BLACKHOUSE FOUNDATION STRESSES STRATEGY AND COMMUNITY IN THE FESTIVAL PROCESS

By Dan Schoenbrun

Last night at HSBC’s corporate headquarters in New York, The Blackhouse Foundation celebrated the launch of the 2012 film festival season with a networking event and panel discussion focused on festival strategy.  Now in its fifth year, Blackhouse is a non-profit organization set up to support communities of black filmmakers throughout the festival process. The Foundation has had a presence at many of the top North American festivals, including Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto, and the LA Film Festival.

Blackhouse exists to help black filmmakers at all stages in their careers, a fact made clear by the event’s attendees. The talent in the room ranged from NYU film students in production on their theses to up-and-coming documentarians like Michael Brown (whose first feature 25 to Life is currently in post production).  Also in attendance were more established filmmakers such as Gun Hill Road director Rashaad Ernesto Green and Precious producer Lisa Cortes (who also serves on Blackhouse’s board.)

A sense of community pervaded over the proceedings. And indeed, the importance of such a community was stressed during the night’s panel discussion. Blackhouse co-founder Carol Ann Shine spoke of the sheer number of filmmakers competing for shelf space in today’s film festival environment. She stressed that filmmakers should align themselves with organizations such as Blackhouse, stating that “having a community behind you, or a village so to speak, really does help.”

Meanwhile panelists Basil Tsiokos of the Sundance Film Festival, Cara Cusumano of the Tribeca Film Festival, and Amy Dotson of IFP discussed what filmmakers can do to make sure that their submissions stand out from the masses. Dotson stressed the importance of a compelling artistic statement, one that captures the passion behind the filmmaking process. “I want to know you as a person,” she explained. “That you’re not in this for a hobby.” Cusumano recommended reaching out to programmers directly, arguing that “people think the process is impenetrable. It isn’t.” She even stated that she appreciates it when filmmakers deliver their submissions to her in person, then stick around to chat with for five minutes. Tsiokos reacted to this statement with bewilderment – … Read the rest

ALMA HAR’EL, “BOMBAY BEACH”

By Brandon Harris

Stunningly shot and formally audacious, Bombay Beach, the first feature of Israeli-born music-video director and cinematographer Alma Har’el, is a rare bird, the type of film that seems to be building its own cinematic language from the ground up. Sure, it embraces some stylistic and thematic similarities with a whole host of filmmaking luminaries, but it is dancing to its very own tune, both literally and figuratively.

Har’el, as we discuss below, quickly entered the lives of various people living around the California hamlet of Bombay Beach, a derelict precinct that was once a haven for zealous developers in the ’60s, after scouting the place for a music video shoot. She found undocumented lives of great wonder and choose to make artwork out of their struggles and eccentricities, their dreams and failures, their prejudices and their grace. Dispatching the term “subjects” for “collaborators,” Har’el creates a visual, highly narrative tone poem concerning a number of snake-bitten but essentially decent and partially victimized people living on the margins of the California desert. With characters that include bi-polar, overmedicated child and his explosives-addicted parents, a mildly racist, trailer-dwelling octogenarian with an ear for poetry and a lovesick football prospect who seeks to escape the ghettos of the Salton Sea through an athletic scholarship, Har’el casts a warm but unforgiving eye on a forgotten corner of America.

Bob Dylan and Beirut both contributed music to the highly atmospheric, oddly touching film, which premiered in Berlin’s Panorama section before making its North American Premiere at Tribeca, where it won the International Documentary Competition’s top prize. While it wears the influence of Harmony Korine, Larry Clark, Lynne Ramsay, David Gordon Green, Charles Burnett and Gus Van Sant (just to name a few), it announces a major new directorial talent in Har’el who is working in a key all her own.

Bombay Beach opens at the IFC Center on Friday.

Filmmaker: Watching your film again I was struck by the notion that this film was made by someone who had an intense connection to this place. How did you first discover Bombay Beach and … Read the rest

SURVEYING THE DOCS AT TRIBECA, PART TWO

The Good Life is not about the good life, but the bad life. Mother Mette and daughter Anne lived a life of wealth and privilege, and then the husband-father died and the inherence dwindled, and finally the money ran out. Today the two survive on the mother’s minuscule pension in a small apartment in Portugal. While the mother seems resigned to her impoverished fate, the daughter is anything but resigned. She views life without wealth and servants as terribly unfair to her.

At the age of 56, daughter Anne has never held a job — not one! “Work is still taboo for me,” she says. “I will not allow myself to be demeaned by work.” Although not the first person reared in luxury and convinced being rich is her entitlement for life, she may very well be the funniest.

Danish director Eva Mulvad has crafted an extraordinary film capturing two complex individuals locked in a love-hate relationship, full of bizarre humor and genuine pain, crosscutting between the good past and the desperate present. Although difficult to identify with these two women — they are from an earlier time if not planet, the time and planet of the European aristocracy — it’s impossible not to be sucked into their precarious lives, to laugh at their antics and feel their agony. The Good Life is a joy, although one that comes with the sinking feeling that you are watching a familial Titanic go down.

