13 FILMS PREMIERE DIGITALLY VIA SUNDANCE ARTIST SERVICES

By Scott Macaulay

Conflict-of-interest note: As most of you know, I produce films in addition to editing Filmmaker. Others on our team do as well. “By filmmakers, for filmmakers,” our marketing tagline has long been, and I like to think that our experience gives the magazine insight as well as strong bullshit detector. Being aware of my multiple hats, however, I generally exclude projects I produce from the magazine and site. That’s why you’ve never read about films like Off the Black, Saving Face and Raising Victor Vargas in Filmmaker. (Sorry, directors!) But when it comes to the following story of interest to independent filmmakers, I’ll make an exception because it would be wrong to not cover it and disingenuous not to acknowledge my own films in this mix. Hopefully by adding my own experience I add something to the story. And if anyone wants advice on re-delivering 20-year old films, tracking down analog materials, and finding contracts that never existed as PDFs, don’t hesitate to ask.)

When Tom Noonan decided to title all his films beginning with the letter “W”, he wasn’t thinking of the digital era. I remember Tom explaining to me at the time that by calling his three features What Happened Was…, The Wife and Wang Dang they’d all naturally group together on the shelf at the local video store.

Well, those video stores are near extinct, and now we have digital storefronts, VOD menus, and DIY distribution articles urging filmmakers to title their movies beginning with the letter “A” to ensure upfront placement.

The “’W’ issue” is one of the reasons — not the most significant one, by any means, but definitely one that was considered — we decided to re-release Tom’s first two features through Sundance’s Artists Services initiative and its exclusive aggregator, New Video. Both films are what are known as library titles, having originally been released in the early and mid-‘90s. They both premiered at Sundance, in Competition, where What Happened Was… won the Grand Jury Prize and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. The Sundance awards were instrumental in sealing a distribution deal … Read the rest

IFP TO STREAM 2011 FILMMAKER CONFERENCE

By Dan Schoenbrun

Did you miss the Filmmaker Conference at Independent Film Week last month?  Me too – I managed to catch a few panels, but I spent most of the week running around, working, and attending other IFW events (as evidenced by my photo blogs here, here, and here).

Luckily, IFP will streaming the entire conference available to members.  One new video will be added to ifp.org every weekday this month.  Membership levels start at $35, which for roughly 30 hours of film industry education (and tons of other benefits) is not a bad deal.

One video is already online – a case study of Sundance Audience Award winning documentary Buck featuring director Cindy Meehl, producer Julie Goldman, editor Toby Shimin, associate producer Sofia Santana, line producer Alice Henty, and co-executive producer and Back Allie Films president Andrea Meditch.

Other panels coming soon:

Keynote addresses from Geoffrey Gilmore (Tribeca Enterprises), Rose Kuo (Film Society of Lincoln Center), Keri Putnam (Sundance Institute), and Josh Braun (Submarine Entertainment).

Case studies featuring the creative teams behind recent indie successes Red State, Terri, Kinyarwanda, and Bill Cunningham New York.

Masterclass: “How to Finance Your Film” featuring Ira Deutchman (Emerging Pictures), Richard Sheehan (HSBC Bank), Jonathan Gray (Gray Krauss Des Rochers LLP), Philipp Engelhorn (Cinereach), Pat Kaufman (New York State Governor’s Office for Motion Picture and Television Development), and Nekisa Cooper (Producer, Pariah)

“Is Indie Film a Hobby or Career” Cage Match featuring Ted Hope (Producer, Super, Adventureland) and Mynette Louie (Children of Invention).

Masterclass: “How to Design a Winning Distribution Strategy” with Peter Broderick (Paradigm Consulting)

For the week’s full schedule, check out the Filmmaker Conference website.  To learn more about IFP membership, go here.… Read the rest

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL U.S.A. THEATERS ANNOUNCED

By Jason Guerrasio

In 2010 the Sundance Institute began Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. where a handful of films from that year’s fest screened in select theaters nationwide on one day during the festival. Today Sundance announced the theaters that will take part in the 2012 edition on Jan. 26.

