Author Archive
Monday, February 20th, 2012
At the Daily Telegraph, Adrian Hon, Founder of the online games company Six to Start, writes a modest proposal providing an answer to the controversies over copyright, remixing, piracy, filesharing, etc: eternal copyright. In 1710, the Statue of Anne decreed that the term of copyright last from 14 – 28 years. In the 300 years since, that term has only increased to 70 years from the death of the author. Swift implementation of an eternal copyright law would not only spur creative innovation but redress societal wrongs. From the piece:
Imagine you’re a new parent at 30 years old and you’ve just published a bestselling new novel. Under the current system, if you lived to 70 years old and your descendants all had children at the age of 30, the copyright in your book – and thus the proceeds – would provide for your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren.
But what, I ask, about your great-great-great-grandchildren? What do they get? How can our laws be so heartless as to deny them the benefit of your hard work in the name of some do-gooding concept as the “public good”, simply because they were born a mere century and a half after the book was written? After all, when you wrote your book, it sprung from your mind fully-formed, without requiring any inspiration from other creative works – you owe nothing at all to the public. And what would the public do with your book, even if they had it? Most likely, they’d just make it worse.
No, it’s clear that our current copyright law is inadequate and unfair. We must move to Eternal Copyright – a system where copyright never expires, and a world in which we no longer snatch food out of the mouths of our creators’ descendants. With eternal copyright, the knowledge that our great-great-great-grandchildren and beyond will benefit financially from our efforts will no doubt spur us on to achieve greater creative heights than ever seen before.
Read the entire piece for more of Hon’s proposal, including its implications on Hans Christian Anderson, Shakespeare and the Bible.… Read the rest
Monday, February 20th, 2012
We are filmmakers. We are artisans.
Or so we forget.
With filmmaking so often abstracted from the actual work of making a film, so enmeshed in conversations about new models and plans and strategies, we sometimes lose touch with what should be the main reason we make movies in the first place: to take pride in works of art made beautifully and with love.
It is precisely the love of artisanal creation that is celebrated in Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte’s Charlotte: A Wooden Boat Story, a verite doc chronicling the making of a 50-foot gaff rigged schooner, “Charlotte,” by a team of craftsmen working in a Martha’s Vineyard Boatyard. Focusing particularly on boat builder Nat Benjamin, Kusama-Hinte observes the painstaking and quiet work involved in building such an elegant craft over the several years required. In doing so, he eschews many of today’s accepted documentary strategies — pinning narrative on conflict, or allowing a character-based story to assume center stage. Instead, Kusama-Hinte focuses on the work, and he pushes us, the audience, to concentrate on its pleasures as well as its vexations, on the focus required to sustain it and the quiet satisfaction achieved by its final completion. With a lovely, Satie-like score by Paul Brill, Charlotte has a gentle, meditative power.
Charlotte is the second feature by Kusama-Hinte, whose Soul Power documentary was half glorious concert film and half exhilarating behind-the-scenes chronicle of the famed concert accompanying the “Rumble in the Jumble” boxing match. The two films are quite different, but they share a respect for their subject matters and a resolve to find the cinematic styles most suited to them. Kusama-Hinte is also a well known producer, whose credits include The Kids are All Right, Thirteen and Mysterious Skin, as well as — full disclosure — the Board Chair of IFP, the publisher of Filmmaker.
I spoke to Kusama-Hinte about making Charlotte, the work required to place it before audiences, and the DIY techniques he’s using to promote and distribute it.
Filmmaker: So, tell me about how you began this documentary, Charlotte.
Kusama-Hinte: I … Read the rest
Friday, February 17th, 2012
Kirby Ferguson’s epic and informative web serial, Everything is a Remix, comes to an inspiring conclusion with part four, to my mind the best of the series. In “Part Four: System Failures,” he looks at the historical roots of copyright and patent protection and examines how today’s system has drifted so far away from the original goals of furthering the public good while still protecting creators. I can’t recommend Ferguson’s series more highly, and if you find yourself in an argument with someone about legislations like SOPA, PiPA and ACTA, point them towards these videos for a succinctly argued treatise on intellectual property in the age of the internet.
