I've posted previously on this blog about The Long Tail author Chris Anderson's recent series of articles (and forthcoming book) on the economics of free. Briefly, Anderson's proposition is that digital production and delivery, which decreases the marginal cost of goods, drives their purchase price down to zero. For most, this means adapting to the idea of distribution being ad-supported in some way, and this type of revenue scheme is what has dominated Anderson's previous writings on the subject. But as I noted in a previous post on the Google Book Settlement, the problem with free models for the producer is that they drive the revenue per consumer way down below what truly devoted consumers would pay for the same product. That's fine if free distribution picks up enough consumers to allow ad revenue to offset the pricing decimation, but for many products this type of audience expansion is not possible.

Now, though, with ad dollars in free fall, it's obvious that the free model could use some tweaks. Said tweaks are provided by Anderson in a piece posted at The Wall Street Journal that argues that, in the end, content producers have to find a way to get consumers to value their product enough to pay for it. Here's the final paragraph, but read the article for his commentary on what the ad bust will mean for Facebook, Twitter and the old model of the internet start-up.

Does this mean that Free will retreat in a down economy? Probably not. The psychological and economic case for it remains as good as ever -- the marginal cost of anything digital falls by 50% every year, making pricing a race to the bottom, and "Free" has as much power over the consumer psyche as ever. But it does mean that Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid. Just as King Gillette's free razors only made business sense paired with expensive blades, so will today's Web entrepreneurs have to not just invent products that people love, but also those that they will pay for. Not all of the people or even most of them -- free is still great marketing and bits are still too cheap to meter -- but enough to pay the bills. Free may be the best price, but it can't be the only one.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/31/2009 06:05:00 PM Comments (1)

Over at Splice Today, John Lingan has interviewed legendary d.p. Gordon Willis. An excerpt:

ST: To what do you ascribe the simultaneity of directorial and cinematographic talent during those years? Was there a greater level of artistic freedom afforded to filmmakers then? Or was it the momentum of '60s counterculture finally reaching the film industry? Hall and Wexler have credited "accidents" like sunspots in the lenses for spurring their perceived innovations; what was it about the industry climate that allowed those kinds of accidents to stand?

GW: The studio system was beginning to buckle, but I think it's more like "A Man For All Seasons." All of us came along at the right time and did what we wanted to do. And it wasn't easy—management, and many in the old school hated us, me especially [since] I didn't live in California.

Let me clear something up: Good films are not made by accident, nor is good photography. You can have good things happen, on occasion, by accident that can be applied at that moment in a film, but your craft isn't structured around such things, except in beer commercials.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/30/2009 07:56:00 PM Comments (2)

Over on Web Exclusives page and coinciding with the Lincoln Center "Mavericks and Outsides: Positif Celebrates American Cinema" (beginning today), Jamie Stuart interviews Positif editor Michel Ciment about the magazine and also his long relationship with Stanley Kubrick.

One film that's part of the Positif series is Barbara Loden's Wanda, which was one of Filmmaker's 50 Most Important Independent Films back when we did that list in 1998. Long difficult to see, it was re-released on DVD a year or so ago and has been claiming its place as an inspiration for a new generation of independent filmmakers. Over at Hammer to Nail, director Mary Bronstein writes about the film.

An excerpt:

In 1971, actress Barbara Loden made her directorial debut with Wanda, a work so uncompromising that it could easily pass as the paradigm example of American independent filmmaking. A Hollywood actress by trade (best known for her supporting role in Splendor in the Grass), Loden had no practical background or training in filmmaking when she landed on the idea of directing this intensely personal project. But her drive to realize it drove her to forgo looking for conventional studio financing, ignore sound judgment (most coming from her then husband, Elia Kazan), and simply throw herself face-first into the process. Made over the course of ten weeks, largely self-financed and shot on 16mm reversal film with a crew of only four people, Loden produced something brutally raw, relentlessly downcast and unapologetically small in scope. And so, after an auspicious premiere at the Venice Film Festival (where it won top prize), the film failed to obtain proper distribution and outside of one theatrical engagement in New York, disappeared from circulation almost entirely.

See Wanda as well as many other excellent American films, including Fingers, Keane, True Confessions, and The Honeymoon Killers.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/30/2009 06:38:00 PM Comments (0)

Nelson George attended Sundance this year in two capacities. First, from January 9th to the 15th he was an advisor at the Sundance Writer's Lab. Then, he went to the festival as an executive producer with Good Hair, the doc he made with Chris Rock. In the below video diary he takes us through both events, including the Obama inauguration party on Main Street and the premiere of his film, and along the way he also catches up with a number of other filmmakers at this year's fest. Check it out.


Nelson George: Sundance 2009 from Nelson George on Vimeo.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/30/2009 04:47:00 PM Comments (0)

Feature film prizes were handed out on the second to last evening of the 38th annual International Film Festival Rotterdam tonight, following the announcements earlier in the week of the CineMart and Tiger Award for Short Film prizes. The festival's top prize, the VPRO Tiger Awards, for which 14 first or second time feature film directors competed, went to three films, as is the festival's custom.

They were far from surprising choices, including Ramtin Lavafipour's Iranian smuggling drama Be Calm, Count to Seven, Yang Ik-June's South Korean gangster melodrama Breathless and Mahmut Fazil Coskun's Turkish drama of unrequited love, Wrong Rosary, all of which drew strong partisans among festival attendees and critics. FIPRESCI gave its critics prize to Edwin's Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, a formally ambitious if often disjointed comedy about the repression of Chinese identity in Indonesia, while the KNF award (The Association of Dutch Film Critics Circle), which includes all films in the official selection, went to Chilean Pablo Lorrain's riveting look at a Saturday Night Fever obsessed killer during Pinochet's brutal reign, Tony Manero. Below is the full list of winners:

The jury statements on the VPRO Tiger Award winning films:

Be Calm and Count to Seven (Aram bash va ta haft beshmar) by Ramtin Lavafipour (Iran, 2008)
(Supported by Hubert Bals Fund)
‘We were extremely impressed by the artistry and vigor of the first film – the level of craft and cinematic intelligence on the one hand, the dedication to rendering the reality of a particular way of life on the other. For us, this film did what all films strive to do: it represented and dramatized a way of life in terms that were at once specific and universal, not to mention unfailingly vivid.’

Be Calm and Count to Seven is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.

Breathless (Ddongpari) by Yang Ik-June (South Korea, 2008)
‘A powerfully rendered and acted film with a keen sense of reality in its portrayal of a situation that has been seldom seen in cinema. We were also surprised to see an extremely troubling subject matter treated with a welcome sense of warmth and humor.’

Wrong Rosary (Uzak ihtimal) by Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Turkey, 2008)
‘A uniquely creative film of the most eloquent simplicity, a film built from a feeling of immediacy, moment by moment, breath by breath; a film that builds an absolutely unique form of suspense; a film that stays true to itself from beginning to end.’

Each VPRO Tiger Award comes with a prize of Euro 15,000 and guaranteed broadcast by Dutch public television network VPRO.


NETPAC Award
The NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) Jury, consisting of Film producer Shan Donbing (China), film journalist Okubo Ken’ichi (Japan), and filmmaker Sun Koh (Singapore), presented the NETPAC Award to:

The Land (Dadi) by He Jia (China, 2008)
"The jury awards The Land for achieving in cinema what is impossible through any other art form by showing its subjects and the viewers how humanity remains unchanged with the passage of time."

A Special Mention was awarded to:

Agrarian Utopia by Uruphong Raksasad (Thailand, 2009)
"The jury would like to commend the maker of Agrarian Utopia for his bravery, his folly and his determination in showing us his little piece of heaven."

Agrarian Utopia is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.

.
FIPRESCI Award
The jury of the international association of film critics FIPRESCI (Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique), consisted of Leo Soesanto (France, ‘Les Inrockuptibles’, Jury Chair), Dana Linssen (Netherlands, ‘Filmkrant’), Maya McKechneay (Austria, ‘Blickpunkt:Film’), Firat Yücel (Turkey, ‘Altyazi’), Ashok Rane (India, ‘Sakal’).

The FIPRESCI decided to award the International Critics’ Prize to Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly (Babi buta yang ingin terbang) by Edwin (Indonesia, 2008), selected for the the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition of the 2009 International Film Festival Rotterdam.

The Jury statement:
"A brave film, fragmented in a way that each bit is very sharp as an edgy, personal and political statement. As critics, we were most challenged on many levels by this work which kept coming back again and again in our discussions as the song "I Just Called to Say I love You" did infectiously in the film".

Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly (Babi buta yang ingin terbang), supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, was selected for CineMart 2008.


KNF Award
The jury of the KNF, the Association of Dutch film critics, at the International Film Festival Rotterdam consisting of jury president Ronald Rovers (‘Filmkrant’, The Netherlands), Jann Ruyters (‘Trouw’, The Netherlands), Leo Bankersen (‘Filmkrant’, The Netherlands), Berend-Jan Bockting (‘VPRO Gids’, The Netherlands), and Sven Gerrets (‘Oor’, The Netherlands).

The KNF Jury has chosen its winner among films in Rotterdam 2009 official selection that have not yet been acquired for Dutch distribution. To the KNF Award, a grant is attached for subtitling the film, sponsored by Holland Subtitling. The Award of the KNF is meant to promote the acquisition for distribution within The Netherlands.

The winner of the KNF Award is Tony Manero by Pablo Larraín (Chile/Brazil, 2008). The Jury stated:
The young director of this film dared to take one of cinema's most beloved icons to tell a grim and subversive story about the nature of dictatorship. He delivers his message with a beautiful deadpan expression in the form of a middle aged psychopath on his quest to become the leading John Travolta impersonator on a nineteen seventies tv-show, thereby providing a mirror for ruthless authoritarianism.
Tony Manero is supported by the Hubert Bals Fund.


Earlier in the festival, the following awards were announced:

Tiger Awards Competition for short film
The three Tiger Awards for Short Film were granted to A Necessary Music by Beatrice Gibson (UK), Despair (Otchajanie) by Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov (Russia) and Bernadette by Duncan Campbell (UK).

The jury for Tiger Awards for Short Film comprised Malaysian writer and director Tan Chui Mui (her seven recent short films screen in the festival), Maria Pallier, buyer and programme maker for the Spanish broadcasting company TVE, and the British journalist, curator and artist George Clark.


MovieSquad Award
The Rotterdam young people’s jury, consisting of Ms. Charlotte Eskens (16), Ms. Katinka Nauta (17), Mr. Alain Tjiong (17), Mr. David Hofland (15) and Ms. Thecla Baas (18) chose the winner out of twenty films in official Rotterdam 2009 selection. The award comprises Dutch distribution within the MovieZone educational film programme for young people and 2,000 Euro to be spent on its promotion among young people in The Netherlands.

The jury presented the MovieSquad Award to Slumdog Millionaire by Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan (United Kingdom, 2008).

MovieSquad is an initiative of the Nederlands Instituut voor Filmeducatie (Dutch Institute for Film Education) in collaboration with the International Film Festival Rotterdam.


Arte France Cinéma Awards
The Arte France Cinema Award (10,000 Euro) for the best CineMart 2009 Projects was given given to Him by Lance Weiler, a production of Seize The Media (USA).

The Arte France Cinema Awards Jury 2008 consisted of Michel Reilhac (France, General Manager Arte France Cinéma).

The Arte France Cinéma Awards are in cash, given to the producers towards financing the development of the awarded projects. By introducing the Award, Arte France Cinéma and CineMart aim to further support and promote the development and production of independent filmmaking.


Prince Claus Fund Film Grant
The ninth Prince Claus Fund Film Grant of 15,000 Euro has been awarded to the CineMart 2009 Project Birdie (Shuvuukhai) by Byamba Sakhya (Mongolia). The Grant was announced during the CineMart Closing Night Party on January 28, 2009.

The Jury of the 2009 Prince Claus Fund Film Grant consisted of: jury chair Karim Traïdia (Algeria / Netherlands), filmmaker and a member of the Prince Claus Fund Board and jury members Harutyun Khachatryan (Armenia), filmmaker and Prince Claus Laureate 2007; Alicia Scherson (Chile), filmmaker; Monique Hendrickx (Netherlands), actress; and René Mioch (Netherlands), film critic and producer.

The Prince Claus Fund Film Grant is annually awarded in cooperation with CineMart to support the very first creative phase of the development of a film production. Every year, the Film Grant is presented to a CineMart project by a filmmaker from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Caribbean, and selected for its excellent concept and innovative quality by an international expert jury.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 1/30/2009 03:21:00 PM Comments (0)

Recently I linked to a CNET survey of mainstream video-hosting sites that critiqued these platforms according to their usability and picture quality. Now, CNET has published a "part two":

Around this time last year we put together a comparison of various video sites to determine which ones had the best overall quality and user experience. Since then, high-definition-capable digital cameras and camcorders have taken off, and several major video hosts have rolled out official support for wide-screen, super high-quality Flash video in response. So we think the time has come to take another look at what these sites are offering now and crown a new leader in the realm of HD video.

The six sites we're putting head to head are: YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, DailyMotion, SmugMug and Blip.tv.

Check it out -- I was surprised by the winner.

Speaking of internet video, Mark Cuban has posted a provocative blog post about why it is not the be-all for content creators. His lede:

Internet Video. Its the salvation for content creators everywhere. Its the end to dependence on the big bad meanies, the cable and satellite companies. Right ? Hell no. The concept that “over the top” video creates a valid business alternative for content creators is as misguided an internet business myth as there is.

Of course, Cuban owns HDNet, so you can see why he might be more natually inclined towards arguing the long-term viability of cable, but his is still an interesting argument. So far it's prompted almost 100 replies and, as always, the back-and-forth on the comments thread is as interesting as the blog post itself.

Thanks to producer Noah Harlan for tipping me to both of these.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/29/2009 05:41:00 AM Comments (0)

I'm here in Rotterdam with poor wi-fi connectivity, so that's one reason the blog has been a little light this week. But I want to join many others in the film journalism field by noting my dismay over this week's Variety lay-offs, which include two great writers, Mike Jones (Filmmaker's former Managing Editor) and Ann Thompson, whose Risky Business column was published here at Filmmaker for a couple of years. In addition to being strong writers and reporters, both are journalists who understand the internet, the blogosphere, and the specific topics and tone required to engage an online audience. It's kind of baffling to me that the two writers I most am drawn to at Variety Online are being let go at a time in which so much journalism is having to figure out how to transition to the web.

Both writers have posted about the layoffs. You can read Jones' comments here and, at her Thompson on Hollywood blog, Ann Thompson's here.

They are both super-talented, so I know we'll be hearing from both of them soon.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/29/2009 05:28:00 AM Comments (0)

Congratulations to filmmaker, new media creator, and Filmmaker contributor Lance Weiler, who was awarded the Arte France Cinrma prize here at this year's Rotterdam Cinemart. In his remarks when presenting the award, Arte's Michel Reilhac said that the award acknowledged the visionary nature of Weiler's project and noted that it speaks towards the type of new thinking about audience and platforms that will be necessary if our world of specialty cinema is to survive in the coming years.

Weiler's project is described by him in the program book thusly:

HIM is my newest cross-media poject -- a collision of film, gaming and interactive technology that continues with my horror 2.0 series, placing the viewer literally in the shoes of the protagonist. This is a new type of social entertainment experience that fuses storytelling and gaming in a way that enables audience members to become collaborators within the story world.

Congratulations also to Byamba Sakyaan who was awarded the Prince Claus Film Grant for the Cinemart project Birdie.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/28/2009 07:38:00 PM Comments (2)

I’m returning to Rotterdam after a 10-year absence. The last time I was here we were screening my first feature The Last Broadcast.

Last night I enjoyed a dinner with Nekisha Cooper (Pariah) and Ben Howe (Treeless Mountain) two up and coming producers who are attending the Rotterdam Lab. I was struck by the fact that the conversations from a decade ago were still so relevant today. Sustainability was an issue then and is even more so now. Unlike a decade ago the technology is now a reality. But along with this advancement comes the changing of roles. As prep, production, post and distribution become one it creates a different set of responsibilities. There’s a need for new crew positions and different working methods thanks to social media, audience building and the management of a project’s rights. Producers are in a unique position to help usher in this change.

I know personally that my process has changed. The methods in which I’m working are very different from a decade ago. In addition to attending CineMart with my newest project, I’ll be sharing some of my process with the producers from the Rotterdam Lab.

The following is piece that I was asked to write for the IFFR “Daily Tiger” about the value of transmedia / cross-media storytelling and how it has impacted my process.

I don't consider myself a filmmaker anymore. I rarely shoot on film, don't cut on film and often my work is shown digitally. I'm not sure what the new term will become but I feel more like a story architect.

As people become more connected thanks to technology, I find myself drawn to making stories social. Social in the sense that they can bring people together and hopefully inspire an individual to pass them to another. The concept of letting audience members step into the shoes of a protagonist or any character for that matter is incredibly exciting to me. My work has become a fusion of film, gaming, tech, and design. I create a project universe where stories are meant to have multiple touch points, where the audience can enter, add to the experience and exit only to return again.

In the work that we’ve done in this emerging area we’ve seen audiences spend on average 8 to 10 hours a week with our stories. Audiences have extended the worlds we build by writing fan fiction, creating characters, remixing media, all the while spreading story elements across the web and into the real world. In one instance a couple met through the storyworld we created and got married! If that’s not social engagement I don’t know what is.

My newest project entitled HIM, which is participating in CineMart is designed to be a film, series, game, and social experience. The design and build for HIM is being handled by the company I co-founded called Seize The Media. STM has built these types of experiences for our own original content as well as clients like Ubisoft, myspace, CAA, and others. Our approach to crafting a project universe or storyworld is very calculated. Each element is designed to serve the story and its characters while taking into consideration the best ways to foster audience engagement.

This transmedia / cross-media approach is mirroring a change in audience habits. The audience is evolving. They are their own media companies. They can push button publish text, audio and video to global audiences. Whether anyone is watching is a different story but the tools and desire to create are there. Transmedia offers many benefits to filmmakers in the sense that it can offset costs around production, generate awareness, drive traffic, and increase the life of a film beyond its initial release. This is not theory it is actually happening.

# posted by Lance Weiler @ 1/25/2009 08:36:00 PM Comments (6)

Via Wired's Underwire blog comes news of Gotham Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You director Nina Paley's latest effort to raise money to pay the music rights for her film Sita Sings the Blues. Nominated for a Spirit Award, she's auctioning off her companion seat. Bids start at $1,000.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/25/2009 06:52:00 PM Comments (0)

The award winners of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival were announced this evening and Lee Daniels's Push: Based on a novel by Sapphire was the big winner as it took not only the Dramatic Grand Jury prize but also the Audience Award and Special Jury prize for actress Mo’Nique. Ondi Timoner's We Live In Public was awarded the top Documentary prize. The full list of winners are below.


