FILM & TV FINANCE SUMMIT

By Admin

The Structured Finance Institute (SFI) has announced the schedule for its 5th Annual Film & Television Finance Summit, March 7 – 9, 2005, at the Regency Hotel in New York.

“This conference brings together a senior roster of international film finance professionals. These financiers, independent producers, legal advisors, and studio executives provide ‘hands-on’ practical experience and technical knowledge on how to obtain financing for film projects.”

Among the topics the finance summit is expected to cover are:

- Utilizing commercial bankers to secure financings

- Examining how Investors can minimize their risk in investing in film

- U.S. state and federal tax incentives for film and TV production

- What’s happening in the domestic and international film finance markets

- The role of music rights in increasing the worth of a film… Read the rest

SCATTER ARTIST

By Admin

Barry Le Va, who is the subject of a retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania entitled Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va, on view through April 3, “has used broken glass, meat cleavers, wool felt, ball bearings, powdered chalk, cast concrete, paper towels, linseed oil, a typewriter and a gun, among other things, to make his art,” which is “synonymous with the scatter — a Postminimal gesture now ubiquitous to Postmodern art,” according to a recent press release.

“Part of a generation intent on knocking art off its pedestal, Le Va claimed the floor as his field of operations by scattering massive amounts of materials, or forms, to create works which he called ‘distributions.’ Apparently random, even chaotic, these installations are in fact premeditated and executed according to plan. Not surprisingly, drawing plays a significant role in the work of this artist whose formative training is in architecture.

But perhaps surprisingly, film also serves as a key reference point for Le Va, “who cites Peter Greenaway, Jean-Luc Godard and Orson Welles among the directors whose work he had looked at intensely over the years.”

In conjunction with the ICA exhibition, International House, Philadelphia will present a screening of Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai on Wednesday, February 2 at 7 p.m., preceded by an introduction by Timothy Corrigan, professor of English and director of cinema studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

“A classic film noir expose of the evils of greed and lust… Welles’s oratory on sharks in The Lady from Shanghai is as thrilling as the final shootout in a Hall of Mirrors — an imagery that evokes Le Va’s art”, such as the piece “On Center Shatter — or –Scattershatter (within the Series of Layered Pattern Acts” (pictured, top right), from 1968-71.
… Read the rest

AT SUNDANCE: RECURRING REFRAINS

By Scott Macaulay

Cinema is full of failed literary adaptations, attempts by famous directors to translate the work of their favorite novelists into images and screen action. Most of these films crash, however, by the sheer weight of their ambition. Tackling a writer’s best known book, they invariably disappoint his or her hardcore partisans when what’s particularly riveting about the work becomes less interesting when it’s visualized.

Japanese director Jun Ichikawa avoided all of the Great Author-to-Film pitfalls with his Tony Takitani, an adaptation of a story by the great Haruki Murakami. Not so much a film as a celluloid ode to Murakami and his oeuvre, Tony Takitani is based on a slender short fiction but the material somehow encapsulates many of the author’s recurring themes: loneliness, the loss of a wife, cultural estrangement, jazz, and even a fetish for designer clothing. The story is a simple one. Tony Takitani, an industrial illustrator, has a quiet life and beautiful wife. His only problem is her shopping addiction, which consumes much of his money. And her racks of designer-wear take up a separate room in his house. After her accidental death, Takitani tries to escape his depression by hiring a housegirl who he’ll pay to wear his dead wife’s clothes. Of course, such coping mechanisms are not so simple…

Ichikawa captures Murakami’s essence by overlaying his hypnotic prose, in voiceover, over a series of tableaus, each containing a single dramatic moment which is often filmed in one shot. The camera dollies left-to-right from one tableau to the next, giving the film the feel of a particularly elegant graphic novel. There’s little dialogue, but sometimes the voiceover will break and the next line will be said by the actor in the scene. Throughout it all Ryuichi Sakamoto’s jazz piano winds its way, announcing a theme, departing from it, and then welcoming us back to its emotional space at a key moment in the story. (The film is also a model of low-budget ingenuity, using archival stills to zip through period backstories and using one single set, continually redressed, for all of its interior … Read the rest

AT SUNDANCE: SINGLE ROOM OCCUPANCIES

By Scott Macaulay

Saw back to back screenings in the Sundance “experimental” Frontier section to kick off my festival moviewatching this year. Frequently ignored by most industry, the Frontier section always contains a few real discoveries by filmmakers the fest tags as “experimental” but who will go on to make the mark in the indie scene. A few years ago J.T. Petty debuted his chillingly simple near-silent ghost story Soft for Digging in the section and last year Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation screened there as well.

This year the Frontier “filmmaker to watch” may be Kyle Henry, whose Room is an excellently directed and acted portrait of a working-class woman’s flight from the reality of her Texas home and family life to some kind of “Destination: Metaphor” in New York City.