On the basis of the episodes he had done so far, I selected Ferguson for Filmmaker‘s 2011 “25 New Faces” list. Here’s how I began his profile:
It’s hard to create something original about the remix. Okay, that would seem to go without saying, but I’m not referring to the subject of the remix — I’m talking about the discourse surrounding it. From Lawrence Lessig’s book Remix to Brett Gaylor’s feature doc, RIP: A Remix Manifesto, the creative, social and political issues surrounding the rise of remix culture have been debated with brio. Paradoxically, then, the familiarity we have with the issue of remixing is precisely what makes Kirby Ferguson’s four-part Web series, Everything is a Remix, so compelling. Rather than push a copy-left agenda or hype the latest mash-up artist, Ferguson uses the subject of the remix to discuss the history and nature of creativity. Everything is a Remix deconstructs the idea of originality, exploring the creative but also technological and business memes that recombine from one generation to the next, making us feel that we are encountering something “new” along the way. And it does so in bite-size, six-minute segments that have become a self-sustaining enterprise for its New York-based director.
“The idea for the series started a few years ago, when there were [plagiarism] lawsuits against Coldplay, J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown,” says Ferguson. “I thought they were kind of far-fetched. Why does someone
… Read the rest
Thursday, February 16th, 2012
As part of its New Voices in Black Cinema series, BAMcinematek will screen tomorrow The Tested, Russell Costanza’s debut feature that was developed as part of the IFP Narrative Lab. The film is tough and ambitious New York drama, the kind of film Sidney Lumet might have made at one point, and it deals with both institutional racism and the struggle to achieve forgiveness. It also boasts an amazing performance by Aunjanue Ellis (pictured). This is a film that has flown a bit too much under the radar and is well worth checking out. The trailer is below, and tickets can be bought at BAM.
… Read the rest
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
David Rooney’s Hollywood Reporter review of Brian Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky’s tough, piercing American independent character drama Francine, which premiered this week in Berlin, is masterful. As noted also by Jeffrey Wells, Rooney approaches the film on its own terms, and distills in his prose strengths that would be ignored or misconstrued by another critic.
From the review:
A minimalist, image-based character study that is almost impossibly fragile and yet emotionally robust, Francine is a legitimate discovery. It’s propelled by Melissa Leo’s remarkable title-role performance, rigorous in its honesty and unimpeded by even a scrap of vanity. Made on a shoestring, this first narrative feature from husband-and-wife filmmaking team Brian M. Cassidy and Melanie Shatzky is raw, intimate and observed with penetrating acuity.
The austere approach and stark naturalism invite comparison with the work of Kelly Reichardt, and the subject specifically recalls Wendy and Lucy. (Producers Joshua Blum and Kate Stern have both worked with Reichardt.) The earliest films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne also come to mind while watching. But Cassidy and Shatzky, whose backgrounds are jointly in photography and documentary, have their own voice and their own nonjudgmental gaze.
As a window into a life of seemingly irreversible dissociation, the film performs the uncommon trick of being wide open and pellucid while simultaneously shut tight and opaque. One of the interesting aspects of Francine is that despite the unsettling intimacy of the portrait, only sparing use is made of facial closeups – the usual short-cut to accessing an introspective character. Dialogue figures just as frugally, and psychological background is entirely withheld. But still we come to know the woman onscreen, speculating about her history and contemplating her future after the film has ended.
In Francine, Leo plays a paroled convict, first seen showering and then turning to the camera where she is caught naked, full body, in a wide shot. The nudity foreshadows the emotional nakedness of the film to follow, as Leo’s withdrawn, emotionally damaged character drifts through a series of dead-end jobs before finally working in a veterinary clinic and developing an … Read the rest
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Screenwriter and director Brent Hoff, who we selected for this year’s 25 New Faces list, has a short out today that’s perfectly timed for Valentines Day. Called The Love Competition, it’s included as part of the next issue of Wholphin, will play at SXSW, but is now online courtesy of Wired and Wholphin.
The Love Competition looks at the neurochemistry of romance, pitting a group of contestants against each other as their brains are scanned while they are thinking of their lovers, their ex-lovers, or perhaps just the concept of love itself. Hoff, who won a Tribeca Sloan Prize for a recent marine biology-themed script, knows how to make science emotional.
From Wired:
To develop his latest “competition,” Hoff enlisted the help of researchers at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging. Research director Bob Dougherty assisted with development of the love test, while Melina Uncapher served as the film’s scientific director.
It turns out — based on the levels of activity in the dopamine, serotonin and ocytocin/vasopressin pathways — it is possible for one person to exhibit that they can love someone more deeply than another person can. But what’s amazing about The Love Competition is seeing the participants talk about their loves and the effects the fMRI tests had on them. Many come out almost giddy when the test is complete, and one woman tearily explains that she just feels lucky for the love she’s had in her life.
Check out the film below.