Dramatic Grand Jury Prize:
Push: Based on a novel by Sapphire, Lee Daniels

Documentary Grand Jury Prize:
We Live In Public, directed by Ondi Timoner

Dramatic World Cinema Jury Prize:
The Maid, directed by Sebastian Silva

Documentary World Cinema Jury Prize:
Rough Aunties, directed by Kim Longinotto

Dramatic Audience Award:
Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels

Documentary Audience Award:
The Cove, directed by Louise Psihoyos

Dramatic World Cinema Audience Award:
An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig

Documentary World Cinema Audience Award:
Afghan Star, directed by Havana Marking

Dramatic U.S. Special Jury Prize:
Mo’Nique, for acting in Push: Based in a novel by Sapphire

Dramatic U.S. Special Jury Prize:
Humpday, directed by Lynn Shelton, “for its independent spirit.”

Documentary U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize:
Good Hair, directed by Jeff Stilson

Dramatic World Cinema Special Jury Prize:
Catalina Saavedra for her performance in The Maid

Dramatic World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Originality:
Louise-Michel, directed by Benoit Delepine and Gustave de Kervern

Documentary World Cinema Special Jury Prize:
Tibet in Song, directed by Ngawang Choephel

U.S. Dramatic Excellence in Directing:
Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre

U.S. Documentary Excellence in Directing:
Natalia Almada, El General

World Dramatic Excellence in Directing:
Oliver Hirschbiegel, Five Minutes of Heaven

World Documentary Excellence in Directing:
Havana Marking, Afghan Star

U.S. Dramatic Excellence in Cinematography:
Adriano Goldman, Sin Nombre

U.S. Documentary Excellence in Cinematography:
Bob Richman, The September Issue

World Dramatic Excellence in Cinematography:
John De Borman, An Education

World Documentary Excellence in Cinematography:
John Maringouin, Big River Man

U.S. Documentary Excellence in Editing:
Karen Schmeer, Sergio

World Documentary Excellence in Editing:
Janus Billeskov, Big River Man

Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award:
Nicholas Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi for Paper Heart

World Cinema Screenwriting Award:
Guy Hibbert, Five Minutes of Heaven

The Alfred P. Sloan Prize For a Feature Film:
Adam, directed by Max Mayer

Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards:
Diego Lerman, Ciencias Morales (Moral Sciences)
David Riker, The Girl
Qurata Kenji, Speed Girl
Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Evolution

Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking:
Lies, directed by Jonas Odell

Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking:
Short Term 12, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton

To read our complete Park City coverage click here.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/24/2009 10:58:00 PM Comments (0)

Closing its 15th year, the Slamdance Film Festival announced the winners of its 2009 edition Friday night with Mo Perkins's A Quiet Little Marriage winning the Best Narrative Feature Award. The full list of winner are below.



Best Narrative Feature
A Quiet Little Marriage, directed by Mo Perkins

Special Jury Mention for Best Performance: Larry Fessenden in I Sell the Dead

Best Documentary Feature
Strongman, directed by Zachary Levy

Special Jury Mention: Second Sight, directed by Alison McAlpine

Best Narrative Short
Princess Margaret Blvd, directed by Kazik Radwanski

Best Documentary Short
Rare Chicken Rescue, directed by Randall Wood

Best Animated Short
Undone, directed by Hayley Morris

Best Experimental Short
Funny Guy, directed by Frank R. Rinaldi

Special Jury Mention: Tony Zoreil, directed by Valentin Potier

Best Music Video
Don McCloskey Mister Novocaine, directed by Peter Rhoads

Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature
Punching the Clown, directed by Gregory Viens

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
Heart of Stone (formerly It’s Hard to be an Indian), directed by Beth Toni Kruvant

Audience Award for Best Anarchy Film
The Tides, directed by Eva Flodstrom

Spirit of Slamdance Award
(tie) Zombie Girl, directed by Aaron Marshall, Erik Mauck, Justin Johnson; and Vapid Lovelies, directed by Frank Feldman

Kodak Vision Award for Best Cinematography
I Sell the Dead cinematographer Richard Lopez

Dos Equis “Most Interesting Film” Award
You Might as Well Live, directed by Simon Ellis

IndieRoad Award
Punching the Clown, directed by Gregory Viens
The online audience award voted on by IndieRoad.net viewers.

Writer Award for Best Screenplay
Numbered, by Neil McGowan

Writer Award for Best Short Screenplay
Crybaby, by Mark Seidel

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/24/2009 09:02:00 AM Comments (0)

If you're among the many who decided to skip Sundance this year, one way to get a taste of the festival without leaving your own home has been to check out the portion of Sundance's shorts selection that the festival puts online.

While they made more films available in previous years on there own site than they did on iTunes this year, with a bit of internet video scouring and you can watch as nearly twenty of the eighty of so shorts screening as this year's festival. As more festivals embrace the notion of allowing the films they select to stream on the internet before or during their event, it seems the taboo of putting your short on the internet, in fear that it may hinder one's festival run, is dying away. That said, a director, when I mentioned that I'd seen his short online and wanted to write about it, asked that I keep it on the "DL", noting that he was still waiting to hear back from a number of fests and didn't want to jeopardize his chances.

If you get a chance, here's some of the Sundance shorts that are definitely worth finding on your laptop.

Acting for the Camera: A riveting investigation into the artiface and craftsmanship of film acting, this ingenious sixteen minute short by the Newell Brothers, Justin and Thomas, depicts an acting teacher who's bullshit meter is set of when a female student and her awful scene partner perform the fake organism scene from When Harry Met Sally. As he shows them how its done and pushes them toward authenticity, he realizes more about the young woman in the Meg Ryan role that she'd necessarily like. See it on iTunes for one more day.

From Burger it Came: American animator Dominic Bisignano's hilarious short takes a deeply funny look at a middle American child of the 80's obsession with contracting AIDS from a cheeseburger and later, from a hand puppet that had for a few moments occupied the penis of an adventurous friend. Droll and matter of fact, the short is narrated by the boy as a grown man and by his mother, oblivious to just how confused her boy is/was; the synthesis of their voices and the animation makes all to hysterically clear the failures of American sexual education. Also on iTunes.

575 Castro Street: Overwhelmingly melancholy, this brief glimpse at Focus' recreated Harvey Milk photo store/campaign headquarters is a beautiful addendum to Van Sant's Milk. Filmmaker Jenni Olson half a dozen wistful shots of the interiors are accompanied by Milk himself, giving a rousing and terribly sad recorded speech "in the event of my assassination" he says, in which he details his hopes and dreams of equality and fairness for the gay community. On the FilminFocus website.

Hug: A brilliant Columbia MFA short about a young rapper who just needs a hug. Check out Nelson Kim's review of this film from Hammer to Nail. Available on iTunes

Countertransference: Madeleine Olnek's unforgettable Countertransference, about a woman working a an antique store who is neurotically stumbles through a life in which she can never seem to assert her needs or desires, her problems only exacerbated by an unhelpful therapist with exhibitionist tendencies, is a comedic goldmine. Available on iTunes.

Trece Anos: Even amongst shorts, Topaz Adizes' devastating Trece Anos, originally part of a feature work in progress called The Americana Project, has a rigourous economy to it. Unfolding in just four brief scenes, its a tale of a Cuban man returning home from the states after twelve years to a family that isn't the same one he left. Deftly exploring perceptions of America abroad, it articulates how national identity is something we often fail to transcend, especially when we most want to.

# posted by Brandon Harris @ 1/24/2009 06:18:00 AM Comments (0)

Previously I posted some thoughts on the Kevin Lee/YouTube situation, and now, via Lee's Shooting Down Pictures blog, it's great to report that YouTube has responded to criticism and restored Lee's account. In a long post entitled "Things I Learned from Losing -- and Regaining -- my YouTube Account," Lee tells all of us how we can defend ourselves against a similar type of complaint, the nature of copyright laws and why YouTube may not be to blame for his situation, and also how we can fight further for digital rights and fair use issues. Thanks to Kevin for his generous link to and quotation from this blog. He credits the writing of all of us bloggers with convincing YouTube to contact him directly about reinstating his account.

In my blog post I mentioned Lance Weiler's article in the new Filmmaker in which he discussed issues of data portability, which are germane to Lee's situation. That article has just gone online.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/23/2009 06:56:00 PM Comments (0)

I was honored when Sundance asked me to moderate a public discussion with Nick Hornby and David Bezmozgis. Hornby needs little introduction--his beloved novels include About a Boy, High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and How to Be Good. The author wrote the screenplay for An Education (directed by Lone Scherfig), a Sundance '09 favorite starring Peter Sarsgaard and breakout actress, Carey Mulligan (Mulligan's name is on everyone's lips at Sundance; she is also in the Dramatic Competition feature, The Greatest). An Education premiered at Sundance with no distribution and will leave as a Sony Pictures Classics' film (heading next to Berlin). David Bezmozgis is the celebrated Canadian author of Natasha and Other Stories, one of my favorite short story collections of the past decade. Bezmozgis' lovely first feature (which he wrote and directed) -- Victoria Day -- has been warmly received at Sundance. I chatted with Hornby and Bezmozgis for almost an hour (about the process of adaptation, writing fiction versus screenplays, life on a film set as opposed to solitary writing, etc.) before we opened it up to questions from the packed house. The authors were tit for tat in their intelligence and graciousness; that sort of humility seems like an anomaly for a film festival (where self-promotion is practically expected). I highly recommend both authors' films.

An Education could be quite successful for Sony, and marks the arrival of a major talent in Mulligan (whom some audience members compared to a young Cate Blanchett). I hope Bezmozgis' film finds distribution in the United States, but until then, pick up a copy of Natasha and Other Stories. It's a stunning collection (a debut on par with Goodbye, Columbus), and what most excited me from speaking with Bezmozgis is the news that he's close to completing his first novel, which he's been working on for the past four years. It was clear from listening to charmed audience members--and random Park City chatter--that Sundance '09 was an opportunity to meet Carey Mulligan (star of An Education). While it may sound ridiculous to say this less than a week after the Sundance premiere of An Education, but I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised to see Mulligan's performance and Hornby's elegant screenplay receive love from Academy voters in a year. But for now, you can follow the film's progress on Nick's wonderful blog. And Michael Goldman at Digital Content Producer sat down with the film's director, Lone Scherfig, and spoke to her for a podcast you can listen to here.

# posted by James Ponsoldt @ 1/23/2009 05:25:00 PM Comments (0)

Over on the main page, select stories from the Winter issue have been posted.

Steve McQueen talks about his amazing first feature, Hunger; Greg Mottola chats about his return to indie films with Adventureland; and the always talkative James Toback reveals how it was to get inside the mind of Mike Tyson for his documentary, Tyson.

Also, Jon Reiss continues his series of pieces on self-distribution, this time focusing on the home video aspect, and Lance Weiler gives tips on how to build a film industry via the Web.

And much more, enjoy.

Don't forget: You can get the latest issue and archive issues by subscribing for a digital issue. Click here to learn more.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/23/2009 08:56:00 AM Comments (0)

So you come from outside the industry, scrape up enough money to make a small movie about working-class characters... and get slagged off on MSNBC by Courtney Hazlett for being a member of an "elite, effete" group who made a movie that you have to see on "some website." Check out the clip at the link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/23/2009 12:38:00 AM Comments (3)

I'm in the group that believes that physical media -- books, DVDs, CDs -- is essentially going away. I think a sentimental or nostalgic connection will be required to convince us in the future to actually buy something that will sit on our shelves. You love Thomas Pynchon, you have all his books, so when his new one comes out you'll buy it to reconnect to that part of you that used to love to buy things and loved the idea that your own literary cool could be signified by a physical object. That new writer who has gotten great reviews, or perhaps the thriller you'll read at the beach -- those will be bought for the Kindle. Ditto DVDs. Criterion box sets will get fancier and fancier, coming in more elaborately designed housings as the majority of films will be bought digitally.

Or perhaps, if this interesting essay by Kevin Kelly is right, you won't buy anything. In "Better than Owning" Kelly argues that the idea of actually buying any form of media, physical or otherwise, is going away, just like physical books and CDs. In the process, concepts like value, use and the responsibilities of ownership will be redefined.

An excerpt:

Very likely, in the near future, I won't "own" any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won't buy – as in make a decision to own -- any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won't own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to "own" it. I can consume a movie, music or book without having to decide or follow up on ownership.

For many people this type of instant universal access is better than owning. No responsibility of care, backing up, sorting, cataloging, cleaning, or storage. As they gain in public accessibility, books, music and movies are headed to become social goods even though they might not be paid by taxes. It's not hard to imagine most other intangible goods becoming social goods as well. Games, education, and health info are also headed in that direction.

As creations become digital they tend to become shared, ownerless goods. We can turn this around and say that in this realm of bits, property itself becomes a more social endeavor. Property may be less about title and more about usage and control. An idea can't be owned in the way gold can; in fact an idea has little value unless it is shared or used to some extent. Its value paradoxically can increase the less it is owned privately. But if no one owns it, who gains the benefit of that increase in value? In the new regime users will often assume many of the chores that owners once had to do. And so in a way, usage becomes ownership.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/22/2009 10:43:00 PM Comments (4)

I agree with Manohla, the reduced crowds make this Sundance the most pleasant in years. In her just-posted piece in the New York Times on the festival, however, she includes a bit of historical summary that nails the current conundrum facing the independent sector.

An excerpt:

The industry was still in attendance this year, but the high-roller fever that has gripped the festival for the last decade has cooled. Although this made for the most pleasant Sundance in memory, it also presents a host of unknowns. If the studios don’t buy independent films, fewer investors in turn may be inclined to bankroll projects, particularly those with bigger budgets. Yet it is precisely those movies with heftier budgets, and the glossier production values and marquee-ready performers that can come with those budgets — like the ready-made entertainment and 2006 Sundance success story “Little Miss Sunshine” — that distributors believe can help bring in the increasingly finicky audience. If the investors don’t invest and the buyers don’t buy, will the movies still be made, and what kind?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/22/2009 10:27:00 PM Comments (0)

Two years ago at SXSW I stood in line trying to see the premiere of Gary Hustwit's Helvetica. At SXSW, 'natch, the heavy contingent of designers made my attendance impossible as the line snuch through the lobby of the convention center when I arrived. Now, Hustwit has a new doc, Objectified, that will premiere at SXSW this year , and it's about industrial design. So, expect another packed premiere, especially given news on the film's blog that Hustwit filmed an interview with Apple designer Jony Ive inside Apple's super-secret design facility.

Here's the trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/22/2009 10:03:00 PM Comments (0)

The big panel at Sundance this year was called "The Panic Button: Push or Ponder." Here's how it was described:

The sky fell, companies collapsed, and the industry spent much of the year with one hand on the panic button. So, where do we go from here? Is this the end or simply a transition? Of the questions that besiege the industry today (content, distribution, its very identity), maybe the most fundamental is what kind of movies we want to make…and see. Today we ask for a vision of the future; for new models that foster the health, diversity, and creativity of independent filmmaking.

Panelists include Mark Gill (The Film Department), Ted Hope (This is that corporation), Michael Barker (Sony Picture Classics), Jonathan Sehring (IFC), Peter Broderick (Paradigm Consulting), and James Schamus (Focus Features).

Geoff Gilmore moderated this big-picture discussion of where the business is and where it is going. Thanks to the folks at Sundance, HP and also to Todd Sklar, who alerted me to this, here is the entirety in two parts.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/22/2009 06:39:00 PM Comments (0)

I arrived at the "Women In Film" brunch late, sweating, having run up Main Street with too many bags and not enough high-altitude oxygen. The discussion was "A New Social Consciousness In Film." The panelists were Mary Ann Smothers Bruni (DP, Quest For Honor), Beau St. Clair (Producer, The Greatest), Liz Garbus (Director, Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech), Lili Haydn (Composer, Over the Hills and Far Away), Emily & Sarah Kuntsler (Directors, William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe), Nancy Schreiber (DP, Motherhood), and Trudie Styler (Producer, Moon, Crude). I set up my tape recorder, tried to catch my breath and started to listen. Trudie Styler talked about working for social change, Liz Garbus demanded more public discourse about Israel; Sarah Kuntsler pointed out that more evil has occurred on behalf of the legal system than all the illegalities in the history of man. Thirty minutes in, I was restless and confused -- why aren't they talking about women?  Isn't this about being a girl on set? What of the glass ceiling?? Then I realized that they each had much more important things to talk about than being a woman, which was precisely the point and the power of the whole afternoon. 

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 1/21/2009 03:37:00 AM Comments (0)

If you've taken a look around the blogosphere you'll notice that — and on not just this site — postings have slowed from the avalanche of early interviews and features. That's for a couple of reasons. First, some of us pre-screened films, allowing us to get a jump on coverage; and second, for each day that goes by we see more and more films, and there are only so many hours in the day to compose thoughtful coverage. For me, that means I'll be trying to write up my take on some of the more complicated films here after tomorrow, when I head back to New York. (James Ponsoldt will be here until the end of the fest covering the second half films and filmmakers.) I like Dana Perry's Boy Interrupted, for example, but there's no way I can lay down my thoughts about it in a twenty-word blog bite. Ditto Sophie Barthes' elegant Cold Souls, which plays like Woody Allen's Sleeper crossed with the recent globalist thrillers of Olivier Assayas. So expect more on these films and others later in the week, but, for the moment, here are the equivalent of my reporters' notes on a few premiering titles.

I was knocked out last night by Oren Moverman's tough, tough-minded, and enormously powerful The Messenger. It's both moving and intellectually ambitious as it unpredictably refracts the violence of the Iraq war through language, relationships, and belief systems, and it boasts riveting performances by Woody Harrelson and, particularly, Ben Foster (pictured). Lone Scherfig's An Education, from a script by Nick Hornby, is solidly entertaining with a justifiably lauded lead performance by Carey Mulligan, who smoothly moves this initially light-hearted '60s-set take on a relationship between a teen schoolgirl and a callow rogue into deeper emotional waters as the film progresses. I thought Emily Abt brought a fresh energy to Toe to Toe, her story of the friendship between two teenage girls that stretches across Washington, D.C.'s racial divide. The two lead performances by Sonequa Martin and Louisa Krause are excellent, and I wouldn't be surprised to see these actresses noticed here at awards time.