The cities and theaters participating are:
–Ann Arbor, MI – The Michigan Theatre
–Boston, MA – Coolidge Corner Theatre
–Brooklyn, NY – BAM
–Chicago, IL – Music Box Theatre
–Houston, TX – Sundance Cinemas Houston
–Nashville, TN – Belcourt Theatre
–Orlando, FL – Enzian Theater
–San Francisco, CA – Sundance Kabuki Cinemas
–Tucson, AZ – The Loft

Tickets for each screening will be available through the theater’s box office.

As in the previous years, filmmakers will travel from the festival in Utah to the nine cities. In each city, the filmmaker will introduce and screen their film and participate in a Q&A with the audience.

The films taking part will be announced in December.

In the past, films that have participated in Sundance Film Festival U.S.A. include Like Crazy, My Idiot Brother, Jack Goes Boating and Cyrus.… Read the rest

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES THIS YEAR’S CREATIVE PRODUCING INITIATIVES

By Jason Guerrasio

The Sundance Institute announced today the participants for its annual Creative Producing Labs and Creative Producing Summit, which will take place in Sundance, Utah starting July 18.

From the 18-22, ten projects will participate in the Labs (five narrative, four documentaries) and receive ongoing support throughout the year. Following the Labs, from the 22-24, leaders in the independent film community will partake in the Summit that will include case study sessions, panels, roundtable discussions, one-on-one meetings and pitching sessions.

Summit panelists include Josh Braun (Submarine Entertainment), Victoria Cook (Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz), Liesl Copland (William Morris Endeavor), Eric d’Arbeloff (Roadside Attractions), Marian Koltai-Levine (PMK*BNC), Alex Kruglov (Hulu.com), Tim League (Alamo Drafthouse), Susan Margolin (New Video), Celine Rattray (Maven Pictures), John Sloss (Cinetic Media), Dan Steinman (Creative Artists Agency), Ricky Strauss (Participant Media) and Nancy Utley (Fox Searchlight). Click here for a full list of panelists.

The Fellows and projects selected for the Labs are:

Narrative

Ad Inexplorata
Producing Fellow: Danielle DiGiacomo
Captain William D. Stanaforth is a NASA pilot alone on a one-way mission toward the unknown. (Writer/Director Mark Elijah Rosenberg)

In the past decade, Danielle DiGiacomo has worked as the Community Manager at IFP and Head of Documentary Acquisitions at IndiePix Films, produced the first two Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Film, and associate produced Jennifer Venditti’s Billy the Kid (Best Documentary Feature, Los Angeles Film Festival 2007 & SXSW 2007) and Samantha Buck’s 21 Below. In 2010, she produced three short films (two premiered at the 2011 Cannes’ Short Film Corner) and Associate Produced one feature, Andrew Semans’ Nancy Please. She is currently producing Chris Kelly’s documentary The Cause of Progress and Samantha Buck’s Best Kept Secret. (Mark Silverman Honoree)

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
Producing Fellows: James M. Johnston & Toby Halbrooks
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints tells the story of an outlaw who, in the 1970s, escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas countryside to reunite with his wife and the daughter he never met. Along the way, however, his past starts to catch up with him. (Writer/Director: David Lowery)

James M. Johnston and Toby … Read the rest

GET TIX FOR SUNDANCE INSTITUTE’S SHORTSLAB: CHICAGO

By Jason Guerrasio

Last summer in L.A. the Sundance Institute presented their first-ever ShortsLab, a day-long workshop for short filmmakers. The success of the event has led the Institute to expand ShortsLab to three cities this year with the first being Chicago on May 7 (NYC will happen on July 9 and L.A. Aug. 6).

The Chicago workshop will include seminars, screenings and panels that focus on story, production and distribution. There will also be a panel dedicated to short film programmers, as they’ll talk candidly about what films they’re looking for and give tips on how to get your short noticed.

Some of the names scheduled to attend: Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, Get Low director Aaron Schneider, director and Chicago native Kyle Henry, Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler, Shorts International co-head of global acquisitions Linda Olszewski and Sundance shorts programmer Todd Luoto.

Tickets are $150 and available here.… Read the rest

WHAT’S IN MY INSTAPAPER: SUNDAY MORNING LINKS, 2/20/11

By Scott Macaulay

Here are a few things in my Instapaper this week.