The Love Competition from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Jason Sondhi, along with Short of the Week partner Andrew Allen one of our “25 New Faces” this year, handpicked today’s Valentines Day selection, “Moving Takahashi.” Directed by Josh Soskin and well acted by rising star Boyd Holbrook and newcomer (at least to me) Kristin Malco, the Kickstarter-funded short is part of what Sondhi calls the “bad boy romance” genre. It’s about a young mover (Holbrook) who discovers that the daughter of the family whose house he’s moving has, in a suicide attempt, swallowed pills that will kill her in 20 minutes. What’s the bad-boy element? You’ll have to watch to find out. The short is gorgeously shot by another of our 2011 “25 New Faces,” Rob Hauer.
Here it is on Vimeo.
Moving Takahashi from Josh Soskin on Vimeo.… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
February 20 is the deadline for submitting to the 2012 Vimeo Awards, which will be presented during this year’s Vimeo Festival + Awards, June 7 – 9 in New York City. Filmmaker Magazine is a sponsor of the awards, which go to original works in 13 different categories that premiered July 31, 2010 and February 20, 2012, or which never premiered at all. For 2012, Vimeo has assembled a pretty amazing group of judges, including actor and director James Franco; Parks and Recreation Star Aziz Ansari, 2012 Oscar Nominee Lucy Walker; documentarian Steve James; Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright; snowboard superstar Travis Rice; Thierry Mugler and UNIQLO creative director Nicola Formichetti; Shelly Page of DreamWorks Animation; Barbara London of The Museum of Modern Art; Showstudio’s Nick Knight; camera guru Philip Bloom; and advertising legend David Droga.
Grants of $5,000 will be awarded to the winners of each category, and $25,000 goes to a single Best Video winner. For more details on the Vimeo Awards and how to apply, visit the website. There is a $20 submission fee.
Leading up the awards are a series of videos being uploaded to Vimeo by last year’s winners. Both the 2011 Documentary and Narrative Awards went to particularly striking films that remain lodged in my memory months later. Gabriel Bisset-Smith’s Thrush leveraged a single day of shooting into an emotionally compelling work that tracked a relationship through five years of its digital detritus. Here’s that short:
Thrush from Gabriel Bisset-Smith on Vimeo.
And here is Bisset-Smith on what the award has meant to him:
Vimeo Festival + Awards Judge: Gabriel Bisset-Smith from Vimeo Festival + Awards on Vimeo.
Eliot Rausch’s Last Minutes with ODEN is a wrenching, heartbreaking and ultimately loving film about the euthanizing of the filmmaker’s cancer-stricken dog.
Last Minutes with ODEN from Eliot Rausch + Phos Pictures on Vimeo.
As Rausch describes it here, the short was almost accidentally made, and it has led to good things for him.
Vimeo Festival + Awards Judge: Eliot Rausch from Vimeo Festival + Awards… Read the rest
Friday, February 10th, 2012
One way to break into directing has always been to find a young, unsigned band and offer to do a music video. A new way: make a trailer for a book. These days, there are more and more trailers for books, and many of them take the form of short films. All you need is one hot independent film actor (Paul Dano) and one hip crossover porn star (Stoya). Case in point: the mumblecore-meets-porno stylings for Adam Wilson’s debut novel Flatscreen, forthcoming from Harper Perennial. Wilson is the Associate Editor of the New York Egoist, a blogger for BlackBook Magazine, and his novel is described as “a coming-of-age story about a young man trying to become a new person in a world where nothing is new.” In addition to Dano and Stoya, the short also features Sara Cicilian, Paul Rome, Harper Perennial editor Michael Signorelli, and Wilson. It was directed by Gabriel Wilson.
… Read the rest
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
While at the Toronto Film Festival this year I interviewed Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed and director Jon Shenk about their climate change doc, The Island President. The film is focused entirely on Nasheed’s efforts combating climate change and greenhouse emissions, showing how his stewardship of the environmentally fragile island state can be a model for others looking to enact more progressive policies.
One question I had while watching the doc was how well his environmental activism played at home. The domestic policies of the Maldives are largely absent from the doc.
Today, reports the BBC, Nasheed has resigned amidst widespread unrest in the country. According to the news service he is under house arrest, with some claiming his ouster the result of a military coup. His environmental policies appear to have had little to do with today’s events. From the BBC:
A one-time political prisoner, Mr Nasheed became a vocal figure in office on issues relating to the environment and climate change.
But he has faced constant opposition – from those loyal to former President Gayoom and from religious conservatives who accuse him of being anti-Islamic, says the BBC’s South Asia analyst Jill McGivering.
That pressure has intensified with the prospect of fresh presidential elections, scheduled for next year. Opposition parties are jockeying for power as they try to extend their influence.
I’m planning to run my complete interview timed to the release of the film. For now, here’s an excerpt in which Nasheed discusses his collaboration with Shenk.
… Read the rest
