Archive for September, 2008
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Hi all. Well I’m home – back in Vermont after an insanely busy week at IFW. I’m slow in wrapping up my thoughts, but here they are. A few highlights, in no particular order:
Meeting Bob Villa of This Old House and telling him I just bought an old house and was fixing it up and having him smile politely and then head to the other side of the room. That was neat.
At the Chicken & Egg Pictures party getting to share 7 minutes of Cartoon College with an audience and hearing them laugh in the right places and then cheer at the end.
At the IFW screening having Simon Kilmurry – head dude at P.O.V. – come up to me after to share how excited he is about the film.
An unexpected opportunity came out of a meeting with truTV. Josh and I pitched an idea for a show about law and order in rural Vermont (you wouldn’t believe the amount of crime perpetrated against cows up here). We’re going to shoot a pilot of sorts and see what happens. I’m a total sucker for Cops, so this is right up my alley.
Seeing some really cool works in progress: DeAf Jam, Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be the Same, Casting by: revolution in hollywood, etc.
Trying to distract Cartoon College producer Alan Oxman with profane text messages while he was on the HBO Documentary panel about war docs. Yes, I am twelve (and his phone was shut off anyway).
Meeting up with David Redmon and Ashley Sabin from Carnivalesque Films to talk about the upcoming DVD release of Manhattan, Kansas (available in stores and on Netflix Nov. 18).
Ego crushing lowlight that was actually a highlight because it made me rethink my pitch: Meeting with a festival programmer in a speed dating session and having her say: “Honey, just what is your film about? What is the Big Beautiful Question? Because you’re boring me with the details.”
My only regret was not being able to attend every event and party and screening … Read the rest
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
I completely missed notice that Carlos Reygados’s third feature, Silent Light, is opening today in New York. I think this film is a flat-out masterpiece, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Manohla Dargis writes about the film in today’s New York Times. An excerpt:
I’ve seen Silent Light three times — it had its premiere at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival — and find it more pleasurable and touching with each viewing. After having wowed and appalled international audiences with bravura technique in his first feature, Japón (2002), and assaultive provocations in his second, Battle in Heaven (2005), which opens with the kind of sexual encounter that keeps nunneries in business, Mr. Reygadas has quietly altered his visual style to brilliant and meaningful effect. His silky camera movements and harmoniously balanced widescreen compositions still enthrall, but he now comes across as less committed to his own virtuosity and more invested in finding images — of children bathing, trees rustling, clouds passing — that offer a truer sense of the world than is found in melodramatic bloodletting.
… Read the rest
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
IFP announced today the launch of First Weekend, a new program that seeks to connect audiences directly with new independent films. The first film profiled in the series will be Lance Hammer‘s Ballast.
From the release:
“First Weekend” series will be a quarterly program designed to guarantee sold out shows during a self-distributed film’s opening weekend. In purchasing a $25 ticket and supporting the series, audiences are directly supporting truly independent films and filmmakers. The full box-office proceeds will go directly toward the film’s theatrical run. The audience also gets to join in a post screening conversation hosted by a notable personality and attend an exclusive after party in celebration of the film.
Ballast screening:
Date: Thursday, October 2 at 8pm
Location: Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, NYC. Details on the private after-party provided upon purchase of ticket.
To purchase an IFP “First Weekend” ticket: www.ifp.org
Your $25 admission gets you:
-A ticket to the opening weekend screening at 8pm on Oct 2 at Film Forum.
-An invitation to the post-screening Q&A between Lance Hammer and Tony Award-winning playwright/poet/activist/actress Sarah Jones (Bridge & Tunnel).
-An invitation to the exclusive after-party with the filmmaker and members of NY’s arts community, including members of the Host Committee.… Read the rest
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
In addition to all the press screenings and the opening night bash, one New York Film Festival-related thing we at Filmmaker look forward to each year is Jamie Stuart’s series of NYFF videos. (For a good recap of Jamie’s work, check out Karina Longworth’s piece here.) You see, even though we host and exec produce these pieces, they remain somewhat mysterious to us, arriving in the middle of the night with a handy promo image attached, and usually warping some kind of previously stated concept to a creatively unexpected degree. Without having gone in-depth about this with Stuart, it looks like the latest, NYFF46, which opens with a bona fide fight scene, may be the most narratively-oriented of all. It’s even got some kind of J.J. Abrams-ish, David Lynchian multiple reality thing going on… I think. Honestly, though, it’s really too soon to tell. Like you, hopefully, I’m anxiously waiting the next installment.… Read the rest
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
My name is Ryan Bilsborrow-Koo and this is my guest post for the just-concluded Independent Film Week here in New York. Along with Zachary Lieberman (co-creator of The West Side), I spoke on Monday’s panel “Your Film Online,” and I wanted to expand here on some thoughts I shared during that panel — mostly in response to the prevailing wisdom that “the sky is falling” on independent film.
(This is also cross-posted on my own blog, No Film School).
I’m a New Face of independent film, not an Industry Veteran, so maybe it’s naiveté that leads me to have a very different outlook on distribution than The Film Department CEO Mark Gill, whose comments in June were still on everyone’s lips at IFW. After proclaiming, “As it relates to independent film, the sky really is falling,” Gill’s solution was for the indie film world to make “fewer, better” movies. Unfortunately, that’s not actually a productive piece of advice. After he spoke, did most of the audience pack it up and leave to pursue a different career? No. Everyone’s already trying to make the best film they can, and telling financiers or filmmakers to try harder isn’t going to materially affect the market.
