- has yet to even live?

Read the full address here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/27/2008 01:10:00 PM

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With so many great performances to choose from, I'm selecting this late-career classic: The Verdict, written by David Mamet and directed by Sidney Lumet.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/27/2008 11:29:00 AM

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... or, what you hear in the political ad.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/26/2008 11:30:00 AM

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Here's mash-up commentary on last night's Bush speech titled "The Dark Bailout." Nolan's The Dark Knight continues to resonate. Hat tip: Hollywood Elsewhere. Source: Matthew Belinkie at Overthinking It.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/25/2008 04:32:00 PM

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Hi all. Well I’m home – back in Vermont after an insanely busy week at IFW. I’m slow in wrapping up my thoughts, but here they are. A few highlights, in no particular order:

Meeting Bob Villa of This Old House and telling him I just bought an old house and was fixing it up and having him smile politely and then head to the other side of the room. That was neat.

At the Chicken & Egg Pictures party getting to share 7 minutes of Cartoon College with an audience and hearing them laugh in the right places and then cheer at the end.

At the IFW screening having Simon Kilmurry - head dude at P.O.V. - come up to me after to share how excited he is about the film.

An unexpected opportunity came out of a meeting with truTV. Josh and I pitched an idea for a show about law and order in rural Vermont (you wouldn't believe the amount of crime perpetrated against cows up here). We're going to shoot a pilot of sorts and see what happens. I'm a total sucker for Cops, so this is right up my alley.

Seeing some really cool works in progress: DeAf Jam, Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be the Same, Casting by: revolution in hollywood, etc.

Trying to distract Cartoon College producer Alan Oxman with profane text messages while he was on the HBO Documentary panel about war docs. Yes, I am twelve (and his phone was shut off anyway).

Meeting up with David Redmon and Ashley Sabin from Carnivalesque Films to talk about the upcoming DVD release of Manhattan, Kansas (available in stores and on Netflix Nov. 18).

Ego crushing lowlight that was actually a highlight because it made me rethink my pitch: Meeting with a festival programmer in a speed dating session and having her say: “Honey, just what is your film about? What is the Big Beautiful Question? Because you’re boring me with the details.”

My only regret was not being able to attend every event and party and screening and panel.

That's it for me. Thanks for reading.

Goodnight.

# posted by Tara Wray @ 9/24/2008 09:51:00 PM

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I completely missed notice that Carlos Reygados's third feature, Silent Light, is opening today in New York. I think this film is a flat-out masterpiece, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Manohla Dargis writes about the film in today's New York Times. An excerpt:

I’ve seen Silent Light three times — it had its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival — and find it more pleasurable and touching with each viewing. After having wowed and appalled international audiences with bravura technique in his first feature, Japón (2002), and assaultive provocations in his second, Battle in Heaven (2005), which opens with the kind of sexual encounter that keeps nunneries in business, Mr. Reygadas has quietly altered his visual style to brilliant and meaningful effect. His silky camera movements and harmoniously balanced widescreen compositions still enthrall, but he now comes across as less committed to his own virtuosity and more invested in finding images — of children bathing, trees rustling, clouds passing — that offer a truer sense of the world than is found in melodramatic bloodletting.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/24/2008 12:26:00 AM

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IFP announced today the launch of First Weekend, a new program that seeks to connect audiences directly with new independent films. The first film profiled in the series will be Lance Hammer's Ballast.

From the release:

“First Weekend” series will be a quarterly program designed to guarantee sold out shows during a self-distributed film's opening weekend. In purchasing a $25 ticket and supporting the series, audiences are directly supporting truly independent films and filmmakers. The full box-office proceeds will go directly toward the film’s theatrical run. The audience also gets to join in a post screening conversation hosted by a notable personality and attend an exclusive after party in celebration of the film.

Ballast screening:

Date: Thursday, October 2 at 8pm
Location: Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, NYC. Details on the private after-party provided upon purchase of ticket.
To purchase an IFP “First Weekend” ticket: www.ifp.org

Your $25 admission gets you:

-A ticket to the opening weekend screening at 8pm on Oct 2 at Film Forum.
-An invitation to the post-screening Q&A between Lance Hammer and Tony Award-winning playwright/poet/activist/actress Sarah Jones (Bridge & Tunnel).
-An invitation to the exclusive after-party with the filmmaker and members of NY’s arts community, including members of the Host Committee.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/23/2008 04:40:00 PM

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In addition to all the press screenings and the opening night bash, one New York Film Festival-related thing we at Filmmaker look forward to each year is Jamie Stuart's series of NYFF videos. (For a good recap of Jamie's work, check out Karina Longworth's piece here.) You see, even though we host and exec produce these pieces, they remain somewhat mysterious to us, arriving in the middle of the night with a handy promo image attached, and usually warping some kind of previously stated concept to a creatively unexpected degree. Without having gone in-depth about this with Stuart, it looks like the latest, NYFF46, which opens with a bona fide fight scene, may be the most narratively-oriented of all. It's even got some kind of J.J. Abrams-ish, David Lynchian multiple reality thing going on... I think. Honestly, though, it's really too soon to tell. Like you, hopefully, I'm anxiously waiting the next installment.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/23/2008 01:51:00 PM

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IFP has announced their final Tribute honoree for this year's Gotham Awards: President of HBO Documentary Films Sheila Nevins.

Nevins will be recognized for her contributions to the art of the documentary. She is responsible for overseeing the development and production of all documentaries for HBO and Cinemax and their multiplex channels. As an executive producer or producer, she has received 22 Primetime Emmy Awards, 25 News and Documentary Emmys and 28 George Foster Peabody Awards. Nevins was also presented with a Personal Peabody in recognition of her work and ongoing commitment to excellence. She holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in Directing from Yale University School of Drama.

IFP also announced that Penélope Cruz, Gus Van Sant and Melvin Van Peebles will be presented with Gotham Awards Tributes this year.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/23/2008 10:52:00 AM

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I figured folks who have been reading these entries might be interested in the full staged reading we are doing of DAY DREAM on Monday, Nov. 10th at 6:30pm at 45 Bleecker St (at Lafayette). There will be a live jazz quartet accompanying the songs in the script. See synopsis below. Confirmed cast for the reading includes Anthony Chisholm (Oz), Colman Domingo (Passing Strange), Aunjanue Ellis (Ray), Andre Holland (Sugar), Marc Damon Johnson, Lonette McKee (Jungle Fever) and Tracie Thoms (Rent). Additional info will be up at www.newfest.org

# posted by Rodney Evans @ 9/22/2008 10:10:00 PM

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And one more thing....

For those of you who want to continue the festivities...
The full season of Stranger than Fiction starts tomorrow, and is always a good way to see great docs. and connect with fellow filmmakers.

--Jesse


Jesse@Shootingpeople.org
Jessedocs.com

# posted by Jesse Epstein @ 9/22/2008 06:46:00 PM

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…or so it did last Thursday. I’m happy to see that I’m not the only one who crash-landed after last week’s IFW meeting marathons.

Craig and I met with 24 companies in three days. And, yes, it was just as uncomfortable pitching this idea as I thought it’d be. The level of uncomfort depended on the person we were speaking to. It could vary from a feeling like we were pitching a dirty joke to NPR to feeling as if we were over-explaining why one might think the 3 Stooges are funny to someone who is obviously not a fan. But, it had to be done – and that’s why we were there – and surprisingly (to me, at least), the meetings went incredibly well. After pulling off a quick polish to the script, we’re sending the script out this week to just about everyone we met with.

Our description (I really shouldn’t call it a “pitch”) got better as the days went on. We decided to ask some folks if we could just spare them the misery of listening to us babble on and just send the script – none of them declined that option. Both Craig and I felt that the script could sound like a one-note joke, which it certainly isn’t, and that the response we had already received was excitement about how fleshed out and full the script actually is…so why not let it speak for itself if we have that option?

A lot of new ideas were sparked from the meetings. I came up with a new scriptwriting software idea for Macintosh and Craig Zobel and I continued to spend the week developing new ideas for our own self/alternative-distribution model – which will hopefully enable us to not only MAKE our films, but to get them SEEN as well.
Right now it is impossible to say what any of these meetings will lead to…we likely won’t know for at least another month, after we’ve followed up and re-met with everyone. Regardless, this week opened a lot of doors that we likely never would have thought of knocking on.

Other thoughts in summary: Rooftop Films is wonderful – they pulled together some great screenings to wrap up the 2008 season, the week’s parties were packed with the “who’s-who”, the “who’s that?” and the “who farted?” of film festival parties, Melvin VanPeebles made a quick speech at the awards lunch that made us all cheer (why wasn’t he on Wall Street helping those folks out?), more than one person asked us “are you actually going to make that film?” and, while meeting with an incredibly wonderful woman from Gracie Films, Craig told her that we’d be willing to change the title of our film to Turds of Endearment to help get on James L. Brooks’ good side.
Let’s see if it works…

Thank you to IFP and Filmmaker Magazine for asking me to take part in this week's writing experiment.

# posted by Todd Rohal @ 9/22/2008 04:48:00 PM

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Some photos from the last day, an HBO party, and from our very own New Day Films party on Friday evening.

Last day at the filmmaker/industry lounge:





"New Venues for Docs" Panel:


with:
Josh Braun (Submarine), Alice Elliot (New Day Films), Michael Rubin (MSNBC), David Redman and Ashley Sabin (Carnivalesque Films)









Have to say, the panel -- with both sales agents, and filmmakers who distribute their own films -- was very interesting. And also pretty funny.
Moderated by David Wilson (True/False).

More at:
thetakepart



HBO Documentary Party:


















Winding down at the New Day Films after-party.
















Big thanks for a great week. Lots of good people, interesting projects, and a way to understand more about the industry.

# posted by Jesse Epstein @ 9/22/2008 04:09:00 PM

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Now that Independent Film Week is over I finally have a chance to reflect on the experience of bringing my project Day Dream to IFW's No Borders program last week. All in all, everything went extremely well. We had about 20 half-hour meetings over the course of four days. For people who have never done back-to-back pitch meetings like this it is a bit like speed dating. Trying to put your best foot forward in a short amount of time with the hope that the relationship might continue or even be mutually beneficial and satisfying in the long run. The great thing about the No Borders program is that Susan Boehm and her team are literally traveling the world to make connections and bring foreign sales agents and distributors to the program to meet the mostly U.S. filmmakers with projects. These are companies that I doubt I would have had any opportunity to meet with otherwise. Some of these companies that seemed sparked by the project included Wild Bunch, Future Films, Bankside Films and Revolver Entertainment. Compared to my last experience in the No Borders program with my film Brother To Brother in 2000 I'd say that it has become more focused on these types of foreign sales companies/distributors which is great since this is what makes the program unique. Our most intense day was Tuesday where we had nine meetings pretty much back to back in a five hour stretch. One of my producers, Anna Higgs, and I began getting pretty wiggy by the end and started singing our conversations to each other during our breaks in full-on musical mode to keep the energy up. Whatever it takes.....

# posted by Rodney Evans @ 9/22/2008 12:46:00 PM

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From Screen Daily comes the news that Michael Winterbottom will work again with Mat Whitecross, his collaborator on The Road to Guantanamo, on a feature film adaptation of Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine. Winterbottom says he's already begun filming, and Klein will narrate the film.

He should maybe take a breather while Klein appends a new chapter to her book. Her thesis -- that late-stage capitalism is reliant on "shocks" that, by dizzying the populace, enable privatization and massive transference of public wealth into private hands by anti-democratic means -- is astoundingly relevant to the Wall Street bail-out being proposed this week.