The Marine Corps prides itself on producing the world’s best fighters. It does this by transforming civilians into fighters who refuse to quit, who muster the grit and determination to pursue the fight to the very end. The Marine ethos is antithetical to the quitter mentality, every new Marine is told and retold. Yet, at the Camp Lejeune Marine base in North Carolina, there are some Marines who would prefer that one former Marine had less fighting spirit.

When retired Master Sergeant Jerry Ensminger’s 9-year-old daughter died of a rare leukemia, the 25-year veteran of the Marine Corps transformed himself into a relentless investigator. He was haunted by … Read the rest

SURVEYING THE DOCS AT TRIBECA

Attempting to wrap your mind around a film festival’s totality is an exercise of dubious value. Still, the dubious can be exceedingly difficult to resist. It seems to me that the documentary films at the Tribeca Film Festival are of a consistently higher quality than the narratives. But what doc rat doesn’t believe this at every festival? Still, there are extremely few stinker docs at Tribeca, and forget the bombs. After the screenings the descriptive word that I hear the most from the audience members is “good,” occasionally “outstanding,” but never “bad.” Stinker docs need not apply.

The universal need to know who we are, to know who we came from, is the theme of Donor Unknown (pictured above). JoEllen Marsh, a teenager from Erie, Pennsylvania, uses the Internet and the Donor Sibling Registry website to coalesce some 20 or so teenagers and twenty-somethings who are the biological offspring of Donor 150 at the California Cryobank in Los Angles.
Donor 150, Jeffrey Harrison, is certainly a character. A deeply spiritual hippie now in his fifties, he is an intense animal lover and all around eccentric who lives in a RV in a parking lot in Venice Beach. Will the boys and girls go to California to meet their biological father? What will they think of him? Will lasting relationships be formed?

Donor Unknown is a delightful documentary that informs — revealing how the kids and their mothers and, of course, Donor 150 feels about this strange situation, and even how the sperm donor process operates — while also being emotionally charged. After all, knowing your biological roots is rather primal. Director Jerry Rothwell and his small crew have crafted a stupendous film about a very unusual, yet becoming more usual, sort-of-a family.

How can a young man, 19-year-old Filipino Paco Larranage, be arrested for rape and murder and convicted by a judge and the conviction upheld by the Supreme Court when there are 42 reliable witnesses who wanted to testify that Paco Larrange was partying 375 miles away from the scene of the crime? They even have photographs of … Read the rest

SPRING ISSUE NOW ONLINE

By Jason Guerrasio

Check out select stories from our new Spring issue.

Some of the stories you can read now include Mark Ruffalo talking about his directorial debut, Sympathy for Delicious; the team behind The Myth of the American Sleepover discuss their intimate film on teenage life; David Leitner highlights the latest crop of large-sensor HD cameras; Anthony Kaufman reports on the resurgence of studio indies; Lance Weiler explains how filmmakers can build audiences outside of the theater experience; and we look at the Tribeca Film Festival as it celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

To read the complete issue on your desktop now, subscribe to our digital issue. Learn how to here.… Read the rest

TRIBECA AT 10 YEARS

By Jason Guerrasio

TRIBECA REVEALS COMPETITION LINEUP

By Jason Guerrasio

The Tribeca Film Festival today announced their 2011 world narrative and documentary lineup as well as introducing a new out-of- competition sidebar, Viewpoints, which highlights international cinema.

A total of 45 features were unveiled for the 10th edition, taking place April 20-May 1, from a record number of over 5,600 submissions. The fest also introduced at a press conference today, according to indieWIRE, new awards that will be handed out this year from the competition slate: achievements in cinematography, screenwriting, editing and Best New Director awards for narrative and doc sections.

The remaining features will be announced next week. Last week Tribeca announced its opening film will be a free outdoor screening of the Elton John documentary, The Union, directed by Cameron Crowe.

Competition and Viewpoints lineup below.

World Narrative Feature Competition-

“Angels Crest,” directed by Gaby Dellal, written by Catherine Trieschmann. (UK, Canada) World Premiere.
In the working-class Rocky Mountain town of Angels Crest, young father Ethan (Thomas Dekker) is doing his best to raise his three-year-old son Nate. He has no choice—Nate’s mother (Lynn Collins) is an alcoholic. But one snowy day Ethan’s momentary lapse in judgment results in tragedy, catapulting the town’s tight-knit community into strange new directions as they try to decide where the blame lies. With Jeremy Piven, Elizabeth McGovern, Mira Sorvino, and Kate Walsh.

“Artificial Paradises” (Paraísos Artificiales), directed by Yulene Olaizola, written by Yulene Olaizola and Fernando del Razo. (Mexico) – North American Premiere.
This beautifully rendered atmospheric story captures a young woman addicted to heroin trying to get clean at a rundown resort on the Mexican Gulf Coast. There she meets a local character and the two begin a unique rapport. First-time narrative filmmaker Yulene Olaizola subverts the conventional addict story and imbues her main characters with a complexity and honesty that inspires this delicate and resonant journey of two old souls. In Spanish with English subtitles.