In GQ, Mark Harris looks back at “The Day the Movies Died” and the preeminence of easy marketing over original ideas. An excerpt:

Such an unrelenting focus on the sell rather than the goods may be why so many of the dispiritingly awful movies that studios throw at us look as if they were planned from the poster backward rather than from the good idea forward. Marketers revere the idea of brands, because a brand means that somebody, somewhere, once bought the thing they’re now trying to sell.

YouTube has a contest for non-profits making videos.

Boing Boing considers outside filmmaker Neil Breen, “real estate magnate turned sci-fi auteur.” His latest:

I Am Here….Now (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

At Shadowlocked, a useful and detailed exploration of the major studio policies on take down notices and YouTube.

Via Paid Content, a report from a publishing industry invite-only “Roundtable on Tablet Subscriptions” held in London. The publishers’ number 1 demand? A reduction of Apple’s just-announced 30% tariff on iOS-delivered content? No. “A fair business partnership” is #4. #1 is:

1. Censorship of content

Freedom of speech is the basis of the media’s existence. Publishers cannot agree with the practices of technology companies that interfere with editorial decisions on what to put into a digital publication. So we appeal to Apple to change its rules and practices that led to the rejection of apps in some European countries regarding content considered legal and appropriate in those countries.

Like a ton of people, I linked to the fantastic reverse-zombie Dead Island trailer this week. A bona fide viral sensation, the trailer has now prompted a movie deal in which the film will embrace the backwards-chronology style of the trailer instead of the more normal forward gameplay of the game title itself. Reports Drew McWeeney at Hitflix:

Techland, the Polish developer for the game, has got to be dancing in the streets right now. This is a game that had been delayed and that had fallen off the radar after being

… Read the rest

ROBERT REDFORD AND KENNETH COLE DISCUSS VOLUNTEERISM AT SUNDANCE 2011

Last week from the Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker ran a series of videos sponsored by Kenneth Cole highlighting the work of volunteers at the festival. Each year, 1,600 volunteers descend on Park City and help make the festival a good experience for both filmmakers and audiences. And each year Cole, a Sundance Institute board member, designs and donates a sleeveless down vest to the volunteers. This year those vests are for sale at Kenneth Cole stores and at Sundance’s online festival store. A percentage of the net profits from the sale is donated to the Sundance Institute.

Below, in this final video, Redford and Cole discuss the spirit of volunteerism and how it relates to the specific job of running the Sundance Film Festival.

And here are our previous video portraits of the volunteers:

Christine Ioannides

Rhys Southan

Brenda Berliner

Knar Kitabjian

Jeff Aguirre… Read the rest

SUNDANCE PREVIEW: INTERVIEW WITH SENIOR PROGRAMMER DAVID COURIER

For the independent film industry, January isn’t just the start of a New Year, it’s also exam season. At this very moment, documentary filmmakers around the world are in edit rooms deep into the night, hoping to ace the Sundance finals. The reward for those late night cram sessions is certainly worth it: the most gifted alumni of previous festival’s have been awarded the best graduation gift of all — a career as a working filmmaker. To find out more about this year’s class, I spoke to David Courier, Senior Film Programmer at the Sundance Institute.

Filmmaker: I noticed a lot of names in the catalog this year that I recognized from previous festivals. Do you and your colleagues purposely reserve slots for filmmakers you know and trust?

Courier: It’s interesting you ask that, particularly this year… People love to premiere at our festival because we love documentaries; they’re on par with narratives here. This year, we made a big decision to make a documentary premiere section, which is the equivalent of the narrative premieres section…Last year we came to realize that we needed to make a place for master documentarians alongside a space for new directors. Many of the names you have heard of are probably in our doc premieres section; they are filmmakers who have won the Oscar or have been here many times. This year, they’re out of competition, and our doc competition this year has less big names…It’s not the list of Oscar winners that we had last year.

Filmmakers: One of the big stories of Sundance last year was Catfish, a truly microbudget documentary that caused a big splash. Going into the festival, do you have an idea of what might be the break-out film?