(For the record, I'm not someone who argues that the government should let Wall Street burn -- the toxic potential of all this overleveraged bad debt has been plain to see for months if not years. I just agree with Paul Krugman and Robert Reich who think that the taxpayer should actually get something for its money -- and that Section 8, which makes the Treasury Secretary a financial czar, is ridiculous.)

Klein wrote about this herself in The Guardian a few days ago, before the details of the bail-out were released. And she recently appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher to discuss her book's relevance to the current situation. Below is the short film Alfonson Cuaron and Klein made about The Shock Doctrine and then her recent appearance on Bill Maher.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/22/2008 09:49:00 AM

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I'm sure there will be a few blog stragglers over the next few days as our guest posters gather their thoughts on the just concluded Independent Film Week. For now, though, thanks to all the filmmakers who joined our blog and took the time to relate their experiences. If you haven't read their posts, scroll below and check out their first-hand accounts of trying to launch new projects at the IFP's various programs this past week. I also recommend you click over to Hammer to Nail, where filmmaker David Lowery posted his own diary about his experiences in the Narrative Rough Cut Lab and Emerging Narrative programs.

Speaking of Hammer to Nail, Ted Hope passed along an email from Michael Tully, the editor of the site:

An incredible no-budget film called Take Out is opening on five screens in LA this weekend and they really need all the help they can get. I've never actually met the director, Sean Baker, but I am a HUGE fan of this movie, as well as his newest movie, Prince of Broadway, so i'm trying to spread the word in my own tiny way. Go see it, or spread the word to LA folks who might be interested. Here's my Hammer to Nail review of the film.

I haven't seen the film but will look forward to checking it out. If you live in L.A., check out Tully's review and consider seeing the film this weekend.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/20/2008 10:15:00 AM

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Peter Aspden has a provocative piece about the consciousness-changing aspects of the internet at the Financial Times today. Whereas many who discuss this issue come off as techno-Luddites, Aspden seems to both welcome and slightly fear the inevitable future. There's a bit of Cronenberg's "Long Live the New Flesh" here.

An excerpt:

The hyperlink syndrome, the way our minds copy the workings of the internet and flit sharply from one idea to another, means that we have become addicted to the breadth of everything rather than the depth of something. The contemporary mind needs to be elastic and happy to forage in alien fields. We are yanked out of our comfort zones and must appear happy at the prospect. The methodical toiler who moves from beginning, to middle, to end is regarded as a dullard.

At times, it all appears too chaotic. But here is a comforting fact: it is not a competition. You can’t move faster than the internet. Scientists may insist that the circuits inside our heads are still superior to anything produced by machines, but it just doesn’t seem that way. The screen in the corner of your room is like your pet Alsatian: it is awesome, wild and potentially out of control; it just needs to be tamed.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/19/2008 08:26:00 PM

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With the New York Film Festival around the corner you know it's time for Jamie Stuart to come out of hiding and dazzle (as well as bewilder) us with his series of shorts from the fest. Below is a teaser he sent. This year's series will begin on the site next week.

Also, new on the Web Exclusives page is a brief essay Karina Longworth wrote for us on Stuart's previous NYFF pieces.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/19/2008 09:50:00 AM

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Here is the continuation of my post about Independent Film Week. It was a long eventful week with terrific opportunities and access to an amazing group of filmmakers. I can't say enough great things about my experience. I would highly recommend first time filmmakers apply to the IFP rough cut lab. It really changed things for my film by opening up opportunities that weren't available before and the film is better for it.

# posted by E. E. Cassidy @ 9/18/2008 04:58:00 PM

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Today led Craig and I down a strange path in our lives…the IFP held a reading of five Emerging Narrative screenplay segments for an industry audience at the Norwood Club…a place I’ve only heard about in fancy publications and dreams fueled by cream pies and butterscotch.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of casting director Amelia Rasche, we were very fortunate to land us a couple of child actors who came in with sugar-fueled energy levels and the great Michael Showalter, who pulled out a pitch-perfect performance as a Reverend who falls in love with a severed pair of buttocks.
After talking to our boys, Lucian and Aaron, and realizing that our references to Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder were proving to be more obscure to them as we had hoped, the guys just went at it and the direction of “be dumb and have a lot of energy” were pretty much all they got.
Aaron was held over from a Spanish class, so I waited outside for him to arrive in a cab, just in time for the reading to begin.
The sweatiest armpits in the room belonged to me, but the guys really hit it out of the park. Michael Showalter erupted into a Jerry Falwell-on-steroids performance – really milking the lines with all the could – even adding improvised giggles and expressions of his own that got great reactions. Lucian and Aaron held their own – Aaron’s timing with our weird-ass dialogue hit spot-on in every case. The whole thing was surreal. Craig and I wrote this screenplay over iChat, and never pictured a scene like this…a swanky club with kids and Showalter on display for the film industry.
The point I felt that things were moving right was when Ramsey, the actor hired to read the scripts’ scene direction, began laughing himself and had to cover his face.
This was a moment I had personally been looking forward to since being accepted into the Emerging Narratives program and, wow, was it weird.
I don’t know what trajectory this reading will send out film onto…I hope it’ll help for someone to see the potential in our writing…or perhaps it’ll lead to a studio buying the script and having it re-written into a Mac & Me sequel…
For the time being I continue to be incredibly grateful to the folks at IFP and Amy Dotson especially. What a weird way to spend a day in New York. I realize that further south on Wall Street things are a bit bleak, but for this near-broke filmmaker who has never owned a stock or had a 401K to worry about, things have been looking up.

** Special Thanks to Mike Tully for the photo which I stole from his blog.

# posted by Todd Rohal @ 9/18/2008 01:34:00 AM

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As the IFP's Independent Film Week rolls along, there has been quite a lot of discussion around the streets of Chelsea of new paradigms, the role of the independent filmmaker, and creative strategies to reach audiences. I've been wearing my producer hat this week, taking meetings at the IFP's No Borders program. I'll write a bit more about this experience when it's all over, but suffice to say for now that it's been an excellent couple of days filled with energetic and surprising meetings that stand in stark contrast to the torrent of bad news coming from Wall Street and the MSM. This morning I received the below letter from Ted Hope -- it's one of the emails he sends out to his personal list in which he discusses independent film and related new media. Ted ties a lot of stuff together here, knitting observations about the ground-level activism of independent filmmakers, broadband adoption in the U.S., the current election season and the macro-collapse of the global finance industry, which is in the process of being creatively destroyed as we speak. Thanks to Ted for allowing me to reprint this here. -- Scott Macaulay

It's INDEPENDENT FILM WEEK here in NYC. Although I haven't participated in many events, the activity and others efforts are benefiting me and everyone else greatly. The intense focus on and embrace of the coming reality is completely inspiring.

Instead of the negative view towards a changing paradigm, people are recognizing that the benefits of being part of a audience driven (the crass like to say "consumer") model and the abandonment of the gatekeeper/limited supply past. Somehow I find it ironic that this recognition of the change from a top down to a bottom up (or push vs. pull) film industry structure is occurring simultaneously with an economic collapse and hopeful presidential power shift. The current financial crisis in America has been compared to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, in that unregulated capitalism is literally bankrupt, like authoritarian states with communist run economies previously collapsed. The film industry paradigm shift is not of the same seismic shift, but it is the biggest change we've had in our little corner.

On Monday night, I had the good fortune to be invited to a dinner put together by Lance Weiler and Arin Crumley & Susan Buice. These filmmakers have not only embraced the new world but have been inspiringly innovative in their efforts to reach, build, and motivate audiences. The dinner was a spin off of their DIY Days. I have been making films for twenty years now and the business model has never truly worked for the films I make and want to make. Yet, this was the first time that ANYONE has pulled together a brainstorming session on what to do about that, and for that alone these folks are elevated to True Indie Film Heroes on my chart. More on this dinner later (they filmed/recorded it), but check out everything you can about what these filmmakers are doing (if you haven't already) and you can watch the future arrive.

Peter Broderick, who has been preaching the DIY Distro gospel longer than anyone I know (and thus is also on TIFH chart), has written a great two part article on the benefits of living in the real world aka the new world for IndieWire. It's REQUIRED READING.

Part One.
Part Two.

The hysteria of the last six months in Indieville is built partially on our collective relunctance/slugishness to abandon an old model which has long been recognized as being inapplicable to most filmmakers work, but also out of the slow drip of the inevitable. For fifteen years we have all heard of the dawning of the new era when we will have instant crystal clear downloads of everything under the sun on every screen everywhere anytime. And we are waiting and waiting and waiting. And still waiting. The reality is the core audience could give a hoot about that future. They like the here and now just fine (and granted most are old and grey and bald like me -- or two out of three). Reality check: the glorius future is still a long way away still.

Have you wondered why though? Who's keeping you pleasure at arm's length? Did you know that in the last three years the US had dropped from 3rd to 16th in terms of internet penetration among countries. I just got back from Asia. South Korea has 80% Broadband penetration! Imagine what that could do for all of us.

We can't drag our feet any longer. We are on the precipice. Truly. For the first time in our cultural history, we have the opportunity to truly have the culture we want -- whatever it is, in it's multi-headed truly glorious diversity. Once all filmmakers had to consider mass audiences. Now, if you reach them, you can create for niches, even niches that once never existed. It's hard to even fathom what this means. But it's also on the verge of being taken away from us. Truly. The phone companies, cable companies, the Hollywood Studios, and the MPAA have banded together to take away the first utility to promote democracy (and innovation, participation, and free speech). On Monday I got to speak up about The Key Issue In The Entire HIstory Of Independent Film at IFP's IFW Filmmaking 2.0 panel: NET NEUTRALITY. The theater was 33% full at best (ugh), and only six people in the audience said they knew what "Net Neutrality" meant (UGH!) It's nothing to be embarassed about, but it is something to take action about. I am going to be writing more about it on my blog INFO WANTS TO BE FREE (one of my many, mind you... please check them all out), but you can get super clear info on it now from both SaveTheInternet.com and PublicKnowledge.org. On the panel with me was Art Brodsky from the latter entity, and I was completely impressed with him. Follow that blog, that man, that issue. We need to get active on this.

I should point out that the presidential candidates have incredibly different views on this subject. If you want to endorse the candidate that supports Net Neutrality -- and thus by extension truly supports true independent film -- click and give here. And if you are in NYC next Monday, you know where you should be (or will when you click there).

On another note, a film I produced, TOWELHEAD, is in the theaters now. I truly think this is an incredible film. It does what I love most about film: it helps us deeply understand people and situations that we would never otherwise have the opportunity to do so. And it does it with grace, artistry, and humor. Go, take some friends, and if each and everyone of you do not feel it was a warranted investment of your time and money, I will personally refund your money (on proof of purchase of course!). And feel free to forward this email to your friends -- I will do the same for them.

Finally, if you are in LA, and care what I have to say, please come to Film Independent's Filmmaker Forum. I am the Keynote Speaker there on Saturday September 27. I am saving up some stuff to discuss there. Come join. -- Ted Hope

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/17/2008 05:30:00 PM

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The IFP announced today that Melvin Van Peebles will be honored with a Tribute at this year's Gotham Awards, taking place Tuesday, Dec. 2, in New York City.

Recognized as the "godfather of independent film and modern black cinema," Van Peebles wrote, produced, scored, directed, and starred in the landmark 1971 independent film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song. He is an Emmy Award winner, a three-time Grammy nominee, and an 11-time Tony nominee. His latest film, Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus Itychfooted Mutha premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

As part of the Gotham Tribute, The Museum of Modern Art will present a salute to Van Peebles on December 1st, which will include a presentation of his first feature Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968) and a special screening of Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus Itychfooted Mutha.

And on October 24th and 26th, To Save and Protect, the 6th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation opens with a special screening of the Museum's newly restored print of Sweet Sweetback's Baadassss Song. The October 24th screening is introduced by Van Peebles.

