FIRST IMPRESSIONS

By Stephen Garrett

Stephen Garrett on crafting a winning trailer

A DAY AT THE SUNDANCE SHORTSLAB

A few weeks ago I attended the third Sundance ShortsLab, a day-long event about short filmmaking organized and conducted by the folks from Sundance (primarily, from what I could see, from the festival side of the house.) Sundance has previously put on two other Shortslabs, one in LA and one in Chicago. This was their first event in New York, and those of us in attendance spent the day in an auditorium at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as a variety of speakers and panels unfolded, and several short films were shown.

The day started with Trevor Groth, Sundance’s director of programming, addressing the audience with an overview of the history of Sundance (the festival and the institute) and describing how they had determined to start running these ShortsLabs. Groth said that shorts are always important to Sundance, both as part of their programming blocks and, I gathered, because of the importance they play in the industry as both a proving ground for directors as well as an art form unto themselves.

Groth said that while he loves the “purity of shorts” and the “pure passion” they evince, that of the thousands of shorts submitted to Sundance each year, he and the other programmers were seeing many of the same pitfalls over and over again. Thus they were inspired to create Shortslabs events in which they could provide insight for short filmmakers about honing their crafts.

He also acknowledged that in this single day, with almost 200 people in attendance, that Sundance was reaching more people in one fell swoop than they do over several years of their narrative labs (which tend to take about ten writer/directors per year, though they have several other types of labs as well.) He said he felt that Sundance wanted to democratize the learning and outreach part of their mission and create a more accessible event (again, than the labs, which are extremely competitive to get into.) Entrance to the Shortslab event cost $150, and there was no application process.

The day’s panels were interspersed with short films, both within the panels themselves, as … Read the rest

TORONTO ANNOUNCES TITLES FOR 2010 FEST

Titles for the 35th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival were announced today. The mixture of world and North American premieres range from directors like Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden‘s It’s Kind of a Funny Story, to Julian Schnabel‘s Miral to Susanne Bier‘s In A Better World. The full list of titles screening in the Gala and Special Presentations sections are below. TIFF has also announced that the festival, running from Sept. 9 -19, will be extended one day longer this year and in celebration of their 35th year will be running a “TIFF For Free” series were past films that have screened at the fest will be shown at no cost (some of the titles include The Big Chill, Crash and Water). Learn more at the fest’s site.



Galas

The Bang Bang Club, directed by Steven Silver (Canada/South Africa)
(World Premiere)

Barney’s Version, directed by Richard J Lewis (Canada/Italy)
(North American Premiere)

Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky (USA)
(North American Premiere)

Casino Jack, directed by George Hickenlooper (Canada)
(World Premiere)

The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford (USA)
(World Premiere)

The Debt, directed by John Madden (UK)
(North American Premiere)

The Housemaid, directed by Im Sang-Soo (South Korea)
(North American Premiere)

Janie Jones, directed by David M. Rosenthal (USA)
(World Premiere)

The King’s Speech, directed by Tom Hooper (UK)
(North American Premiere)

Little White Lies, directed by Guillaume Canet (France)
(World Premiere)

Peep World, directed by Barry Blaustein (USA)
(World Premiere)

Potiche, directed by Francois Ozon (France)
(North American Premiere)

The Town, directed by Ben Affleck (USA)
(North American Premiere)

The Way, directed by Emilio Estevez (USA)
(World Premiere)



Special Presentations

Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh (UK)
(North American Premiere)

Beginners, directed by Mike Mills (USA)
(World Premiere)

The Big Picture, directed by Eric Lartigau (France)
(World Premiere)

Biutiful, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Spain/Mexico)
(North American Premiere)

Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance (USA)
(Canadian Premiere)

Buried, directed by … Read the rest

WEEKEND LINKS, 5/2/2010

By Scott Macaulay

Most of the time when I come across interesting articles or video on the web I clip them to my Evernote reader and check them out later on my Blackberry or iPad. Here, then, are a few things I’ve clipped that might interest you too.

From CNN Money: “One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010.” What are the implications for online content creators?

In Spring 2008 I wrote about Alix Lambert’s Crime book for Filmmaker. (The piece is not online, but you can check it out on her site.) Here, at The Graveyard Shift, she discusses taking the book and three actors on the road to “think tank the idea of crime as theater.”

The making of Brent Green’s Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then is chronicled by the artist himself in the new issue of Filmmaker. I hope you check out the article as well as the film, which opens this Friday at the IFC Center. In the meantime, limited editions of artwork from the film are available from Art We Love. And, below, is a visit to Green’s studio.

Ask me what I am most proud of last year in Filmmaker and it might have been my exclusive interview with Mark Region, director of the uncategorizable After Last Season. So I was thrilled to get an email from Joseph Childers who writes for the site True/Slant, which I’ve been a reader of, telling me that he quoted from my interview throughout this review of the After Last Season DVD. From Childers’ review:

But as craptastic as the film is, it’s more than mere incompetence that makes the film fascinating. Most incredibly lame works of almost-art are compelling and sadly comic because of a massive gap between highfalutin intent and piss-poor execution. But like The Room and Troll 2, it’s incredibly hard to even begin to fathom the intent behind After Last Season. In other words, it’s so weird, I don’t even what they were going for – and that’s strangely admirable. It may not be,

… Read the rest