NURI BILGE CEYLAN, “THREE MONKEYS”

By Nick Dawson

YAVUZ BINGÖL AND HATICE ESLAN IN DIRECTOR NURI BILGE CEYLAN’S THREE MONKEYS. COURTESY ZEITGEIST FILMS.

In film writing these days, superlatives like “visionary” and “genius” are thrown around all too often to describe directors, though few truly deserve them; Nuri Bilge Ceylan, however, is one of those few. The Turkish writer-director was born in 1959 in Istanbul, and started taking photographs in his mid-teens. He earned a degree in Engineering at Bo?aziçi University, but after graduating he moved on to study film, a newly discovered passion, at Mirnar Sinan University. After a ten-year period spent living in London (during which he studied filmmaking by reading books), Ceylan returned to Turkey and embarked on his film career with a 20-minute black and white short, owing much to his photographic background, called Koza (Cocoon) which was selected for the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. Ceylan made his feature debut with Kasaba in 1997 and followed it up with Clouds of May (1999); both pictures had their international premieres at the Berlin Film Festival. Ceylan’s breakthrough came in 2002 with his third feature, Distant, a moody tale of urban and artistic alienation which won the Grand Prix at Cannes and made Ceylan an important figure in global film. In 2006, he returned with Climates, an understated study of a couple’s disintegrating relationship in which Ceylan and his wife, actress and fellow photographer Ebru Ceylan, played the leads.

His latest film, Three Monkeys, co-written with his wife (along with Ercan Kesal, who appeared in Distant), is a brooding tale of a family torn apart. The action begins with a local politician Servet (Kesal) killing a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident. To salvage his career, he pays his loyal driver Eyüp (Yavuz Bingöl) to take the fall for him, however the situation is greatly complicated when Eyüp’s wife, Hacer (Hatice Eslan), begins an affair with Servet while her husband is doing time, and their son, Ismail (Ahmet Rifat Sungar), discovers her treachery. As the title implies, Three Monkeys examines the impact of actively ignoring the misdeeds of those around … Read the rest

THE WORLD’S MOST BAFFLING MOVIE TRAILER

By Scott Macaulay

Thanks to Jamie Stuart for the heads up about the trailer for After Last Season, which is in the early stages of going viral by virtue of its genuine oddness. Michael Tully at his Indiewire blog writes, “It’s like Todd Haynes lost his mind after Safe and was hired to direct a series of cable access sci-fi infomercials,” while David Lowery writes, “I’ve watched the trailer about ten times now, and have yet to tire of it. It is so beyond logic in its construction that it essentially reinvents itself anew upon each viewing.” In addition to being featured on the film’s own website, the trailer also appears on Apple’s trailer page.

Jamie at Knox Road says he’s spoken to the film’s director, Mark Region, and the picture, which many doubt is an actual feature film, is apparently for real and slated for a June 5 release. Region also says in the interview that the film’s budget is $5 million.

From Knox Road:

[Region] said the trailer for the movie can be misleading.

“It’s pretty much what you see in the trailer, but more than that,” said Region. “It’s different.”

Although Apple Trailers labeled the film a comedy, Region said it’s a mistake. He said the movie is more like a Hitchcock film, dark and mysterious.

“The movie is just a regular mystery… with special effects and computer effects,” he said.

The special effects, which appear in the trailer, cost a big part of the movie’s $5 million budget said Region. He said most of the money came from local investors, not from Hollywood.

He said he wanted to keep the set simple and hired local actors to keep the the film low-budget.

“It took a lot of effort, we tried to do our best,” he said.

The trailer for After Last Season is below. And I agree with Lowery — this demands multiple viewings.

… Read the rest

THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, DAY TWO

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s the second of our guest blogs from Sundance Lab-supported filmmaker Gayle Ferraro, who is blogging from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Day 2

The days keep getting better and I am feeling like I have known my fellow filmmakers and the Sundance folks for a long time. It is funny how that happens before you know it. We filmmakers all have code names, an affectionate shorthand, for the people we have all spoken with — the rat guy, the French guy with the cell phones, the water guys….