Penelope Cruz and Gus Van Sant will also be honored with Tributes at the Gotham Awards.

To learn more about the Gothams, go to http://gotham.ifp.org.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/17/2008 04:07:00 PM

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Hello,

Finally getting a chance to start to digest all this info and write a bit. IFP has been great so far. I loved the opening night film (Medicine for Melancholy) and especially the Q&A after. I could recreate this experience but for thorough coverage of the Q&A, and many of the panels I have to link to the Film Panel Note Taker: http://www.thefilmpanelnotetaker.com/

Been going to panels by day and then events by night. Last night started with a Chicken & Egg event, a sushi party sponsored by the Film Florida, then to the Woodstock Film Festival party, and then wound down at a Karaoke bar with many great British people. O.k, well it wasn’t exactly winding down.

Particularly special was a cross Atlantic rendition of “We Are the World” sung by a large spectrum of industry reps, including Ingrid Kopp (Shooting People), Matt Dentler (Cinetic), David Wilson (True/False) and Mark Rabinowitz (Cinelan), Katie Speight (Channel 4-More 4), and Natalie Difford (Chicken & Egg Pictures). I was dancing and cracking up, so unfortunately didn’t take any photos, but trying to track down some down.

Looking forward to tomorrow which is all about docs! New Day Films is representing on the panel “New Venues for Documentary” from 4-5p, and a bunch of our member-owners will be there. We are also hosting an informational event on Friday afternoon for filmmakers who want to learn more about this filmmaker owned-&-operated educational distribution business.

Ok – off to more. Am still hoping to learn more about foreign pre-sales and looking forward to meeting with people.

Also -- if you are in the Stella Artois Lounge tomorrow, a 3 minute short documentary that I made called RUST is playing with more films at 3:30p.


Ciao!
Jesse

Jesse Erica Epstein
Current Project: WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES

# posted by Jesse Epstein @ 9/17/2008 03:59:00 PM

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I left Los Angeles/Echo Park on Saturday morning 7am and ran into Fellow Lab member Patrick Epino Writer/Director of Mr. Sadman and my producer Robert Poswall at LAX.
I arrived in NYC that evening and I am staying with my lovely friends Nonnie and Gabe. Up early for registration.Rob, Myself and Patrick

# posted by E. E. Cassidy @ 9/16/2008 11:37:00 PM

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This is where the magic starts to begin to happen, at the Doc Spot meetings hub. We've pretty much been parked here the last two days. Tomorrow (Wed.) we'll be there too.


Doug Block and I couldn't help it, we formed an impromptu totem pole.



Milton Tabbot and Michelle Byrd (Executive Director of IFP) were given sweet chickens as a thank you for their many years of dedicated work helping independent filmmakers at the Chicken & Egg Pictures party Tuesday night.

The party also celebrated recent C&E grantees, including Cartoon College.

Bob was there too. He likes docs.

# posted by Tara Wray @ 9/16/2008 11:32:00 PM

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Hello there. I have a few spare moments so I thought I'd get down some impressions of the first day of IFW before the memories evaporate.

Yesterday we had six good meetings with a range of distributors, networks, and production companies. Everyone wants to see a rough cut of the film, which is what I expected (no one wants to bring out their checkbook for an unedited bunch of footage -- no one yet, I should say, two more full days of meeting to come). Still, that's not bad news. Our rough cut will be ready by the end of the year. Then we'll show it to them and they will buy the film for 10 million dollars (give or take). Yesterday was not without a couple of technical snafus. While attempting to show our 2-minute trailer to Josh Green of Emerging Pictures I found that the DVDs I'd burned solely for that purpose wouldn't play on our laptop. Do'h! Was I embarrassed. After a profanity-laced tirade aimed at no one I was able to regain my composure and continue the meeting undeterred.

In the afternoon Josh Melrod and I met with Bret Granato, who's editing the film. I handed him all the media for Cartoon College. Due to time constraints I gave him all the masters, but still managed to sleep fine last night in spite of the fact that if anything were to happen to those tapes I'd have to start over from scratch.

Our first meeting of the day was canceled (nothing personal I was told, the company is going through personnel changes) so I got to stand and talk with Doug Block for a while, which was fun. His new doc, a sequel to 51 Birch Street, Almost Gone, sounds cool.

Got to make some stuff happen now, so more to come, including, hopefully, pictures.

Portions of this post ghost written by Josh Melrod.

# posted by Tara Wray @ 9/16/2008 11:13:00 AM

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Todd Rohal here, checking in -- and Independent Film Week is underway, obviously.

My writing partner Craig got into town on Saturday and we began the IFW events early Sunday morning with a breakfast welcome reception. I was expecting to see a small collection of filmmakers gathered in a corner discussing their projects and looking as if they had just crawled out of bed…what I found instead was a bit overwhelming: hundreds of filmmakers empowered and ready to talk about their new movies for the first time. Just seeing the amount of people in the room put a face on a number for me…all of these filmmakers, all of these scripts, all of these films – and here we all are – eating free eggs like nobody’s business.

After re-connecting with some friends, I was happy to see that there were other filmmakers I already knew with projects attending: Matthew Porterfield has brought his new script Metal Gods, Jesse Sweet’s new work-in-progress documentary Class of 2023 (screening today at 4:15), and Damien Lahey’s new horror script Child In the Dark. We had all spent the past year in front of our computers brewing up these new movies and were now moving into the next phase.

Most of the IFW events take place at F.I.T. this year. Craig had seriously thought that we were at M.I.T., which is funny because 1. It’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 2. Fabric sales probably aren’t big weekend events at M.I.T. But yeah…wow…mixing F.I.T. with IFP is a really wonderful way to shake up both the film and fashion worlds. The administration was probably bombarded with student's protests about hordes of shlubby guys in T-shirts walking around with tote bags scaring off next year’s potential freshmen.

We began our meetings right away yesterday (Monday) morning. We had a list of 15 companies to speak with over the course of 4 hours, rotating from one table to the next every 15 minutes. This is the core of the Emerging Narratives program – meeting and discussing our script with as many different people as possible. Within each 15 minute period, we could connect with each person long enough to establish a reason to set up another meeting, send our script, send a different script…and on and on. It was easy, it worked well and it saved us from having to stand around at a film festival party wondering why we can’t be the kind of people who can identify and chat up business executives. Plus, the people at these meetings CHOSE to meet with us, so for 15 minutes we don’t need to feel like we’re bothering someone from Merchant-Ivory with a story about two little boys who find a man’s butt. (If Merchant-Ivory types are listening, I do have an idea for a movie called A Time Before Boats – no story yet, but the tagline will be “Don’t Expect Any Boats”). We continue these meetings for the next two days.

I’ll save details of this for the next update, but the response we’ve had so far has been really wonderful. Sure, we’re pitching a comedy that, once discussed as being anything other than a comedy gets into some weird territory, but we feel like we’re making a good case for our movie and getting better at it as we go. And, so far, only one person has asked us if our script is a comedy..........

In a nervous moment, I asked Craig to imagine how Ralph Bakshi would have handled coming to IFW and pitching Fritz the Cat to these companies in 1972, and Craig said, “Ralph Bakshi did this?”

# posted by Todd Rohal @ 9/16/2008 08:03:00 AM

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So I thought I'd give folks an update on how things have been progressing over at IFW's No Borders program. So far so good. Yesterday (Sunday) we started with the panel entitled Meet the No Borders Presenting Partners with representatives from Atelier du Cinema Europeen (ACE), Cinemart, Film Victoria, Filmstiftung NRW, National Film and Video Foundation of South Africa, New South Wales Film and Television, New Zealand Film Commission, Sundance Institute, Telefilm Canada and The UK Film Council. They all spoke about how they work with filmmakers and how filmmakers might qualify for the funds and/or programs they represent. This usually involves having a co-producer from the respective country as a part of the project and a certain amount of the budget that is being spent in the country (ie either shooting there or doing all of post-production there, etc.). 

# posted by Rodney Evans @ 9/15/2008 08:51:00 PM

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Hello from New York. Tara Wray here blogging the start of Independent Film Week. This morning Cartoon College producer/my soon-to-be-husband Josh Melrod and I picked up our badges and registered so now it’s off to the races. I ran into some familiar faces right off the bat: editor Andrew Blackwell (who is at IFW with The Graves of Putumayo; he also teaches at The Edit Center) and Juna Skenderi, director of this year’s industry video library who worked with me in the library in 2006.

I haven’t been back to New York (where we lived for almost seven years) since I left for Vermont in April 2007 to begin production on Cartoon College. This city is mad! Literally. Josh and I are staying two blocks from Bellevue, just in case.

Anyway, this afternoon I went to the Doc Spot orientation, hosted by Milton Tabbot. It was part orientation, part panel discussion. Ryan Harrington, head of IndiePix provided the industry point of view and the crew from the doc 21 Below were there to share their experience at last year’s market. The focus was on being prepared for our upcoming meetings (which I’ll talk more about in my next post), and also managing expectations—something I’m working on. Both Ryan and Milton reminded us filmmakers to keep it simple, stupid. Actually, they just said keep it simple; the stupid was mine.

Ryan spoke about what industry people want from those of us who will be pitching docs-in-progress: character, story, and commercial viability, especially commercial viability. IFW, Ryan said, is one of the only times when industry people are a captive audience to filmmakers—it’s his busiest week of the year; it's at IFW that he'll get a first peek at docs that'll be in front of audiences for the next two years. He also stressed the importance of being able to pitch your movie in a single sentence. Industry people and festival coordinators hear between fifty and a hundred thousand pitches at IFW, so if you can’t get their attention right away they’re likely to zone out or take that incoming call. Tonight I’m going to work on boiling my pitch down to something so concise it’ll be like a slap in the face! The team from 21 Below talked about cramming as much as you possibly can into your IFW experience. Last year they successfully obtained finishing funds after making some important connections at peripheral events: lunches, cocktail parties, speed-dating sessions.

Also mentioned: bring a laptop (and headphones) with you to your doc meetings, so you can show your trailer. Ryan seconded. He said the industry people we’re meeting might not remember having seen it (or they might not have watched it at all – OMG!!), and besides, it’s best to let the work speak for itself.

Tonight we’ll be going to bed early in preparation for a busy day tomorrow. In my next post I’ll report on the start of industry meetings, which are like the bacon in the IFW BLT.

(Portions of this post ghost-written by Josh Melrod)

# posted by Tara Wray @ 9/14/2008 11:36:00 PM

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I started to write more about David Foster Wallace but scrapped it. For all of its celebrated intellectual brilliance, Wallace's writing always resolved itself on the simplest, most human terms while still vigilantly guarding itself against the ever present threats of lazy thinking, sentimentality and, as he discusses in the Kenyon address linked to below, our "default thinking." I can't summon up anything profound or summarizing about him or the news that he killed himself. I simply direct you to his own writings.

There is much on the web today about Wallace, including this round-up of links from GreenCine, that includes a remembrance from Glenn Kenny about working with Wallace on three pieces for Premiere. (One was his famous piece on the making of David Lynch's Lost Highway.) The Howling Fantods is notating all of the tributes. And James Ponsoldt sent me this link this morning to a transcript of Wallace's commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005. It's brilliant and beautiful and that Wallace could write this -- could know this -- and still not make it is crushing.

Here's how he opens; please read the rest.

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead, because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling up his gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings ["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/14/2008 11:06:00 AM

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I am Rodney Evans,  a Brooklyn-based writer/director/producer. I have been invited to blog about my experience in the No Borders section of Independent Film Week with my new narrative feature project, Day Dream. The film is a musical drama that follows the jazz composer Billy Strayhorn as he travels to New Orleans to investigate the myths and legends surrounding Buddy Bolden, the forefather of modern jazz who spent the last 24 years of his life in a mental institution. 

