NEW YEAR ARRIVES IN NYC

By Scott Macaulay

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

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

“WHO IS HENRY JAGLOM?”

By Jason Guerrasio

A feminist voice, maverick filmmaker, or just an egomaniac? Filmmaker Henry Jaglom has been called many things and all of them are explored in Henry-Alex Rubin and Jeremy Workman‘s brief (only 58 minutes) but entertaining documentary.

Armed with his trademark hat, loose tongue and nonstop-running camera, Jaglom explores the inner psyche of his actors and the audience by filming the “reality” of the moment in his films, no matter how damaging it may become to who he’s filming. This style has led to comparisons to Cassavetes or Godard, and to some, a hack filmmaker with no talent.

Using archival footage (mostly shot by Jaglom), on-set visits of Jaglom’s film Last Summer In The Hamptons (1995), and clips from his other films like Always, Venice/Venice and Someone to Love, Rubin and Workman shot interviews with people who’ve worked or admired him including Dennis Hopper, Candice Bergen and John Landis in the mid-90s. The doc originally aired on PBS in 1997.

One of the most interesting parts of the film is Jaglom’s relationship with Orson Welles at the end of his life. Welles starred in Somone to Love and the two became close, talking often on set and off. This lead to a prickly moment in their relationship as Welles learned Jaglom taped many of the conversations they had (Jaglom says Welles knew they were taped). But this is just one incident in a career filled with weird motivations and incidents.

As we watch Jaglom from the set of Someone to Love, barking orders to his actors, trying to find the truth of the moment (no script in sight) to use for the film, moments later Jaglom listens back to some of his Welles tapes and comes across him saying, “I don’t think the camera ever photographs the whole truth,” which is interesting as it seems for most of Jaglom’s life he’s been searching for a truth through his.

Special feature includes Who Isn’t Henry Jaglom?, a 30-minute interview with Jaglom looking back on the doc and his portrayal in it.

Released by First Run … Read the rest

CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ, “LOVE SONGS”

By Nick Dawson

LUDIVINE SAGNIER, CLOTILDE HESME AND LOUIS GARREL IN DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHE HONORÉ’S LOVE SONGS. COURTESY IFC FILMS AND RED ENVELOPE ENTERTAINMENT.

Occasionally a filmmaker comes along who truly remind us why we love cinema. Christophe Honoré is not only one of those people, but also finds multiple other ways of expressing his seemingly endless creativity. He was born in Finistere (literally “The end of the world”), a small town in Brittany, France, and attended the University of Rennes, where he studied literature and film. In 1995, he moved to Paris where he began reviewing for the legendary Cahiers du Cinéma while writing both plays and children’s books. His first book of young fiction, Tout contre Léo (1995), tackled the tough subject of children born with HIV, and Honoré has shown a similarly unflinching approach in his adult novels which deal with incest, suicide and AIDS. Since 1995, he has written 12 children’s books, four novels, four plays and four screenplays for other directors. He made his debut as a writer-director in 2002 with 17 Times Cécile Cassard but it was his audacious adaptation of Georges Bataille’s Ma Mère (2004), featuring Isabelle Huppert as Louis Garrel’s hedonistic mother, that first attracted international attention. Honoré’s follow-up, the unconventional family drama Dans Paris (2006), was redolent of the French New Wave in its bold, loose approach and demonstrated the extent of the auteur’s potential.

Honoré’s latest film, Love Songs, is a companion piece to Dans Paris in which he returns to the themes of love and grief as seen through the eyes of young Parisian men, and once again stylistically references the Nouvelle Vague–and it’s a musical. Based around the songs of Honoré’s regular composer Alex Beaupain, Love Songs begins by introducing three carefree lovers, Ismaël (Louis Garrel, in his third consecutive movie for Honoré), his girlfriend Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme), who has recently become their bedfellow. From this light, bawdy start the film takes an unexpected turn as Honoré pushes the musical genre to an unusually dark and somber place, combining poppy ballads with realism and a deeply … Read the rest

RISK VS. REWARD

By Scott Macaulay

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

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

EXQUISITE CORPSE SHORTS

By Admin

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

ASIA ASCENDANT

By Scott Macaulay

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

LIGHT INDUSTRY OPENS

By Admin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beard and Halter … Read the rest

SUNDANCE CHANNEL FOR SALE?

By Scott Macaulay

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

From Andy Fixmer’s Bloomberg report:

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

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

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

CLOONEY’S CUP RUNNETH OVER

By Scott Macaulay

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

Karina Longworth reports over at SpoutBlog:

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

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

SELF DIAGNOSIS

By Scott Macaulay

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

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

… Read the rest