Courier: We definitely didn’t predict Catfish. You just can’t predict things like that. We watched it happen at the festival. We loved the movie, which is why we programmed it. But what’s interesting this year is that if people look at our documentary competition, they’ll probably notice that the topics are lighter. It’s not like we set out to … Read the rest

SUNDANCE USA ’11 TITLES SELECTED

By Jason Guerrasio

The Sundance Institute has announced the films that will be screening as part of Sundance Film Festival USA.

On Thursday, January 27, 2011 nine different cities will screen films from the Sundance 2011 slate. The full list of titles and theaters involved in Sundance USA are listed below. Tickets are available through individual theater’s box office.

See the complete list of Sundance Film Festival competition titles here and out-of-competition titles here.

The festival will take place Jan. 20-30, 2011 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

Sundance Film Festival USA

Win Win / U.S.A. — Ann Arbor, MI — Michigan Theater | www.michtheater.org
Director and screenwriter: Tom McCarthy, based on the story by Tom McCarthy and Joe Tiboni — When a disheartened attorney moonlighting as a high school wrestling coach stumbles across a star athlete, things seem to be looking up. That is, until the boy’s mother shows up fresh from rehab and flat broke, threatening to derail everything. Cast: Paul Giamatti, Amy Ryan, Bobby Cannavale, Jeffrey Tambor. World Premiere

My Idiot Brother / U.S.A.— Brookline, MA — Coolidge Corner Theatre | www.coolidge.org
Director: Jesse Peretz; Screenwriters: Evgenia Peretz and David Schisgall — After serving time for being conned into selling pot, Ned successively moves in with each of his three sisters as he tries to get back on his feet. His best intentions quickly bring the family to the cusp of chaos and ultimately the brink of clarity. Cast: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Emily Mortimer. World Premiere

Kaboom / U.S.A. —Brooklyn, NY — BAM | www.bam.org
Director and screenwriter: Gregg Araki — A science fiction story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students. Cast: Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, Roxane Mesquida, Juno Temple. U.S. Premiere

The Music Never Stopped / U.S.A. —Chicago, IL — Music Box Theatre | www.musicboxtheatre.com
Director: Jim Kohlberg; Screenwriters: Gwyn Lurie and Gary Marks, based on the story “The Last Hippie” by Oliver Sacks — A father struggles to bond with his estranged son who suffers a brain tumor that prevents him from … Read the rest

SUNDANCE ’11 SHORT FILMS ANNOUNCED

By Jason Guerrasio

The Sundance Institute has announced the short films that will be screening at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The full list of titles are below.

See the complete list of competition titles here and out-of-competition titles here.

The festival will take place Jan. 20-30, 2011 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

U.S. NARRATIVE SHORTS

After You Left (Director: Jef Taylor; Screenwriters: Jef Taylor and Michael Tisdale) – A man in his mid-thirties searches for meaning in the aftermath of a relationship.

Andy and Zach (Director and Screenwriter: Nick Paley) – When Zach decides to move out, his roommate Andy tries to set up a new life without his best friend.

AWOL (Director and Screenwriter: Deb Shoval) – Days before her deployment to Afghanistan, Joey, 19, comes home to rural Pennsylvania for Christmas, with big dreams of running away to Canada.

Babyland (Director and Screenwriter: Marc Fratello) – A woman seeks love and beyond in a small American town.

Brick Novax (Director and Screenwriter: Matt Piedmont) – Penniless and now living in a seedy motel with only weeks to live, international super legend Brick Novax records his amazing tales as an astronaut, movie star, corporate CEO, and famous musician to preserve his legacy as the coolest guy in the history of the world.

Close. (Director and Screenwriter: Tahir Jetter) – One night after a casual ‘visit’, Angela is all but ready to leave Derek’s apartment. Derek, however, is determined not to let her go without a fight.

Crazy Beats Strong Every Time (Director and Screenwriter: Moon Molson) – An African-American twenty-something finds his Nigerian-immigrant stepfather passed out drunk in their project-building hallway and is pressured by a friend into murdering him.

Das Racist “Who’s That? Brooown!” (Director and Screenwriter: Thomas De Napoli) – An epic quest through the streets of New York City made in the style of -bit video games from the 1980’s.

Excuse Me (Director and Screenwriter: Duncan Birmingham) – A couple threatens to splinter apart due to what may or may not have been said in the heat of passion.

EX-SEX (Director … Read the rest