# posted by Rodney Evans @ 9/14/2008 04:58:00 AM

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I was absolutely stunned to return home to New York tonight from a wedding in Massachusetts and read online that one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace, died this weekend in Claremont, California.

Wallace's novels include Infinite Jest and The Broom of the System, and he is the author of several excellent books of essays, including A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster.

From the obituary in the L.A. Times:

Times book editor David Ulin was in New York City for a National Book Critics Circle Board meeting Saturday.

"What was a party is now a wake," Ulin said as the news of Wallace's death circulated. "People were speechless and just blown away.

"He was one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years," Ulin said.

"He is one of the main writers who brought ambition, a sense of play, a joy in storytelling and an exuberant experimentalism of form back to the novel in the late '80s and early 1990s," Ulin said. "And he really restored the notion of the novel as a kind of canvas on which a writer can do anything."

At the Huffington Post John Seery posts a personal rememberance. Below is Wallace on Charlie Rose. (He starts 23 minutes in.)



From Timothy Williams's obituary in the New York Times:

Mr. Wallace burst onto the literary scene in the 1990s with a style variously described as “pyrotechnic” and incomprehensible, and it was compared to those of writers including Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo.

His opus, Infinite Jest, published by Little, Brown & Company in 1996, is set in the near future, in a time called the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment and is, roughly, about addiction and how the need for pleasure and entertainment can interfere with human connection.

In a New York Times review of the book, Jay McInerney wrote that the novel’s “skeleton of satire is fleshed out with several domestically scaled narratives and masses of hyperrealistic quotidian detail.”

“The overall effect.” Mr. McInerney continued, “is something like a sleek Vonnegut chassis wrapped in layers of post-millennial Zola.”

Wallace's blend of extreme wit, irreverence, curiosity, humor and, finally, generosity was completely unique in contemporary literature. This is very, very sad.

Labels: obituaries

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/14/2008 02:05:00 AM

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IFP and Filmmaker have asked a few of the Independent Film Week participants to write about their experiences over the course of the next week. I’ve been asked to host us through my journey in the EMERGING NARRATIVES section of the Market.

Here is a run-down of who I is, who I be, and who I being doing.

My name is Todd Rohal. I participated in IFP’s first Rough Cuts Lab in 2005 with my film The Guatemalan Handshake. I’ve since participated on IFP and IFW panels over the last few years. Now that The Guatemalan Handshake is complete and widely available at KBToys and Detroit-area CVS stores, I’m marching forward with two brand-new movies-to-be.

The first film, currently titled Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’, is about my experience as a Tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts of America. Sophia Lin, who has come on as a producer, was selected to participate with the film at the Sundance Producer’s Lab last month.

The other film, which I co-wrote with Craig Moorhead, (pictured above, right) is (un?)titled The Untitled Buttock Adventure Movie (at least for the time being. Our original title was freaking people out). We wrote this together after birthing an idea that wouldn’t go away. The script, which we wrote to be a comedy brother of The Jerk, Blazing Saddles, Silver Streak, Duck Soup and The Little Rascals, was sent around to some friends who all responded with incredible enthusiasm (Ronnie Bronstein described it as a movie version of MAD magazine). But, being the admittedly depressed and disillusioned people we are, Craig and I set the script aside, unsure of how to talk about it to anyone outside of our group of friends and unsure if we could raise money for a comedy.

Months later, Amy Dotson asked me to submit something for the upcoming Independent Film Week. I obliged and sent in the script. Weeks later, I was questioning the decision. I dreaded running into Amy down the road for fear that she’d have to explain why our script wasn’t the kind of material that was appropriate for a venue like IFP. Of course, it’s been this kind of thinking that’s gotten me to such great heights in my life.

I ended up getting a call from Amy telling us that not only was the script accepted, but that the readers had been cracking up and were all now supporters of our submission...and that there would be a staged reading of a portion of the film. The readers had also discovered the “sweetness” that had somehow managed to find its way into a script with a title that defined itself as a “Buttock Adventure” film. Did I mention our target audience was 12 year olds? What is a Buttock Adventure? What are we doing? In the grand scheme of things, our movie isn’t a strange bet at all…Will Ferrell made over $100 million dollars this summer rubbing his testicles on a drum set…and I paid to see that movie…twice.

Regardless, the IFP selecting the script has given us a huge boost of confidence and we’re now very serious about making this movie happen. That’s all it took…and as far as I’m concerned, even if nothing else comes out of the next week, the IFP has done a significant show of support for us already just by slapping us around and shoving us onto the floor (yes, figuratively and literally).

The Emerging Narratives section of IFP is for U.S. scripts that are coming to the market with no funding in place. Craig and I have set up some goals for the week, and we are being very realistic about what we hope to achieve within the run of the event. We hope to meet some people looking to invest in an independent comedy, which seems (to us) to be a rarity these days. I’m certainly not out of touch about the state of independent distribution these days, having spent 2 years on the road with my film taking it from city to city. Because of what I experienced during that time, I’ve built up an entire distribution plan for this film, which (for good or bad) takes even longer to explain than the film itself. I’m equally as excited about both aspects of the movie…creating it and distributing it.

So, here we are…staring down a week of meetings, screenings and a 10-page live reading from our script that’s been cast by a wonderful person named Amelia Rasche. I’m sweaty, nervous and excited.

I’ll do my best to pass on useful information from my own experiences and hope that it can be of some use to someone, somewhere, somehow…

# posted by Todd Rohal @ 9/13/2008 10:10:00 AM

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Hello from the wilds of Vermont. My name is Tara Wray and I make documentaries. I’ve been asked to blog my Independent Film Week experiences and I just wanted to introduce myself before the blur begins.

I'll be attending IFW with a documentary work in progress called Cartoon College, a film about artists, outcasts, and nerds, and a school made especially for them where the motto is “draw comics or die.”

Cartoon College teaser trailer


I’m in the Doc Spot section, which, according to IFW’s website, is geared toward “filmmakers in production or post seeking financing partners, broadcast/distribution, and festival invitations.” That’s me—actively seeking all that stuff. To that end, I have about twenty meetings scheduled with potential funders, programmers, distributors, etc., some of whom I know from the 2005 Market, which I attended with my first film, Manhattan, Kansas. To be honest, I'm pretty nervous. There's a lot of (mostly self-imposed) anxiety that comes from meeting people that can either help bring my dream to fruition or trash all hope of it ever seeing the dark light of a movie theater. But I know as long as I show up and share the passion I have for my film it will all work out the way it’s supposed to work out.

I love IFP, by the way. Just thought I’d put that out there. As organizations bent on improving the lives of independent filmmakers go, IFP’s just about tops in my book. Especially Milton Tabbot. He’s been a wonderfully patient mentor. IFP gave me my first ever grant, from the Anthony Radziwill Documentary Fund (on my second attempt), and I’ll never forget screaming into the phone—totally shedding all vestiges of professionalism—when Milton called with the good news. IFP got me a screening at Lincoln Center. IFP’s my fiscal sponsor. Basically they’ve done nothing but support me as a filmmaker. I wanted to try to repay the kindness, so in September of 2006 I volunteered to work in the Industry Video Library during that year’s Market. It was fascinating to see the process from the other side of the fence. I was especially diligent in making sure filmmakers got their attendance reports in a timely fashion, since I knew how important that info was to me in 2005.

Anyway, Milton also did me a huge favor by rejecting Cartoon College when I applied to the 2007 Market. He recognized that the project wasn’t ready and smartly told me to try for 2008. I was disappointed, but he was right (and since IFP dropped the attendance fee this year I’m even more grateful for that rejection). Now I’m in a great place with the film: shooting has wrapped and a rough cut is on its way (edited by the unbelievably talented Bret Granato) and it’s the right time to present the film.

So then, you can probably tell I’m pretty honored and thrilled to attend IFW this year. I look forward to meeting new filmmakers, reconnecting with folks from past Markets, and introducing Cartoon College to the independent film world.

Sincerely,
Tara

P.S. Agnes Varnum—former Doc Spot Manager, astute blogger, and all around champion of the doc—wrote two really helpful articles about attending IFW. They’re oldies but goodies.

Labels: documentary, Independent Film Week

# posted by Tara Wray @ 9/12/2008 04:38:00 PM

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To conclude our series of blog posts from Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, currently in theaters, here is his breakdown of how he posted his movie.

Able Danger was shot on an Panasonic AG-HVX200 by accomplished Brooklyn-based cinematographer Charlie Libin. We shot HD using no tape. It was shot to P2 cards, basically RAM and then copied to a hard drive. It was edited on Avid mostly on a laptop in a basement and then on an Avid at Jump Editorial. It was edited in HD but at the Panasonic "native" file size of 1280 x 720. This is not true HD, but after testing the camera's 1920 x 1080 record modes, I found the difference negligible and the 1080 mode had problems with motion. And the file sizes made shooting 1080 inefficient.

After much research about the absolute best methodology for finishing, I decided on the following; 123,840 uncompressed TIFF frames (86 mins x 24 frames per second) were exported to a hard drive and brought over to one of my favorite post production facilities, NICE SHOES, and colorist Chris Ryan imported the TIFF sequence into the specter (German color correct box) and bumped up to true HD 1920 x 1080. It was color corrected there and laid down to D5.

No special pro lenses were used. We used a wide angle adapter on occasion and a long lens adapter for daytime surveillance. For surveillance night scenes, we used military grade night vision.

I did all of the sound editing and sound designing and editing and music editing in the Avid. The final was mixed in Protools. Shots that needed effects were exported as uncompressed TIFFs out of Spectre and went to one of two places:

1. AFTER EFFECTS was used for the surveillance graphics. It took months to develop the surveillance look. We (Roberto Serrini and I) experimented with a lot more graphics on screen and a lot more text. But that took away from the beauty of the imagery and became too noisy and less "filmic" also getting the right interaction of the onscreen text, the surveillance chatter (which I recorded through a kids' toy voice distorter) and the onscreen action took a lot of fine tuning. I worked intimately with my assistant and After Effects artist refining ad infinitum. After I color corrected the night vision in Specter, TIFF frames were exported and we laid the After Effects back on top and then exported TIFF frames.

2. THE FLAME was used for some "gun flashes" and "electricity" in the stun baton were added after the color correct and bump up to 1080 HD from the Specter. The color TVs were composited and tweaked in the flame by Nick Sasso at Manic. Final finishing took the After Effects TIFF frames and conformed in the flame and laid down to D5 at NICE SHOES.

The film basically only existed on hard drives until we were done and laid down to D5. I think it was pretty innovative. The dream sequences on top of the World Trade Towers were shot on green screen, and uncompressed TIFFs were exported out of Avid and into FLAME and matte paintings and comps were done in flame. The intro animation was done in After Effects.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/12/2008 07:00:00 AM

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Beginning today over at Filmmaker Videos is a series of interviews from Toronto provided by Filmcatcher.com. Up now is Jeffrey-Levy Hinte's much talked about documentary Soul Power, about the 1974 Zaire music festival.

Keep checking the page daily as we'll be posting interviews through next week.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/11/2008 07:42:00 AM

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Brooklyn, and especially Manhattan, have rarely been as vibrantly rendered as in Scott McGehee and David Siegel's excellent Uncertainty, set on a hot July 4 holiday, one of the finds of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Missing are the more self-conscious, academic touches that slowed down their earlier films, such as Suture (1993)and The Deep End (2001). Here, beginning and ending on the Brooklyn Bridge, the codirectors give you two, two, two films in one: parallel narratives occurring simultaneously in both boroughs with the same couple, Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins), at the center of each. Realistic, no, but you go with it. Rain Li's mostly handheld camera, and Paul Zucker's creative editing, dynamize the enterprise, and the intensity of collaboration between filmmakers and actors is apparent.(Much of the dialog was improvised.)