In terms of their emotional register, independent films do love, grief, melancholy and disaffection quite well, but you rarely see anger. I'm not talking about "mad" but instead deep, soul-corroding rage. Lee Toland Krieger's The Vicious Kind may have a familiar set-up — family wounds re-open when an outsider enters the mix — but Adam Scott's misanthropic insomniac is an original, a man whipsawed by and struggling through his own hate and insecurities. Krieger's direction is strong, and Brittany Snow is affecting as the catalyzing, goth-y girlfriend character. Tze Chun's Children of Invention also deserves more notice — if you aren't reading more on this title it's probably because it had the misfortune to press screen opposite the inauguration. In short, though, Chun's film has a real insight into the lives of children buffeted by the economic strains of today's world. Referencing both the mortgage meltdown and Ponzi schemes, the film finds delicate moments of beauty and grace as its child heroes are forced to make their own way. As for Cary Joji Fukunaga's Sin Nombre, because I co-edit the FilmInFocus site we've downplayed that title here... but because Fukunaga was one of our "25 New Faces" in 2005 and I covered the development of the film in a 2006 article on the Sundance Labs, I'll simply point you to the Variety review, which I complete agree with. This is a riveting, astonishing debut film -- suspenseful, emotional and incredibly skillful in the way it ushers the audience into its violent world. Fukunaga has a big future ahead of him.

Visit the rest of Filmmaker's 2009 Sundance coverage.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/20/2009 02:48:00 PM Comments (9)

Writer, director and producer Edward Boyce sent us this blog post about his experience attending Sundance this year as the producer of a short film.

Short. Film.

Bitter. Sweet.

I’m four days into my life as a Sundance anointed short film producer. I’ve felt obliged to schmooz and glad-hand so much that I feel like a reluctant student-council candidate. And good luck trying to wash off some of the weird tinsel-slime that seems to linger on the fringe of the artistic core at Sundance. (Festival resolution #12: never willingly enter a “gifting suite” again.)

It’s a big deal and it’s no big deal. As one festival programmer stressed during her introduction to the Shorts Program IV that I saw on Friday, “You really need to understand what an accomplishment it is to get a short accepted to this festival.” She recited the numbers I’ve now become familiar with: over 5000 shorts submitted, fewer than 100 accepted. Yet as a producer of the Sundance feature The Greatest just remarked to me as we shared a power outlet in the Sundance Filmmakers Lodge: “I’ve produced three shorts at Sundance, and nobody wants to talk to you as a shorts producer. A short is about the directorial debut.”

Ouch! I suppose this is mostly right. And yet kind of a good thing for a production team as tight as ours. It feels a bit like our director, Doug Karr, is gathering some career rocket-fuel and our producers and crew are upgrading the ship, talking shop with the other mechanics. I’ve met some very talented producers who have helped explain the lay of the land a bit: who the deal-makers are, what to expect this time around.

Did I mention that Sundance is a class act? It feels like Redford’s original vision still permeates the waters. The coarse froth of the social scene quickly resolves itself into a number of distinct strata. The top is not necessarily mixing with the bottom. Yet filmmakers are clearly protected, even moderately exalted and given many opportunities to create new friendships with their peers. The programmers are excellent people. Super film nerds. But nerds with power! They seem to be these cinematic mother hens trying to give their nascent, upward looking chicks a nice meal before they maybe fly off into the blue sky or fall straight out of the nest to the ground. More on the films I’ve seen and all the top-notch filmmakers I’ve met in my next post.

It’s generally chill enough here that I felt emboldened to chat up Spike Lee in the filmmaker’s registration area. He’s here with his documentary Passing Strange which is linked to the Broadway musical of the same name. I wrongly assumed he’d been here before but in fact it was his first Sundance. He was in a good mood; he had just visited Robert Redford, he was premiering the next day and then was off to DC for the celebrity world hot-ticket that seems to be solidly competing with Sundance this year.

Although Main Street’s foot-traffic has picked up a lot since I arrived, everyone agrees that it’s a little light. Three often cited factors seem to be thinning the ranks: Obama’s inaguration, Bush’s economy, and the Mormon’s support of Prop 8.

We premiered Saturday night before the feature Victoria Day. It went really well. A full house at the Egyptian and our film was apparently a lot funnier than we ever knew. Big screens and big crowds: intoxicating. Three more Sundance screenings and tomorrow we’ve been invited to screen for an audience of Park City High School students; we’ll see what the kids have to say.

If we can keep our director from running more red lights (already pulled over once, he somehow charmed his way out of a ticket with his credentials), and keep the 22 Canadians we have housed in a mansion on the hill all fed and plied with drink, then this week should just keep getting better.

Edward Boyce is a writer, director and producer. Ten For Grandpa is in the International Shorts Competition at Sundance 2009. www.tenforgrandpa.com

(photo: Stay the Same Never Change director Laurel Nakadate taken by Ten for Grandpa director Doug Karr at the Robert Redford-hosted Sundance brunch.)

Visit the rest of Filmmaker's 2009 Sundance coverage.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/20/2009 04:18:00 AM Comments (1)

At a Sundance press breakfast this morning IFC Films announced a partnership with SXSW in which five films screening at the festival will be available simultaneously on IFC's on-demand platform. The films include Joe Swanberg's premiering Alexander the Last as well as our Filmmaker mag cover film Medicine for Melancholy, which will return to the festival for a special screening.

Attending the event was Steven Soderbergh, who spoke about independent filmmakers' need to "let go of the fantasy" that their film will receive a conventional theatrical release in this tough climate. He also quipped that the Festival Direct program appealed to him because of the name's association with Fresh Direct, the online service he uses for his grocery shopping. IFC's Jonathan Sehring mentioned one advantage of the program is its ability to reduce the cost of releasing a film. He argued that the releasing strategy will allow producers and sales agents to avoid the problems of studio accounting.

Swanberg said, "These movies have a moment when people are looking at them, and (for my movies) that was the festival premiere." He spoke about the difficulty of sustaining interest in a film across the duration of a slow multi-city roll-out, and said that he prefers the concept of creating a single event that will drive ancillary distribution in new media platforms.

When asked whether on demand could cannibalize festival attendance, SXSW head Janet Pierson said a festival's mission is to connect talent with audiences, and she echoed Swanberg's comments about "capitalizing on the wave" of interest in a film that a festival premiere creates. She said she thinks that a festival premiere is a different experience than home viewing and believes audiences will still thirst for that in-person event.

Journalist and fest programmer Tom Hall asked if this deal will kill the idea of a festival run for filmmakers like Swanberg, who have built up audiences in different cities by playing at the regional fests. Swanberg threw the question back at the programmers in the audience: "You tell me whether it will kill the festival run. All I can do is send you the film and you will have to decide if you don't want to program it because it's on VOD."

Spout's Karina Longworth asked Sehring whether on demand revenue numbers will ever be publicly released like box office numbers are now; Sehring cited information available on certain tracking services like Rentrak but claimed that affiliate agreeents currently prevent the public release of these numbers.

When asked about how BluRay will impact our future viewing, Soderbergh called it the "worst launch of a new format in the history of formats. I think they had a window of opportunity they totally missed because of the HD/Blu-Ray(war)."

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/19/2009 11:44:00 AM Comments (3)

While some in the industry are at Sundance and others are preparing for the inauguration, the folks at SAG, according to a post on the Digital Media Law blog, are engaged in knock down cage fight. Check the account of the proceedings at the link.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/19/2009 03:21:00 AM Comments (0)

In the first major deal of the festival, Antoine Fuqua's cop drama Brooklyn's Finest was sold to Senator, reports Gregg Goldstein at MovieCityNews, in a "low-to-mid seven-figure pact" with a "$10 million P&A commitment." Senator President Mark Urman has always been good for a quote, and that's no exception here. After noting to Mike Jones at Variety his personal connection to the material -- "Being from Brooklyn, this film is important to me" -- he muses on the film's poorly-received, Hamlet-like ending with the kind of postmodernist flair I'd expect to hear in a discussion of the David Foster Wallace adaptation that's here. "It strikes me that the ending will be different," he says to Jones. "But Antoine must be happy with it." To Goldstein he goes further, summoning up the spirit of Borges and Calvino. After saying that "yes, of course" the ending will be cut, he continues about that final bloodbath seen by 1,100 people at the Eccles the other night: "It’s apparently not even in the script, and I view the very ending as something that's not even in the movie.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/18/2009 12:27:00 PM Comments (2)

Before I head out to Strand Releasing's 20th Anniversary dinner here at Sundance I want to quickly note John Maringouin's eccentric and winning documentary Big River Man. It's like an updated, black comic Aguirre, the Wrath of God with the quest for power and search for gold replaced by the subject's environmental consciousness and love affair with both long distance swimming and the media. Briefly, it's the tale of 52-year-old Slovenian swimmer Martin Strel, who, after swimming many of the world's longest rivers, decides to swim the length of the Amazon to both complete his life goal but to also call attention to global warming and the plight of the Amazon rain forest. Like Aquirre, he descends into madness but it's of a much more gently eccentric variety.

Back in 2006 I selected Maringouin as one of this magazine's "25 New Faces" for his previous doc, Running Stumbled. At the time he had recently finished a tour doc for the Jackass folks, and Running Stumbled was a crazy, vivdly expressionistic mix of personal psychodrama and film/video art. For Big River Man, Maringouin has pulled back on his more confrontational strategies while still not being afraid to engagingly play with video formats or insert an out-of-the-blue music cue that will amp up his film's drama just one more notch. Big River Man is an enormously entertaining doc that takes a series of unexpected turns, and you should make a point of checking it out.

For our complete Sundance 2009 coverage go here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 08:44:00 PM Comments (0)

If you're in Park City and you've heard of the internet, you should try to get into the New Frontiers lounge tonight on Main Street for "Night of a Thousand Megabytes," an installation/performance by Nasty Nets. Nasty Nets is a collective of internet artists who have gathered together as an "internet surfing club." Almost a dozen of the 25 members are here, and they have big plans from 9pm - 2am. Expect such feats as grapes being eaten off of a boom mic, a live ichat performance from a member in Tokyo, a rendition in a to-be-disclosed medium of an entire Ramones album, a live directors commentary of a never-before-seen film starring an actress whose name rhymes with Mooma Murman, etcetera. 

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 1/17/2009 05:27:00 PM Comments (0)

 Overheard before the press conference for Doug Pray's Art & Copy, a documentary about the  creative greats of the last fifty years of advertising, which is gaining buzz here at the festival: 

# posted by Alicia Van Couvering @ 1/17/2009 04:03:00 PM Comments (0)

Last night director Lynn Shelton's Facebook status report was "Lynn Shelton is... wow." An appropriate indicator of her mood and well-being because, as Mike Jones reports in Variety, her well-loved Humpday is "in play," with four distributors circling. With all the speculation about sales and acquisitions, it's great that this true indie from the Pacific Northwest is the first major buzzed-about title here. Expect Nick Dawson's inteview with Shelton on these pages in the next few days. (And you can also check out my take on Shelton's previous film here.)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 12:24:00 PM Comments (0)

Courtesy of the Workbook Project, here is Ted Hope's closing speech at the Sundance Art House Convergence confeence. From their description:

This year before Sundance kicked off a number of exhibitors, bookers and filmmakers gathered for an event called Art House Convergence. During the three day conference 51 Art Houses met in Salt Lake City to discuss the major issues facing the industry and how they can work together to share resources. The following video is of producer Ted Hope’s closing keynote. Hope’s remarks present his vision of where filmmakers will be a year from now thanks to new distribution models and methods.

Ted Hope Art House Convergence Closing Remarks from joe zina on Vimeo.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 11:53:00 AM Comments (0)

I may be at Sundance, but it's still cool to be able to embed Grant Gee's Joy Division doc for you here, courtesy of Pitchfork. It's live for one week.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 03:21:00 AM Comments (0)

Wake up, edit a few pieces for our standalone festival page, and then head to the registration office where I get my badge in about one minute's time. Walk over to a press screening where I enter just as the movie is starting and get a seat. Later, meet some friends and snag a table for six on Main Street for dinner. Another press screening -- this time I stroll in during the opening credits and easily score a good seat.

Am I at Sundance?

Yes, it is quieter this year. It feels like a lot less people are here. I haven't made it to a big screening at the Eccles yet, but most people I talk to are also getting into theaters, parties and finding parking spaces. It all feels quite nice, even if it's also a bit disconcerting. Also nice tonight was a reception the IFP and Filmmaker hosted for the Sundance Arthouse Convergence conference (pictured above). Attendees included Ted Hope, Peter Broderick, Jason Kliot and Joana Vicente, Pete Sollett, Eva Vives, Tony Liano, Slava Rubin, Frazer Bradshaw, Todd Rohal, Tze Chun, Mynette Louie, Sophia Lin, Silvestre Rasuk and quite a few others.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 03:20:00 AM Comments (0)

Just a couple of days after I noted SAG's response to the question of whether or not studios could acquire films made under their Guaranteed Completion Contracts, the guild has now decided to stop issuing these waivers to indie films entirely. Dave McNary reports in Variety:

With a SAG strike becoming less likely, the Screen Actors Guild has announced it's pulled the plug on offering waivers to indie film producers that would allow production to continue if there's a work stoppage.

SAG made the brief announcement Friday evening, suspending a program that's covered over 800 productions in about a year.

In their statement, SAG says that the "Guaranteed Completion Contracts have served their purpose" and are now to be discontinued. What purpose is that? Allowing their members to be hired and to have their salaries, health care and pensions paid for by independent producers who are not parties to the failed studio negotiations? In their initial statement, which now I can't seem to find online, SAG mentioned that producers could work under the 2005 Minimum Basic Agreement. But, as producer Noah Harlan noted to me in an email:

The concern is that if SAG goes on strike our projects will be shut down as well. That means that financing is going to get tough as debt services (gap, incentive cash flows, MG advances) won't be able to get completion bond companies to back them and thus won't commit. Basically it makes going into pre-production from now until this is resolved a potentially risky endeavor. To avoid this situation SAG offered Guaranteed Completion Contracts starting last June when the current agreement ran out. Those contracts allowed films that were not directly related to a studio (or other member of the AMPTP) to film regardless of whether there was a strike. The conditions were that the distributors would have to adhere to the final terms agreed to in the negotiations with the AMPTP when that gets resolved. There were 800 of those contracts issued.

Of course, many don't believe SAG will get the votes needed for a strike from its membership, but this is still a dispiriting development for independent producers trying to maintain their output during these economically challenging times.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/17/2009 02:44:00 AM Comments (0)

I wrote for the FilmInFocus site a piece on Cary Fukunaga's journey from Sundance (the festival in 2005 and Labs in 2006) to Sundance (this year's Dramatic Competition with his film, Sin Nombre). Fukunaga was one of our "25 New Faces," and we are big fans of his. In the piece, I recount his work at the Labs and hear from the actors about the way in which they worked with on the set.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/16/2009 07:19:00 PM Comments (0)

Kicking off the 25th anniversary of the Sundance Film Festival Thursday, Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford welcomed a capacity crowd to the opening night world premiere of Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max at the Eccles Theater in Park City.

In his remarks, Redford briefly recapped the history of the festival and expressed optimism about the incoming Obama administration, saying “I think this can be a very exciting time for artists” as the nation’s priorities begin to shift, then introduced Mary and Max writer-director-animator Elliot, whose 2003 Harvie Krumpet won an Oscar for best animated short film after screening at Sundance.

Another traditional stop-motion claymation film, Mary and Max is Elliot’s feature debut. Work on the 92-minute film took more than a year to complete, with all the character and background elements hand-crafted by Elliot and his co-animators. It marks both the first fully animated title and first Australian film to open Sundance.

Elliott based his script of a 1970s pen pal friendship between Mary (voiced by Toni Collette), a lonely Australian girl, and Max, a neurotic, middle-aged New Yorker (voiced by Philip Seymour Hoffman), on his own youthful correspondence with his American pen friend. The story tracks their parallel challenges with growing up and growing older, switching back and forth between Australian and New York settings.

The film is a wonder of stop-motion artistry, with each character movement and change of scenery individually crafted. Elliot contrasts the settings with a brown color scheme for Australia and grey for New York -- palettes that add resonance to the characters’ challenging life situations.

Unfortunately, the epistolary structure creates an episodic storyline that gradually drags on the narrative momentum, although Collette and Hoffman are consistently enjoyable as the lead characters. While the film strives for an embracing humanism, the final scenes are overly downbeat.

Too adult for children and too childish for adults, Mary and Max looks unlikely to reach US theatrical audiences (Icon is selling international rights), but should enjoy a healthy run as a festival staple throughout the year.

A comfortably crowded party followed the screening at Park City’s Legacy Lodge, where filmmakers mingled with sponsors, press, audience members and festival staff. The mood was buoyant despite talk of lighter attendance and a lower-key atmosphere this year -- expectations still awaiting validation.

Mary and Max leads off 10 days of screenings, panels, parties and public events, and with mild, sunny weather in Park City, turnout should be enthusiastic.

# posted by Justin Lowe @ 1/16/2009 02:26:00 PM Comments (0)

Ted Hope gave the closing speech at the festival's conference bringing together exhibitors and filmmakers. It's long, and I'm packing and getting ready to head to the airport, so I don't have time to read it carefully and post my thoughts, but I'll try to in the next couple of days. For now, I'm linking to it and running the first three paragraphs here. Read it and post your thoughts.

The beginning:

In case you haven’t heard, our business is in the midst of a transformation from a limited supply gatekeeper entertainment economy based on impulse buys to a new paradigm
based on creator-controlled content and an ongoing dialogue with the audience. This affects all of us: filmmakers, exhibitors, distributors, and film lovers.

It once was that distributors generally only made available films that fit their pre-existing marketing model. Their marketing spend was not based on the film’s content – but their acquisition or production of a film was based on justifying that pre-set marketing spend. We (both the filmmaking and film exhibiting community) are now just learning how to determine, and to access, what an appropriate marketing spend -- based on the film that was actually made – is, and in the process, we are learning how to prepare for, access, and exploit what have far too long been under-utilized tools and practices: community, collaboration, and appreciation.

