IFP ANNOUNCES ’09 GOTHAM TRIBUTES

By Jason Guerrasio

The IFP have announced that Kathryn Bigelow, Natalie Portman, Stanley Tucci and Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will receive career tributes at the 19th Gotham Independent Film Awards on Nov. 30th at Cipriani Wall Street in NYC.

All the Tributes have either had big years already or are lined up to have them by the end. Bigelow has received rave reviews and Oscar buzz for The Hurt Locker, Tucci starred in Nora Ephron‘s Julie and Julia and will be in Peter Jackson‘s The Lovely Bones, Portman stars in the Jim Sheridan remake of Brothers and Bevan and Fellner are producing the Coen brothers‘ A Serious Man (executive producing) and Richard Curtis‘s Pirate Radio.

Gotham nominees will be announced Oct. 19. Lear more about the gothams at gotham.ifp.org… Read the rest

NO CINEVEGAS IN 2010

By Jason Guerrasio

According to a report posted on indieWIRE, Festival President Robin Greenspun and Artistic Director Trevor Groth announced today that the event will be canceled due to the economic downturn. Read more here.… Read the rest

NO BORDERS WITH FREE IN DEED REDUX

By Admin

So No Borders has come and gone in the blink of an eye. It was an interesting event this year coming on the heels of what was, by all accounts a lackluster sales environment in Toronto and continued skepticism about where to best allocate resources. The interesting discussion that kept arising was about a core change in the economic calculation we are making as filmmakers about the future life of our work. Here, below, are a few bullet-point thoughts:

1) If you are hoping for distribution then there are really three tiers:

a) You are bought by: Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight, or one of 2-3 other companies and cover your budget.

b) You go to the scavengers. Companies like IFC wait until the hype dies down and then swoop in with ‘last, best’ offers. You can look to see maybe $50-$100K from that sale and then cross your fingers and pray.

c) You realize that giving up your film for 10-20 years for a fraction of the budget is not tenable and you hunt a DIY route.

Now let me be clear. I am not criticizing these companies, it’s more a reflection of the marketplace and they are doing the thing that makes sense for them. There is nothing wrong with that, it just doesn’t make sense for a lot of filmmakers. To that end, you must be planning not only for production but for distribution as well, in your budget.

2) The companies that have equity are afraid. They know the issues in point 1 above and are genuinely scared about deploying capital if the chance of making it back is threading a needle.

3) Nothing is worth anything. A sales agent will tell you that a film will be more valuable if you could get some name talent into this role or that role. The smart producer then asks the follow-up: what does that get me? The sales agent, today, will smile and acknowledge that you still won’t get pre-sales or reliable estimates but that it might “help”.

So? What does this mean? Well it’s not totally … Read the rest

IFP FILM WEEK RE-CAP FOR ‘HUNGRY IN AMERICA’

By Admin

Today marks the end of a satisfying and productive week for the “Hungry in America” team. Although the problem of hunger in America is one that grows worse every day, thanks to IFW “Hungry in America” the documentary is moving closer to its goal of turning this trend on its head by raising awareness about American hunger and galvanizing social and political action to eradicate it. It’s an ambitious goal but we feel even more strongly now that we’ve got the best team, and partners, in place to do it.

Over the past week, we have been fortunate to receive encouraging and insightful responses from each of our 17 (!) meetings with broadcasters, distributors, film funds, outreach partners, etc. Things got off to a great start with our first meeting with Paola Freccero of B-Side Entertainment, and the positive energy just kept on building throughout our three days of meetings. We definitely introduced our film, and the surprising state of hunger in America, to a wider audience over the course of the week, including to a slew of international broadcasters who were very intrigued and receptive.

Our pitching came to an invigorating culmination with a screening of our work-in-progress trailer followed by dynamic Q&A session— where we were thrilled to have Barbara Kopple come out to support the film. The attendees were particularly moved by a story we shared about one of our characters, Imani. As Imani tells it, she brought her 3-year-old son with her to the food stamp office one day and the case worker who was reviewing her eligibility was munching on potato chips. So Imani’s son, who had barely eaten all day, reached his hand out to the case worker to ask for some chips because he was hungry. How could the government question that a child in Imani’s son’s position deserves food stamps?

We can’t take total credit for the good vibes “Hungry In America” was welcomed with, however. There was a general positive energy permeating F.I.T.’s Great Hall throughout week—an inspiring indication of independent film’s fortitude even in this tough economy. And, of course, … Read the rest

MICHAEL ALMEREYDA, “PARADISE”

By Nick Dawson

A STILL FROM DIRECTOR MICHAEL ALMEREYDA’S PARADISE. COURTESY POST FACTORY FILMS.

As he himself puts it, writer-director Michael Almereyda loves to make movies like a fighter likes to brawl, and over the course of his directorial career he has sought out an intriguing variety of creative challenges. Born in 1959 in Overland Park, Kansas, Almereyda spent his formative years in the Los Angeles area, where he discovered cinema and became a voracious moviegoer. Almereyda attended Harvard as an art history student, but dropped out in order to pursue his film career. He made his debut with the short film A Hero of Our Time (1985), and in 1989 directed his first feature Twister, a rural comedy about an oddball family in Kansas. Another Girl Another Planet (1992), a relationship drama shot in Pixelvision, was followed by Nadja (1994), an offbeat indie vampire movie starring Elina Löwensohn and produced by David Lynch. Almereyda made a more conventional horror movie, Trance (1998), before making his most high profile film, a modern-day version of Hamlet (2000) starring Ethan Hawke at the head of an all-star cast. He tapped into a similar mix of experimental and mainstream in his Pixelvision-shot drama about modern identity, Happy Here and Now (2002), which was set in New Orleans. Following two arts-based documentaries, This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs the Late Henry Moss (2003) and William Eggleston in the Real World (2005), Almereyda returned to New Orleans for the post-Katrina companion pieces, New Orleans, Mon Amour, a fiction feature, and the documentary Big River Blues (both 2008).

