THE NEW BREED L.A. #7: “SCREENING THE CUT”

“Don’t make your festival premiere your first test screening,” I always say to the filmmakers who take the IFP Narrative Lab. It’s sounds basic, but you’d be surprised at how many filmmakers I’ve come across who never properly screen their cuts with an audience before taking them out into the world. In this final episode of The New Breed‘s series on filmmakers and their creative process shot at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Marwencol director Jeff Malmberg and producer Ted Hope discuss their late-edit screening processes.

Thanks to Zak Forsman and Kevin Shah of Sabi Pictures and to the Workbook Project for their work and collaboration with this series.

Go back and watch all the episodes here.

NEW BREED LOS ANGELES – Episode 7 from Sabi Pictures on Vimeo.… Read the rest

SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL WINNERS ANNOUNCED

The 36th Seattle International Film Festival end this weekend with audiences flocking to the 25 day fest as nearly 20% increase from last year. From May 20-June 13, the festival had shown 408 films. The awards ranged from the audience-selected Golden Space Needle Awards; the five juried Competition Awards, as well as the FIPRESCI Award for Best American Film. Borys Lankosz‘s The Reverse won the narrative Grand Jury Prizee , while Marwencol, directed by Jeff Malmberg, took home the doc Grand Jury Prize.

The winners of the Jury and Audience Awards are below.

SIFF 2010 Best New Director

Grand Jury Prize
The Reverse, directed by Borys Lankosz (Poland, 2009)

Special Jury Mentions
Turistas, directed by Alicia Scherson (Chile, 2009)

Gravity, directed by Maximilian Erlenwein (Germany, 2009)

SIFF 2010 Best Documentary

Grand Jury Prize
Marwencol, directed by Jeff Malmberg (USA, 2010)

SIFF 2010 Short Film Jury Awards

Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short
Little Accidents, directed by Sara Colangelo (USA, 2009)

Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Short
White Lines And The Fever: The Death Of DJ Junebug, directed by Travis Senger (USA, 2010)

Grand Jury Prize for Best Animated Short
The Wonder Hospital, directed by Beomsik Shim (USA, 2010)

Special Jury Mention for Short Animation
Cherry On The Cake, directed by Hyebin Lee (United Kingdom, 2009)

SIFF 2010 FIPRESCI Award for Best American Film

FIPRESCI Award
Night Catches Us, directed by Tanya Hamilton (USA, 2010)

Special Jury Mention
Jenna Fischer in A Little Help

SIFF 2010 Golden Space Needle Audience Awards

Best Film Golden Space Needle Award
The Hedgehog, directed by Mona Achache (France, 2009)

Runners-up (in order):
Mao’s Last Dancer, directed by Bruce Beresford (Australia, 2009)
Micmacs, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France, 2009)
Cell 211, directed by Daniel Monzon (Spain, 2009)
Hipsters, directed by Valery Todorovsky (Russia, 2009)

Best Documentary Golden Space Needle Award
Ginny Ruffner: A Not So Still Life, directed by Karen Stanton (USA 2010) and Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker (United Kingdom, 2010) (tie)

Runners-up (In … Read the rest

MARWENCOL’S JEFFREY MALMBERG |
By Alicia Van Couvering

Mark Hogencamp was an illustrator living in Kingston, NY, and one night in 2000, he walked out of a bar and was followed by a group of teenagers who beat him mercilessly and left him for dead. Hogencamp was in a coma for nine days, suffered massive brain damage, and lost most of his memory and ability to move and write. Unable to afford therapy, he came up with his own: Marwencol. A 1/6 scale World War II-era town set someplace in Belgium, Marwencol’s inhabitants are dolls painstakingly painted and clothed by Mark, most representing a person from his real life. Mark’s doll is our hero, Captain Hogencamp, a strapping GI who first stumbles upon the town when its only other residents are women (Barbies, wearing co-opted SS uniforms from the soldier’s they’ve killed).

Hogencamp used the small dolls and props to redevelop his hand-eye coordination while he dealt with the psychic wounds from his attack through the town’s many battles with the SS and interpersonal dramas. He also began to take photographs of the events as they unfold, which are soon discovered by an art magazine, leading to a gallery show in New York City and a filmmaker, Jeffrey Malmberg, showing up to make a documentary about him. Four years later, Marwencol is premiering at SXSW, and it is a captivating, multi-faceted portrait of Hogencamp and the incredible world he’s created – call it art, therapy, or something in between, you’ve never seen anything like it before. As Hogencamp said to Malmberg the first day of filming, “it just gets weirder and weirder.”

You can view images of Marwencol and read more about the film at marwencol.com.

Filmmaker: I have a superficial question: how physically big is Marwencol? Like 20 x 20 feet?

Malmberg: I would say it’s about maybe twelve buildings at this point. It’s gotten pretty developed — now there’s kind of like a main drag through town, which Mark can walk down. But he’s very careful; he’ll only walk on a certain side so that he doesn’t get big footprints in the photographs. it’s kind … Read the rest