While Gill obviously gave the right speech at the right time and touched nerves across the industry, if we take a step back from the shake-up currently going on, the future is very clearly brighter than ever for independent productions; we just need to embrace a number of fundamental changes in distribution. Ten years ago, to get someone to pay to see your indie film, you had to mobilize a local crowd in dozens of markets in order to get butts into art house seats. Now we’ve got a global interconnected audience of millions of online movie watchers and the answer is to make less movies? No. The audience is larger than ever; we don’t need to make fewer movies. The answer is we need to make it easier to watch movies.
The way independent film distribution currently works is self-defeating. Let’s say I’m reading the … Read the rest
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
IFP has announced their final Tribute honoree for this year’s Gotham Awards: President of HBO Documentary Films Sheila Nevins.
Nevins will be recognized for her contributions to the art of the documentary. She is responsible for overseeing the development and production of all documentaries for HBO and Cinemax and their multiplex channels. As an executive producer or producer, she has received 22 Primetime Emmy Awards, 25 News and Documentary Emmys and 28 George Foster Peabody Awards. Nevins was also presented with a Personal Peabody in recognition of her work and ongoing commitment to excellence. She holds a BA from Barnard College and an MFA in Directing from Yale University School of Drama.
IFP also announced that Penélope Cruz, Gus Van Sant and Melvin Van Peebles will be presented with Gotham Awards Tributes this year.… Read the rest
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
I figured folks who have been reading these entries might be interested in the full staged reading we are doing of DAY DREAM on Monday, Nov. 10th at 6:30pm at 45 Bleecker St (at Lafayette). There will be a live jazz quartet accompanying the songs in the script. See synopsis below. Confirmed cast for the reading includes Anthony Chisholm (Oz), Colman Domingo (Passing Strange), Aunjanue Ellis (Ray), Andre Holland (Sugar), Marc Damon Johnson, Lonette McKee (Jungle Fever) and Tracie Thoms (Rent). Additional info will be up at www.newfest.org
Synopsis:
DAY DREAM is a feature length drama that follows the jazz composer Billy Strayhorn on a quest for musical inspiration as he travels to New Orleans to investigate the life of Buddy Bolden, the forefather of modern jazz who spent the last 24 years of his life in a mental institution.
… Read the rest
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
And one more thing….
For those of you who want to continue the festivities…
The full season of Stranger than Fiction starts tomorrow, and is always a good way to see great docs. and connect with fellow filmmakers.
–Jesse
Jesse@Shootingpeople.org
Jessedocs.com… Read the rest
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
…or so it did last Thursday. I’m happy to see that I’m not the only one who crash-landed after last week’s IFW meeting marathons.
Craig and I met with 24 companies in three days. And, yes, it was just as uncomfortable pitching this idea as I thought it’d be. The level of uncomfort depended on the person we were speaking to. It could vary from a feeling like we were pitching a dirty joke to NPR to feeling as if we were over-explaining why one might think the 3 Stooges are funny to someone who is obviously not a fan. But, it had to be done – and that’s why we were there – and surprisingly (to me, at least), the meetings went incredibly well. After pulling off a quick polish to the script, we’re sending the script out this week to just about everyone we met with.
Our description (I really shouldn’t call it a “pitch”) got better as the days went on. We decided to ask some folks if we could just spare them the misery of listening to us babble on and just send the script – none of them declined that option. Both Craig and I felt that the script could sound like a one-note joke, which it certainly isn’t, and that the response we had already received was excitement about how fleshed out and full the script actually is…so why not let it speak for itself if we have that option?
A lot of new ideas were sparked from the meetings. I came up with a new scriptwriting software idea for Macintosh and Craig Zobel and I continued to spend the week developing new ideas for our own self/alternative-distribution model – which will hopefully enable us to not only MAKE our films, but to get them SEEN as well.
Right now it is impossible to say what any of these meetings will lead to…we likely won’t know for at least another month, after we’ve followed up and re-met with everyone. Regardless, this week opened a lot of doors that we likely never would have thought … Read the rest
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Some photos from the last day, an HBO party, and from our very own New Day Films party on Friday evening.
Last day at the filmmaker/industry lounge:
A very happy Sean Flynn who just found out that the film he is producing with director Beth Murphy, THE PROMISE OF FREEDOM, received the 2008 Fledgling Fund Award for Socially Conscious Documentary.
Nara Garber and Betsy Nagler with their film FLAT DADDY
Me, Sam Pollard, and Alice Elliot
Sam was an editing consultant on a short I directed and it’s always great to see him.
“New Venues for Docs” Panel:
with:
Josh Braun (Submarine), Alice Elliot (New Day Films), Michael Rubin (MSNBC), David Redman and Ashley Sabin (Carnivalesque Films)
Have to say, the panel — with both sales agents, and filmmakers who distribute their own films — was very interesting. And also pretty funny.
Moderated by David Wilson (True/False).
More at:
thetakepart
HBO Documentary Party:
DCTV’s Matt O’neil, and Karim Armstrong
Winding down at the New Day Films after-party.
Big thanks for a great week. Lots of good people, interesting projects, and a way to understand more about the industry.
Me and my girls – Hannah Rosenzweig and my co-producer Trish Dalton
– Jesse
Jesse Epstein
Jesse@Shootingpeople.org
Current Project
… Read the rest