Community, collaboration, and appreciation. These tools are the new tools. These are the good old tools. These tools are where our marketing money also now needs to be spent.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/15/2009 03:18:00 PM Comments (0)

Over at Movie City News's "10 Days of Sundance," Ray Pride has posted a spirited rejoinder to some of the online Sundance sourpusses who are either celebrating their non-attendance or kvetching already about the shuttle and movie lines they'll be standing in. Encompassing Dennis Hopper, the Joker, Sarah Palin and Lance Hammer, it begins:

THE OTHER DAY, I READ A CYNICAL PIECE OF TRASH by someone who hates this film festival among other things in her or his life and career. It infuriated me. I wish it could be forgotten, made unread. The bit read like some other pieces, about myriad minor irritations, a day without dry socks, a slowly shuffling shuttle, the terror of slush and indifferent films among 150 or so on show, about branding and renegade brands skeeching behind the Sundance Express, rendered as a bewildered concatenation of kitten-like sneezes. "There are two kinds of music," Duke Ellington noted. "Good music and the other kind." The same applies to the movies coming up, and to be blunt about it, the days of your life, which include the moments in 10 days of Sundance to come, about which I roundly refuse to be uninformed and cynical, or non-analytic and pessimistic. Was it Oscar Wilde who observed that the worst belittlement you could bestow upon yourself is to boast that you are bored?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/15/2009 01:51:00 PM Comments (0)

Once again Sundance has teamed with iTunes to showcase a collection of shorts during the fest for free. From January 15 through January 25, visit www.itunes.com/sundance to view 10 shorts from this year's festival representing a variety of countries, styles, genres, and stories.

They include:


Acting for the Camera (Director: Justin Nowell; Screenwriter: Thomas
Nowell)-An acting class. Today's scene: the orgasm from 'When Harry Met
Sally.'


Countertransference (Director: Madeleine Olnek; Screenwriters: Madeleine
Olnek and Cast)-A comedy about an awkward woman with assertiveness
problems who seeks the questionable help of a therapist.


HUG (Director: Khary Jones)-Drew is a musician with a contract ready to
sign. When Asa, his friend and manager, realizes Drew is off his meds
the across-town drive to sign the contract becomes significantly more
complicated.


Field Notes From Dimension X: Oasis (Director: Carson Mell)-Captain Fred
T. Rogard muses in isolation on planet Oasis.


From Burger It Came (Director: Dominic Bisignano)-An animated film that
recounts early 1980s-era Cold War fears of a young boy in middle
America. Using a variety of techniques, the visual narrative is
colorfully assembled over semi-documentary audio conversations between a
grown adult recounting his fears and his mother's memory of the time and
her own concerns.


I Live In The Woods (Director: Max Winston)-A Woodsman's fast-paced
journey, fueled by happiness, slaughter, and a confrontation with
America's God.


Instead of Abracadabra/Sweden (Director and Screenwriter: Patrik
Eklund)--Tomas is a little bit too old to still be living with his
parents, but his dream of becoming a magician leaves him with no other
option.


James/Northern Ireland (Director: Connor Clements)-A young man grapples
with the impulses and thoughts about being gay.


Magnetic Movie/UK (Directors: Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman + Joe
Gerhardt)-Natural magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing
geometries, as scientists from NASA's space sciences laboratory
excitedly describe their discoveries.


This Way Up/UK (Directors: Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith; Screenwriters: Adam
Foulkes, Alan Smith, Christopher O'Reilly)-Laying the dead to rest has
never been so much trouble.

# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 1/14/2009 10:02:00 PM Comments (5)

Michael Cieply had a provocative piece this morning in the New York Times' Carpetbagger blog in which he wondered:

An interesting question — and at this point, it’s only that — has been floating among the people who buy movie rights for big studios and their specialty divisions at festivals like Sundance, which begins on Thursday: Can they, or should they, buy films that were produced under waiver agreements with the Screen Actors Guild?

Because these waiver agreements oblige filmmakers to adhere to the final terms of the SAG-AMPTP contract, and that contract has not been negotiated, the thinking goes that a filmmaker can't legitimately sell his or her movie to an AMPTP (aka studio) company.

If this were to be true, this would be gigantic news -- it would wipe out Sundance as an acqusitions market for the majority of its commercially viable films. Pretty knocked out by this, I did something very traditional media -- I made some calls. First I left word for SAG's public relations office, who said they would get back to me. Then I called an industry vet who is involved in both the production and sales of more than one Sundance feature. He hadn't read the piece, but when I read it to him, he erupted, "If SAG is pretending that indies can get financed under an interim agreement and at the end of the day are using it as leverage to squeeze the studios, then that is a disgrace."

Fortunately, though, that bad faith doomsday scenario will not come to be. By the end of the day, SAG did get back to me and directed me to this statement which they posted on their website that would seem to resolve the issue. I am posting it below.

To Screen Actors Guild Guaranteed Completion Agreement (GCA) signatories:

It has come to the Guild attention that some distributors of Guild-covered projects have expressed concerns about risks associated with distributing projects covered by GCAs in the event of a Guild work stoppage. As you know, one of the benefits of being signatory to a Guild GCA is the assurance that any work stoppage would not affect the continued production of the picture.

GCA signatories and distributors have the Guild’s full and complete assurance that there will be no disruption of distribution of projects properly covered by Guild GCAs due to any work stoppage. Signatories or distributors with questions should feel free to contact the Guild’s Theatrical Contracts department at (323) 549-6828.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/14/2009 08:48:00 PM Comments (0)

Filmmaker leaves for Sundance on Thursday and before leaving we've launched our Sundance micro-site, where you'll find all of our blog, feature, news and interview coverage of the festival. Check it now -- a number of pieces are up, including Alicia Van Couvering's conversations with filmmakers anticipating Sundance, my piece on the Sundance Archive Program and Anthony Kaufman's article on LGBT filmmaking at Sundance following the Prop-8 battle. We'll also be running each day responses from filmmakers to our annual Sundance question. This year we asked directors how their conception of story was affected by the changes occurring across our filmmaking as well as social and political landscapes this year.

New material will go up every day, so check back often. And, also, if you are a Filmmaker reader headed for Park City and you see a film you're especially passionate about, please feel free to email me your thoughts at editor.filmmaker AT gmail.com, and I'll try to post them in a few "reader feedback" posts throughout the fest.

See you in Park City.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 11:41:00 PM Comments (0)

I tend to be a check-in, sit on my hotel or condo bed and go through the catalog kind of person. I don't really plan my schedule way in advance. This year I've taken a longer look at the catalog than usual and jotted down a few thoughts on some films I want to see and a couple that we know a little bit more about. Consider these the equivalent of notebook scribblings and reminders-to-self — more coherent (and substantive) writing on many of these films will follow later.

Dramatic Competition

Amreeka: I saw the first 18 minutes of this story of a Palestinian woman and her teenage son's move to the United States as a work-in-progress screening at Dubai, and the project was a selection of the Fast Track program, a joint venture between this magazine and the Los Angeles Film Festival. The section I saw was extremely promising, and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest.

Big Fan: I read this script by the screenwriter of The Wrestler several years ago and liked it.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: I don't know much about this project other than that it is a long-awaited adaptation/expansion of short stories by the late David Foster Wallace. I'm a big Wallace fan, so this is another film I'm eager to see.

Cold Souls (pictured): Writer/director Sophie Barthes was one of our "25 New Faces" last year, and I love the concept of this movie. A depressed stage actor decides to lighten his load by having his soul extracted; the soul is then sold to a Russian soap opera actress. This is probably the film I'm looking forward to the most.

Dare: Featured a little while ago in our "In Focus" column, there's good buzz on this one.

Don't Let Me Drown: First Sundance Competition film for the hot producing duo of Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen.

The Greatest: Shana Feste was one of this year's "25 New Faces," and the script was quite smart.

Humpday: The concept reads like an Apatow bromance, but Shelton mined similar male bonding territory in her previous My Effortless Brilliance and brought her own touch and insights to the story. I've heard good early word on this one.

Paper Heart: Due to the presence of Michael Cera, the industry is buzzing loudest about this one.

Push: The screenplay adaptation of Sapphire's modern classic was devasating. I'm eager to see it and the performance of newcomer Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe.

Sin Nombre: Do. Not. Miss. This. Film. (Writer/director Cary Fukunaga, another "25 New Face.")

Taking Chance: HBO's been sending out screeners and I'm trying to watch mine before I head off to the fest. I'm interested to see what producer-turned-director Katz has done for his solo directing debut.

Toe to Toe: Another film previously featured in our "In Focus" column, and it co-stars Raising Victor Vargas's Sylvestre Rasuk.

Documentary Competition.

Boy Interrupted. I'll have more on this moving story of a couple's loss of their son to suicide later in the week.

El General: We have liked director Natalia Almada's previous work, having picked her Al Otro Lado as one of our 2005 Best Films Not Playing at a Theater Near You nominees.

The Reckoning: Very interested in this doc on the International Criminal Court.

Reporter: This doc on the African work of New York Times reporter Nicolas Kristof has very strong early buzz.

The September Issue: I like R.J.Cutler's work, but I guess I'm especially interested in seeing his take on the production of a single issue of Vogue magazine just to laughingly compare it in my head to our own stripped-down procedures at Filmmaker.

We Live in Public: I'm interested in the subject (the effect of the internet on privacy and the concept of public life), and director Ondi Timoner is very smart about new media issues.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe. Interested in seeing how his daughters portray their famous civil-rights lawyer dad.


Premieres

Adventureland. An interview with director Greg Mottola will be online and in our Winter print issue. Nick Dawson, Jason Guerrasio and I all really like this sweet, occasionally melancholic look at post-high-school, pre-college romance. Stars Jesse Eisenberg and Twilight's Kristen Johnson (both excellent).

Brooklyn's Finest: What's an Antoine Fuqua cop movie doing at Sundance? I guess we'll find out.

The Messenger: Screenwriter-turned-director Owen Moverman was interviewed for Filmmaker as part of our coverage of Todd Haynes's I'm Not There. I've heard good things about this, word that's confirmed by the film's selection for competition in Berlin.

Moon: Don't know much about this other than it was directed by David Bowie's son (formerly Zowie).

Motherhood: Killer produced, Katherine Dieckmann is a smart director, and the concept is simple but with a lot of potential -- this film seems like it could be commercial in a good way.

Spectrum:

Against the Current: 25 New Face Sean Kirby shot this sure-to-be-emotional story of a man who swims the Hudson as a way of dealing with the death of his wife.

Children of Invention. 25 New Face Tze Che expands his excellent short Windowbreaker into a timely film that deals with not only child abandonment issues but also the real estate crisis and pyramid schemes.

Everything Strange and New: I've heard good advance buzz on this one.

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle: The concept, which I won't reveal, should not work... except I saw a few scenes from this and it seems like the very talented director David Russo (another 25 New Face) has absolutely nailed the perfect tone. What I saw felt very original.

The Missing Person: Director Noah Buschel submitted my favorite answer to our annual Filmmaker Sundance question, an answer that made me doubly want to see what sounds like an American Friend-ish philosophical thriller.

Frontier

You Won't Miss Me. Look for more on this site about Ry Russo-Young's second film, which stars Stella Schnabel as a young woman in crisis.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 11:06:00 PM Comments (0)

On this blog we've posted the line-ups of the various Sundance sections, but we forgot to include the shorts. So, to make up, Max Friend in the Filmmaker office has compiled this exhaustive post listing not only all the shorts but also hyperlinks taking you to info on the films, the filmmakers and sometimes the films themselves. Enjoy.


U.S. Dramatic Shorts

Abbie Cancelled (Directors: Dumb Bunny) — Two couples who have never met find themselves engaged in an awkward dinner after their mutual friends cancel at the last second.

Acting for the Camera (Director: Justin Nowell; Screenwriter: Thomas Nowell) — An acting class. Today's scene: the orgasm from When Harry Met Sally.

Asshole (Director: Chadd Harbold; Screenwriter: Bryan Gaynor) — Vincent Allen goes to the doctor for a diagnosis. The diagnosis: he's an asshole.

Boutonniere (Director: Coley Sohn) — A dark comedy revolving around a simple teenage girl's attempts to survive her overbearing mother's exuberant plans for a prom she'd rather not attend.

Choices (Director: Rashaad Ernesto Green) — Explores a young man's thought process as he makes love to his girlfriend.

Concerto (Director: Filippo Conz; Screenwriter: Jon Haller) — A drama about the lengths men will go to find a moment of grace in a violent world.

Copper On The Chopping Block (Director: Kai Orion) — Tormented by the cultural reality he finds himself in, Yalmer plots revenge upon a close relative.

Countertransference (Director: Madeleine Olnek;Screenwriters: Madeleine Olnek and Cast)—A comedy about an awkward woman with assertiveness problems who seeks the questionable help of a therapist.

The Dirty Ones (Director: Brent Stewart)—Two Mennonite sisters are traveling throughout Southern states with the body of their dead grandmother lying in the trunk bed. Produced by Harmony Korine.

HUG (Director: Khary Jones) — Drew is a musician with a contract ready to sign. When Asa, his friend and manager, realizes Drew is off his meds the across-town drive to sign the contract becomes significantly more complicated.

Knife Point (Director: Carlo Mirabella-Davis) — An evangelical family passing through upstate New York gives a ride to an unusual traveling knife salesman. Link to the music.

Little Canyon (Director: Olivia Silver) — Greta's dad is moving the family cross-country. Promising a California paradise he packs half the household into a dented station wagon. All that's missing is Mom.

Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: Rope A Dope (Director: Laurent Briet) — Alana, a 10-year-old bad-ass little girl goes head to head with a professional boxer in a jump rope contest. The film can be seen here.

Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: She Walked Calmly Disappearing Into The Darkness (Director: Malik Hassan Sayeed) — A young man tries to sort out what has happened during the chaos of a street side shooting.
See the film.

The Nature Between Us (Director: William Campbell; Screenwriter: Trey Hock) — Radical dudes, mega babes and a secret crush stumble into a neon-drenched universal oneness.

Nobody Knows You, Nobody Gives a Damn (Director: Lee Stratford; Screenwriter: Rebecca Thomas) — A young mother struggling with post-partum depression inadvertently connects with her infant child through attempts to sort out her sexual relationships.

Our Neck Of The Woods (Director: Rob Connolly) — Bob Underwood's mundane life manufacturing plastic lawn-ornament deer is disrupted by an enchanting Georgian (the country) refugee whom Bob decides to rescue--whether she needs it or not. Film's website.

Pencil Face (pictured) (Director: Christian Simmons) — A young girl makes friends with an unlikely being able to bring her dreams to life. But behind his smile lurks something unsettling.
The Film.

Sparks (Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt) — The story of a former rock and roll goddess who may or may not have burnt her house down. Adapted from the writings of crime novelist Elmore Leonard.

Predisposed (Director: Philip Dorling; Screenwriters: Philip Dorling, Ryan Nyswaner) — A conservative son is pulled into the messy mission of helping his manipulative drug addicted mother score. In working together they realize they're not so different, and that some personal qualities are deeply embedded in our genes.

Protect You + Me (Director: Brady Corbet) — A reminder of a long-forgotten event, combined with a challenging situation, provokes a man to extreme action.

Rite (Director: Alicia Conway) — A young girl faces an unsettling ritual.

Short Term 12 (Director: Destin Daniel Cretton)—A film about kids and the grown-ups who hit them. Trailer.

Small Collection (Director: Jeremiah Crowell) — A love story caught in the corridors of memory. Through fragments of conversations still echoing in now empty places, we piece together the record of a relationship cut short. An image.

Trece Años (Director: Topaz Adizes) — A young man returns home to his family in Cuba for the first time in 13 years experiencing a divide greater than physical distance.

Wunderkammer (Director: Andrea Pallaoro; Screenwriters: Andrea Pallaoro and Orlando Tirado) — An exploration of the dynamics of the co-dependent relationship between an aging woman and her mentally challenged son.
The film.

The Young and Evil (Director: Julian Breece) — A highly intelligent but troubled gay black teenager sets out to seduce an HIV-positive prevention advocate into giving him the virus.
Trailer.


U.S. Documentary Shorts

575 Castro St. (Director: Jenni Olson)—Set to the original audio-cassette recorded by Harvey Milk in November 1977 to be played, 'in the event of my death by assassination'. The Film.

The Archive (Director: Sean Dunne) — An eight-minute documentary about the world's largest vinyl record collection examining the man who owns them and the current state of the American record industry.

Chop Off (Director: M.M. Serra) —A n exposition of the dark, fearful recesses of the human psyche by filming the body modification of performance artist R.K. who literally risks 'life and limb.' R.K.'s body is his medium and amputation is his art.
Photo.
http://www.nzfilm.co.nz/FilmCatalogue/Films/Chop-Off.aspx

Good: Atomic Alert (Director: Max Joseph) — An examination of nuclear arms asking; who has them, what are their intentions, and what would happen if a nuclear weapon hit New York City?

Good: Internet Censorship (Directors: Morgan Currie, Lindsay Utz, James Jones; Screenwriter: Mattathias Schwartz)—Internet censorship can take many forms, from restricting private internet access to blocking searches for politically volatile keywords. This film explores how different countries apply their bodies of censorship to cyberspace. The film.

I Knew It Was You (Director: Richard Shepard)—John Cazale appeared in just five films -- The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather, Part Two, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter -- and all were nominated for Best Picture. This documentary is a fresh portrait of the acting craft and a tour through the movies that defined a generation.

The Kinda Sutra (Director: Jessica Yu) — A combination of interview and animation, that explores the youthful misconceptions of a spectrum of people over the universal question: How are babies made? The film.

So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away (Director: Annie P. Waldman) — Two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, desiring to graduate high school with their friends, a group of students return to New Orleans despite their parents' relocation and absence.

Sister Wife (Director: Jill Orschel; Screenwriters: Alexandra Fuller, Jill Orschel) — DoriAnn, a Mormon Fundamentalist, shares a husband with her younger biological sister. During a private bathing ritual, DoriAnn explores the surprisingly universal challenges of her marriage.

SUSPENDED (Director: Kimi Takesue) — The film both documents and re-contextualizes the experience and perception of suspended time capturing a range of evocative moments that reveal states of emotional and physical suspension.

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall (Directors: Sam Green, Carrie Lozano) — A tour of the world's largest shopping mall, located near Guangzhou, China. Built three years ago, the South China Mall was supposed to be a celebration of consumerism and Vegas-like spectacle. Photo/Article.

U.S. Animated Shorts

Dear Beautiful (Director: Roland Becerra; Screenwriters: Roland Becerra, Meredith DiMenna)—The sudden appearance of exotic flowers in New Haven spawns an unprecedented epidemic that threatens to destroy the city. Paul and Lauren, a married couple, are caught between the catastrophe and their own troubled relationship. See trailer.

Field Notes From Dimension X: Oasis (Director: Carson Mell) — Captain Fred T. Rogard muses in isolation on planet Oasis. See trailer.

From Burger It Came (Director: Dominic Bisignano)—An animated film that recounts early 1980s-era Cold War fears of a young boy in middle America. Using a variety of techniques, the visual narrative is colorfully assembled over semi-documentary audio conversations between a grown adult recounting his fears and his mother's memory of the time and her own concerns. See clip.

