Archive for April, 2005
Monday, April 25th, 2005
Among the many new DVD titles listed for sale at Luminous Film and Video Wurks is Hans-Jurgen Syberberg’s 7-hour-long magnum opus Hitler, a Film from Germany (1977). It’s not clear from the LFVW site whether this an imported copy of the BFI box set from 1994 — but at $14.95 it’s a real bargain. (For those with really high-speed connections and limitless patience, the entire film can also apparently be viewed online at Syberberg’s own Web site free of charge).
“Originally presented on German television in four parts, Syberberg presents a simple theme: Such evil as occurred in Hitler could never have existed without the support, however unwitting, of the rest of humanity. The presentation is the stuff of nightmares. The music of Hitler’s beloved Richard Wagner is included to suggest a sort of decadent, modern Wagnerian opera. Syberberg’s vision is not an optimistic one; it is forthright and brutal in its honesty, a vision of humanity’s dark, unsettling dreams.”
“Susan Sontag [was] one of the most perceptive critics to engage Syberberg’s Hitler, A Film from Germany, which was released in the United States under the title Our Hitler by Francis Ford Coppola. The film itself, made in twenty days of shooting after four years of preparation on a budget of $500,000, caused an enormous controversy when it was released in 1979, and continues to call for responses, both positive and negative, in critical circles today.
“Syberberg’s two themes are film and Hitler, the art medium of the twentieth century and the subject of the twentieth century. One might include here all of the permutations of these two terms: Hitler as film, Hitler in film, film as Hitler’s privileged medium, and our own, contemporary construction of Hitler as one that is, ultimately, cinematic in the sense that Hitler functions as a ‘screen’ for many of the internal projection machanisms of modern mass culture, Germany in particular. These two themes in their entwinement are articulated and interrogated on a grand, even ‘mythic’ scale, enacted theatrically on a stage, combining and mixing different modes, genres, media: the puppet show, the … Read the rest
Monday, April 25th, 2005
Two new Web sites have launched as resources for filmmakers looking to network or to manage their productions online:
“Some friends and I sat down two years ago to design a Web site for film/TV production,” writes Steve Kleiman. “We wanted it to manage the little things that get reinvented every production we worked on. Two years later the result is up at ProdInfo.net.”
“Prodinfo differs from other tools you might use to manage your film or television project. ProdInfo is a specialized tool meeting the unique needs of a demanding industry. The system knows what a ‘Grip’ is, how to sort your scenes in script versus shoot order, and how to adjust a call time. ProdInfo [also] shares information instantly on the Web. Other software tools revolve around one person controlling information from a single computer. Updates are printed out and faxed. Since ProdInfo is entirely Web-based, everyone on your project can access current information at anytime from any Internet-connected computer in the world. There’s no special software to install.”
StrongEyeContact.com, a new networking Web site for filmmakers and entertainers, is described as “Craig’s List meets the Actor’s Studio.” The site is designed to allow filmmakers to find everything they need to make their film a success: namely, actors, crew members, and publicity.
“Online networking is white hot these days,” says Brad Hinley, co-founder of Gorilla Films, a division of StrongEyeContact.com, “but Web-based technology simpy hasn’t beed used to help those in the entertainment industry — until now.”
Producers, soundmen, makeup artists, lighting techs, actors, post editors, camera men — they all have something in common. They are forced to pursue projects through traditional indirect avenues. “Thanks to Web-based social networking technologies — including Web service alerts, project management tools and centralized communications — the process is being democratized. [StrongEyeContact's] ease-of-use interface speeds up film and commercial production collaboration directly between people breaking into the industry.”
.… Read the rest
Monday, April 25th, 2005
Early last month Screening Room Digital Cinemas announced an e-cinema initiative to develop a network of 100 Digital Boutique Arthouse Cinemas over the next year. The cinemas will be company-owned and available as franchises for independent operators.
“The Digital Boutique Arthouse is a unique, modular designed deluxe cinema concept combining digital technology with an initimate ‘eatery’ style design… Cinemas will be equipped with projection, server and satellite technology, and will have access to an ongoing slate of independent, arthouse, and classic programming.”