For the first part of the day I was a bit distracted trying to coordinate an important shoot in Queens, New York for the film while participating in the Forum. The shoot came up last minute and puts closure on a central storyline so it had to be covered.

Upon arrival at the forum’s day two I joined Cara Mertes (Director, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program) at a press announcement for the Sundance/Skoll Stories of Change as a Grantee. I spoke a few minutes about my film on Dr. Yunus and the Grameen start-up in Queens and was then off to attend my first session: “Winning Hearts and Minds, The power of a well told story.” It was packed — no surprise given the speakers, Susan Collin Marks (Sr. VP of Search for Common Ground), Amitabha Sadangi (CEO Intl Development Enterprises- India) and Greg Barker, (Director, Silverbridge Productions). Reading their bios is impressive and the presentations hit it home with everyone.

From there I hit another two sessions in the afternoon, “Power to the People” and then “Expansion Finance For Social Impact.” For sure this sounds deadly dry, but trust me it was fascinating if you like to know who is doing what in the world and how it is working. These are committed people who are really smart and know a lot if you get into listening. The audience questions are really right-on and everyone rightly so wants publicity for their projects.

At the break I tried to hide (brain turning to mush) but I found myself with … Read the rest

THE SKOLL WORLD FORUM ON SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP, DAY ONE

By Scott Macaulay

Here’s the second of our guest blogs from Sundance Lab-supported filmmaker Gayle Ferraro, who is blogging from the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

Day 1

The first day was amazing. Our opening Sundance filmmaker Meet and Greet session, which was more like a panel presentation, went very well; it was a great opportunity to learn about my fellow filmmakers and find out where their game is at. Sundance really picked a seasoned group of wonderful people with Joe Berlinger, who talked about Crude; Robert Kenner, who just premiered Food, Inc.; Greg Barker, who talked about his latest, Sergio; and Jon Alpert, who rounded out the team with an extraordinary collection of his work from the past 20 years, beginning and ending with his video bus headed for Denmark. The conversations we are having within the film team seem to be a continuous dialogue where one film blends into another, and we are “jumping” as the ideas are coming to each of us so quickly. It feels like nothing else exists.

When it was my turn to speak I told the audience that they should pursue whatever publicity and filmmaking ideas that make sense to them because, well, you never know. I used my own experience as an example — having made 16 Decisions in Bangladesh 10 years ago I am now working again with Dr. Muhammad Yunus shooting a feature doc on his work.

After the Meet and Greet, all us filmmakers were surrounded by social entrepreneurs who had incredible projects they wanted to share. This experience was really like being in a candy store — fabulous material for film and willing participants! A group of three men from “Friends of the Earth – Middle East” approached me and announced they had won the top honor at the World Forum for their peacekeeping through water management on the river Jordan. The delegates were from Israel, Jordan, and Palestine and wanted to discuss how this tale could be told in a film. I had an African refugee cell phone compay, the founder of Kiva, children who make … Read the rest

THE INVASION OF BAGHDAD, FIVE YEARS LATER…

By Scott Macaulay

We are still putting up our SXSW features, and the latest to go up on our SXSW page is Alicia Van Couvering’s interview with Kristian Fraga and Mike Scotti of the Iraq war doc Severe Clear. Fraga is the director and editor, and Scotti is both subject and cameraman as the film follows him and his fellow soldiers of the 1st Batallion, 4th Marines as the 2003 invasion of Baghdad begins. Writes Van Couvering:

We first meet Mike and his unit in a desert camp, where they drink too much, curse too much, make gay jokes and fart jokes, shoot guns at stuff and otherwise prepare for war. It’s unsettling to see these men acting like such silly meatheads because, like the happy couple at the beginning of a horror film, you know what’s coming for them. Fraga deliberately used horror film techniques to tell this story, but despite three years of careful editing, it never feels like anything but Scotti’s personal story. Danger, bloodshed and chaos escalate by the minute as they make the battalion makes their way towards the capital, but Mike almost never stops filming. The story is framed by Scotti’s letters home, personal diaries and notes for the book he’s planning to write when he gets home.