Henry previously worked as an editor — he cut Eric Eason’s feature Manito — and the film pulls you along with a sophisticated montage that overlays the “white noise” of daily terror alerts and Iraq war news onto this lower-class bingo parlor worker’s (played superbly by Cyndi Williams) quotidian existence. After suffering a series of blackouts, she impulsively abandons her husband and kids and hops a plane to the big city where she looks for some kind of white and open interior space she’s imgained in her mind’s eye.

At the Q and A, Henry referenced Carl Jung and spoke of his desire to make cinema that was “like a dream” and which could “allow a personal interpretation” for each viewer. Central to Henry’s film is the idea that changes in politics and technology can trigger personal change as well, a thought that figures in novels by Don Delillo and philosophical science fiction but which rarely is referenced in a feature film.

As the film progresses, though, its ties to a physical reality become increasingly tenuous, and it ends with a 2001-ish headscratcher. Given the clarity of the film’s first act, with its incisive portrait of working-class America, it is disappointing when Room ultimately gets lost within a fun-house New York and its own very abstract metaphors. Despite this final detour, however, … Read the rest

SOCIAL ACTIVITY ACCOUNTS

By Scott Macaulay

For years, the only op-ed conservative voice I’ve enjoyed has been William Safire’s at the New York Times, and this is despite the fact that I disagree with many of his positions. So, I took note of the columnist’s four-piece departure in the Paper of Record this past Monday and recommend, while it’s still free, this final column and thoughtful discussion of the need for perpetual personal change.

Writes Safire:

Combine those two bits of counsel – never retire, but plan to change your career to keep your synapses snapping – and you can see the path I’m now taking. Readers, too, may want to think about a longevity strategy.

We’re all living longer. In the past century, life expectancy for Americans has risen from 47 to 77. With cures for cancer, heart disease and stroke on the way, with genetic engineering, stem cell regeneration and organ transplants a certainty, the boomer generation will be averting illness, patching itself up and pushing well past the biblical limits of “threescore and ten.”

But to what purpose? If the body sticks around while the brain wanders off, a longer lifetime becomes a burden on self and society. Extending the life of the body gains most meaning when we preserve the life of the mind….

In this inaugural winter of 2005, the government in Washington is dividing with partisan zeal over the need or the way to protect today’s 20-somethings’ Social Security accounts in 2040. Sooner or later, we’ll bite that bullet; personal economic security is freedom from fear.

But how many of us are planning now for our social activity accounts? Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind.

Medical and genetic science will surely stretch our life spans. Neuroscience will just as certainly make possible the mental agility of the aging. Nobody should fail to capitalize on the physical and mental gifts to come.… Read the rest

WHERE’S THE SUNSHINE?

By Admin

The list of the 2005 Oscar nominees that was unveiled yesterday contained few surprises, several of them pleasant, like Catalina Sandino Moreno’s nomination for Maria Full of Grace. Yet there were, in my opinion, several egregious omissions. The deserving Sideways was nominated for five Oscars, and that’s great, but how could the Academy overlook Paul Giamatti, perhaps the most worthy member of that film’s cast and crew?

Yet Giamatti’s snub pales in comparison to what happened to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yes, Charlie Kaufman and Kate Winslet got nods, but the fact that Michel Gondry, Jim Carrey and the film’s producers were overlooked for Best Director, Best Actor and Best Picture, respectively, is unconscionable. The film is a groundbreaking, near-flawless work, and a stunning example of how technical know-how (which Gondry’s got in spades) and nonlinear storytelling can inform and enhance — not obscure, as is so often the case — emotional and narrative clarity. And Carrey is a revelation in a performance that is at once understated and heartbreaking. Eternal was also shut out of all the technical achievement categories. Oh well.
… Read the rest

AT SUNDANCE: “THEY MAY AS WELL SALUTE AL QAEDA…”

By Scott Macaulay

“They may as well salute Al Qaeda,” a guy sitting behind me at the 40 Shades of Blue press screening quite sincerely grumbled after seeing one of the “Independent” mini-trailers that precede all of the screenings here. These short films, which basically serve as cinematic headers for a credit roll of festival sponsors, occupy a strange place in the festival each year. They’re intended to be amusing but innocuous — little film tidbits to reinforce the idea that “You are at a Film Festival!” — but their sheer repetition invariably transforms them into gauche cinematic eyesores by festival’s end.

This year, the grumbles are starting a bit earlier. “Don’t you think there’s something weirdly condescending about these spots?” a journalist friend asked me at one screening today. And then there was the guy with the “Al Qaeda” comment, who prompted a whole row of journalists to burst out laughing.