The Brooklyn drama is charged by the intensity of family issues at the home of Kate's parents, where relatives have gathered for a barbecue. Mom is worried about the future of a younger daughter, an uncle has mental problems; things would become even more complicated if they all knew that Kate is 11 weeks pregnant, and that she and Bobby have not figured out what to do about it. The Manhattan tale is high-energy, high-action: A cell phone they find in the back of a cab leads them to a criminal who sends goons to kill them. Most of those scenes are shot in Chinatown, among real people, no "sets" as such, and, in spite of some improbably plot twists, it all feels so alive, so real.

The Manhattan Richard Linklater attempts to capture in Me and Orson Welles, a UK-backed film, is fake from the get-go. It's set around Welles's Mercury Theater in 1937, but the production is hampered by the period fakery. If you are going to place the action seven decades back, then budget the requisite amount. This is plain cheesy, less American than Stilton.

The movie involves a young acting student, Richard (Zac Efron), who gets a non-paying job playing Lucius to the Brutus of Welles (Christian McKay)in a problematic production of Julius Caesar. Based on the novel by Robert Kaplow, the producers must have thought that Me and Orson Welles would come to life through McKay's performance. He had done a one-man show as Welles, and here he is very good. Claire Danes does a superb job as Sonja, the married genius's girl Friday (and Saturday and Sunday), and Efron is okay, though more of a pretty boy than a gifted thespian at this point.

Linklater is versatile, as we all know, having made two-character romantic films like Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and toyed with unique animation, not to mention taking a (disastrous) shot at a cinematic version of Fast Food Nation. This, however, is hack work, servicable but undistinguished. He is a talented, ballsy filmmaker, and I hope this was just a project to pay off the mortgage.

He might have benefited from watching Kenneth Branagh's In the Bleak Midwinter(1995), a very low-budget, funny let's-put-on-a-play film with a soul, in which an unemployed actor on the verge of a nervous breakdown directs Hamlet with some dodgy performers in an effort to save a church. The dialog and interaction feel natural, unlike the overly scripted ripostes in Me and Orson Welles. In the latter film, McKay's nasty one-liners and Danes's sex-inflected commentary become tiresome. Efron is like a pincushion in their presence. The set-up is even worse against the fake backdrops, both interior and exterior.

McGehee and Siegel, on the other hand, had the resourcefulness to fully integrate their characters into an electrifying, unforgettable mise-en-scene in Uncertainty.

# posted by Howard Feinstein @ 9/10/2008 09:48:00 PM

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Ted Hope alerted me to the very cool Trailers from Hell site, in which an amazing and erudite group of filmmakers -- John Landis, Howard Rodman, Allison Anders, Michael Lehmann, Larry Cohen, Joe Dante and others -- provide voiceover commentary to a series of trailers from great movies, most of which hail from B-movie or genre traditions. Personal favorites include Blast of Silence, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and, embedded below, Point Blank. Check this site out!

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 05:45:00 PM

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In the opening moments of Rod Lurie’s drama Nothing But the Truth, there’s an assassination attempt on the U.S. president and the government retaliates by bombing Caracas. In its final moments, the journalist who reported that the government knowingly went to war with the South American country on faulty intelligence meets her confidential source and.… Okay, I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s suffice to say that by the time we’ve reached the denouement of Lurie’s film this story of criminal foreign policy has shrunken to a depressingly conventional Hollywood tale of a mother’s idealism and sacrifice.

Kate Beckinsale plays Washington Sun Times reporter Rachel Armstrong who, through a confidential source, learns of the administration’s malfeasance and then watches as her paper fast tracks the story. Her article reveals the identity of a CIA agent, portrayed here by Vera Farmiga as a glamorous, tough-talking soccer mom. Soon Rachel is jailed by a Patrick Fitzgerald-like prosecutor (Matt Dillon) for refusing to divulge her primary source. As the months go by and she’s holed in a prison lock-up full of female cons straight out of Caged Heat, her marriage begins to crumble, her story fades from the media, and even the powerful attorney who has aced similar cases in the past (Alan Alda) can’t negotiate her release.

And what about all the dead people in Venezuela? The film doesn’t really care about real world issues because its story, pointedly “inspired by but not based on” the Valerie Plame case, strips away all the resonant messiness of that true tale involving uranium processing tubes in Nigeria, an administration out to malign its critics, and a New York Times reporter, Judy Miller, whose own pre-Iraq War reporting uncritically embraced Bush administration talking points. Rather than explore the complicated and ethically challenged relationship between Washington journalists and policy-makers, Lurie presents us with a simple, by-the-numbers defense of the First Amendment.

Beckinsale is excellent – she’s an appealing, empathetic actress who skillfully avoids the melodramatic possibilities of the material. Farmiga’s also great – sexy, confident, and, finally, in a scene in which she learns that her own colleagues are turning against her, heartbreaking. Ultimately, though, their skillful performances can’t save this picture.

There’s a slogan that was once central to the feminist movement – “the personal is the political.” In today’s Hollywood, almost the reverse is true – “the political must become the personal.” If an idea can’t be presented through a close-up on a major movie star, it’s not worthy of discussion. The final minute of Lurie’s movie really is a jaw-dropping groaner. In one fell swoop he both sentimentalizes his material and obfuscates its relation to current political issues. With Warner Brothers and Akiva Goldsmith reportedly in development on an authorized film based on Valerie Plame’s memoirs, Nothing But the Truth feels like one of those quickie straight-to-video knock-offs that show up in the stores just prior to a studio’s release of some tentpole disaster flick. And what’s worse is the knowledge that if this film fails in the marketplace then that failure will be attributed to the film’s political backdrop and liberal point-of-view, not its generic Hollywood storytelling. I’m kind of hoping that Nothing But the Truth is a success because, if it’s not, the much more interesting story of the real Valerie Plame case will have to wait for a close-up of its own.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 03:09:00 PM

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IFP announced today that Gus Van Sant will be presented with a Gotham Awards Tribute at the 18th Annual Gotham Awards on Tuesday, December 2nd in New York.

Van Sant's next project is the bio pic, Milk, about the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the United States, Harvey Milk. Starring Sean Penn as Milk along with Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna and James Franco, the film will be released by Focus Features in select cities on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 and then expand in December.

IFP also announced that they will be teaming with The Hetrick-Martin Institute, home of the Harvey Milk High School in New York City. IFP, courtesy of Deloitte Financial Services LLP, is donating 45 video cameras to the school. IFP hopes to work with the producers of NewFest, The New York LGBT Film Festival, to create a series of training and mentoring sessions. Select works by youth members from The Hetrick-Martin Institute and students from Harvey Milk School will be invited to screen during the next edition of NewFest (June 4 – 14th, 2009). Additionally, school administrators and students will be on hand for a Q&A following a special screening of The Times of Harvey Milk, Rob Epstein's Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary that received early support from IFP. The documentary will be screened as part of To Save and Protect: The 6th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation on Thursday, November 6th.

As part of its tribute to Van Sant, IFP will also team with the Museum of Modern Art to present a public screening of Milk at the Museum on Wednesday, December 3rd.

IFP announced last month that Penélope Cruz will also receive a Gotham Awards Tribute. Additional honorees will be announced in the coming weeks.

To learn more about the Gothams, go to http://gotham.ifp.org.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/10/2008 02:19:00 PM

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Wow -- this is a surprise. We, like many others, had heard that Magnolia would be releasing this film. According to this Indiewire report, Steven Soderbergh's Che will open theatrically in December for a one-week Oscar qualifying run and then will play in January through IFC In Theaters, its day and date platform.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 12:16:00 PM

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Nik Fackler's Lovely, Still has garnered a bit of buzz up in Toronto. One of the most impressive elements of the film is its fantastic cinematography and production design. Fackler and his team create a gorgeous Christmas-world that dances just this side of a fairy tale. In this Filmmaker piece, the film's d.p., Sean Kirby, discusses his approach to shooting the movie.

Labels: cinematography

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 11:25:00 AM

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The FilmInFocus site has just undergone what is in my opinion a very nice 2.0-ish facelift, with a much cleaner new design and better organization of articles. (I'm one of the editors of this site along with Peter Bowen and Nick Dawson.) Please check it out, and to give you a leg up, here's some new stuff on the site that I recommend:

Filmmaker's Jason Guerrasio explores the cult of The Big Lebowski in an interview with Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt, authors of I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski: Life, The Big Lebowski and What Have You.

The "Five in Focus" series continues, this time with artist photographers. Gregory Crewdson kicks off this edition with his list of five movies that influenced him.

Photographer Henny Garfunkle, whose work is often found in the pages (and covers, like this issue's Melissa Leo shot) of Filmmaker, takes on the "Movie City" feature with a report on Hamlet 2 setting Tucson, Arizona.

In the "Behind the Blog" column, a conversation with Amy Monaghan, aka the Cinetrix, of Pullquote.

A newly replenished section dedicated solely to the great film writing that comes out of U.K. publisher Faber and Faber.

Peter Bowen's beautifully worded blog dispatches from Toronto.

And, finally, an exclusive extract from James Schamus's new book, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word, courtesy of University of Washington Press. I just received a copy and will have a bit more on it later, but here's the first paragraph of the intro from the FilmInFocus site.

Why a book about Gertrud?

The great Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s fourteenth and final film, Gertrud (Palladium, 1964), is easy to both praise and damn with the same breath; it is, after all, a perfect exemplar of that awful category, the “minor masterpiece.” Awful, because, like its brethren (Raul Ruiz’s Three Crowns of a Sailor, Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, and Abbas Kiarostami’s Close-Up—the list could go on for pages and pages), we must admit about Gertrud: few have seen it, and of those who have, few love it. And yet. For, we might say, it is the quality of the love of those few that is so remarkable. From Jean-Luc Godard to Lars von Trier, from Paul Schrader to David Bordwell, Gertrud has transfixed the passionate regard of filmmakers and critics with a peculiar power of fascination, a fascination not unlike, I shall argue, that which Gertrud herself holds for her many failed lovers. As the last great work of a filmmaker who himself sums up the oddly quizzical critical status of the cinema d’auteur, an auteur who appears to disappear into his own, often stylistically quite radically different films, Gertrud acts as a kind of cinematic vanishing point: we can claim that a powerful strain of modern European film practice organizes itself around it, but it is in and of itself not an object subject to vision—it is rarely cited, revived, or celebrated.

With this little book I hope, of course, to correct that general oversight; but I also, perversely, want to cherish the reasons for it. Even more perversely, I would love to somehow preserve Gertrud’s relative invisibility even as I try to spread the reflected glory it radiates. To celebrate Gertrud is to praise paradoxically the ultimate cinephilic fetish, for we all know that what the cinephile most loves is the unseen and unseeable (“You mean you haven’t seen Ozu’s silent comedies? Even better than his fifties films!” . . . “I’ve got a bootleg of the subtitled French version of La jetée—I can’t believe you’ve only seen that terrible version with the English voice-over!”). Gertrud is a film that goes right to the heart of that terribly sad—and transcendently liberating—love of the unseeable and unknowable object that is the cinema itself.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 10:41:00 AM

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Paul Krik, whose Able Danger opens tomorrow in theaters in four cities, including New York's Pioneer Theater, gave us a list of his favorite conspiracy films. Two days ago we ran his list of Hollywood conspiracy thrillers. Here is his list of independent 9/11 films.