Hot Dog (Director: Bill Plympton)—Our plucky hero joins the fire company to save the world from house fires and gain the affection he so richly deserves. Typically, the results never turn out the way he planned. See press kit.

I Am So Proud Of You (Director: Don Hertzfeldt)—Dark family secrets cast a shadow over Bill's recovery; in this second chapter to Don Hertzfeldt's 'Everything will be OK'. (Winner of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Grand Jury Prize, U.S.). Read interview with director.

I Live In The Woods (Director: Max Winston)—A Woodsman's fast-paced journey, fueled by happiness, slaughter, and a confrontation with America's God. See trailer.

Joel Stein's Completely Unfabricated Adventures (Director: Walter Robot; Screenwriter: Joel Stein)—Journalist Joel Stein takes us on an animated adventure through the waste treatment plant of Orange County. Visit writer Joel Stein's website.

Western Spaghetti (Director: PES)—Everyday objects become delicious ingredients as we learn how to cook spaghetti through stop-motion. See film.

The Yellow Bird (Director: Tom Schroeder; Screenwriter: Jay Orff)—The animated journey of a young man fleeing the draft during World War I. After taking a job on a cattle ranch in eastern Montana an accident occurs causing him to reflect back on his life as he seeks medical attention in a nearby town. See photo & article.


International Dramatic Shorts

2 Birds/Iceland (Director and Screenwriter: Runar Runarsson)—A group of young teenagers embark on a journey from innocence to the stark reality of adulthood. See filmmaker's website about the film.

Secret Machine/Germany (Director: Reynold Reynolds)—2) Secret Machine is the second from a three-part cycle exploring the unperceivable conditions that frame life using stop motion animation to portray the futuristic deconstruction of the female protagonist's form. See exhibition page.

A'Mare/UK (Director: Martina Amati; Screenwriters: Martina Amati and Dario Cané)—Andrea and Felice are two kids whose lives center on the sea. One day during a fishing excursion their usual routine is disturbed when something unexpected appears from the water. See production info.

The attack of the robots from Nebula-5/Spain (Director: Chema García Ibarra)—"Almost" everybody is going to die very soon. See info and awards.

BAIT/Israel (Director: Michal Vinik)—On a hot summer day, tomboy teenager Nitzan is on her way fishing. Will she catch the right fish? See production info.

The Blindness of the Woods/Argentina (Directors and Screenwriters: Martin Jalfen, Javier Lourenco)—A narrative that combines the naive simplicity of fairytales with the Nordic erotic movies from the 1970s. See website and article.

Captain Coulier (Space Explorer)/Canada (Director and Screenwriter: Lyndon Casey)—An aloof space captain becomes restless amongst his robotic crew. Maybe intergalactic space travel isn't his shtick. See film's website.

Crocodiles and I/Brazil (Director and Screenwriter: Marcela Arantes)—The emotional conflicts and discovery typical of adolescence are expressed in Rachel's daily life and dreams.

Instead of Abracadabra/Sweden (Director and Screenwriter: Patrik Eklund) —Tomas is a little bit too old to still be living with his parents, but his dream of becoming a magician leaves him with no other option. See website.

James/Northern Ireland (Director: Connor Clements)—A young Irish man grapples with the impulses and thoughts about being gay. See photo, info, and awards.

Jerrycan/Australia (Director and Screenwriter: Julius Avery)—While attending a party, five bored kids decide to blow something up. A childhood game seals the fate of Nathan, who risks everything after he is bullied, and is forced to make a life and death decision. See trailer.

Love You More/UK (Director: Sam Taylor-Wood; Screenwriter: Patrick Marber)—Two teenagers are drawn together by the Buzzcocks' single 'Love You More' during the summer of 1978. See photo and article.

Miracle Fish/Australia (Director: Luke Doolan)—A young outcast finds solitude in a fantasy world only to be brought back to reality when faced with a psychotic man. orth Americairector and Screenwriter: Julius Avery)creenwriter: Blake Brooker) See photo.

Omelette/Bulgaria (Director: Nadejda Koseva; Screenwriter: Georgi Gospodinov)—While a woman makes an omelette we learn how difficult it is to make ends meet. See article.

PAL/SECAM/Russian Federation (Director and Screenwriter: Dmitry Povolotsky)—At the dawn of Perestroika, little Boris, ravaged by hormones, seduces the neighborhood with his mother's VCR.
Winner of the The Onion Best Film Award at the Columbia University Film Festival. See photo and info.

A Mate/Finland (Director: Teemu Nikki; Screenwriters: Teemu Nikki and Jani Pösö)—Pera wants to try something kinky in the bathroom and he asks his straight mate to help him. However, Pera's wife comes home a bit too soon. See photo and info.

Netherland Dwarf/Australia (Director and Screenwriter: David Michôd)—Harry really wants a rabbit. Harry's dad really wants his wife back. And somehow in the middle of all this wanting, they both seem to have forgotten that they already have each other. See director's profile.

Next Floor/Canada (Director: Denis Villeneuve; Screenwriter: Jacques Davidts)—During an opulent and luxurious banquet, complete with hordes of servers and valets, eleven pampered guests participate in what appears to be ritualistic gastronomic carnage. See film's website.

The Stronger/UK (Director: Lia Williams)—Who is stronger? The wife or the mistress? See clip included in video.

Ten For Grandpa/Canada/USA (Director and Screenwriter: Doug Karr)—An introspective look at the enigmatic life of an influential ancestor that pushes an individual to immerse himself in a nefarious web of danger and infamy. See article and photos.

This is Her/New Zealand (Director: Katie Wolfe; Screenwriter: Kate McDermott)—As she watches her younger self in the throes of childbirth, Evie's deliciously wry commentary reveals exactly what life has in store for her new baby daughter, her loving husband, and the six-year-old 'bitch' who will one day steal his affections and destroy Evie's life. See info.

Treevenge/Canada (Director: Jason Eisener; Screenwriter: Rob Cotterill)—Sometimes Christmas is worth crying over. See photo.

The Watch/Argentina (Director: Marco Berger)—Two young men find a surprise connection during an impromptu sleepover.
Presented at Cannes 2008

Wet Season/Singapore (Director and Screenwriter: Michael Tay)—Utilizing stop-motion animation, the production pays tribute to the filmmaker's real-life father who passed away six years ago. See info.

International Documentary Shorts

China's Wild West/UK (Director: Urszula Pontikos)—This part observational, part impressionistic study of a day in the life of a Muslim community, illustrates their hopeful efforts to discover jade in the harsh conditions of a dried-up riverbed in a remote town on the Silk Road in Western China. See film.

Lessons from the Night/Australia (Director and Screenwriter: Adrian Francis)—As dusk approaches and workers stream out of the city, Maia is about to begin her day. She reflects on life, work and toilet bowls as she goes about her nightly cleaning round through silent, empty spaces.

Ma Bar/UK (Directors: Finlay Pretsell, Adrian McDowall)—Bench pressing isn't a hobby for 73-year-old Bill McFadyen - it's a way of life, and he is on a quest to be the best in the world. See review.

Magnetic Movie/UK (Directors: Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman + Joe Gerhardt)—Natural magnetic fields are revealed as chaotic ever-changing geometries, as scientists from NASA's space sciences laboratory excitedly describe their discoveries.' See article.

My Surfing Lucifer/Switzerland (Director: Kenneth Anger)—Using found footage, we're introduced to the short life of Bunker Spreckels, Clark Gable's stepson and surfing legend. See photos.

The Real Place/Canada (Director: Cam Christiansen; Screenwriter: Blake Brooker)—An animated poetic film celebrating the life and spirit of playwright and librettist John Murrell. See article.

Steel Homes/UK (Director: Eva Weber)—Self-storage units are windows into human histories: the silent cells with their discarded objects and dust-covered furniture are inscribed with past dreams, secret hopes and of lives we cannot let go. See photo and article.

International Animated Shorts

Cattle Call/Canada (Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Rankin, Mike Maryniuk)—A high-speed animation film documenting the art of livestock auctioneering. See photo.

A Film from My Parish: 6 Farms/Ireland (Director: Tony Donoghue)—An animated film shot on location in North Tipperary. It consists of six stories by six farmers from one parish. See photo.

hear, earth, heart/France (Director: Yi Zhou)—A white box unfolds to reveal a surreal and shifting landscape of fragmented clouds, suns, mountains, stardust, darkness, and flames that eventually freeze in time and space. See director's website.

John and Karen/UK (Director and Screenwriter: Matthew Walker)—John the polar bear apologizes to Karen the penguin after an argument. See film.

Keith Reynolds can't make it tonight/UK (Director and Screenwriter: Felix Massie)—Keith Reynolds leaves his hat in his car. This isn't the only mistake he makes today. See trailer.

Lies/Sweden (Director: Jonas Odell)—Three perfectly true stories about lying. In three episodes based on documentary interviews we meet the burglar who, when found out, claims to be a moonlighting accountant, the boy who finds himself lying and confessing to a crime he didn't commit and the woman whose whole life has been a chain of lies. See website.

Mister Cok/France (Director and Screenwriter: Franck Dion)—Mister Cok is the owner of a large bomb factory. Looking for efficiency and profit, he decides to replace his workers by sophisticated robots; however one of the workers does not accept being discarded so easily.

Out of Control/Mexico (Director: Sofia Carrillo)—Remote and alone, various personalities share feelings of solitude in the interior of a labyrinthine house. See trailer.

Skhizein/France (Director: Jérémy Clapin; Screenwriters: Jérémy Clapin and Stéphane Piera)—Having been struck by a 150-ton meteorite, Henry has to adapt to living precisely ninety-one centimeters from himself. See photo.

This Way Up/UK (Directors: Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith; Screenwriters: Adam Foulkes, Alan Smith, Christopher O'Reilly)—Laying the dead to rest has never been so much trouble. See trailer.

New Frontier Shorts

All Through the Night/USA (Director: Michael Robinson)—A charred visitation with an icy language of control: "there is no room for love". Splinters of Nordic fairytales and ecological disaster films are ground down into a shimmering prism of contradictions in this hopeful container for hopelessness. See photo. See article about filmmaker.

American Minor/USA (Director: Charlie White)—A filmic meditation on the isolated world of an American teen, focusing on the external environment and internal state of a fourteen-year-old, upper-middle class girl. See photography exhibit by director.

The Beekeepers/USA (Director: Richard Robinson)—An experimental documentary on the environmental crisis surrounding Beekeeping and Colony Collapse Disorder. It explores this ancient profession in its current crisis and the implications for our environment when millions of bees just disappear. See photo and website.

Horizontal Boundaries/USA (Director: Pat O'Neil)—A film that looks at certain aspects of the geography of California as the ground for cinematic disruption and restatement. It is not a static repositioning, but rather a dynamic one, moving more or less randomly, causing image combinations to be generated unpredictably. See film's website.

Nightstill/Austria (Director and Screenwriter: Elke Groen)—Night images captured with time lapse photography. See info.

Out of Our Minds/USA (Director: Tony Stone)—A fantasy world spawned from sound. Three time periods and three narratives, one connection–blood. At the center of this life force is the heart. See article on filmmaker.

Theresa's Story/UK (Director: Maria Marshall)—Side-by-side only two takes of the same incomprehensible emotional improvised story unedited depicting four-year-old Jake Marshall Naef's world before finally Jake addresses the viewer directly. See article on director.

Untitled/USA (Directors: Sandra Lea Gibson and Luis Recoder)—A black and white film suggestive of being projected behind a translucent window frame while giving the illusion it is hovering somewhere between the screen and the viewer. See recent film installations by filmmakers.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 10:04:00 PM Comments (0)

Geoff Gilmore asks himself and us all the right questions about change, independent film, and the evolution of film festival's in this Indiewire First Person piece, launched on the eve of this year's fest. I especially liked his riff near the end about stopping our natural tendency to "date" films based on their release date.

From the piece:

Theatrical admissions have trended downwards for a number of years and the importance of consumer preference and choice, of filmgoers seeing films when and how they want, is essential to success for the film industry in the future. The “long tail” of availability, the keeping of films in the market for longer periods of time is especially important for independent film. And that a film’s release is ordered by an antiquated theatrical universe is one of the fundamental obstacles facing the independent arena. Indeed why are films “seasonal” instead of “evergreen?” The practice of dating films, i.e. assigning a year of release, strikes me as a holdover from the marketing past. How and where films will be made available depends on the establishment of new outlets and new strategies. It simply makes no sense that most of the year’s quality films are all released against each other in a cutthroat fall campaign. In the future perhaps festival platforms could further serve to give films long-term visibility. At the very least new web venues, transformed marketing strategies and dynamic new concepts for consumption are at the core of making films available.

It's true, we in the press are absolutely hardwired to the concept of the new, and of syncing our coverage of films to things like theatrical openings. But Gilmore is right -- if the distribution ideas surrounding the Long Tail have any chance of catching on, then we must promote longer windows during which films are deemed relevant and discussion-worthy. This year we all witnessed critics wrestle with their "10 Best" lists and films like Silent Light, which had a protracted multi-year release spanning festival openings, museum screenings and limited theatrical. How can we -- and, perhaps more importantly -- how can filmmakers continue to recharge interest in their films among communities long and small during what may be much longer periods of "initial release"?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 08:17:00 PM Comments (2)

FilmInFocus has asked a number of filmmakers about theirs. I love Azazel Jacobs', think I'm going to adapt Michael Tully's as one of my own, and feel that Astra Taylor somehow channeled my own thoughts about the book we are both reading right now. Check out the lists here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 08:07:00 PM Comments (0)

Let me weigh in quickly on the imbroglio surrounding the deletion of Kevin Lee's YouTube account. On the account Lee had posted his series of critical video essays on a number of recent and classic films, and in the course of arguing the aesthetic merits of each picture the videos included clips from the movies themselves. Apparently, YouTube received a complaint from the copyright holder of one of the clips and deleted his entire account.

Matt Zoller Seitz has the complete story along with a comments thread that is also a must read, and Karina Longworth originally covered the story here.

Like I said, my reactions here are quick because I'm getting ready for Sundance as well as editing material for our Sundance micro-site that will go up tomorrow.

1. My first reaction is a self-interested one -- this story ties in really nicely to Lance Weiler's latest piece on data portability that will appear in the new Filmmaker, which hits the stands next week. (It will be online a week from Monday.) In the piece Weiler talks about the dangers of filmmakers aggregating too much of their data on social networks that can delete their accounts -- and this data -- at the blink of an eye. He's mostly talking about social networking data, but his argument applies to content as well. In the piece he directs people to the Data Portability Project, and I'd recommend people check out this organization's good work.

2. I completely agree that what happened to Lee is distressing and also, in my opinion, legally wrong. I would argue that the use of these clips is covered by fair use. However, I am not surprised. What I would point out is that these issues are not new -- documentary filmmakers have been grappling with the limits of fair use for years. (And it's why some clip-oriented docs, like The Celluloid Closet, have big budgets and an array of big traditional media funders while others, like L.A. Plays Itself, have no such backers and only play on the non-profit circuit.) The problem in most fair use cases is that while a creator may be legally right, in the absence of clear test cases partners on the distribution and exhibition end are usually uninterested in funding the massive legal fees required to embark on a fair use battle. The Center for Social Media at American University has done some work in this area. Particularly noteworthy is their "The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education." The document is intended for educators, and obviously an online essay outside of the classroom is slightly different, but much of the discussion in this document is still relevant. Issues surrounding fair use and our emerging "remix culture" are also at the center of Lawrence Lessig's new book Remix, and Lessig is interviewed by Weiler in the upcoming Filmmaker article.

3. Here's where I may be getting in a little over my head, but it's my understanding that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act gives internet service providers (of which YouTube is considered one) a pass on copyright infringement until a complaint is made. At that point, if the provider doesn't comply by removing the allegedly infringing piece, they are then liable. So, there's little incentive for YouTube and its owner, Google, to fight the good fight for the filmmaker -- or, at least there isn't until enough people rebel by shifting to another service or disseminate their videos another way. The key here is that the DMCA requires the ISP to respond to an "alleged" violation if the ISP is to claim the legal protections that the act affords it. It would be great if a company like Google would throw its legal team behind fair use issues, but if you've followed my blog posts on the Google Book settlement, then you would see that while Google is actively using the legal system to challenge conventional copyright laws, they are doing so in cases in which their own ad-supported revenue model will profit. I think where YouTube is really in the wrong is by deleting Lee's entire account. As he has a very clean argument that fair use covers his clip usage, YouTube is making its own judgement that the rights holders of the other clips on Lee's page would have similar complaints, and there's no evidence that that is the case.

4. At the end of the day, as distressing as this is to the blogger community individually, I think the best way forward is to link what's happened here to the broader debate over fair use as it applies in documentary film, in classrooms, and in the kind of "remix" works Lessig talks about in his new book. There are people who have been invested in these issues for years, and the voices of the online critical community should now be added to theirs. At the same time, we should heed what Weiler suggests -- to be aware of data portability issues when we release our materials. And also what Seitz quotes Amy Taubin as saying over at his site:

"One way around this problem re movie criticism is not to post on YouTube, but rather to create a dedicated site specifcally for movie criticism that employs excerpts and get a good intellectual properties lawyer to take the first case that arises pro bono (it would be an important landmark case.)"

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/13/2009 04:39:00 PM Comments (3)

Last year, I put together a blog post with a taster of some quotes from Director Interviews I did in 2007 and I have now (somewhat belatedly) come up with a compilation of choice soundbites from this past year.

Though in my thoughts on 2008 I expressed the opinion that it had been a below average year for cinema (at least in comparison with the high water mark of 2007), it has been a hugely enjoyable 12 months from my perspective as an interviewer. Any year in which you get to sit down with George Romero, Werner Herzog, Catherine Breillat, Abel Ferrara, Wayne Wang, Johnnie To, Nick Broomfield, Jiří Menzel and Michael Haneke – not to mention the most exciting new and emerging talent in independent cinema – will always be remembered as a good one.

Looking back, my interview with Haneke stands out as a particular highlight. I always relish talking to someone as formidably intellectual as the Austrian auteur, but in this instance my expectations for the interview were not great as Haneke had very limited time and apparently insisted on having an interpreter (which essentially cuts the interview time in half). There seemed even less chance of things going well when I turned up for the interview to discover that the publicist who I had been coordinating with was not there because of a fire in his apartment and that the interpreter was running late. Fortunately, Haneke turned up early and graciously agreed to begin the interview then and there; from then on, it all went very smoothly and he proved the perfect interview subject: sharp, direct, bullishly intelligent and fully engaged with the issues of our conversation. (And, for the record, his English is, in fact, excellent.)