“Black Butterflies,” directed by Paula van der Oest, written by Greg Latter. (Germany, Netherlands, South Africa) – International Premiere.
Poetry, politics, madness, and desire collide in the true story of the woman … Read the rest

CAMERON CROWE’S ELTON JOHN DOC WILL OPEN 2011 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

By Jason Guerrasio

The Tribeca Film Festival has just announced that Cameron Crowe‘s documentary, The Union, will open their 2011 edition. The film follows the career of Elton John and his collaborative album with Leon Russell. It’s produced by T-Bone Burnett.

Marking the festival’s 10th year, The Union will screen for free outdoors at the World Financial Plaza’s North Cove in New York City’s Lower Manhattan. Elton John will also perform after the screening.

This year’s fest will take place April 20-May 1. The feature film slate will be announced in the coming weeks.… Read the rest

GUCCI TRIBECA DOCUMENTARY FUND GRANT RECIPIENTS ANNOUNCED

Out of 390 applicants from 23 countries, the Tribeca Film Institute and Gucci announced yesterday the seven recipients of the 2010 Gucci Tribeca Documentary fund, whose projects highlight globally important social issues.

The projects that will receive  a total of $100,000 in grant money are :

African Deep, Directed and Produced by Rachel Boynton. – (USA) African Deep is a riveting adventure about the heated quest for oil in the deep waters off West Africa’s coast. Shot over the course of four years, at a time of rising demand for energy and increasing competition for resources worldwide, the film takes you inside the gargantuan efforts and ambitions surrounding our planet’s most important resource.

Donor 150, Directed by Jerry Rothwell. Produced by Hilary Durman and Al Morrow. – (UK) Donor 150 is a twenty-first century tale of identity and genetic inheritance and perhaps the family of the future. For the first time in history a generation of children born through artificial insemination are old enough to search for their biological fathers. Donor 150 follows two young people as they first decide and then travel to meet  their father for the first time, and as they navigate the increasingly complex maze of new and constantly evolving family relationships.

The Mosou Sisters Directed and Produced by Marlo Poras & Yu Ying Wu Chou. – (USA) The Mosou Sisters follows two spirited daughters from China’s last remaining matriarchal society who are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn when they lose the only jobs they’ve ever known.

MOVING WINDMILLS: The William Kamkwamba Story Directed by Tom Reilly. Produced by Ben W. Nabors. – (USA) MOVING WINDMILLS: The William Kamkwamba Story dates to 2001 when William Kamkwamba dropped out of school due to a devastating famine. Through self-education, he saw a picture of a windmill in a textbook. Using found materials, William built a windmill that powered his village and changed his life, using imagination and ingenuity to inspire a family, a village, and a nation.

The Redemption of General Butt Naked Directed and Produced by Daniele Anastasion and Eric Strauss.  – (USA) The Redemption … Read the rest

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, PART TWO

Some good, or at least interesting, films surfaced at Tribeca this year—I’ll get to a few a couple of paragraphs down, and I wrote about others here last week—almost in spite of the umbrella organization itself. You can’t help but wonder: What is the template for this festival, which has been struggling to find its identity since its inception? Toronto, Sundance, Cannes, Berlin? San Francisco, Denver? Answer: It’s not cast from a festival mold at all, in spite of the invaluable input of former artistic director Peter Scarlet and David Kwok, as far as I can tell the only current programmer with any significant knowledge of film as art. No, the model is the Hollywood studio. On top of that, Tribeca’s priorities are much more L.A. than New York, no matter how much the promo materials cry, “Here comes the neighborhood.”

A tad of space with some examples that support this reading:

* Opening film, Shrek 4;

* On juries, bold-faced names, rarely of intellectuals or competent filmmakers. According to one member of the documentary jury, “It’s been the best run festival I have ever been at, though putting Jessica Alba on a doc jury is a bit CRAZY;”

* Articles in festival daily mainly on bold-faced names, some unbelievably superficial (two separate pages on juror Renee Zellweger’s assorted black dresses over the years, and an article, including cover photo, on high-powered personal publicist Leslee Dart of 42 West, which, strangely enough, is handling 13 of the festival’s features;

* Neon ads for chief sponsor American Express on either side of at least one movie screen in Chelsea;

* Self-promotion of co-founder Jane Rosenthal, a producer of big-budget studio movies (Meet the Frockers; The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle), whose business partner and fest co-founder is figurehead Robert De Niro (not frequently seen in indie films), the third co-founder being Craig Hatkoff, Rosenthal’s husband. Take a gander at Jane’s World in the first Tribeca Daily. She tells an interviewer, “You can’t go wrong with Bergdorf….Isaac Mizrahi, Zac Posen… Read the rest