THE 2011 EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL

Spend even the shortest amount of time in the delightful and disturbing Scottish capital and you begin to read native Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a metaphor for the city itself. Edinburgh boasts a warm and welcoming population residing in an atmosphere where an ever-present hint of menace hangs palpably in the air like its famous rainy mist. (This openness is evidenced by the fact that one early afternoon my sister and I were able to pretty much wander in to a Justice Committee hearing of Parliament debating that day’s front page news – whether singing “God Save The Queen” at soccer matches should be made illegal.) Yes, this is the home of Harry Potter – and the café where J.K. Rowling birthed him proudly touts its pedigree – but it’s also a city in which for centuries public executions were pretty much a local pasttime. Not to mention, its skyline of threatening, medieval fortress architecture heavy with spires and turrets practically screams, “Don’t fuck with us.” It’s actually the opposite of Amsterdam, where I flew in from to cover this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. That city’s cozy atmosphere – the Dutch have a word for it, “gezellig,” which has no English equivalent – reflected in its quaint canal houses and hole-in-the-wall coffeeshops, stands in stark contrast to its conservative insular population. (Don’t get me wrong, the Dutch are very agreeable – just don’t mistake “tolerant” for “welcoming.”)

And atmosphere – every bit as important as the movies themselves – is also what makes or breaks a film festival. Interestingly, the buzz this year at EIFF had nothing to do with awards or red carpet premieres. In fact, this 65th edition jettisoned its Michael Powell Award for best British film along with the closing night flick and the red carpet. (Thus, Ewan McGregor had to set foot on the same ground as us common mortals for the screening of David Mackenzie’s Glasgow-set Perfect Sense, which he stars in opposite Eva Green.) No, the drama surrounded newly tapped festival director James Mullighan, … Read the rest

ADAM BHALA LOUGH AND ETHAN HIGBEE, “THE UPSETTER”

By Brandon Harris

Widely revered in reggae and hip-hop circles, Lee “Scratch” Perry is one of 20th century music’s most influential and mysterious artists, a tried-and-true rasta man whose lasting contribution goes beyond spawning some of reggae’s most seminal acts. He was, in fact, the driver for the aesthetic innovations that germinated into the two genres mentioned above, and he reinvented the image of the studio engineer from mere technician to artistic focal point. Now in his mid seventies and expatriated to Switzerland, he’s the subject of the feature-length doc The Upsetter, from the directors Adam Bhala Lough (The Carter, Weapons) and Ethan Higbee (Red Apples Falling). NYU classmates, frequent collaborators (Higbee has scored several of Lough’s previous features) and nearly lifelong reggae fans, Lough and Higbee received unprecedented access to the beguiling Perry, who speaks in gorgeous, puzzle-like sentences that require significant scrutiny to unpack.

The Upsetter screened at over a dozen stops on the fest circuit, including Edinburgh and Karlovy Vary, and just now is finding its way to theaters, nearly two years after its festival run ended. Like several of Lough’s previous films, it evolved significantly after playing at festivals. In the interim some footage has been lost, a few vintage photos of Perry, Bob Marley and other key figures in the early days of reggae have been unearthed and its new, slightly slimmer cut features voice-over narration by Benicio Del Toro . The Upsetter opens in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent this Friday. It screens at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem April 3rd.

Filmmaker: How did your interest in Lee Perry evolve into the desire to make a film about him?

Lough: I’ve been interested in reggae since I was a little kid. My dad used to play Bob Marley since I was very young. I wasn’t really aware who Lee was though.

Higbee: I’ve been obsessed with him since high school really.

Lough: Probably in middle school I saw a solo record of his at Tower Records or something. He was very prominent and … Read the rest

GREGG ARAKI, “KABOOM”

By Brandon Harris

One of the key figures in the New Queer Cinema and ever youthful at 51 years of age, Gregg Araki is a director who is increasingly hard to pigeonhole. After the critical success of 2004′s Mysterious Skin, the film which confirmed that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was a movie-star and that Mr. Araki could direct delicate drama as well as exploitation and cult cinema, it seemed that the director of such indie LGBT classics as The Living End (1992) and The Doom Generation (1995) was moving on to a new, more conventionally respectable, middle-aged portion of his career. Now Mr. Araki is back with Kaboom, a film which stars newcomer Thomas Dekker as a sexually ambiguous college freshman at a coastal California university who may or may not be discovering a plot that will lead to… wait for it… the end of the world!