Andrew Piddington (on The Killing of John Lennon)
John Lennon was the first rock 'n' roll assassination and he was the first one to suffer that tragedy. Consequently now we've had a whole raft of people who've been killed and a whole slew of people who have injunctions out on personal stalkers. Everybody wants to be famous for nothing these days. You have all these reality shows on TV and it teaches people that you don't have to have talent to be famous and make a lot of money. These issues are worth exploring.

Abby Epstein (on making The Business of Being Born)
When we were at one of the homebirths, I remember thinking, “Oh my God, the neighbors are going to think we're watching a porno in here!” because there was this moaning all day and she and her husband were in the tub.

Nadine Labaki (on growing up in Beirut)
I've lived with the war all my childhood: most of my childhood was spent at home because we couldn't go out, there was no school for a long time, so I saw and understood the world through TV. That's how I learned English, that's how I decided to become a filmmaker. I learned that through films I could be able to create realities that are different from my reality, and worlds that are different from my world. That was my childhood, just me in front of the TV watching films.

Paul Andrew Williams
I was hired by Columbia to do Wild Things 3. At this point, I'd never done a film and I was like, “Yeah, cool. I've got a film, I've got some money, it'll be great,” but after a week I was like, “These guys are total fucking wankers! And they don't give a shit about the film or me or anything, so what am I doing...?” The people who were making it were awful. This was a line from one of the guys at the studio: “It's only Wild Things 3, it doesn't have to be perfect.”

George A. Romero (on the online community)
I had a website of my own for a while, but I just got really sick and tired of it. I tried to be diligent, I tried to show up at least two nights a week and actually answer questions and have conversations, but pretty soon people were just sniping at each other and it was sort of a party that had nothing to do with me anymore. Sort of coming over to my house, eating stuff out of my fridge, and just calling each other names. So I just wrote a letter saying, “Guys, gotta go. Help yourself to what's in the fridge...”

Stefan Ruzowitzky (on directing)
When I was in primary school there was always a stage play performed by the fourth grade, the kids who were about to leave the school. I saw it when my brother did it: the mothers were doing the costumes and it was all wonderful. So for the whole of primary school I was waiting to be in the fourth grade and be part of such a performance, and when I finally got there our teacher came and said, “Kids, this year there's no performance.” I said, “This can't be,” and so I organized the whole thing by myself. I was casting my friends, and doing just everything. Obviously it was pretty good because we did a lot of performances for the whole school and the parents, so this is when I decided, “This is what I want to do as a profession.”

Michael Haneke
Cinema could be an artform, can be an artform... it's very rare. If it is art, it is automatically responsible. A film has to be a dialogue, not a monologue — a dialogue to provoke in the viewer his own thoughts, his own feelings. And if a film is a dialogue then it's a good film; if it's not a dialogue, it's a bad film. It's very easy.

Christophe Honoré (on his job title)
I used to not be able to say I was a writer because I thought it was pretentious, but now I don't like to say I'm a filmmaker because the person asking me is probably a young actor and then it's going to be difficult. The business card I take out most readily is the one that says “Writer of Children's Books,” because it reassures everybody but doesn't interest anyone. People then don't bother me and, as I don't like to be bothered, that works.

Jeff Nichols
I was in sixth grade and they had a re-release print of Lawrence of Arabia in my hometown. It was enormous. We had a dome theater so it was a beautiful screen to see it on. I remember being struck by its scope and also by the fact that a landscape could dictate structure, that things that happened in the movie couldn't have happened without that landscape, and that landscape couldn't have been shown any other way than to be that big.

Etgar Keret (on co-directing Jellyfish with his heavily pregnant wife, Shira Geffen)
Shira had to go to the hospital just before the last day of shooting, so I was there by myself, but she didn't have the baby until after shooting finished. All the time we were on the phone, and I was asking “How are you feeling?” and she was saying “What are you shooting now?”

Scott Hicks (on Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts)
My heart was in my mouth when I showed the film to [Philip Glass]. I said after showing the film to Philip that the closest experience I've had of that was the time I showed Shine to David Helfgott — the main difference being that Philip wasn't clinging to my leg at the time.

Yung Chang (on “Chinese time”)
Living in the South of China, you don't pre-arrange things: when you call somebody on the phone there are no answering machines or voicemails, you have to talk directly to the person. I think Chinese time is something that is very... inexact. Chinese time is not late time, it's just “you don't know if it's going to happen” time.

Garth Jennings
I was a crackhead in Hot Fuzz. In the opening montage of Simon Pegg's character's reveal of his many talents, one of his talents was to shoot a crackhead who was holding a family hostage. And that's me. [I was] standing in for that, waiting all afternoon with sores all over my face with a Kalashnikov rifle, thinking “This is really weird, really, really weird.”

Nick Broomfield (on politics and cinema)
We’ve lived in a decade of evading any real issues, and people in Britain and America feeling completely impotent to make themselves heard. So people seize on irrelevant things and address non-issues. The real issue is most of the electorate in both countries was against the war. We still went to war and we’re still fighting this war five years later. People have said we’re against torture, and we have an American president that’s saying waterboarding’s OK. I think people feel it doesn’t matter what they say, so many rules are being broken, they’ve lost power, they don’t have a political party that represents them anymore – it’s a terrible, dangerous apathy. That’s why all political films, not just the Iraq films, are doing badly. Any film that’s to do with anything vaguely political is doing badly because people feel impotent.

Parvez Sharma (on A Jihad for Love)
I am one of very few people in the Muslim world saying that “Jihad” needs to be taken back, that Al Qaeda doesn't control that and they've got it all wrong. How do you make “jihad” fashionable and take it away from Osama and his gang? I've been thinking of great marketing ideas: the coolest new hipster T-shirt should be “Love Jihadi.”

Stuart Gordon (on Bush's America)
I think that in our society now, people will just not admit to any mistakes, starting all the way at the top. There's a line in the movie where they say, “Look who's in the White House. Look, you can get away with anything now!” It's true, we've got this completely amoral president who sets the tone for everybody else. In talking about fear in our daily life, this is a guy who has done nothing but try to fan the flames of fear, to get us more afraid – afraid of terrorists, afraid of immigrants, afraid of gays, afraid of anybody.

Werner Herzog (on dry eyes and Dreyer)
I do not cry in movies, I laugh in movies. But I do faint. I keep fainting in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, the wonderful great silent film. There's a moment where they cut the elbow vein of Joan and blood is spurting out, and that's when I faint.

Cecilia Miniucchi
The most incredible piece of advice that really changed my life was from Bob Altman who said to me, “Never take any advice.”

Catherine Breillat (on The Last Mistress)
There are some people who hated me who are now starting to say that, yes, I had made a really good film now, that I had calmed down. But I have not calmed down! They're wrong. And people who are wrong will always be wrong.

Scott Prendergast (on Kabluey)
Right before we shot, I went and visited my sister-in-law and said, “Hey, so I have something to tell you... Yeah... So... You know that movie I was writing about the mascot costume? Well, there's this other character in the movie who's a woman and she's got two little kids and her husband's at war and her brother-in-law comes to help her...” She sort of gave me this very thin look, but kept folding laundry. I said, “And she sort of does some questionable things and she's sort of an unlikeable character and she really makes some mistakes, but I dramatized it all because it's a movie and we have to have a fictional plot so she does some things that didn't really happen...” My sister-in-law, without missing a beat, said, “Who is playing me?” I said, “Lisa Kudrow.” She said, “OK, fine, whatever you want.”

Stephen Sebring (on Patti Smith: Dream of Life)
Somebody was telling me at Sundance that Quentin Tarantino was all over this movie, saying "This is what it's all about: somebody taking 12 years to make a movie!" I was like, "That's great, that's really cool." But I don't think I could do another 12 year project.

Chris Smith (on the democracy of cinema)
I remember seeing Roger and Me when I was 18 in a mall theater in Michigan, where I grew up, and thinking how incredible it was that this guy who was 45 minutes away from me had made this film on 16mm and that it was playing at a multiplex. It empowered me to the point where I thought, “I can grab a 16mm camera and as long as the 90 minutes that I put in front of that camera is interesting, it can play anywhere that a giant Hollywood film can play.”

Wayne Wang (on the future of filmmaking)
A friend of mine in London just shot a feature film completely on her cell phone, and she did it for so little money and it's a wonderful little movie and it's accessible and showable. That stuff is amazing. People ask me, “What's your dream project?” I don't have a big dream project that costs $100 million, my dream is that when I'm older I can take my cell phone and make a damn movie.

Matt Wolf (on his weirdest job)
In high school, I worked in the only gay coffee shop in the San Jose area. It was really cool, it was in this old abandoned bank but the owners were heroin addicts and would shoot up in the vault. I was 15, and paychecks were bouncing and checks to vendors were bouncing and I would serve decaf coffee because we couldn't pay the bills to pay for the coffee deliveries.

Marianna Palka (on titles)
When I was writing the script, I was really asking the question, “What is sexy? What does that actually mean for people?” and in doing that, Good Dick was just naturally the title. “Good Dick” is... it's like titling a poem or something. You have to title it, you can't just call it These People.

Abel Ferrara (on Werner Herzog remaking Bad Lieutenant)
He can die in hell. I hate these people – they suck. A, he don't know me, couldn't pick me out of a line-up. B, I'm chasing windmills. Well, I'd rather chase windmills than steal other people's ideas. It's lame. I can't believe Nic Cage is trying to play that part. I mean, if the kid needed the money...

Ellen Kuras (on her marathon directorial debut)
People say to me, “What was it like doing a film over 23 years, and did you anticipate that it would take 23 years?” and I have to say, “No.” In the interim, I didn't have a firm deadline that I had to respond to and also the film represented to me many different things. In a way, it was my own personal notebook, it was a continuing dialogue with Thavi that we had about life and death and philosophy and everything that was happening in the community and the gangs.

Avi Nesher (on the star of The Secrets)
The night before we met Fanny Ardant, I was at a dinner party and a man told me this really strange story about her. He said she was sitting at a diner party, she didn’t say a word for an hour and then, just before coffee was served, she spoke up and said, “You know, I have a knife in my handbag?” People were just flabbergasted and said, “Why a knife?” and she said, “I have this phobia that a huge tent will fall on me and I have to cut my way out.”

Elissa Down (on menstruation and movies)
Every guy and girl I know have great period stories, of springing a leak on a date or all this stuff, and I'm like “Why is this stuff not in movies?” In romantic comedies, where's the girl freaking out because she's bled over her skirt or it's the big night and it's her period and “Oh, do I tell him or do I pretend I'm not interested?” I find it insane that it's not used screenplays more.

Nacho Vigalondo (on the science of Timecrimes)
When we were making the film there were some teachers at the physics college [where we shot] and they were like, “How does your time machine work?” I was like, “Well, it's a tank filled with liquid...” He was like, “Liquid?! OK, forget about it. What is it about liquids? It looks like a porn movie more than a science fiction movie.”

Rod Lurie (on his teenage heroes)
I really wanted to become a film critic and I even began a correspondence with people like Pauline Kael, Judith Crist and Roger Ebert. They were so mensch-y they would write me back: I was 12 or 13 years old and having a relationship with these guys. There was nothing better than going up to my bedroom and on my bed would be waiting a letter from Ebert.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 1/11/2009 10:54:00 AM Comments (0)

I like the nice, clean look of the new Indiewire along with a number of its user-friendly interactive features. It's just gone live so I'll spend some time exploring it, but for now, here's a piece of editor Eugene Hernandez's introductory letter:

As I revealed last week, we have spent over a year developing this new site, but it’s actually taken us twelve years to get here. We’ve not only re-designed indieWIRE, but completely re-imagined it.

Understanding that indieWIRE has emerged as a hub for filmmakers, the industry, and movie lovers alike over the past twelve years, we have developed this new site as a gateway to the latest news, information, and resources for our readers, incorporating a number of innovative tools and approaches. The new site not only delivers the latest original editorial from indieWIRE’s editors and writers, but also features a new model for aggregating and showcasing the best coverage from journalists and bloggers all over the world. Our goal is to make iW so essential that you’ll consider making indieWIRE.com your homepage.

Our new front page features a cleaner navigation system, links to the latest from indieWIRE and across the Internet, a headline ticker, photo galleries, a widget from our colleagues at SnagFilms, and a number of new features that we hope you will value.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/10/2009 09:18:00 PM Comments (0)

At the of Barack Obama's election-night speech, he had a beautiful bit of oratory in which he remembered an elderly woman and spoke of all the things that she saw in her lifetime. What will we see if we live as long as her, he wondered. That, in essence was the question posed to a distinguished group of artists, writers and thinkers at The Edge. The responses here are of the quality that you want to bookmark the page and read one a day for the next month or so.

Formally, the question posed by editor and publisher John Brockman was: "WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING? What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?" Among the respondents are Richard Dawkins, Richard Foreman, Freeman Dyson, and Douglas Ruskoff. Brief excerpts from some of the answers are below.

Howard Gardner:

For the first time, it should be possible to delineate the nature of talent. This breakthrough will come about through a combination of findings from genetics (do highly talented individuals have a distinctive, recognizable genetic profile?); neuroscience (are there structural or functional neural signatures, and, importantly, can these be recognized early in life?); cognitive psychology (are the mental representations of talented individuals distinctive when contrasted to those of hard workers); and the psychology of motivation (why are talented individuals often characterized as having 'a rage to learn, a passion to master?)

Stuart Kauffman:

John Brockman's question is dramatic: What will change everything? Of course, no one knows. But the fact that no one knows may be the feature of our lives and the universe that does change everything. Reductionism has reigned as our dominant world view for 350 years in Western society. Physicist Steven Weinberg states that when the science shall have been done, all the explanatory arrows will point downward, from societies to people, to organs, to cells, to biochemistry, to chemistry and ultimately to physics and the final theory.

I think he is wrong: the evolution of the biosphere, the economy, our human culture and perhaps aspects of the abiotic world, stand partially free of physical law and are not entailed by fundamental physics. The universe is open.

Leo Chalupa:

In the 1960s movie "The Graduate" a young Dustin Hoffman is advised to go into plastics, presumably because that will be the next big thing.

Today, one might well advise the young person planning to pursue a degree in medicine or the biological sciences to go into brain plasticity. This refers to the fact that neurons are malleable throughout life, capable of being shaped by external experiences and endogenous events.

Brian Eno:

What would change everything is not even a thought. It's more of a feeling.

Human development thus far has been fueled and guided by the feeling that things could be, and are probably going to be, better. The world was rich compared to its human population; there were new lands to conquer, new thoughts to nurture, and new resources to fuel it all. The great migrations of human history grew from the feeling that there was a better place, and the institutions of civilisation grew out of the feeling that checks on pure individual selfishness would produce a better world for everyone involved in the long term.

What if this feeling changes? What if it comes to feel like there isn't a long term — or not one to look forward to? What if, instead of feeling that we are standing at the edge of a wild new continent full of promise and hazard, we start to feel that we're on an overcrowded lifeboat in hostile waters, fighting to stay on board, prepared to kill for the last scraps of food and water?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/10/2009 06:21:00 PM Comments (0)

Here Roger Ebert reprints his review of the deficit documentary I.O.U.S.A., which CNN airs this weekend.

From Ebert's blog post:

I'm reprinting my review of the nonpartisan doc I.O.U.S.A. again because it will be televised on CNN at 1 p.m. CST Saturday, Jan. 10, and 2 p.m. CST Sunday, Jan 11. Co-hosts will be CNN financial experts Ali Velshi and Christine Romans. Their panelists will include Pete Peterson, ormer U.S. Commerce Secretary; Dave Walker, former U.S. Comptroller General; Alice Rivlin, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Bill Bradley, former U.S. Senator.

Okay, I'm going to reprint my own review out of Sundance -- I've pasted it below. And I plan to catch the conversation on CNN this weekend because, honestly, I'm baffled by the free ride this doc has gotten, mostly from film critics and bloggers who haven't scrutinized its claim to being "non-partisan." Because this doc is about, generally, the economy, and the economy has now collapsed, critics seem to be inclined to give the doc some credit for predicting such.

But here's the problem: I.O.U.S.A. focuses entirely on the federal budget deficit. And the federal budget deficit has little to do with the current economic crisis. To put it another way, it would be as if I walked into your house and said, "Oh my god, your home is going to burn down unless you replace that gas heater!" You do, and your house burns down... due to faulty electrical wiring. Should I get credit for predicting that?

What's more, in this current economic crisis, what are the majority of mainstream economists from both the left and the right recommending? Increasing the size of the federal deficit! (Like I said in my review below, the word "Keynesian" somehow never makes it into a documentary about government spending.)

Anyway, here's my review from January 27, 2008. (This was a two-parter, the first of which covered Josh Tickell's Fields of Fuel; I'm just reprinting the I.O.U.S.A. part here.)

Compared to the issues discussed in Tickell's doc, America’s reliance on foreign oil seems like a minor problem. IOUSA deals with not just the U.S. budget deficit but also related topics ranging from America’s trade deficit and savings shortfalls to our shrinking dollar and loss of global economic leverage. Like Tickell, Creadon zippily cuts from a range of interview subjects, including taxpayers, government officials and, also, annoyingly, clueless kids who are asked to guess how big the budget deficit is (answer: $8.6 trillion). The film’s human through line comes in the form of U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, who lectures across the country about the catastrophe awaiting future generations of Americans if the U.S. doesn’t begin to balance its budgets and reduce its deficit. The film also focuses on the activities of the Concord Coalition, an advocacy group comprised of members of both the centrist Brookings Institution and the right-wing Heritage Foundation – political opponents brought together by the looming disaster.

IOUSA is most successful when it finds ways to entertainingly and concisely convey decades of economic history through animated charts, archival photos, and, even, a Saturday Night Live skit. In one sequence a penny is rolled up and down a rollercoaster of a bar graph, illustrating how the budget deficit expanded and sometimes contracted across wars and social program expansions. But while Creadon references some of the customary explanations for the budget deficit, he mostly analogizes the U.S. to the proverbial maxed out consumer who can’t stop spending until his credit card implodes.

