A LETTER FROM THE IFP

By Scott Macaulay

I am reprinting below a letter I received from Joana Vicente, Acting Director of the IFP, which publishes this magazine. Please consider joining the IFP and taking part in its activities over the coming year.

It has been a time of many changes in the independent film scene; both scary and exciting. Through it all, independent filmmakers of all stripes keep pushing forward, making great work that moves, inspires, and amuses countless people around the world.

It has been a year of changes at IFP as well. After 12 years at IFP’s helm, Executive Director, Michelle Byrd, stepped down to pursue other ventures, and I happily stepped in, after four and half years as a Board member, as the Interim Executive Director. As I reflect on this past year, I am delighted with the way that the IFP served our community. In 2009, the IFP produced the 31st annual Independent Film Week and 19th annual Gotham Independent Film Awards, successful Script to Screen and Independent Filmmaker Conferences, and helped emerging and mid-career filmmakers through the Independent Filmmaker Labs, Fiscal Sponsorship, and Made in New York programs, among numerous others. Tom Quinn, director of The New Year Parade, writes that he “shuffled into the IFP Rough Cut Lab with a 40-minute cut and an overwhelming 180 hours of raw footage, totally green and lacking the confidence or know how to push the film forward. Throughout the Lab we were given so much amazing advice, and with it came the confidence to make the film we had set out to create. Since then the IFP staff, and everyone at Filmmaker have continued to be a tireless support system – a wind at our back and a map toward things ahead.” The New Year Parade went on to win the Slamdance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize, receive uniformly stellar reviews, get a small theatrical and large DVD release, and now, is nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards “John Cassavetes Award” 2010.

On the nonfiction side of things, Independent Film Week’s Spotlight on Documentaries 2008 alumni The Way We Get By (directed by

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CORNELIU PORUMBOIU, “POLICE ADJECTIVE”

By Brandon Harris

Cornelieu Porumboiu’s absurd anti-policier Police, Adjective, a hit at last fall’s New York Film Festival, has pushed the Romanian director into the forefront of a young group of Romanian filmmakers who have in the past four years taken the world of International Art Cinema by storm. Along with Cristian Mungiu (2008 Palme D’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), Cristian Nemescu (California Dreamin’) and Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. L?z?rescu), Porumboiu has found success at the highest levels of the international festival circuit while still trying to carve out audiences at home. In his latest film, the follow up to his outrageous and insightful 2006 debut 12:08 East of Bucharest, he turns the police procedural on its head in order to meditate on the disconnect one cop has between his thankless duties and his unformulated ideals while examining its resonance to the larger societal woes of this former Communistic bloc country. Featuring a haggard Dragos Bucur in a performance that gets to the bottom of a crushed young spirit, this droll and highly comic movie paints a portrait of bureaucracies’ most malignant manifestations.

Centering on a cop charged with the thankless task of doing surveillance on high school kids smoking pot near a local kindergarten, it slows the dynamics of the film investigation to an all too verisimilitudinous crawl, showing how such a small and pointless task can grow into an administrative nightmare in which local law enforcement will ruin lives just to save face. Just as capable of being infuriating as it is laugh out loud funny, it suggests the ways Totalitarianism is an ethic informed mainly by an abuse of language and procedure.

Police, Adjective opens in New York and Los Angeles today.

Filmmaker: In the New Romanian Cinema one of the major themes is the way bureaucracy, be it in a police station or a hospital or wherever else, is a cancer that eats away at everyone’s best intentions. Is this something that you and the other filmmakers of your … Read the rest

SAVE OUR 181 FILM PRODUCTION INCENTIVES!

By Scott Macaulay

Perhaps you’ve gotten into the habit of phoning your elected representatives about issues like, I don’t know, health care… Well, if you are a working film producer you might add one more call to your phone sheet. Section 181, which allows investors to write off the cost of film production in the first year of expenditure, has been a real incentive to the independent film business over the last few years. It is due to expire December 31, but there is a possibility it will be extended. The extension vote has passed the House and is now waiting Senate passage and Obama’s signature. It’s included within H.R. 4213. Time is running out — make your voice heard about this important piece of legislation!

(Hat tip: Noah Harlan.)

UPDATED: A reader, Joe Gold, posted this link to a letter written by Senators Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley to Senator Harry Reid announcing their intention to take up the extension of various tax provisions, including, apparently, 181, as soon as possible in the New Year. They wrote:

“Although the House and Senate were unable to come to agreement on a package to extend several expiring tax provisions before Congress adjourned, these measures must be addressed as soon as possible. These expiring tax provisions help American families and businesses and address some of our most urgent national priorities, including job creation, at a critical time in our nation’s economic recovery. Expiration of these provisions makes it difficult for taxpayers to fully and effectively realize the intended benefits by creating uncertainty and complexity in the tax law. In an effort to provide a seamless extension of these provisions with the fewest disruptions and administrative problems, we will take up legislation as quickly as possible in the new year.”

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THE ALIEN SEX OF AVATAR

By Scott Macaulay

I haven’t seen Avatar yet, and I’m waiting to discover why a film in which not a single clip I’ve seen so far thrills me is going to rock my world. But I love these ten random notes on the film by Anne Billson over at her Multiglom blog. Like this one on technology and alien sex:

James Cameron has developed millions of dollars’ worth of technology in order to deliver the message that technology is bad. Crazy guy! Basically, he’s a techno geek who’s emotionally stuck at adolescence. His idea of alien sex is sloppy kissing! It’s alien sex as envisaged by an adolescent male whose role model is Captain Kirk. I’d like to see the Na’vi having slimy sex like David Bowie in The Man who Fell to Earth. Or tree-huggy sex. Whatever. A wasted opportunity.