Screening Room Digital Cinemas is a division of The Screening Room, Inc. of Amherst, NY, which also operates Screening Room Entertainment, a digital releasing division, and The Screening Room Cinema & Cafe, one of the country’s first alternative digital cinemas, in operation since 1993.
.… Read the rest
Sunday, April 24th, 2005
In today’s Arkansas Democrat Gazette is an another indie-film horror story. Written by composer Jason Morphew (who made it into our “Super 8″ last year) about his ill-fated experience on Tim McCann’s Runaway (which premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival), the piece details what happens all too often when budgets are low and the lines of communication between the producer, director and financier are less than transparent. Since the piece will go off-line within the next couple of days, I’ve posted it in its entirety below. Read and weep.
“Just Dying to Score”
By Jason Morphew
It took an hour and two ink cartridges to download and print the Runaway Boys screenplay.
Once done, I realized the pages weren’t numbered. I had placed the hundred-plus sheets, about five at a time, face down on the table next to my girlfriend, Krissy’s, computer, assuming I could easily collate later.
So I read the screenplay out of order on my back patio, in the squint-inducing summer sunlight of Los Angeles. Again, I had assumed the author’s intended sequence of scenes would manifest itself to me as I read. Unfortunately, this screenplay contained several near-identical scenes featuring the same two boys saying similar things to each other in a motel room. It was an accidental-postmodern reading experience.
My old friend Bob had e-mailed Runaway Boys to me earlier that day. He was producing the small-budgeted film for a small New York production company with only one other theatrical release to their credit, something relatively well-received featuring Robert Wagner. Bob wanted me to write some songs for the film, songs that sounded “rural.” He suggested that I use accordion and harmonica; he even threw out some guitar chords for consideration.
I disregarded his suggestions because rural comes naturally to me, without coaching. Besides, the production company wasn’t offering me any money yet. Bob was in charge of the budget, however, and he assured me that if I “threw my hat in the window” soon, the money allotted for the film’s music would be mine.
He added, “And let me know if … Read the rest
Sunday, April 24th, 2005
Via Wiley Wiggins comes the following online viewing tip: Doctor Macro image archives.
.… Read the rest
Friday, April 22nd, 2005
Via the Maddogmovies blog: Encore’s new documentary, Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, directed by Stuart Samuels, is screening out of competition at the Festival de Cannes — as a midnight movie.
“Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream … focuses on movies that re-invented the film medium while pushing the boundaries of ‘bad taste’ and ‘social taboos.’ These filmmakers shared a common desire to upset the traditional aspects of making films — taking filmmaking beyond the norm by making films for ritual viewing, not box office success.”
“Exploitation movies were over [by the 1970s],” explains John Waters. “Sexploitation was over; porn was legal, and Deep Throat became radical chic… I had to go further than something like Deep Throat… [to make a film] that society [hadn't] made up a law for yet!”
“These films grew out of ‘an America split down the middle’ by the Vietnam War,” Samuels is quoted as saying on the JSOnline Web site earlier this year, when the doc screened at the Sundance Film Festival. “The reason they were on the margin at the time was because they offended everybody. To break taboos as an indication of political, social and individual worth was new with these films.”
Of course, subversive cinema had been around long before the 1970; Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art (reprinted this year by CT Editions and distributed by DAP) traces transgressive tendencies in filmmaking to much earlier periods in the history of film. What was really pioneered in the 1970s — and which Samuels’ documentary, loosely based on Jim Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s book Midnight Movies, illustrates in great detail — was the practice of programming films like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo in arthouses for open runs at midnight — which made the film an “event” and also allowed it to build a much larger audience through word of mouth.
“Midnight movies were pothead movies,” says Waters. “They were a party for ironic insomniacs.”
“Midnight movies loosened up everything else,” he added, “and then everything changed… As soon as video … Read the rest
Friday, April 22nd, 2005
When Lars von Trier’s Dogville screened in competition at Cannes two years ago, some members of the American press, most notably Variety‘s Todd McCarthy, took the naughty Dane’s anti-American’s potshots rather personally. This week, the festival announced that Manderlay, the second installment in the director’s “American Trilogy” would be making its way to the Croisette next month.