IOUSA’s press notes state, “This film is not an endorsement of any political party or political candidate,” and indeed, Creadon’s film initially appears non-political and intended to simply raise awareness about the deficit issue. But here’s the thing — framing a discussion of the health of the U.S. economy by focusing solely on the budget deficit is inherently an idelogical act. “Deficit hawks” can be found all across the political spectrum, but they are most often found on the right and among those seeking to cut social spending and entitlement programs. (Indeed, the recently passed Medicare prescription drug benefit is given a few whacks in IOUSA.) The film is “inspired by” Empire of Debt, Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggins's book that discusses the U.S. debt crisis from a right/libertarian viewpoint and places it within a larger critique of America as an “empire” that has overextended itself in both domestic and foreign policy. Creadon has left out most of the book’s “America as empire” argument, but he has uncritically embraced their argument regarding the deficit. You’d never know from IOUSA that not every economist is as worried about the deficit as Walker is. In fact, the word “Keynes” – as is John Maynard Keynes, the economist whose work discussed the economic benefits of deficit spending, is never uttered in this doc. Also not included are any of the many contemporary academic economists who might argue against the film’s theories. There’s no real discussion of the large deficits of other Western nations as a percentage of their GDPs, and while the trade imbalance with China is talked about, more nuanced globalist arguments that look at the interdependency between U.S. borrowing, the American consumer, and the development of the Chinese as a trading partner are not. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is interviewed, and the film salutes the Clinton administration for managing revenues and spending in order to balance the budget… without mentioning the technology-fueled economic boom that led to the increased taxed revenues that allowed the budget to be balanced during this time. And because the film avoids ideology, that also means that it avoids politically charged but necessary discussions of just how our deficit got to where it is today. You won't hear in this doc anything about “starving the beast,” the phrase describing right-wing efforts during the Reagan era to deliberately create a deficit crisis in order to force cuts in social spending.

But the film’s refusal to present more than one side of the deficit issue is not its most problematic element. I don’t have to agree with every aspect of Creadon's deficit doom mongering to accept that, in the absence of a crystal ball, his is a valid argument. IOUSA’s main problem concerns its final message to its viewers. Let me back up. I suspect that if you ask the average man on the street if the U.S. should have a balanced budget, that person would say yes. Ask if that person’s Social Security payments should be reduced, or if his taxes should be raised, or if a favorite government program be axed and you’d get a different response. IOUSA throws around terms like “leadership” when discussing how we get out of the deficit mess, but it doesn’t include a discussion of the types of initiatives a real leader on this issue would be forced to propose. It concludes by simply imploring readers to “write their elected officials” and demand that the deficit issue be addressed. Unlike Tickell’s film, which ends with a detailed breakdown of how we can wean ourselves from foreign oil, IOUSA punts when it comes to the public policy specifics needed to resolve the problem as the film formulates it. (Indeed, in a recession, which we are probably in right now, cutting the deficit by the obvious methods — decreasing spending or raising taxes — is probably disastrous economic policy.) The only clue as to just what kind of deficit strategy is recommended by Creadon, Walker, Bonner et al comes, coyly, in the form of an end-title song:

Nick Lowe’s "Cruel to be Kind."

Like I said, I've been baffled by the pass I think this film has gotten. One economist who did take on the film is Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the author of the blog Beat the Press. Here is Baker, who I am taking the liberty of quoting at length, excerpted from a December 2 article on the Huffington Post entitled "I.O.U.S.A.: Failed Scare Flick of the Decade":

Every few years there is a book or movie that stands out for its incredibly bad timing....

The basic story of IOUSA is that the United States suffers from a massive deficit problem. The film constantly comes back to the deficit using a variety of measures that are intended to scare viewers into action. After seeing the film we are all supposed to run to our phones and computers and demand that our representatives in Congress shut down Social Security and Medicare and double our taxes.

Hopefully, the film will not have this effect, because there is nothing that the economy needs more right now than very large deficits. The collapse of the housing bubble has destroyed more than $5 trillion in wealth. The fallout from this collapse has led to an even larger decline in stock market wealth. This massive loss in wealth in turn is leading to a plunge in consumption that is driving the economy into the most serious downturn since the Great Depression.

Economists from across the political spectrum agree that the only way to counteract this loss of consumption demand is through large increases in government spending. If IOUSA viewers manage to persuade their representatives in Congress to balance the budget then they will be guaranteeing the country another Great Depression.

Ironically, the heroes of IOUSA include many of the leading villains of the current economic crisis. The story prominently features Peter Peterson, whose foundation is helping to circulate the film. Mr. Peterson made a fortune running a Wall Street private equity fund, much of which he was able to shelter from normal taxation through the "fund managers' tax break."...

The film also interviews Robert Rubin. As Treasury secretary Robert Rubin promoted an over-valued dollar. The over-valued dollar made our goods uncompetitive internationally by raising the price of U.S. exports to foreigners and lowering the price of foreign made goods to people living in the United States. As a result, our trade deficit exploded, peaking at almost 6 percent of GDP ($800 billion) in 2006.

Rubin also pushed the one-sided financial deregulation that fueled the irresponsible lending practices of the housing bubble years. These were practices that he personally profited from as a top executive at Citigroup.

Finally, the film gives a starring role to former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan will go down in infamy as the man who looked the other way as the housing bubble soared to ever more dangerous levels. He also claimed to be oblivious to the explosion of subprime and other high-risk loans during his tenure as Fed chair. More than any other individual, Alan Greenspan bears responsibility for the economic catastrophe facing the country. Audiences may find his lectures on the need to increase saving less than compelling at this point....

The moral of the IOUSA story - the need to reduce the budget deficit - is so radically out of sync with the economic imperatives facing the country that it is likely to quickly fall from sight, perhaps to be resurrected in film festivals showing red scare films from the fifties. This would be a positive development for the country, since it would be an enormous tragedy if this film helped to dissuade the public from supporting the sort of stimulus package needed to prevent a long and extremely painful recession.

The director of the film, Patrick Creadon, is highly talented and clearly well meaning. Obviously he just fell in with a bad crowd when he decided to make IOUSA....

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2009 10:48:00 PM Comments (3)

I was hoping to find someone to cover CES this year but struck out. (If you are a Filmmaker reader attending and would like to send some comments from the point-of-view of an independent filmmaker, you can email me at editor.filmmaker AT gmail.com.) However, discovering Scott Kirsner's CES blog at Variety is, for me, the next best thing to having a correspondent there. I interviewed Scott in the last issue of the magazine, and over at the Variety blog he files commentary in his own patented fusion of tech coverage and industry business analysis. Among the topics: a predicted explosion of up to six-fold in BluRay sales; what will drive equipment sales given the retail electronic sector's collapse; and a piece entitled "Unraveling the Mysteries of Mobile Video" that talks about just that.

An excerpt:

“I like to say that mobile video is like a crab,” says Frank Barbieri, chief executive of Transpera, a San Francisco-based start-up that works with media companies to deliver video to phones. “It’s hard to crack, and it has all these little compartments, but once you get into it, you find all this really sweet meat.”

Some media execs at CES have the sense that the audience for video on phones isn’t big enough yet. “The numbers aren’t there,” says Bill Bradford, chief product officer at Fox Digital Media, who also expressed concern that content protection, or digital rights management, isn’t yet strong enough on mobile phones. “It’ll take a few years.”

But working directly with mobile carriers, MTV Networks served up “nearly 100 million video streams in 2008, and that was double the number from the year before,” says Greg Clayman, executive vice president of digital distribution. But Clayman acknowledges that carriers are hoping to move toward delivering more ad-supported content, as opposed to subscription-based content, and that “there’s no agreed-upon ad formats yet.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2009 09:58:00 PM Comments (1)

I am empowering Burger King's pernicious viral marketing campaign, which I linked to below, even further by quoting this blog from Kottke.org, in which Jason Kottke uses the mathematics behind the campaign to come up with a valuation for Facebook that is lower than the valuation Microsoft used when they invested in the company. (Getting people like me to blog about a fast food product seems to have been the whole point of the campaign.) You see, if each Whopper costs $2.40, and there are 150 million users on Facebook, but some of them live overseas and are ineligible... well, just head over there for the details.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2009 05:51:00 PM Comments (1)

This blog will be broadcast via this new Facebook app... as soon as four more of you confirm that I am indeed one of the authors. Please click here and visit the page if you are on Facebook.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2009 04:23:00 PM Comments (0)

I've blogged before about the legal saga surrounding The Watchmen, which is the film news world equivalent of a slow-motion car crash. If you're a producer, the idea that your film could be held hostage after its completion due to legal issues is the ultimate nightmare.

One of the film's producers, Lloyd Levin, has written an open letter that is posted over at Drew McWeeny's new blog, Hitfix. An excerpt:

One reason the movie was made was because Warner Brothers spent the time, effort and money to engage with and develop the project. If Watchmen was at Fox the decision to make the movie would never have been made because there was no interest in moving forward with the project.

Does a film studio have the right to stand in the way of an artistic endeavor and determine that it shouldn't exist? If the project had been sequestered at Fox, if Fox had any say in the matter, Watchmen simply wouldn't exist today, and there would be no film for Fox to lay claim on. It seems beyond cynical for the studio to claim ownership at this point.

By his own admission, Judge Feess is faced with an extremely complex legal case, with a contradictory contractual history, making it difficult to ascertain what is legally right. Are there circumstances here that are more meaningful, which shed light on what is ultimately just, to be taken into account when assessing who is right? In this case, what is morally right, beyond the minutiae of decades-old contractual semantics, seems clear cut.

For the sake of the artists involved, for the hundreds of people, executives and filmmakers, actors and crew, who invested their time, their money, and dedicated a good portion of their lives in order to bring this extraordinary project to life, the question of what is right is clear and unambiguous - Fox should stand down with its claim.

My father, who was a lawyer and a stickler for the minutiae of the law, was always quick to teach me that the determination of what is right and wrong was not the sole purview of the courts. I bet someone at Fox had a parent like mine who instilled the same sense of fairness and justice in them.

The hardline attitude towards this case is articulated by David Poland over at the Hot Blog, who calls the letter "bullshit."

An excerpt:

Is there anything more pathetic than a movie producer… a producer of expensive movies… suddenly wanting to sit around the campfire, hold hands, and sing Kumbaya, and talk about what’s “right?”....

This is not an Orson Welles movie being left to die. This is not Mapplethorpe being censored in Cincinnati. This isn’t even a publishing company doing a book deal to assure that the book will never get released because they don’t like the contents.

This is business. Simply business. Studio 101 business.

Meanwhile, Nikki Finke posts another update on all the legal skirmishing.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/09/2009 11:51:00 AM Comments (2)

Now here is outside-the-box, appealingly anti-social advertising. From Burger King comes the Whopper Sacrifice campaign, described here in Ad Week:

It's a common problem for anyone who joined Facebook some time ago. You look at your friend list and wonder who these people are.

Burger King wants to help consumers do something about it.

The fast-food chain has released the Whopper Sacrifice application on Facebook. The app rewards people with a coupon for BK's signature burger when they cull 10 friends. Each time a friend is excommunicated, the application sends a notification to the banished party via Facebook's news feed explaining that the user's love for the unlucky soul is less than his or her zeal for the Whopper.

The effort crafted by Crispin Porter + Bogusky came about after agency creative staffers confronted the too-many-friends scenario themselves on Facebook.

"We thought there could be some fun there, removing some of these people who are friends [but] not necessarily] best friends," said Jeff Benjamin, executive interactive creative director at Crispin, and friend to 736 on Facebook. "It's asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the Whopper," he said.

The app also adds a box to user profile pages charting their progress toward the free burger with the line, "Who will be the next to go?"

The Facebook app can be downloaded here.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 05:26:00 PM Comments (1)

"What if Sundance isn't about the sales anymore?" asks Stephen Zeitchik in a Hollywood Reporter piece that's worth reading for its take on the festival and the current acquisitions market. In it he mentions several films that are screening directly for executives instead of heading towards Park City, and he summons up the following vision of the festival (which is a lot like how it used to be a long time ago):

But what these breakouts show is that the fest's main value might now lie in the classic indie model, in which little money is spent and little is earned. The payoff comes in the form of critical cachet and awards, not in a Little Miss Sunshine-style plug-and-play blockbuster. It's a switch that takes the fest back to its emergence two decades ago, when movies like "sex, lies & videotape" were championed not as possible crossover hits but as giving rise to directorial talent and even a new style of filmmaking.

Such a shift would dovetail, in a sense, with the festival's own ambitions. While organizers haven't voiced outright opposition to the sales market as they have with swag and ambush marketing, they have had an ambivalent relationship with it: Organizers like the heat and industry attendance it brings but privately worry that it puts the emphasis on the big sale instead of the great film.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 04:51:00 PM Comments (1)

From a press release I just received from Film Independent:

Today Film Independent and Netflix announced the immediate launch of the Netflix FIND Your Voice Film Competition, which will award one aspiring first-time feature filmmaker the means, guidance and resources to make a full-length, narrative film.

The winner of the competition, who will own all rights to his or her film, will be determined between now and July 2009. In addition to production resources needed to make the film, the winner will receive a $150,000 cash production grant funded by Netflix, plus turnkey resources like film stock, processing, camera rental, and post production services. The total prize value is more than $350,000. Film Independent will provide advice and mentorship to the winning filmmaker throughout the production of the film and will also screen the winner’s movie at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

To apply online, as well as to get more information, please go to: www.netflix.com/findyourvoice.

There is no cost to apply. We will accept a maximum of 2000 submissions between now (January 9) and February 9, so don't wait -- apply now!

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 03:16:00 PM Comments (1)

Below I posted John August's take on the new iMovie HD, introduced this week at Macworld Expo. Now, the New York Times' David Pogue weighs in. He's mixed/positive on the update, saying that it fixes some of the previous version's deficiencies while ignoring others. But while most filmmakers don't use this consumer-level application, I can't help but think that one new iMovie development may reshape some no-budget filmmakers' creative arsenals:

Now, longtime readers may recall that I absolutely hated iMovie ’08. It wasn’t iMovie at all; Apple completely junked the beloved iMovie that had served it well for years, and replaced it with something completely unrecognizable, riddled with feature holes.
Some of those holes are filled in the new version (video effects, slow/fast motion, direct export to iDVD) and some aren’t (no export back to tape, no volume-level “rubber banding”). Overall, though, iMovie ’09 appears to be vastly more usable and complete than iMovie ’08 was. Especially when you consider its killer new feature: software stabilization.

This program can do an insanely great job of turning a bouncy, jerky handheld camcorder shot into something smooth and level (following a long period of analysis; let it run unattended while you go get lunch). I tried it on about five different clips, some of which were VERY unsteady. It works so well, a couple of observers complained that it looked unnatural; the floaty SteadiCam feeling is so noticeable, it doesn’t look like home movies anymore. No big deal; you can double-click a stabilized clip to open up an intensity slider that you can adjust to back off the effect.

In general, this feature could do wonders for the great majority of amateur videos.

Will we see the handheld wave that was launched by Jean de Segonzac's lensing of Laws of Gravity morph into a generation of no-budget Kubricks with their gliding tracking and following shots?

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 02:47:00 PM Comments (4)

If you'd like to impress your date with your taste and erudition -- and thumb your nose at all your downsizing friends -- you can buy a pair of tickets to what is the toniest movie fundraiser ever.

From Quintessentially.com:

The Alloy Theater Company will present a stunning recreation of one of the most amazing classical menus ever created, featuring the most decadent tastes from late 19th century Paris, and immortalized in the Academy Award-winning film Babette’s Feast, at Thomas Keller’s world-renowned Per Se restaurant. Taking place on Friday, January 9 at Per Se (10 Columbus Circle), Keller’s interpretation of the exquisite feast will feature such dishes as Blinis Demidoff (buckwheat cakes with caviar) paired with vintage Veuve Cliquot, and Cailles en Sarcophage (tender quail stuffed with foie gras and encased in a puff pastry shell over a pool of black truffles) paired with Vintage Clos de Vougeot.

The evening will kick off with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at 6pm, followed by a screening of the iconic Danish/French film, and the exquisitely sensuous feast. Tickets cost USD 3,500 each or USD 6,000 for a table for two, and Quintessentially members receive a 20% discount on individual tickets, or a 10% discount on a pair of tickets. Proceeds will benefit the Alloy Theater Company, a new non-profit theater company currently in its first season.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 12:50:00 PM Comments (0)

This year we placed Shana Feste, writer/director of the Sundance Competition film The Greatest on our 25 New Faces list. Now, via Variety, is a preview clip from her film.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/08/2009 01:50:00 AM Comments (0)

The Interational Film Festival Rotterdam, which opens this year January 21, has just announced its Tiger Competition line-up. The competition, which is limited to first and and second features, contains 14 films, including eight world premieres, and the opening night film is MIchael Imperioli's directorial debut, The Hungry Ghosts.

Here is the complete list:

At West of Pluto, Henri Bernadet & Myriam Verreault (Canada)
Be Calm and Count to Seven, Ramtin Lavafipour (Iran)
Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, Edwin (Indonesia)
Breathless, Yang Ik-june (South Korea)
Dark Harbor, Takatsugu Naito (Japan)
Dogging: A Love Story, Simon Ellis (U.K.)
Floating in Memory, Peng Tao (China)
The Hungry Ghosts, Michael Imperioli (U.S.)
No puedo vivir sin ti, Leon Dai (Taiwan)
Schottentor, Caspar Pfaundler (Austria)
Sois sage, Juliette Garcias (France-Denmark)
The Strength of Water, Armagan Ballantyne (New Zealand-Germany)
Turistas, Alicia Scherson (Chile)
Wrong Rosary, Mahmut Fazil Coskun (Turkey)

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/07/2009 01:50:00 PM Comments (0)

When making a project filmmakers often find themselves working in a vacuum. The efforts to get the project up and running, combined with the difficultly to keep it on the tracks, can lead to mistakes that could have been avoided. Certain mistakes can be costly or even result in a project being shelved. Many of these issues can be avoided when filmmakers are willing to be transparent around the process of making and distributing their work.

The New Breed is a group blog featuring filmmakers in various phases of the process. Lead by Zak Forsman (I F*cking Hate You, Heart of Now) and featuring a list of contributors that includes Todd Sklar (Box Elder), Zeke Zelker (In Search Of), Jenny Able (Abel Raises Cain), JJ Lask (On the Road with Judas), and Justin Evans (A Lonely Place to Die). New Breed covers a wide range of topics such as funding, production, post, festival strategy, audience building, social media and distribution.



15 filmmakers have come together to share their experiences and the New Breed is looking for more.

# posted by Lance Weiler @ 1/07/2009 09:40:00 AM Comments (0)

In our current down economy, there is one indie film genre that is actually attracting new investment dollars: the porn biz. That's according to The Atlantic, which, in an article by Tom Johansmeyer, tells the story of AdultVest, which bills itself as the adult industry's first hedge fund and investment community. The fund won the Alternative Investment News Hedge Fund Launch of the Year Award, beating out a the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

As the piece makes clear, the fund's CEO, Francis Koenig, sees opportunity amidst all the financial carnage and technological disruption of the current entertainment distribution system.