Mohammed Atta and the Venice Flying Circus - Reporter Daniel Hopsicker is on the ground in Venice, Florida, where the terrorists all trained – gumshoeing, knocking on doors, asking questions, turning over stones. His interview with Mohammed Atta's girlfriend and the time he humped her feet while she slept is absolutely mind-blowing. To say nothing of his relationship with his German handlers, his coke habits and in general, the fact that the CIA “is” the largest airline in the world in the form of small no-name airlines all over Florida. How else do you think the coke gets into the country? And the arms get to the Ayatollah (that's a reference to Iran-Contra for anyone paying attention). The movie is the video documentary follow up to his excellent book, Welcome to Terrorland -- about Florida. Hopsicker has removed a brick from the wall. The dyke is open, let the water of truth flow.

Any video with Webster Tarpley speaking. Author of the book Synthetic Terror. You can find plenty on Google video and YouTube. The truth is out there. Big picture historical truth. So scary it has to be true.

Zeitgeist the Movie - Renewed my faith in Xmas by tracing it back to the Egyptians.

Fahrenheit 911 - I don't know how he pulled off getting that footage. Amazing. Stunning. Hilarious. A great starting point for mainstream America. Doesn't it show that we're hungry as hell for the truth?

Loose Change - Amazing what two college kids can do. They're collecting stories. Not great investigative journalists, but lots of great stuff. Questions posed that ultimately need to be answered. Some stuff in there I think is booshit. But some really profound simple things that just don't hold water, for instance that Mohammed Atta was identified within minutes after the crash by a passport that supposedly fell from the plane? Official story; jet fuel hot enough to melt the building - the first steel frame building in history to fall from fire, but not burn his passport up?



Alex Jones Terror Storm/ Bilderburg Group – Alex is relentless. And hilarious.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/10/2008 07:06:00 AM

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A former painter and installation artist, the 46-year-old Gaza-born filmmaker Rashid Mashawari (Curfew, Ticket to Jerusalem, a veteran of 20 features and documentaries, has made one of the revelations of this year's Toronto festival, Laila's Birthday, something of a road movie through his adopted city of Ramallah on the West Bank. The protagonist is Abu Laila (the brilliant Mohamed Bakri), father of a nine-year-old daughter on whose birthday the action takes place. He is a former judge, brought back by the Palestinian Authority to become part of the judicial system but locked out by the ubiquitous bureaucracy there, the ever-changing ministers. So he drives a cab to support his family. Yet, on account of his background in jurisprudence, he remains a functionary even with his passengers, commanding them what they can do and not do in his car.

"A character like this does not exist in our Palestinian reality," says the director. "His being a functionary, I'm talking symbolically. I don't care about traffic, about whether people can smoke in his cab: I'm referring to policy. Do we know where we are going? I don't believe our ministers are real. It's not possible to have them under occupation. And they change all the time because of the different opinions among Palestinians. Like our two governments, one in Gaza, led by Hamas, and one in the West Bank, governed by the Palestinian Authority, which is Fatah.

Masharawi shoots the beauty of Ramallah, architecturally built of white stone and dotted with beautiful trees: This is not the Ramallah we know from news footage and horrifying docs. "I wanted the city to be a character and different from the way others have depicted it before. I didn't want the film to be like Taxi Driver, in which the cabbie picks up passengers for THEIR stories. I wanted it to be HIS story."

The execution is perfect and unexpected. Explosions are heard, not seen, and we never see the humiliating checkpoints, to which Abu Laila refuses to drive. "We are in a mess," he says. "Through him we can face ourselves as Palestinians: where we are going with all this. We are not a state, but also not in revolution, not in negotiations. We are not happy. I don't like what Hamas is doing in Gaza, and I don't like what the Palestinian Authority is doing with negotiations.

"I'm trying to explain the situation under Israeli occupation," he continues. "It's 60 years old: It goes back to 1948 and the creation of two states. I want to explain what checkpoints, the security wall mean. I thought by structuring the movie with some humor, we can rethink things.

"I decided to be an optimist. I'm trying to say that we Palestinians can create a good future. The cake Abu Laila finds in the back of the taxi (he did not have time to buy a birthday cake, as his wife had asked) can be used for the family celebration. The flowers glued to the car (mistakenly, by a wedding party) can be used as a gift for his wife. This is a film first and foremost for a Palestinian audience. Let's look at ourselves and where we are going."

---Howard Feinstein

# posted by Howard Feinstein @ 9/09/2008 01:20:00 PM

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Hello. I’m going to be blogging during Independent Film Week but started thinking about this before and wanted to post it.

The market and conferences during Independent Film Week has always been a great time to get a better understanding of the “climate” of independent film and develop strategies for how to navigate the next year. And as I get ready for this year I’ve been reading some interesting articles in the New York Times. One that came out in June and two that came out this month. The most recent article is a bit more hopeful, not exactly in terms of finances, but about artistic risks and challenging stories that could come out of a widening separation between studios and independent filmmaking.

Providing an overview of what’s been happening since January, the articles have been helpful. Some excerpts:

In July, John Anderson wrote “No Film Distributor? Then D.I.Y.”

“When “Bottle Shock” played at the Sundance Film Festival in January, it appeared to possess that mix so tantalizing to well-heeled indie distributors….But “Bottle Shock” found no love among distributors in Park City, Utah. So the director, Randall Miller, is opening the film himself next week in 12 cities. With their hopes for conventional movie deals increasingly dead on arrival, more and more indie filmmakers are opting for a do-it-yourself model: self-distribution, once the route of the desperate, reckless or defiant, has become an increasingly attractive option for movies otherwise deprived of theatrical exhibition….”

Then on September 4th, A.O. Scott wrote “It’s Suddenly So Last Year, That Once Bold New Guard”

“On Oscar night, the idea that indie was the new mainstream was confirmed, once again, as conventional wisdom. Even the big-studio offering that crashed the party — Tony Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton” — was more of a middle-sized movie than a would-be blockbuster.

Again! Still! For real this time! What began as a trickle of discouraging news — Warner Brothers shutting its art-house divisions; sluggish sales on the Riviera — swelled over the summer into a flood of gloomy assessments and “I told you so…”

And, also in September: “The Revolution Is Dead, Long Live the Revolution” by Manhola Dargis

“As long as there’s been a Hollywood, there has been an off-Hollywood, outsiders and mavericks who show their movies any which way they can, at film societies, art houses and ethnic theaters. There was always overlap between these worlds, but it wasn’t until the 1990s and the ascendancy of Miramax Films that that the two became so interdependent as to be, at times. nearly indistinguishable….

For my part, I am honestly sorry to see those small studio companies go, but their closings say less about independent film than they do about Hollywood.
…Like the finest independents, they aren’t trying to emulate Hollywood, and while Michelle Williams has the lead role in “Wendy and Lucy,” it isn’t the kind of film that can be sold on a starlet’s smile. Like “Ballast” it will make its way into theaters, where it will be much loved and remembered long after it leaves…”

---------------------

So I’m hoping that panels at the IFP like “The State of the Industry” will give me even more insight -- and I bring with me a sense of hope that people will continue to find creative ways to tell and distribute stories that are complex, interesting, and challenging. Personally, I want to better understand and further explore distribution models like educational distribution, and I hope to blog more about these findings.

Please chime in with any thoughts.

Regards,
Jesse

Bio:
Jesse Epstein grew up in Boston, Mass. and for two years in Mozambique, Africa. She received an MA in documentary film from NYU.
Her films WET DREAMS AND FALSE IMAGES (Short Subject, Jury Award, Sundance Online Film Festival), and THE GUARANTEE (Best Short Film, Newport International Film Festival) are being distributed to schools through New Day Films. She recently received grants from Chicken & Egg Pictures and The Fledgling Fund to expand these shorts into a feature film, and has just completed the third segment 34x25x36 (SXSW, Full Frame, True/False).
Jesse also moderates the Shooting People bulletin.
jessedocs.com

# posted by Jesse Epstein @ 9/08/2008 10:51:00 PM

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The best laid plans... despite arriving at what I thought was a suitably early time to catch the industry screening of Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, the line halted just 20 or so people ahead of me. Whether it was the Venice win, the Fox Searchlight buy, or just the anticipation of a comeback for both Mickey Rourke and Aronofsky, The Wrestler was this afternoon's hot showing. And later in the day, another surprise sell-out. Following what I heard was a great public screening, press and buyers packed into this afternoon's showing of Robert Kenner's political food doc, Food, Inc. So, rather than these pictures I went instead to Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino, The Last Emperor, a lovely ode to the great designer and to the idea of European couture in general. What starts out as an unsurprising portrait of a fashion icon who is the last remaining designer to head a house that bears his name deepens as the company stages a lavish 45th anniversary bash while negotiating sales of a majority of shares to an investment group. As Valentino retains his focus on old-fashioned glamour, debating whether to add or subtract ornamentation from one of his flowing dresses, the suits and bankers have other plans. Seeing this film at a film festival, where debate over the future of the industry is all around, I couldn't help but draw a connection when, in the movie, a fashion editor comments that there's no money to be made in couture. The fashion shows and designer evening wear just serve to advertise the brand; the real money, she says, lies in accessories and perfumes. Laced with Nino Rota music as well as clips from La Dolce Vita, the film that captured the Rome of Valentino's early days, Valentino: The Last Emperor is both an insider's view of the big business of fashion as well as a lovingly respectful ode to a vanishing concepts of artistry and craftsmanship.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/08/2008 05:25:00 PM

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IFP has announced it will be kicking off it's 30th annual Independent Film Week with the New York premiere of Barry Jenkins's Medicine For Melancholy. A party will follow honoring Jenkins and the other talents included in this year's 25 New Faces of Independent Film, which also marks Filmmaker's 10th year doing the list.

Five of this year's "25" will also be premiering short films at Independent Film Week created for an initiative with Nokia and IFP. The three-minute films, shot on a Nokia mobile device, include: Jessie Epstein's Rust, Ryan Bilsborrow Koo & Zachary Lieberman's Untitled, Matt Wolf's Boca, E.E. Cassidy's Grand Prix and Christina Voros's Near Death. All five shorts will be screened in the Stella Artois Lounge September 15 – September 18 at 3:30pm. The shorts will also be considered by Spike Lee for an upcoming film with Nokia Productions.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/08/2008 03:10:00 PM

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In a release sent out today, the Sundance Institute announced that Patricia Finneran, festival director at Silverdocs: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, will be coming on as a Senior Consultant of the their Documentary Film Program.

According to the release, in addition to representing the Sundance Documentary Program internationally, Finneran will be responsible for recommending film projects, maintaining the Documentary Program's New York base and working on the Program's initiatives such as the Sundance Doc Fund and the Skoll Foundation's Stories of Change: Social Entrepreneurship in Focus Through Documentary.

The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program provides year-round support to nonfiction contemporary-issue filmmakers internationally.

The Institute also announced the Documentary Film Program grantees nominated for the 2008 News and Documentary Emmy Award:

Iraq in Fragments
James Longley
Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft, Cinematography News Coverage/Documentaries

Made in L.A.
Almudena Carracedo, Robert Bahar
Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story, Long Form

Rain in a Dry Land
Anne Makepeace
Outstanding Continuing Coverage of a News Story, Long Form

Sentenced Home
David Grabias, Nicole Newnham
Outstanding Informational Programming, Long Form

The Trials of Darryl Hunt
Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg
Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft, Research
Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft, Music and Sound

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/08/2008 10:49:00 AM

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Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, opens his independent conspiracy thriller in four cities on September 11. (In New York, you can see the film at the Pioneer Theater.) Krik was kind enough to give Filmmaker two lists of his favorite films. In this first part, he lists his favorite conspiracy movies. In the second, he'll list his favorite films about 9/11.

In general a conspiracy movie for me has to do with exposing.