Getting terrific work out of both Mr. Dekker and up and comer Juno Temple as his sexually adventurous sometimes lover, Mr. Araki’s most recent work is a throwback of sorts, one that recalls the “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy” that cemented his reputation in the mid 1990′s. Yet while his fast-paced, audaciously absurd film throws everything at the viewer but the kitchen sink, it contains elements that are as personally autobiographical as anything in Araki’s oeuvre. Kaboom bowed out of Competition in Cannes last year before finding its way to Sundance — both the festival and its VOD/theatrical exhibition platform, Sundance Selects, which will release the film in both theaters and on VOD today.

Filmmaker: Do you see this film as an attempt to rekindle some of the anarchic spirit and energy of your “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy”?

Araki: I didn’t want to regress artistically or anything, but I did sort of in a way wanted to make a sort of old-fashioned cult movie. I don’t think that those movies get made anymore [laughs] given the marketplace and the economy. Frequently when I go to film festival, I’ll run into these kids who are like, “I’ve seen Nowhere like 5,000 times, I had a VHS tape … Read the rest

WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS

By Scott Macaulay

Here are a few articles and blog posts that caught my eye this week:

At VentureBeat, a good list titled “Eight Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Business.”

At the Playlist, five cinematographers on the rise. Also over there, Jim Jarmusch talks about new projects, including one with Tilda Swinton, Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska.

In the guise of a beautifully written essay about dreaming, his dad, and Roger Ebert, David Lowery announces — sort of — a new film.

At Moving Image Source, Jonathan Rosenbaum defends non-linear film criticism.

At Subtraction, Khoi Vhin talks about loving his iPad, but he has gripes. I love mine and I have the same gripes. Specifically: Safari window refreshing and the poor video caching that, for me, makes YouTube often unusable.

In our current issue, Koo wrote about the promise of Google TV. Here’s a good follow-up at the Wall Street Journal on the partner challenge the new service is facing. (Unlike many sites, for the WSJ I give you the direct, non-firewalled link!)

The BBC on digital nomads and living out of the cloud.

The job market is terrible. But there are new job categories for enterprising people willing to jump in and master them. One is the “community manager,” and Mashable has ten tips on becoming a good one.

Mark Cuban on the stock market and why he’s overweight cash.

Chris Anderson is great at the equivalent of web water-cool conversation. He’s done it again with his “The Web is Dead” piece for Wired. Everybody is talking about it but I haven’t read it yet so I won’t.

Finally, if you are a fan of Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film blog, make sure not to miss a post entitled “IMHO: Action is the Best Solution.” Ted has been a big advocate of community building, amassing fans before production, figuring out your audience outreach strategy. But in this post he also acknowledges that sometimes action in the form of seizing production opportunities takes precedence over the best-laid social media plans. Here is his lede:

I wish I could put

… Read the rest

FILMMAKER FLASHBACK: SPRING, 1996

By Scott Macaulay

Spring, 1996. It’s so strange now to look back at a piece in this issue by David Leitner on the new digital camera technology and read this bit of breaking news:

1996 will witness the inauguration of prerecorded films on CD-sized Digital Versatile Disks or “DVDs” (you and I will call them Digital Video Disks). DVDs not only doom VHS but also CD-ROMs as we know them for the mere reason that single-sided DVDs store 8.5 gigabytes compared to the puny 680 megabytes of CDs while manufacturing costs are the same.

Also in this issue was filmmaker John Landis (yes, that John Landis) interviewing James Mangold. At the time, Mangold had a small, character-based indie, Heavy, at Sundance. This summer, of course, he’s at the multiplex with the Tom Cruise-starring Knight and Day. Christine Vachon published her production diaries from the making of I Shot Andy Warhol, which was our cover film. Rose Troche interviewed its director, Mary Harron. At the time, she was trying to make a bio-pic about director Dorothy Arzner. The interview is worth reading today for anyone attempting to develop a film based on biographical material.