Almereyda’s latest effort, Paradise, sees him staying within the realm of non-fiction. The film is comprised of video footage shot by Almereyda over the past decade that captured the world as he saw it, often while traveling abroad. With no narration, captions or music, Paradise provides the audience with no clear context for each of the little episodes presented, yet one can detect recurring themes – the act of watching, children, innocence, the wonders of nature – which loosely tie together these snapshots of life. There are … Read the rest

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL: THE FIRST HALF

By Admin

A committee selects the titles it deems worthy of inclusion in the New York Film Festival. Besides two retrospectives and many avant-garde programs this year, the fest is comprised of only 30-odd films. Picking collectively usually means a lot of compromise, which in turn leads toward safe choices, the model being some French movie with an American distributor that will open at the Lincoln Plaza soon after it plays Lincoln Center.

Surprise, surprise! In the first half of the fest (I’ll cover the second next week), not only is there but one French film, there are also a number of movies that break barriers and/or do not pretend to sate the highbrow crowd. What a relief, especially because Tribeca, the other major New York festival, opts more and more for mainstream fare.

Three of the films are truly transgressive. Danish Dogma founder Lars von Trier may focus on an haute bourgeois couple in Antichrist, but you know the moment their baby falls to its death in the first sequence (one of the most haunting in recent memory) that this film is going to take you to some extreme places. Psychiatrist Willem Dafoe and his inconsolable wife Charlotte Gainsbourg grieve and attempt to recharge at their weekend shack in the country, but something goes wrong, very wrong: She flips out, and their sex life shifts from constant passion to a nonconsensual sadomasochism that involves genital mutilation. Definitely not for the dilettantes.

Neither is the American enfant terrible Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers. Nearly plotless, it is really a compilation of scenes of twisted behavior by three heavily made up and pretty unlikable characters. Korine films (he is his own cinematographer) human behavior that is conveniently left out of movies, such as masturbation, defecation, and pelvic thrusting, as well as crude dialog that rarely makes sense. To me this is less a film per se and more an art event, exploring, as an artist should, the unconscious at its raunchiest.

Portuguese director Joao Pedro Rodrigues would like To Die Like a Man to be more transgressive than it is. The plight … Read the rest

IFW UPDATE: RADIO UNNAMEABLE

By Admin

WERNER HERZOG’S ROGUE FILM SCHOOL

By Scott Macaulay

“The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted; it is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lockpicking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four-year-old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. — Werner Herzog

That’s the mission statement of Werner Herzog’s new Rogue Film School. Click here for more info. The first seminar takes place in L.A. January 8 – 10, and the application deadline is November 13. There is a seminar fee of $1,450. Details can be found throughout the site, including several fantastic directives on the “About” page. Examples:

The Rogue Film School will not teach anything technical related to film-making. For this purpose, please enroll at your local film school.

The Rogue Film School is about a way of life. It is about a climate, the excitement that makes film possible. It will be about poetry, films, music, images, literature.

Excerpts of films will be discussed, which could include your submitted films; they may be shown and discussed as well. Depending on the materials, the attention will revolve around essential questions: how does music function in film? How do you narrate a story? (This will certainly depart from the brainless teachings of three-act-screenplays). How do you sensitize an audience? How is space created and understood by an audience? How do you produce and edit a film? How do you create illumination and an ecstasy of truth?

Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance.

Censorship will be enforced. There will be no talk of shamans, of yoga classes, nutritional values,

… Read the rest

FUNNY OR DIE ON HEALTH REFORM

By Scott Macaulay

Will Farrell, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm and other actors stick up for the insurance companies.

… Read the rest

BANNED IN NEW YORK

By Admin

I’m not gonna lie, there is something very exciting about your first brush with controversy. Late Thursday evening we got the call from Rose Vincelli of IFP. She is a no-nonsense woman, and when she calls we know she means business. She calmly told us that our trailer would not be able to be shown at the Rooftop Films screening on Sunday night because the event was being held at Fulton Ferry Landing which is a state run park. The New York State Parks Commission deemed our trailer to have content of a “sensitive nature” and that it was “not family friendly”. What Luck! At first we didn’t take it so well until we realized this was a great opportunity! In these days of DIY and BYOB you gotta do everything you can. So, thanks Albany for helping us to create a little buzz. The IFP Banned Four, as we’ve started to call ourselves, are our film The Tested, plus Perfection, AuPair, Kansas, and the one that really put the nail in the coffin Wanderlost. Of course the ones that were able to be shown City on a Hill, The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, Myth of Time, Phasma Ex Machina, Postales, and Stranger Things held it down. The lesson to be learned here and one I hope other filmmakers can benefit from is that in a flooded marketplace it’s a struggle to get noticed so anything that might be able to distinguish your film and make it stand out, use it to your advantage no matter how small the tidbit might seem. This brings me to our Project Forum meetings that we had on Monday. Another exercise in standing out. Many of the people we met with were literally off the plane from Toronto and it was our job to pitch our film in a way that would remain in their minds after they got up from the table. Each meeting was 30 minutes, and I found the process a lot less stressful than I originally thought. It was … Read the rest