The Iraq War is probably the most-photographed and most-filmed conflict of all time. Soldiers have taken thousands of hours of personal video and millions of pictures; we’ve seen the results of some of them. Severe Clear doesn’t preach or explain, and it can be hard to watch, but you ignore it at your peril.

The film’s trailer is below.

… Read the rest

“SEVERE CLEAR’”S KRISTIAN FRAGA AND MIKE SCOTTI By Alicia Van Couvering

Severe Clear premiered at SXSW this week, five years to the day after the US invasion of Baghdad. Back then, Kristian Fraga was just one of millions, watching events unfold on cable news. First Lieutenant Mike Scotti was crossing the Iraqi border in an artillery tank, and he had a video camera.

Severe Clear is a chronicle of the Baghdad invasion culled from over 60 hours of this footage, edited from a pure first-person perspective to ensure that the viewer goes through an experience as close to Mike’s as possible. We first meet Mike and his unit in a desert camp, where they drink too much, curse too much, make gay jokes and fart jokes, shoot guns at stuff and otherwise prepare for war. It’s unsettling to see these men acting like such silly meatheads because, like the happy couple at the beginning of a horror film, you know what’s coming for them. Fraga deliberately used horror film techniques to tell this story, but despite three years of careful editing, it never feels like anything but Scotti’s personal story. Danger, bloodshed and chaos escalate by the minute as they make the battalion makes their way towards the capital, but Mike almost never stops filming. The story is framed by Scotti’s letters home, personal diaries and notes for the book he’s planning to write when he gets home.

The Iraq War is probably the most-photographed and most-filmed conflict of all time. Soldiers have taken thousands of hours of personal video and millions of pictures; we’ve seen the results of some of them. Severe Clear doesn’t preach or explain, and it can be hard to watch, but you ignore it at your peril.

FILMMAKER: Kris, can you talk about the process of editing all his material into a coherent story?

FRAGA: Well, I mean the key to making the film work, for me, was to tell Mike’s story. I wasn’t interested in just taking this very raw, intense footage and kind of throwing a movie out there and saying, “this is what they went through.” It had to be a narrative. There … Read the rest

BLOGGING FROM THE 2009 SKOLL WORLD FORUM

By Scott Macaulay

Today at the Said Business School at Oxford University, England, the 2009 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship kicked off, and with this year’s edition comes a partnership between the Skoll Foundation and the Sundance Institute that sends four doc filmmakers to the forum.

As the Skoll Foundation describes the conference, “Each year nearly 800 delegates from more than 60 countries convene for this premier gathering of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Prominent figures from the social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors engage for three days and nights in a series of debates, discussions and work sessions focused on accelerating, innovating and scaling solutions to some of the world’s most pressing social issues.”

Sundance describes their initiative with Skill thusly: “It is a $3 million, three-year initiative designed to explore the role of film in advancing knowledge about social entrepreneurship. In essence, there are activists who want to draw attention to social issues and there are filmmakers looking for compelling stories to tell. Sundance Institute brings the two groups together. Film is the medium for modern storytelling. Storytelling drives social change.”

The Sundance Institute’s Ken Brecher and Cara Mertes are attending the forum this year and they brought with them four doc filmmaker fellows supported by Sundance, who will observe the proceedings and network among the attendees. The filmmakers are Robert Kenner (Food, Inc.), Gayle Ferraro (To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunnus Banks on America), Greg Barker (Sergio), and Joe Berlinger (Crude)

Gayle Ferraro will be guest blogging here this week, relaying stories of the people and ideas she comes across at Skoll. Here is her first post.

As more extraordinary things happen with making this film – too intimate and unusual to get into here… I have been invited by Sundance Institute as their guest to attend the sixth Skoll Social Entrepreneur World Forum here at Oxford University.