From the piece:

Troche: Arzner was just this character who was in Hollywood but also outside of it. She was a real lesbian, a dumpy dyke, not the glamor puss bisexual that everyone wanted, like Garbo. She wasn’t beautiful enough for that.

Harron: I think that keeping an open mind is really important when doing your research. When I say you come up with an internal structure, I don’t mean that you start off knowing the meaning of it all. Because the information you find might change your story. You might find out terrible things about Dorothy Arzner, that she was dreadful to another partner, and that will make your story more complicated. You can’t shut it out. For example, I found out that Valerie had slept with men, in fact had lived with a man, even though she identified herself politically and emotionally as a lesbian. Sexually she was more of a bisexual. That’s why I

… Read the rest

REVISITING THE TOPIC OF INDIE MOVIES AND YOUTH

By Scott Macaulay

This is perhaps the longest gestating blog post in Filmmaker Blog history.

Back in December, Ted Hope commented on the graying of the arthouse audience in a post entitled “Can Truly Free Film Appeal to Younger Audiences?” He asked:

What is it that new audiences want? What must the indie community do to engage them? It is really surprising how few true indie films speak to a youth audience. In this country we’ve had Kevin Smith and NAPOLEON DYNAMITE, but nothing that was youth and also truly on the art spectrum like RUN LOLA RUN or the French New Wave (PARANORMAL ACTIVITY not withstanding…). Are we incapable of making the spirited yet formal work that defines a lot of alternative rock and roll? And if so, why is that?

The post inspired a long comments thread, much of which focuses on the issue of marketing, and whether today’s independent films are marketed to youth correctly, or whether today’s indies are giving young audiences the experiences they want. Amongst these comments is one by producer Cotty Chubb, who tackles the issue of young content. An excerpt:

If there’s no reason to go to the theater to have an emotional (comedic, dramatic, it doesn’t matter) experience that answers questions you have — about being a child of divorce, about how to figure out how to live or love, or about what happens you become intimate and it’s all too much — whatever it is that you’re living — if you lose the habit of seeing movies because the people that make them don’t give two shits about you except for your ability to spend money — you stop going, except for the thrill rides or the exceptional rude boys.

That’s why I thought Judd Apatow was going to matter when I saw Knocked Up. That’s why I think 500 Days of Summer is important. It was honest and funny and smart and generous and Joe Gordon Levitt is uniquely transparent in his emotion. And it grossed 32+MM$.

I think Ted and Cotty combine to make a great point here having to … Read the rest

U.S. DIRECTORS CALL FOR JAFAR PANAHI’S RELEASE

By Scott Macaulay

A powerful statement from U.S. directors calling for the release of director Jafar Panahi from prison in Iran has been issued. I’ll let the petition speak for itself, but kudos to the organizers for taking action and assembling this illustrious group.

New York, NY (April 30, 2010) – Jafar Panahi, an internationally acclaimed Iranian director of such award-winning films as The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold and Offside, was arrested at his home on March 1st and has been held since in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. A number of filmmaking luminaries have come to Mr. Panahi’s defense and “condemn his detention and strongly urge the Iranian government to release Mr. Panahi immediately,” according to a new petition. (Petition text and full list of signatories is available below.)

Islamic Republic officials initially charged Mr. Panahi with “unspecified crimes.” They have since reversed themselves, and the charges now allege that he was making a film against the regime, a very serious accusation in Iran.

Mr. Panahi’s films have been banned from screening in Iran for the past ten years and he has been kept from working for the past four years, but he continues to stay in Iran.

“Mr. Panahi deeply loves his country,” says Jamsheed Akrami, an Iranian-American film scholar and filmmaker, who helped organize the petition. “Even though he knows he could have opportunities to work freely outside of his homeland, he has repeatedly refused to leave. He would never do anything against the national interests of his country and his people.”

Mr. Panahi is one of the most heralded directors in the world. He has won such top prizes as the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival for Offside (2006), the Un Certain Regard Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Crimson Gold (2003), the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle (2000), the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival for The Mirror
(1997) and the Cannes Camera d’Or for The White Balloon (1995).