What are these spots? They’re these cut-out animation pieces by team at Jib Jab in which people in various professions explain why they’re “independent,” and they end with this happy music with lyrics like, “He’s not working for the Man, he’s an independent guy!” The thing is, in the spots I’ve seen so far, “independence” usually equates to incompetence or criminally malicious behavior. The “independent road striper” paints zig-zag lines all over the highway causing cars to crash and fly off the mountain. And in the “independent demolition expert” spot, which prompted the “Al Qaeda” crack, an Afro’d blaxploitation queen demonstrates her “independence” at blowing up buildings, wrecking a suburban home and then accidentally blowing herself up. And again, the music, this time with a 70′s funk arrangement — “She’s not working for the Man, she’s independent!” — after which all the corporate logos appear. To make things perfectly clear, the spots start with letters forming the word “Independent” appearing on screen after which some fade away leaving only the letters forming “Inept.” And who said irony was dead?
… Read the rest

NVR MEDIA ARTS GRANTS

By Admin

From a press release rceived today: “National Video Resources (NVR) [has] announced that 16 film, video and media artists will be awarded grants to aid with the completion, transfer and marketing of their projects. Through its Program for Media Artists, NVR will provide 12 technical assistance grants of $1,500 each, two of which for the first time are being given to preserve and archive the projects of past Fellowship recipients that have passed on. Additionally, 4 artists will receive in-kind Web assistance grants for Web site development.

Technical Assistance Grants

Kelly Anderson/Tami Gold

$1,500 towards Spanish translation and subtitling of Every Mother’s Son, a documentary about an emerging movement of mothers in NYC whose sons have been victims of the police and who contest official accounts of what happened. The subtitling will help reach Spanish-speaking audiences as part of a community engagement project.

Carlos Avila

$1,500 toward the re-mastering and DVD authoring of Foto-Novelas, a series of short stories that use magical realism, science fiction and fantasy to show life in the Latino community. The preservation in DVD will allow the project to become part of the collection of media libraries across the country.

Seoungho Cho

$1,500 documentation of Desert Project/Death Valley, installation video works about California’s Death Valley. Proper documentation will enable the filmmaker to continue promoting the work among galleries, museums and other exhibit spaces in the U.S. and abroad.

Curtis Choy

$1,500 will go toward music composition and acquisition for the feature-length documentary What’s Wrong With Frank Chin?, about the controversial pioneer of Asian-American literature, theater and film.

Simin Farkondeh

$1,500 to finalize the postproduction of her narrative feature Who Gives Kisses Freely From Her Lips, a film that looks at temporary marriage in today’s Iran.

Thomas Allen Harris

$1,500 for promotion and marketing materials for Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela, a film based on the stories of the first twelve South African exiles who left their country in 1960 to keep the anti-apartheid movement alive, among them the filmmaker’s stepfather.

Mitko Panov

$1,500 to contribute to the creation of … Read the rest

MURAKAMI MOVIE

By Scott Macaulay

A little over a year ago Filmmaker ran a feature entitled “Who Inspires Us?” [Summer 2004] in which we asked filmmakers to list current inspirations on their own work. Manito director Eric Eason cited the Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who was actually a recommendation to him from our own Managing Editor Matt Ross. Anyway, I hadn’t read any of Murakami’s work but the citing stuck in my head and I wound up buying his The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle this fall at a time when I particularly needed something great to read. 600-plus pages later I’m a die-hard Murakami fan, and as I’m about to crack open his new Kafka on the Shore I receive an Indiewire news alert that Tony Takitani, the Jun Ichikawa picture based on a Murakami short story receiving its American premiere at Sundance has just been acquired by Strand Releasing.

Writes Tony Rayns in the London Film Festival catalog about the film, “It’s almost unknown for Haruki Murakami to allow film adaptations of his fiction; there were two brilliant shorts by Naoto Yamakawa in the early 1980s, [Panya Shugeki (The Bakery Attack), based on "The Second Bakery Attack," and 1005 no Onna no Ko (The 100% Girl), based on "On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning" in A Fine Day for Kangarooing], and this equally brilliant feature by Jun Ichikawa is the first since then. … Each shot is like a waking dream, many scenes are sequence-shots, most colour is drained away, and the soundtrack collages together dialogue and voice-over. It’s certainly striking, but the key thing is that it coheres as a filmic equivalent of Murakami’s deadpan prose. One of the films of the year, and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s piano score is just perfect.”

For a taste of Murakami’s prose, click on the link above where Random House has posted the first five chapters of the new novel, or read the short story the film was based on in The New Yorker.
… Read the rest

FILMS DEFINITELY NOT AT SUNDANCE 2005

By Admin

Leave it to the boys at Vice magazine to compile a list of the best “outsider” video clips, a genre that has exploded thanks to the advent of cheap DV cameras, high-speed Internet connections, and more than a few bored film editors with access to company tape archives. If you like Jackass! — or if you always wondered how Orson Welles made it through those embarrassing Paul Masson wine commercials in the early 80s — you’ll love these gems.
… Read the rest