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QUOTES FROM THE MELTDOWN

By Scott Macaulay

Anthony Kaufman’s current Village Voice piece, “New York’s Independent Film Community Goes from Boom to Bust: My Big Fat Greek Collapse,” has some good quotes that speak to the changes the indie film world has gone through this past decade. I’m not one to periodize things too much by saying that things were once X and now they are Y. Independent film has always been too multi-headed a hydra, and the business plans that a distributor talks about were often ones that didn’t have much to do with the majority of actual makers. That said, on decade’s end it’s clear that things are really different than they were. A few quotes:

Mark Urman on indie film’s participation in the often criminal credit-fueled asset inflation of the ’00s:

“We chose to believe that we stood apart from that [economic excess] because we were in an artistic milieu,” admits Urman. “But I’m sure if you looked around, we had our own Bernie Madoffs.”

Christine Vachon on the diminished number of buyers:

“It’s insane that you can count the number of companies buying [films] on one hand,” says veteran New York producer Christine Vachon, whose latest collaboration with Todd Haynes—the filmmaker who helped define American indie cinema with Poison and Safe—will be a miniseries for the small screen of HBO.

Ted Hope on the migration of indie film’s locus from New York to cyberspace:

“The center of independent film is not a geographical context,” he says, “but a communicative instrument: the Internet.”

But mostly, this paragraph resonated with me:

With the inevitable decline of the DVD, a glut of productions, and changing audience-viewing habits, it was only a matter of time before the Pollyanna-ish art-meets-commerce model that spurred on specialized cinema would come crumbling down. And without studio dollars to cultivate new talents, today’s indie filmmakers, many too young to remember when the industry was nascent, are struggling.

Having done this for a while and remembered all the previous booms and busts (my first time at the Sundance Producer’s Lab was in 1992, I believe, where one prominent, black-clad indie producer brought … Read the rest

BASS ACKWARDS ANNOUNCES ITS POST-SUNDANCE VIRAL RELEASE

By Scott Macaulay

A while back, I posted a call to filmmakers to let us know about any alternative marketing or distribution efforts they are planning around their Sundance selections. With this video by Bass Ackwards producer Thomas Woodrow, the grand total of filmmakers doing this seems to be… two. Watch Woodrow’s walk and talk as he explains why he has partnered with Zipline Entertainment and New Video to release his Sundance picture February 1.

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2010 BAHAMAS FILM FESTIVAL

The Bahamas International Film Festival wrapped in Nassau Thursday night with the closing night film, Precious, which brought out the island out to watch the film and then partake in a Q&A with screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and Lenny Kravitz, who stars in the film. The seven day fest also included a career tribute to Johnny Depp earlier in the week, another tribute to Bahamanian underwater cinematographer Gavin McKinney and a Rising Star honor to actress Sophie Okonado.

I attended the fest, where I moderated the closing night Q&A, and here’s some shots from the fest.

Children of God (Opening Night Film) director Kareem Mortimer and the film’s editor Maria Cataldo.

Festival founder/executive director Leslie Vanderpool (center).

Elliot Kotek (left) moderates the Career Tribute discussion with Gavin McKinney.

Sophia Okonado Rising Star honor.

Sophia Okonado.

Leslie, myself and Geoffrey Fletcher at the closing night screening. (photo by Elliot Kotek)

Geoffrey Fletcher and Lenny Kravitz. (photo by Elliot Kotek)… Read the rest

LEARNING GOOGLE WAVE FROM PULP FICTION

By Scott Macaulay

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A 70-MINUTE TAKEDOWN OF THE PHANTOM MENACE

By Scott Macaulay

A while back I blogged in response to all the lamenters of the decline in the number of film critics, writing that critics will have to find new forms of reviewing aimed at new online audiences. One critic who has just done that is, um… a serial killer named Mike from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And he has done so not by crafting some kind of 30-second quick hit that you scan amidst flashing banner ads but with a hilarious, detailed, fan meta-critical 70-minute takedown of a film that most of you have probably already forgotten: George Lucas’s Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. Writes Peter Sciretta over at Slash Film:

And this isn’t your usual fanboy rant, this is an epic, well-edited well-constructed piece of geek film criticism. In fact, the way I learned about the video was from Lost co-creator and Star Trek producer Damon Lindelof, who said “Your life is about to change. This is astounding film making.

More from the commenter JediRaper in the comments thread, who reminds everyone that whoever Mike is, he’s doing a character too:

Just watched the whole thing. First, this is the type of deconstruction of that shit film and Lucas I’ve been waiting for. It’s like the culmination of every hate-spewed conversation you’ve ever had about the prequels and George himself–but hilarious. Also, douches, he’s mispronouncing things on purpose to be funny.

Here, then, is Mike’s seven-part The Phantom Menace review.

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SIGISMONDI DEBUTS WITH THE RUNAWAYS

By Scott Macaulay

A lot of people are excited to see Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett in The Runaways. I am — I think she’s the real deal. But I’m even more interested in seeing the film because it’s Floria Sigismondi’s directing debut. Sigismondi is an artist, photographer and music video director whose well-known clips include videos for the White Stripes, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie and many others. I think Jett, Cherie Curie et al are a great match for Floria’s sharp eye and smart sensibility. More on this film in the days ahead, but, for now, the trailer.

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