PETITION: Free Jafar Panahi

Jafar Panahi, the internationally acclaimed Iranian director of such award-winning

… Read the rest

FERNANDO EIMBCKE, “LAKE TAHOE”

By Nick Dawson

DIEGO CATAÑO IN DIRECTOR FERNANDO EIMBCKE’S LAKE TAHOE. COURTESY FILM MOVEMENT.

You only have to look at the work of a director like Fernando Eimbcke to see that there is a lot more to get excited about in Mexican cinema than just the so-called “Three Amigos,” Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu & Alfonso Cuarón. Born in Mexico City in 1970, Eimbcke studied film direction at the University Centre of Cinematographic Studies at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). During his time there, he made a handful of shorts, including the fiction films Sorry for the Inconvenience and Excuse Me? (both 1994) and two non-fiction titles, Reaching a Star (1993) and Not everything is Permanent (1996), the latter of which was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the Ariels, the Mexican Academy Awards. Following his graduation, he began directing music videos, as well as more shorts, such as Weightwatch (2002) and The Look of Love (2003). In 2004, he co-wrote and directed his feature debut, Duck Season, a black-and-white comedy drama about two teenage boys left alone for the day who must entertain themselves after the power cuts out. The movie premiered at Cannes in the Critics Week sidebar, was programmed at numerous film festivals worldwide, and won no less than 11 Ariels, including Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay.

With his sophomore effort, Lake Tahoe, Eimbcke reunites with his co-writer on Duck Season, as well as one of the lead actors from that film, Diego Cataño, however in tone and texture the two films could not be more different. The movie begins with the downbeat Juan (Cataño) crashing his car into a lamppost – how and why this happened is unclear – and the film chronicles his efforts to get it back on the road. Helping him (or not) are a distrustful old man (Hector Herrera), a kung-fu obsessed mechanic (Juan Carlos Lara II), and the pretty girl who works with him in the repair shop (Daniela Valentine). As Lake Tahoe progresses, we become aware that driving the minimal narrative of Juan’s quest is … Read the rest

GERARDO NARANJO, “DRAMA/MEX”

By Nick Dawson

DIANA GARCIA IN GERARDO NARANJO’S DRAMA/MEX. COURTESY IFC FIRST TAKE.

Not many people can genuinely claim that cinema is their savior, but Gerardo Naranjo is probably one of the few. Growing up in the small Mexican town of Salamanca, he frequently got into trouble and was forced to move from school to school as a result of his problems with authority, but managed to escape his difficulties while watching movies. He ended up studying at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, where he founded a cinema club called Zero for Conduct, — named after the Jean Vigo movie, a favorite which appealed to his sense of rebellion — in order to screen classic films he loved. While in Mexico City, he wrote film criticism and directed his first short, Perro Negro (1997), which ultimately led to him taking a Masters in Directing at American Film Institute in L.A. There he became best friends with fellow students Goran Dukic (whose Wristcutters: A Love Story is released next month) and Azazel Jacobs, the son of Ken Jacobs, who shared his anarchic spirit. After another acclaimed short, The Last Attack of the Beast (2002), Naranjo made his feature debut with the Scorsese-esque Malachance (2004) before co-writing and co-starring in Azazel Jacobs’ The GoodTimesKid (2005).

Naranjo’s sophomore effort, Drama/Mex, is a triptych following three interweaving stories set in Acapulco: Fernanda (Diana Garcia) discovers that her ex-lover Chano (Emilio Valdés) is back in town, putting her relationship with new boyfriend Gonzalo (Juan Pablo Castañeda) in doubt; aging office clerk Jaime (Fernando Becerril) decides to steal from his boss, quit his job and then kill himself; and teen runaway Tigrillo (Miriana Moro) joins a gang of delinquent girls who prey on tourists. Drama/Mex is stylishly shot, insightfully written and sensitively directed, and Naranjo’s emotionally resonant depiction of characters on the edge is never less than compelling. In the hands of a lesser director, the material would have become bleak and overblown yet Naranjo instils a sense of unshakeable optimism, simultaneously creating one of the most accomplished films of the year.

Filmmaker spoke to Naranjo … Read the rest

SPEAKING OF…

By Scott Macaulay

Jim Jarmusch has directed a video for The Raconteurs, a band featuring Jack White of the White Stripes and Brendon Benson. It’s in his grainy Year of the Horse mode and it can be found here.… Read the rest