Since I am in the final stages of production and into post on a feature doc (To Catch a Dollar –WT) portraying 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Grameen Bank … Read the rest

WEILER, JOHNSON PREMIERE NEW "RADAR" SERIES ON BABELGUM

By Scott Macaulay

Premiering on Babelgum today is a new doc web series, “Radar,” created by a number of people familiar to readers of Filmmaker magazine. The Workbook Project’s Lance Weiler, whose “Culture Hacker” column will begin appearing in the next issue of Filmmaker, produces, Alex Johnson directs, and the d.p. is Tom Quinn, one of our “25 new Faces” for his feature The New Year’s Parade. The Workbook Projects Lab series looks at creators who are exploring new forms of storytelling in their work, and here’s what the series’ site says about the debut piece, “Next Door Neighbor”:

We all have a next-door neighbor and a next-door neighbor story. With this realization in mind – comic book artist, Harvey Pekar collaborator and founder of webcomix collective ACT-I-VATE, Dean Haspiel approached storytelling site SMITH magazine. The result: a yearlong anthology of diverse, shocking and heartfelt true-life webcomix published biweekly by both emerging and celebrated writers and artists. We visit Dean, and contributors Joan Reilly and Joe Infurnari, at their communal workspace deep in industrial Brooklyn and discuss the importance of place and community – real life and virtual.

Watch the film at Babelgum here.… Read the rest

SPIKE JONZE’S WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE FINALLY REVEALED

By Scott Macaulay

After too many months of rumors and studio-blogger back-and-forth, the trailer for Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are has broken online, and it looks absolutely wonderful. The story involves an angry young boy who runs away to a land populated by giant beasts. In the two minutes of the trailer, which will premiere this weekend before Monsters vs. Aliens, there are costumes, Arcade Fire, great graphics and an authentic feeling of being young. The script was co-written by Dave Eggers and both he and Jonze, according to this USA Today piece, regularly contacted Sendak for his input. But, relays Jonze, “”He was adamant that I make my own thing. He had strong opinions, but he would ultimately defer to us. He said, ‘Make something personal to you.’” Commenting on his artistically ambitious approach to the family movie, Jonze also said, “”I never thought of it as a children’s movie. My intention was to be true to how it felt to be 9 years old. Maurice’s whole thing is to be honest. You can say anything to kids as long as you are respectful and not pandering.”

… Read the rest

ONLIVE GAME CONSOLE ABOUT TO GO LIVE

By Scott Macaulay

I was editing the next edition of “Game Engine,” Heather Chaplin’s game column in Filmmaker, and I started wondering where I could play some of the really interesting indie games she has been writing about. Of course, they are available on PS3 or Xbox for download, but that brought up the question for me of why can’t there be a console intended for games that don’t exist as disks but as downloads or streams? Well, today, voila, just such a console was announced. At Variety, Marc Graser was the first to announce the new OnLive, created by WebTV founder Steve Perlman.

From the piece:

The OnLive Game Service, which is being shown off at this week’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, will essentially turn any computer with a broadband Internet connection into a high-end console and enable users to play games instantly without the need of a download.

Service makes videogames the last form of entertainment to turn to on-demand as a future form of distribution.

CNet explains the tech:

According to Perlman, OnLive’s technology will make it possible to stream the games in such a manner — high quality, no matter what kind of system the user has — by virtue of a series of patented and patent-pending compression technologies. And instead of requiring users to download the games, OnLive will host them all and stream them from a series of the highest-end servers. Users will have only to download a 1MB plug-in to get the service up and running.

Lev Grossman at Time’s “Nerdworld” has more:

I saw a demo of this a couple of weeks ago, and I gotta say, it’s impressive. OnLive comes out of an incubator company called Rearden, which was started by Steve Perlman, the man who made zillions of 1990′s dollars off of WebTV. My first question for him was: who’s the wackjob who greenlit this project? I wouldn’t have thought it was possible: if you take my PS3 and move it to some server farm in Virginia, and leave my TV here in Brooklyn, doesn’t that introduce huge amounts of

… Read the rest