According to the film’s website, Manderlay picks up where Dogville left off. This time, our erstwhile 1930′s heroine Grace (played by Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of Ron Howard, who took on the role after Nicole Kidman dropped out), discovers a town in Alabama where people have been living as if slavery had never been abolished. She then decides to make things right. While I haven’t seen the film, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what von Trier likes to do to people with good intentions, especially when they’re dealing with “Americans,” so I’m keeping my fingers crosses for poor Grace. (Will she ever learn?)
After watching the film’s trailer, in which John Hurt soberly intones the different classifications of “nigger” over shots of Danny Glover and Isaach De Bankole, among others, I can only imagine what McCarthy is going to say about this one.
.… Read the rest
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005
Sundance and Cinvegas programmer, journalist and very occasional Filmmaker contributor Mike Plante emailed to say that the new issue of his spirited film zine Cinemad is now online. Click on the link for the current issue, which contains interviews with Bruce Conner, Crispin Hellion Glover, Alejandro Jodorowsky and more.
Plante also passes on some festival deadlines in his email which I’ll cut and paste below:
“Some rad festivals coming up:
MadCat Women’s International Film Festival seeks provocative and visionary films and videos directed or co-directed by women. Films can be of any length or genre and produced ANY year. MadCat is committed to showcasing work that challenges the use of sound and image and explores notions of visual story telling. All subjects/topics will be considered. Submission Fee: $10-30 sliding scale. Pay what you can afford. For an entry form and more details go to www.madcatfilmfestival.org or call 415 436-9523. Preview Formats: VHS or DVD. Exhibition Formats: 35mm, 16mm, Super8, Beta SP, Mini DV, VHS. All entries must include a SASE for return of materials. Early Deadline: March 25, 2005. Final Deadline: May 13, 2005.
And I’m a juror for a festival of films three minutes and shorter. It’s like they’re reading my mind: Extremely Shorts 8: Works Three Minutes and Under. Entry Deadline May 1 as part of Aurora Picture Show’s 7th Anniversary.”
.… Read the rest
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005
Danny Vinik’s TV Party, a documentary about Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party, the legendary public access TV show from the late-1970s, is among the many films premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
According to the film’s press release, “In [the late 1970s], two revolutionary trends emerged in New York City: public access TV and punk rock. Punk rock was about do-it-yourself television. Punk rock was about do-it-yourself music. These two phenomena were made for each other and they came together spectacularly in Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. “
Capitalizing on the novelty and low cost of producing public access television, Glenn O’Brien, a columnist for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, sought to create a weekly hour-long program that would feature a who’s who of New York’s downtown glitterati. Part variety show and part Happening, O’Brien modeled his offbeat show on Hugh Hefner’s Playboy After Dark — a TV show in the form of a party.
As O’Brien writes on the film’s Web site: “The TV Party gang came together spontaneously. My best friends were Chris Stein, the guitarist of Blondie, Edo Bertoglio, a photographer, with whom I collaborated on many magazine jobs (and later on the film Downtown 81), and the film director Amos Poe. Edo became a cameraman. Amos became the director. Chris became the show’s co-host. [Walter Steding provided musical accompaniment to the madness at hand.] Chris and I had a lot of things in common: friends, music, art, drugs and delinquincy. We were serious potheads and we were always trading buds and talking big ideas…
“‘[We described] TV Party [as] the show that’s a cocktail party but which could also be be a political party.’ That was the slogan. My idea,” says O’Brien, “was that socialism meant going out every night, and that social action started with socializing. I think we were trying to inject a sort of tribal element into things. That’s what happens when you smoke reefers and read Marshall McLuhan… I thought we could do subliminal politics as absurdist comedy. I actually did believe in anarchy, as the peaceful … Read the rest
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005
“North American films dominate this year’s Festival de Cannes lineup announced Tuesday,” write Charles Masters and Stuart Kemp in the Hollywood Reporter, “with 10 films from the United States, Canada and Mexico set to unspool, including seven in Competition.”
According to Cannes’ artistic delegate Thierry Fremaux, the Festival “will present 53 films from different 28 countries. In total, there will be 50 world premieres, bearing witness to the Festival de Cannes’ desire to show previously unseen work. There are 20 feature films in competition from 13 different countries. The Selection is also presenting 11 first films, one of which is in competition.”
The complete lineup of all sections can be found on the fest’s Web site.
.… Read the rest