Chinatown - Greatest movie ever. Goebbel says, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."

The Parallax View - Wow, for tone. That's how I felt at times making this movie; All alone – a triumph of existential angst. The company video "montage" was very unsettling as a child. It will always be burned in my memory.

JFK - For the Zapruder video slomo and the massive tribute to a true American hero, Jim Garrison, who is so far the only one to hold a trial in relation to the murder of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. I met Garrison in New Orleans before he died and before the movie came out at a book signing. No one has done this for 9/11. Sander Hicks for example is still actively pursuing a DA from a relevant district in NY to take up the case.

Wag the Dog – Brilliant insight into media control is a must see.

Syriana – Glimpse into how Mid-East politics actually works. Clooney’s work is invaluable. Also Good Night, and Good Luck. Deeply profound commentary on the end of free press and the takeover of the media oligarchy. Clooney is one of the few who makes great movies that we can actually learn from.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? - It's so hard to take on big oil that you have to do it through a silly cartoon movie. But the message got out there. OK movie, great message you can bring your kids to. And it’s hard to look your kids in the eye when they ask "Why is it like that daddy?"

The Rainmaker/A Civil Action - Insurance company absurdity. Real eye opener that confirms all of our corrupt experience with insurance companies. Insurance companies are a big thing that's wrong with the world we live in. And we all know it.

The Good Shepherd - Skull and bones probably really does rule the word. At least according to Antony C. Sutton's who wrote one of the best conspiracy books ever, America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones.

The Manchurian Candidate - So over the top and wonderful and yet it still got me. I was right there, believing everything while watching. Anything is possible. Sinatra is awesome.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/08/2008 07:00:00 AM

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I always admire the blog writings of my colleagues who are able to jump from screening to keyboard, whipping out paragraphs of incisive critical prose. I tend to need more time to mull over the films I see as my opinions will shift from day to day. Take the first picture I saw in Toronto: Finish director Anti Jussi Annila's Sauna, which was shamelessly hyped in the program book to cine-geeks like myself as recalling both the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Eli Roth. And while, yes, there are clear connections to the work of these two (in its bleak wilderness it echoes Andrei Rublev and Stalker, and the sauna of the film's title has the same spartan creepiness as the edifice in Hostel), the film also exists in a kind of strange art-horror hybrid zone that's not as precisely defined as the work of either of these directors. Set in 1595 following one specific episode in what the director told me later is described in his country as the "25 Year Hate," the film follows two brothers -- one a warrior and one a scientist -- in the days following Orthodox Russia's trampling over of Finland in its conquest of Protestant Sweden. But while the film's setting and its dualing religious and political philosophies are complicated and sometimes hard to track, its central story, about a demon inhabiting a cold stone sauna, is not. This is one of those movies where characters due to their own moral failings and compromises are inexorably drawn to that which will destroy them. Leaving the film I felt that the Tarkovsky/Roth comparison oversold the film; a day later, I began to mull over its unusual blend of history and horror and thought I needed to see the film again.

Here's the trailer:

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/06/2008 05:00:00 PM

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Yesterday walking from one theater to another at the Varsity multiplex that houses the Toronto International Film Festival's Industry Screenings, I thought that things seemed a little quiet, missing the usual crowded hub-bub. No one seemed to agree with me, though. "This will be a rebound market," predicted one sales agent friend, who thought that a nice flurry of sales would materialize from the screenings this week. Another shrugged at my observation. "Everybody is here," he said. And later even I didn't agree with myself after I wound up at two very crowded parties filled with industry players. The first was Focus's bash for the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading, their slyly loopy CIA comedy which mines a lot of humor from both the craziness of American political decision making (or lack thereof) as well as a whole host of mid-life anxieties. Taking place at the Spice Route, attendees from the film included the Coens, Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton, the latter her usual sartorially stunning self. Seeing her glide into the room I flashed on one of the things I especially liked in the film: Swinton's aggressively plaid, impossibly stylish wardrobe. I grew up in D.C. -- people are not that well dressed there. (And certainly not for the last eight years.) But that's okay. Swinton is that rare female star who makes the character come to her, not the other way around. And the viewer is always the richer.

The second party of the night was a jam-packed rooftop agent soiree with many hoisted glasses to the tune of "I Want to Rock and Roll All Night." But, as Peter Bowen, who wrote about the evening for Film in Focus, and I agreed, the party we went to early in the evening had a lovely, intimate quality quite unlike most film festival parties. Astra Taylor threw the after-party for the premiere of her philosophy documentary Examined Life at a second floor Chinatown restaurant. The party boasted a nice intimate crowd of supporters, including several key members of the documentary community, as well as a beautiful surprise: Astra's husband, Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Magnum, played a short, sweet set of covers and standards, songs like "You Do Something To Me," backed up by a small ensemble. Since Neutral's groundbreaking In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Magnum has been an elusive, reclusive performing presence even as his work continues to influence a whole new generation of musicians. As Taylor waltzed with friends and family, a doc festival programmer turned to me and said, "I feel very privileged." I did too.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/06/2008 04:25:00 PM

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The blog post, below, titled "Breaking In," in which filmmaker Marc Maurino discussed the tensions between jobs, job security and filmmaking, inspired several responses. You can find them in the comments section to the original post, but filmmaker David Munro just wrote with a longer reply so I'm posting it here as its own entry.


It's David Munro (New Faces '98, Full Grown Men). I read Marc Maurino's reply to your newsletter entry. It got me thinking, too.

Unlike Marc, who is just now contemplating his next move as a talented aspiring director, I drank the full jigger of indie Kool Aid in the go-go '90s and took the plunge. I left a well-compensated job as an advertising creative to attend film school (the decidedly anti-commercial San Francisco State), made several award-winning shorts and in an almost religious conversion devoted my life to long-form filmmaking. It strikes me as terribly ironic that much of the current prognosticating about the future of the filmed medium now centers on content that is not too different from the :30 commercials I once wrote and directed.

I have many friends who attended industry-oriented film schools - AFI, USC, NYU - but I chose a program that I knew explored the full range of cinematic possibilities, from Scott Bartlett's frantic 1968 avant garde masterpiece OffOn to Abram Room's to the 1927 landmark of naturalism Bed And Sofa. My first film history professor, a card-carrying Berkeley commie, taught that restorative three-act narrative structure - far from being the inevitable template we now regard as axiomatic - could have just as easily tilted Eisenstein's way if the Russkies had the marketing muscle and commitment to promote it. (My professor has since absconded to the communally-friendly confines of upstate New York).

Lacking a trust fund or any well-to-do friends, it took me ten years after graduation to finally make and release my first feature film, Full Grown Men. As the recipient of the 2007 indieWIRE Undiscovered Gems Audience Award (which got us a limited theatrical release this Summer) I feel like the door of alternative film distribution barely grazed my ass before shutting completely behind me. I feel so fortunate to have realized my dream, even on a modest scale, and I ache for those who are similarly inspired but are only now beginning the journey. People say to me, "Why don't you teach?", but this seems like the height of hypocrisy - a Ponzi scheme energizing a new crop of filmmakers only to confront the same Quixotic obstacles that bedevil us all.

How can an art form that defined a century be teetering over history's ashcan? It's as if painting or music might suddenly vanish. But I guess sonnets had their day, too. I must confess my short films were more formally ambitious than my feature, so even when prospects for eventual sale looked brighter than they do now I made certain concessions to narrative and audience expectations to make Full Grown Men more commercially palatable (though to read some reviews, maybe not).

I suppose in some ways the medium, once ignominious, has merely returned to its roots, as a novelty and a spectacle. But to have experienced the breadth and depth of its potential, to have sat in so many darkened rooms in thrall of images and ideas that could find their expression in no other form, I feel the need to pour out a forty for the culture-shaking films to come that may never be.

There are so many reasons why visionary film is imperiled, all well-documented in your blogs and elsewhere, I won't belabor them again here. But sixty seconds on a cell phone will never approach the experience of two hours in an arthouse church. Like poetry great films have to wash over you, consume you, vex you. They aren't sketches. They are dense canvasses. To think that they may become bygone curios seems criminal. But then, George Bush was our president for eight years. So there's no accounting for taste.

I've no doubt true artists will continue to find their way, regardless of running time or shooting format. That's what revolutionaries do. Perhaps it's our time in the mountains, to lie in wait, and counterstrike when they least expect us. I'm growing a beard just for the occasion.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/05/2008 05:06:00 PM

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What's with the media and indie film these days? I attend my first party in Toronto, eager to catch up with old film friends and see some new movies, but the toxic murk of today's business environment keeps seeping in. I got a ride in from the airport with a sales agent friend who, while bemoaning the difficult market for auteur films worldwide, said to me, "You have it worse in America. It's not that the films do any poorer there, but there's so much focus internationally on the American release that when they do fail everybody around the world notices." Then I went to the Peace Arch party for Mabrouk El Mechri's very smart and entertaining genre-buster JCVD (pictured above), which features the absolute best film monologue I've seen in years... delivered by Jean Claude Van Damme. The party functioned also as a kick-off for the Midnight Madness section of the festival, programmed by the very energetic Colin Geddes. (A little tired from my early flight, I was amazed by the enthusiasm with which Geddes handled the 2:00 AM post-film Q&A later that night.) At the party, I ran into another sales agent who asked, "Have you seen the Wall Street Journal article? It's another 'sky is falling' piece." I hadn't, so he forwarded it to me on the spot, and I'm linking to it here. Written by Lauren A.E. Schuker and Peter Sanders, it's titled, "Glut of Films Hit Hollywood," and it talks about a number of films that have failed in the marketplace due to what various industry observers say has been a surplus of production caused by easy money from hedge funds and other sources. Here are three key graphs:

Today, the credit crunch is putting the brakes on outside film financing. But Hollywood executives fear the glut created by the recent spate of overproduction is going to be felt for at least a couple more years. Some people say the worst of the oversupply problem is still about a year away.

"We're at the top of the curve heading down," says Hal Sadoff, head of international and independent film at ICM, one of the major talent agencies in Hollywood. "We've seen many of these financial institutions, private-equity firms and hedge funds pull away from the industry. But the films that they have advanced are still in production, and it will take another six to 12 months for the market to regularize again."

Amir Malin, who acquired, marketed and distributed the hit indie film The Blair Witch Project and now runs media-investment firm Qualia Capital, says that the market for such films will get tougher before it gets easier. "The worst is yet to come," he says.

This analysis is nothing new -- and I think, as presented here, that some of it is wrong. (Before The Devil Knows You're Dead cost $18 million?!?) But due to the mainstream media's constant repeating of this story, I can't imagine any new private equity investor not thinking two or three or four times about the wisdom of investing in this sector at this time.

On another note, Scott Kirsner has posted on his blog a piece linking to the Wall Street Journal article in which he asks, "Is There a Future for Indie Film? Filmmakers and Festivals Will Decide." Like Christian Gaines who recently wrote in Variety about a new role for festivals in the distribution scheme, Kirsner says that filmmakers should consider festivals to be their primary form of theatrical release.

From his piece:

But I think smart filmmakers ought to consider using the highest-profile festival they can get into as the platform for launching their movie. During the festival, or on the day it ends, they should make their movie available through their own Web site, perhaps using DVD-on-demand services like NeoFlix, Film Baby, or CreateSpace/Amazon. Same thing for making downloads available: get that movie onto Amazon Unbox, B-Side, or iArthouse.

And I think festivals ought to do more to create opportunities for their filmmakers: a deal with iTunes, for instance, which puts movies into that popular marketplace (iTunes is notoriously difficult for individual filmmakers to work with), or a broadcast deal with a cable channel or pay-per-view service to put the movies on TV, plastered with festival branding, which would serve as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” for movies that might not have stars or high production values.