From the piece:

Relatively small, fragmented, and unaccustomed to outside investment, the U.S. porn industry (which generated roughly $12 billion in 2007) is somewhat buffered from today’s credit crunch, but it has its own problems. Video sales have been falling by 15 percent a year since 2005, and online content doesn’t deliver the returns it used to, now that Web sites such as RedTube and PornHub basically give it away. Struggling companies need investors to help right their operations, and those that are thriving in a brutal market need funding for growth.

Enter Koenig and AdultVest. He sees the porn downturn as temporary and believes that technological improvements will trigger a turnaround. One example: iPorn, a start-up in AdultVest’s portfolio that is developing an application to deliver porn to the Apple iPod. “The industry’s not going anywhere,” Koenig says. “You’ve got 6 billion people on the planet,” he laughs, “and they’re all horny.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/07/2009 12:11:00 AM Comments (0)

Here's the last of our '08 wrap-ups, this time from contributor Mike Plante, whose interview with Wayne Coyne about the Flaming Lips Christmas on Mars is up now on the main page.

Independent film distribution was having trouble before the economy began crashing around your house and new car. But I’m not talking about early 2008, when the likes of Warner Independent Pictures, Picturehouse and New Line went away — I am talking about the last 50 years. When the independent distribution arms of the major studios went out of business, I felt bad about the opportunities for smaller-budget studio films, as well as for all the people who lost their jobs. But the idea that this meant that independent filmmaking was doomed never crossed my mind for one second.

If your definition of independent filmmaking means a budget between 1 and 10 million dollars, we can all point to many films that are creative, smart and entertaining but still never received distribution by anyone big or small. If your definition singles out more grassroots and homemade filmmaking — which can still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — then you’ve got at least five incredible, widely loved films that never saw the light of day outside a festival for every OLD JOY that did. And if you prefer to venture down into the avant gutter and independent film means something artistic, with no-budget, that doesn’t fit into preconceived genre, yet is amazing to watch and feel, then theatrical distribution was never in the realm of possibility anyway.

Yes, things are not getting better. That sucks. The internet offers incredible opportunity — but here come the salesmen and not everyone in Kansas wants to see your weird film, anyway. Welles and Cassavetes had all these problems decades ago. Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin made THE LITTLE FUGITIVE in 1953 for 30 grand, played 5,000 theaters, and still couldn’t find funding for their next film. Brakhage and Ken Jacobs and hundreds of others kept their teaching gigs while making new work. When did you finally see Barbara Loden’s WANDA in a theater? Or THE EXILES? Last year, 30 years after they were made.

But there ARE distributors and sales agents and film festivals that are doing great work, and there are lots of cool kids in Kansas eating up truly independent films. Just like the last 100 years, if you are a filmmaker, it’s hard to make a film and then have people see it — but you will make your film no matter what.

(P.S. where is the NEA bailout? Or the WPA paying people to make art?) -- Mike Plante

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2009 11:45:00 PM Comments (0)

On my "best of '08" list is a sub-category for the best films I saw on the fest circuit that have distribution in '09, and one of my favorites of these is Astra Taylor's Examined Life. It's a documentary in which the director takes eight philosophers to the streets and explores the way in which their ideas bleed back and forth between the world and their consciousnesses. It's a smart, heady film that is also an especially warm, engaging, and high-spirited viewing experience. Here is the just released official trailer.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2009 11:08:00 PM Comments (0)

One of the questions Apple's filmmaker fans had going into today's Macworld conference was whether the rumored changes to the iLife suite of programs would include an upgrade to iMovie that bring the program's functionality back to where it was before it was disastrously retooled as iMovie HD.

Unfortunately, based on screenwriter and director John August's opinion, it doesn't sound like this happened today. From his blog:

Among the products Apple announced today is iMovie 09, an update to their entry-level video editor that I currently find completely unusable. They have demo videos up showing some of the new features, which range from very helpful (stabilization) to fairly gimmicky (the animated maps).

What’s most clear, however, is that they’re sticking with the bizarre and unfortunate editing interface.

Read the entire post for the rest of his comments.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/06/2009 10:58:00 PM Comments (0)

Cinetic's Matt Dentler, who is part of the roundtable discussion on the current state of the biz in the current Filmmaker ("as discouraging as it was galvanizing" one indie director called it in an email) is interviewed on the CineVegas blog by Roger Erik Tinch. Check it out.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2009 09:18:00 PM Comments (0)

Ray Pride has coverage of the Thessaloniki Film Festival in the upcoming issue of Filmmaker, but over the past few days he's uploaded a bunch of his fantastic fest photography to our Festival Ambassador section. In addition to the Greek festival he's got snaps from Sheffield and True/False as well as embedded clips featuring directors and writers like Azazel Jacobs, Diablo Cody and Michael Ondaatje. There's even a shot of Peter Broderick in a swami hat and, here, Emir Kusturica leading his No Smoking band.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2009 12:22:00 AM Comments (0)

CinemaTech's Scott Kirsner has been collaborating with ITVS on a series of case studies focusing on filmmakers who are using new technologies to connect with their audiences and achieve distribution. The first seven case studies, featuring filmmakers like Hunter Weeks and Josh Caldwell, Tiffany Shlain and Kate Chevigny, are up now as is Kirsner's "Top Five Digital Strategies for Social Issue Filmmakers." Check them out at the links above.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/04/2009 05:17:00 PM Comments (0)

I've posted a couple of times about the Google Book Settlement, more from a general interest in intellectual property issues than anything else. The relationship between the settlement's engagement with the publishing industry and its possible application to the world of film are not direct by any means. The Google Book Settlement applies to library collections containing copyrighted but out-of-print works as well as orphan works. But, I did suspect that at some point the issues involved would become relevant to the world of film. (Remember, Google owns YouTube.)

Now comes a piece critical about the proposed terms of the settlement from Chris Castle at The Register. He especially takes issue with the proprietary nature of the register Google is creating and the "opt-out" aspect of the permissions process.

From the piece:

Allowing a content registry to be controlled by a company that also exploits that content creates anticompetitive conditions even without the MFN. Potential competitors will worry that their business depends on an infrastructure controlled by a dominant competitor.

History shows that if a company that does the paying also does the counting, there is an inherent tendency for shenanigans against the creators. Imagine if the British performing rights society the MCPS-PRS Alliance outsourced its royalty collection and accounting to broadcasters. The fox would be in the chicken house, and the writers would revolt.

So where does film come in? Well, Castle quotes from this piece in The Wall Street Journal Online in which Google's Sergey Brin talks about other possibilities:

WSJ: Is establishing a registry for rights holders a model that Google thinks it can replicate in other areas of digital media, like video?

Brin: “Very much so. In fact, with video and our fingerprinting technology, we are essentially building the registry. We have a number of big media companies that send us their raw video files and we fingerprint that and we can attribute those videos to them.”

WSJ: What about in the music industry?

Brin: “The music industry faces a lot of similar problems. There has been a lot of litigating and lack of trust, and it is not something that we have pursued much because there do seem to be other parties that are trying to sort it out. In general, we do want to be comprehensive and we have agreements with many music companies for music videos on YouTube. It is definitely something that is within our sphere”.

Comments Castle:

Regulators should care who controls the Google Books registry because it can easily reach out to other content. Google is well on its way to dominating all search and advertising, and now maybe a significant share of online content. Google’s ability to accomplish transparent accounting is definitely in doubt.

And he concludes:

The plaintiffs got it half right - our business needs a registry. But that registry ought to be independent, and opt-in. If the Google class action settlement is approved, US courts will essentially create the opposite - an opt-out registry controlled by a dominant player with "most favoured nation" price protection. It is a fundamental principle of international law that an author should not be compelled to submit to formalities (such as an opt-out registry) in order to enjoy their rights.

But the borderless Internet drives creators toward at least pan-economic area licensing to encourage and facilitate competition among legitimate businesses. It is hard to see how a single-purpose opt-out books registry with a goodie-laden court-ordered license reached in the context of unequal litigation furthers any worthwhile public policy.

Regulators urgently need to take a closer look at this settlement. A win-win resolution of the harms done by Google to the authors and publishers would be to make Google pay for (or at least pay to start) a truly independent registry in line with current policy trends that could further these goals of cultural protections for all authors and citizens, voluntary opt-in licensing regimes that promote competition, and royalties for creators.

Related is this article about Google generally, "Google the Destroyer," by James V. DeLong, special counsel and chairman of the Intellectual Property practice area in the Washington, D.C. office of Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert. While I don't agree with everything in his piece, his discussion of Google's interests in promoting ad-supported content models is interesting:

Several ways of financing the creation and distribution of content exist. Consumers can pay directly, either per ticket (a movie) or for a subscription (XM Radio). Ads can be sold, either combined with a payment (magazines) or stand-alone (broadcast TV). Or a distribution company can sell raw access to the network, and let the users worry about the content (telephone). And of course there are hybrids, where basic service is sold cheaply, and premium offerings bundled on top of it (cell phones, plus ringtones).

Of all of these, advertising is the least satisfactory. In a system based on advertising, the consumer is a product, not a customer. His eyeballs and ears are sold to an advertiser. The link between the value a customer places on a piece of content and the money available to fund its creation becomes slender indeed. I might be willing to pay $100 for a particular performance, while the value of my eyeballs to advertiser is a mere dime. In an advertising-based system, only the latter counts.

There is nothing wrong with advertising-based systems, but they should not be allowed to crowd out other forms of financing, in which the consumers of content are actually the customers (and thus the kings).

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/04/2009 04:34:00 PM Comments (0)

I was kind of perplexed by Michael Glitz's piece on The Huffington Post entitled "DVDS -- How and Why You Should Switch to BluRay." He runs through all the standard arguments -- they look better, that's the way the industry is heading, you can play your standard-def DVDs on a BluRay player, and if you have a 1080p flat-screen you're getting the most out if it with BluRay. All reasonable arguments, and, in fact, while I don't have a BluRay player I spent an evening with a friend the other day who has one and the picture quality of remastered old films like The Searchers was incredible.

But I guess the tone of the piece struck me as odd; it's something that I'd expect to read in a home video magazine rather than the Huffington Post. I don't think anybody's doubting that BluRay disks look better; the question for people today is both whether they can afford to buy a player and a modest number of disks to make it worthwhile, or, perhaps more importantly, if they feel like investing in a new physical media format. Because, the struggle to get consumers to adopt BluRay is being complicated by the growth of digital downloads and streaming from iTunes store, Netflix, etc. Sure, they don't look as good, even when they are touted as HD, but they are more convenient, can be transferred to a handheld device, and they don't junk up your living room or basement.

The argument is playing out in the comments section, which I found of more interest than the article itself. Some samples:

"The Blurays are slowly taking over the dvd section at Best Buy. Personally I'm just downloading all of my movies digitally these days. Digital downloads are the future ..." -- davism97

"Pay a few more bucks for cable, and you can get all the movies your heart desires either for free, or for $5, on the spot, just by hitting the ">" key on your remote!

How often do people really watch Batman on DVD, or BluRay anyway? 10 times a month? I doubt it. Just watch it On Demand, through your cable subscription. It's so much greener than buying all new BluRays. What a colossal waste, replacing everything.

Also, Netflix, under certain plans, lets you watch movies on your computer! Hook up your computer to your TV, and you're good to go!" -- Truth and Theory

"Unless we plan on waiting for about 2 more years when hard goods are dead. Apple TV, OnDemand, Netfilx... all will allow you to just download movies, buy them or rent them. No need to store countless DVDs that just take up room gather dust, clutter up the living room, make you look like a geek and slowly become obsolete." -- Skudgobang

"Hey in 3 years I can put that Bluray player in the garage with my useless DVD player and other out of date electronics that were over priced and now useless because technology moved beyond it. Are you a salesman for BestBuy or something? Let me know when a BluRay player is down below 50 dollars, but spending 200 for something that will be obsolete in a few years is not practical. Besides I am using that money to buy things I need like food. But thanks for the heads up." -- jdenham

"This does sound like a commercial from a troubled industry. I recently bought a dvd player with up-converting feature for less than $90, it has fantastic image, nothing else needed. I have no need, no intention to pay extra for blu-ray player or discs." -- racom

"Please. BluRay will be passed over in favor of downloaded media. It's already happened for music and it is beginning to happen with video. New devices that do exactly this are popping up like weeds every day. Apple, Net Flix, and Block Buster already have attractive products for downloading and streaming videos to rent or own.

Why would I want to keep a discrete piece of plastic lying around in my home for each video I purchase when I can just download it without having to go to a store and pay retail costs for shipping, storage, and shelf space? Why would I want to have to return a rental to a store, vending machine, or mail them back and forth?

Furthermore, the technological jump from DVD to BluRay is nowhere near the magnitude of change that was seen going from VHS to DVD. All you're getting with BluRay is more density, more unwanted DRM, and more cost. There is no compelling need to upgrade. This lesser technological difference will only slow Blu Ray adoption rates, giving the systems for downloaded video an easier path to market saturation.

Downloaded video becomes more viable as magnetic storage becomes cheaper and home broadband increases in bandwidth and penetration in major consumer markets.

Sony is feeling the pain of having invested so many resources in a format that is not needed and already outdated.

This article is so patently ridiculous one must wonder how much you were paid to shill for them." -- generalstore

Okay, I cherry-picked these quotes, but I'd say the comments thread ran about two to one against the author's call for us to immediately buy BluRay.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/04/2009 02:26:00 PM Comments (6)

I just came across on the Interview magazine site this talk between director Harmony Korine and artist photographer William Eggleston, whose "William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961- 80" is up now and essential at New York's Whitney Museum. (A slide show of some of his images is above.)

An excerpt:

HK: Would you take photos of a Kroger today?

WE: Certainly.

HK: And do you think it would have that same effect looking at it 20 years from now?

WE: I think so.

HK: So you think time makes things more exotic?

WE: I don't think exotic is the word.

HK: So what do you think happens?

WE: Well, probably the best way to put it might be that at some time, not just in an instant, but over some period of time I became aware of the fact that I wanted to document examples like Kroger or Piggly Wiggly in the late '50s, early '60s. I had the attitude that I would work with this present-day material and do the best I could to describe it with photography, not intending to make any particular comment about whether it was good or bad or whether I liked it or not. It was just there, and I was interested in it. That's what I still do today.

Director Michael Almereyda made a documentary about Eggleston, William Eggleston and the Real World, and the Whitney asked him to speak with the artist in this short video shot on the eve of the exhibition.



Finally, over at FilmInFocus, Eggleston riffs off five influential films. Here are his thoughts on one, Gone with the Wind.

Technicolor was used just perfectly in it. It's like a dye transfer. Hell, it is a dye-transfer. Tutwiler [Mississippi] was about five miles from [my childhood home of] Sumner, and we'd go once a week or so when I was a boy. Movies were never a visual influence on me. I never really go to them, even now. There was an art theater in Memphis that Rosa and I went to in the mid-’60s to see European and black-and-white movies. I am sure there must have been some in color but I can't drum one up.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/03/2009 09:18:00 PM Comments (0)

Ted Hope has been running on his blog an upbeat series of posts in which he finds reasons to be optimistic about change in the independent film business. Check out his first post here , his most recent post ((22-25) here, and scroll in between for the rest.

And here's one sample:

22. Financiers are collaborating with each other. Groups like Impact Partners that provide regular deal flow, vetting, and producerial oversight for investors with common interests lowers the threshold number for investors interested in entering the film business. IndieVest is another model based on subscription, deal flow, and perqs. The high amount of capital needed to enter the film business has limited its participants. The film business has its own vernacular, and mysterious business practices. It is an industry of relationships. Collaborative ventures like this help to solve many of these threshold issues.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/03/2009 04:20:00 PM Comments (0)

Via Boing Boing and Constant Seige comes this fun YouTube clip with Andy Warhol, Steven Spielberg and Bianca Jagger talking about tv static, ghosts, and the future.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/03/2009 02:14:00 PM Comments (0)

The issue of Filmmaker that's at the printer right now has a piece by Lance Weiler about data portability -- how we should be advocating for our right to carry with us our social network data as we trek across the 'net. In the piece he mentions the filmmaker Arin Crumley and his recently deleted Facebook page. Writes Arin on his new Facebook profile, "The old one was disabled by Facebook because I had over 2,000 friends, so for this one, we have to have met in person for me to add you." Lance's warning resonated today once more as, over at Ain't It Cool News, Harry Knowles notes that his Facebook page has been disabled:

Well, apparently my account had too much "activity" around my Birthday. I had received a couple of thousand Birthday well-wishes, and apparently FACEBOOK admins have some kneejerk to accounts that have that level of activity. I don't know if this is the case, but as I hadn't violated any of their "codes of conduct" I can't imagine what else it could be. And FACEBOOK doesn't seem to want to repond to inquiries of any kind

.

So, as our company seems to be pretty decent, this is as good a time as any to note that Filmmaker's Facebook profile got deleted this past week as well. Now, our first Facebook profile was as a person, which is something you're not supposed to do when you're a company or organization. We didn't know that when we signed up, and when we did, we came up with a fan page and asked everyone to join that instead. Still, we had way more people on the profile page (almost 5,000) than we do on the fan site, and that's probably why it was deleted. Anyway, if you are on Facebook and you liked getting the occasional posting or piece of news from us, consider searching for us (or clicking here) and becoming a fan so you'll receive them once more.

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/02/2009 10:14:00 PM Comments (6)

It seems whenever the economy is down you'll hear some rose-colored-glasses wearing producer saying, "Great, now that stocks and real estates are no longer offering investors a return, they'll turn to film!"

Well, for those of you waiting to see how the economic collapse will affect independent filmmakers, Hannah Seligson in The New York Times offers one possibility: there may soon be more of us.

From the piece:

With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs, bonuses disappearing and the financial sector going through a seismic shift, some bankers and lawyers are switching lanes to more creative career paths. They are putting down their Wall Street Journals and picking up Variety as they try their hands at comedy, filmmaking and writing.

Harry B. Weiner, a partner at On-Ramps, a recruiting and consulting firm that works with financial professionals, says the economic downturn is creating a new psychology of career transition.

“People feel there’s nothing to lose in terms of taking a risk and pursuing a new direction, especially when you have a résumé that says ‘banking’ and no banks are hiring,” Mr. Weiner said.

That was certainly the calculus for Benjamin Cox, 33. After leaving his job as a vice president at Goldman Sachs in August, he immediately began incubating his plans to work on his screenplay — he calls it a cross between Swingers and Annie Hall — and start a production company.

Mr. Cox said that with the upheaval on Wall Street, he feels relieved to have a backup plan. “I’m seeing a lot of people who never thought of an alternative to banking.”

# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/01/2009 11:32:00 PM Comments (2)