From a filmmaker's perspective, it’d be good to have a movie available during the festival. If I read a glowing review of something playing at Toronto this weekend, I’m going to want to download it or buy the DVD right then –- and I may not feel the same way a week later, after the festival ends (I may not remember the movie at all by that point.)

Anyway, this is all food for thought as the festival kicks into gear. I'm off to see a few movies. Check back on the blog for my reports from this year's Toronto International Film Festival as well as pieces by Howard Feinstein, Jason Sanders and, later, original video content from a new partnership.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/05/2008 12:11:00 PM

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Things seen and overheard, Day One of the Toronto International Film Festival:

Ads hyping the new hybrid Escalade are opening every screening of this year's Toronto Film Festival; whether that's a subconscious meta-commentary on the festival itself, a similar all-consuming mammoth that's uniting unwieldy pomp and flash with more down-to-earth concern, is entirely unknown.

While today was the official first day of the festival, Wednesday night featured a lovely "Programmers Gathering" for early-arriving festival heads, film society programmers, archivists, and museum curators. It's a nice touch for TIFF, one to make a generally overlooked section of the film world feel more at home...until the stars arrive the next day, of course. ("Enjoy it now, you'll never be treated this well again," one curator muttered as I reached for a mousse torte). The gathering has morphed from its genesis many years ago as a full-day conference, complete with presentations, case studies, discussions and arguments ("Why didn't that touring Rivette series work?" "Why does Celluloid Dreams charge so much" etc, etc). Needless to say, the new version, a free coctail-and-food gathering at an elegant hotel bar, has proven slightly more popular. (The flowing chocolate fountain might have something to do with that, too.)

The programmers meeting doesn't exactly provide much of a test for festival photographers, though. They could be seen taking a few half-hearted photos, mainly to test their lenses or experience shooting folks without burly bodyguards. One said it was a good way to get in the mood for the festival (i.e., by hanging around people who not only could name every film by Claire Denis, Lisandro Alonso, or James Benning, but actually would, and did).

The Hollywood brigade has yet to arrive, or possibly they're just practicing their "Well, to premiere here, and to already be discussed as an Oscar candidate..." speeches while they're stalled in Toronto taxi-limo traffic. Tonight the festival premiered the new Guy Ritchie film RocknRolla, one of those star-studded genre works that populate the line-up, but like all discerning citizens I had better things to do with my time: attend the world premiere of $9.99 (pictured above), the new stop-motion animation film by Israel-by-way-of-Brooklyn-by-way-of-Australia filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal.

A 25-New-Faces-of-Independent-Film veteran, Rosenthal's many-moons journey to bring this collection of Etgar Keret short stories to the screen took her from Brooklyn to Rotterdam (as part of the Cinemart funding conference), with an international-funding trail that landed her in Australia (courtesy of the Australian Film Commission and that country's Sherman Pictures), where she spent over two years animating the film.

Stop-motion animation is normally associated with Aardman's animal-based humors: Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, etc, or by others with the rich Czech tradition of filmmakers Jiri Trnka, Jan Svankmajer, etc. In both cases the animation brings to life a fantastic world: chickens talk and break out of a Nazi camp, tree stumps move and eat people, etc etc.

Rosenthal, though, has other goals for her animation: to recreate the real world, movement by movement, blink by blink, a world that may be tinged with surrealism and oddity (these are based on Keret stories, after all), but that is unmistakably recognizable. Here a father worries about his two sons, a child saves money for a soccer game; a couple split up, a lonely elderly man waits for someone to talk with. What's amazing about $9.99 isn't that it's filled with painstakingly crafted animation and figure design (it is, of course), but that its script could just as easily have been portrayed by "real actors." Its themes of loneliness, betrayal, worry, and love are light years from any other animation film in recent memory, and its script (by Rosenthal and Keret) could stand with any festival film here.

Oh, and one star present (besides Tatia, of course): Geoffrey Rush, who provides the voice for one of the characters, and whose genial and erudite presence certainly proved entertaining enough for the crowd.

# posted by Jason Sanders @ 9/05/2008 12:21:00 AM

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Bradley Beesley's sequel to his breakout hit Okie Noodling will be screening this Friday and Saturday at the IFC Center in New York.

If you're not familiar with the film, here's a sum up from the release:

In 2001, filmmaker Bradley Beesley brought the strange subculture of barehanded catfishing to the screen in 'Okie Noodling’, which won the Audience Choice Award and 1st runner-up for Best Documentary at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Now he returns to his home state of Oklahoma to see how the sport has evolved over the last decade in 'Okie Noodling II'. Revisiting the colorful, original cast and meeting some new and eccentric fishermen en route to the largest noodling tournament in the nation- this film explores the legalization issues and commercialization of this once backwoods practice.

For tickets go to ifccenter.com

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 9/04/2008 01:12:00 PM

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This piece by Karina Longworth discussing a panel discussion at Telluride on the crisis in independent film is essential reading. Ann Thompson, director Danny Boyle, distributor Michael Barker, critic and professor Annette Insdorf and writer/director Paul Schrader all talk about changing models and whether or not independent film as we know it is dead.

There's a lot of great stuff here, but these words by Schrader are choice, and they echo the comments I far less eloquently tried to advance in the Filmmaker magazine panel discussion that we recorded for the next issue.

From the piece:

“Technology is leaving behind much that we are fond of,” Schrader warned. “I personally believe that movies are a 20th century art form, and they’re basically over.” Several times over the course of the session, Schrader expressed enthusiasm for short-form episodic work made on low budgets for small screens. Referencing the rise number of “professional” media makers who have jumped to the webseries format, Schrader announced that he’s currently planning a film that would exist in a couple of different versions: one feature designed for arthouses, and one “X-rated” version, cut into 12, 5-minute episodes, for viewing on cellphones and/or on the web. Schrader’s not planning to go this route because it’s lucrative, but because it’s what he sees as our inevitable future. “There’s [currently] no money in it, but it’s much better to gore the ox than to hold the ox that’s being gored.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/03/2008 11:28:00 AM

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In Variety, Ali jafaar reports on a new production company poised to pump a billion dollars into film production.

From the piece:

Abu Dhabi has set its sights on joining the big leagues of pic production.

The Abu Dhabi Media Co., which oversees the emirate’s film, TV and radio outlets, is launching a production shingle with $1 billion to spend on developing, financing and producing feature films over the next five years.

Company dubbed Imagenation Abu Dhabi, which will also oversee Abu Dhabi’s existing $1 billion production fund with Warner Bros., has a mandate to produce eight features a year for the worldwide marketplace. Majority of the fare commissioned will be English-language features aimed at mainstream auds. The banner is set to ink a number of deals with U.S. and international film companies in the coming weeks.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/03/2008 12:24:00 AM

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At his blog John August announces the arrival of Scrippets, a Wordpress plug-in that allows for easy script formatting within blogs. Check it out. (Hat tip: Noah Harlan.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/02/2008 08:51:00 PM

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In the last weekly newsletter I wrote the following:

Last week Filmmaker gathered a small group of producers, sales reps and a distributor to talk about what some are calling a crisis in the funding and distribution of independent film. Our panel mixed generations, comprising veterans who remember independent film in the ’70s and ’80s as well as relative newcomers who have begun producing in the post-Pulp Fiction/Blair Witch era. I won’t go into all the details of our conversation here because the comments will run as a roundtable discussion in the next issue of Filmmaker. One thing was clear, though – we talked for about two hours and could easily have gone on all night. And while we jumped around a lot, skipping from production issues to distribution ones, we kept circling back to a few basic questions about today’s independent film scene. Has the money that sustained independent film in the ’80s and ’90s left the sector entirely or are we just at a low point in a cyclical business? Have the desires and viewing patterns of our audiences changed permanently, or can they be reawakened by better films and a more concerted effort to build a sense of community around independent film? Is the recent departure from the independent sector by several studios a blessing because it will create opportunities for more nimble players or a curse because it is destroying opportunities for films to be acquired? Are filmmakers fighting a rear-guard action in their quest for theatrical play, or should they accept the small-screen logic of the Internet and perhaps even change their work accordingly? I’m waiting for the transcript so I can begin to edit all of this, but, in the meantime, if you have any thoughts you are always welcome to email them to me at editor AT filmmakermagazine.com.

One filmmaker -- Marc Maurino of White Light Film Works, who directed the short film Trigger Finger -- sent in the following reply, which I know many people who are contemplating a career (?) in independent film will relate to.

Considering my own future as a director and getting a first feature made, the idea of a microbudget feature with no-stars, while potentially artistically rewarding, doesn't seem to be something that I can imagine leaving my very stable day job and risking my house for; likewise, even getting something off the ground at the next level, i.e., $2-5M with a name or two doesn't seem a guaranteed route to financial stabilty or, with any certainty, distribution.

I naturally consider the dizzying array of possibilities available via the Internet, webisodes, serials, and streaming ultra-short films, but since I aspire to directing features, and creating work that both prepares me for and displays my aptitude to do so, I'm about to go out to festivals with a 20 min. short, featuring multiple characters, storylines, arcs, and plot/subplot; in short, not a realistic work for streaming, but, under the "old economy", perhaps is a calling card . . . but a calling card for what, and to whom?

Presumably and predictably, I'll ultimately look for a producer who can help me shepherd the short and loosely-related feature script to the same dwindling cadre of financiers who seem to be leaving the game in droves. And as hard as it is to get financing at all, even at the microbduget levels, as an adult (ie, no longer single in my early 20s), I have a few other challenges.

With the family and the mortgage, to be frank, I can't devote two years of my life to produce, post, and then nurture (ie, self-distribute, tour, etc.) a project unless I can guarantee myself, quite literally, about 250K (ie, give up my government health insurance, 401(k) matching, car, and biweekly paycheck.) I'll be focusing on trying to leverage the short plus loosely-adapted feature script (in the vein of Gowanus, Brooklyn/Half Nelson, Five Feet High and Rising/Raising Victor Vargas, Frozen River/Frozen River) but I wonder/fear if that is the "old model", not to mention that I just referenced some insanely talented and fortunate directors.

So barring the fortune to mimic their patterns, I'm also looking at breaking in to television directing--perhaps equally if not more difficult--but beyond these two models (and I use that term loosely, because they are more just hopeful paths) I am, along, perhaps, with the rest of the aspiring director corps, wondering what the future holds.

I'm fairly certain that keeping costs down in order to maximize the profit margin on any possible distribution deal/DVD/foreign territory sale is mandatory, perhaps moreso than ever before. But I'm also trying hard to think outside of the box, and imagine a successful future as a director which is not contingent on multi-million-dollar budgets and distribution deals.

One model I think about a lot is the theatre--my wife works for and is an actor at a major regional theatre (Shakespeare and Co.) which this summer has mounted some fantastic productions (Othello got glowing reviews in the NYT) and all of which will end tomorrow. They employed a slew of actors and technicians, paid the rent on a sprawling campus and multiple theatres, had multiple 400-seat sellout crowds, and have not gone bankrupt doing so. I wonder if the indie film community would be served by looking at theatre models while also looking at digital/Internet venues, and what that might look like . . .

For instance, could a no-budget feature recoup its costs via a 3-5 night a week summerlong run at a regional exhibition space, bolstered by word of mouth and regional press and marketing, ie, the same thing that draws a crowd to The Ladies' Man or The Goat Woman of Corvis County, just to mention a pair of non-Shakespeare plays that are performing well this summer?

Of course, I don't know. These are just the things I'm thinking, and I don't know if you usually get more erudite or solution-based responsed to your postings, but you certainly have gotten me thinking--the question no longer is just "how do I break in?", but also, "what am I breaking in to?"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 9/01/2008 08:50:00 PM

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