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BEIJING TAXI: THE METER IS RUNNING

Scott Macaulay
Filmmaker Miao Wang, a Beijing native now based in Brooklyn, is currently racing to finish her feature doc Beijing Taxi in time for SXSW, where it's scheduled to world premiere. She needs to raise $11,000 to cover post-production expenses and is just under half way there with five days left to go at Kickstarter. From the Kickstarter page: BEIJING TAXI is a feature length documentary that [continue]

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CLIP REEL

Scott Macaulay
Most movie-moment montages work an A-B-A structure in which "A" is sentimental uplift. This montage by Paul Proulx goes for something different. (Hat tip: Anne Thompson.) the films of the 2000s from Paul Proulx on Vimeo.

DAVID LYNCH ON MAKING A GOOD MOVIE

Scott Macaulay

HOW COOL IS INDIE FILM?

Scott Macaulay
Indie film champions are often fond of comparing what we do to indie music. If bands can tour, why can't we? If bands can sell merch, then we should too. If recording artists can form boutique labels, then why can't film distributors? Like, for example, Oscilloscope, the film label of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. At Flavorwire, Judy Berman takes this assumption to task in a piece called "Why is Indie Film Dying While Indie Music Thrives?" [continue]

PAOLA MENDOZA ON BIG ART, LITTLE DEBT

Scott Macaulay
In the new issue of Filmmaker, Esther Robinson penned "The Big Art/Little Debt Plan," which discusses the relation of filmmakers to risk, their films, and their money. She reached out to several filmmakers by email, and their responses helped shape her article. We are running several of the responses Esther received here on the blog. Below is the one from Paola Mendoza, director of Entre Nos. [continue]

MASSIVE ATTACK COLLABORATES WITH GEORGINA SPELVIN, HOPE SANDOVAL

Scott Macaulay
As Scott posted earlier today, 3-D is not just on the minds of the majors. And with the news that JP Morgan has raised millions to finance the digital conversion of around 12,000 screens, it's a first step for one day indie filmmakers to share their own 3-D projects with studio fare in theaters. According to the Los Angeles Times piece, the investment bank raised close to $700 million. The [continue]


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SEVERE CLEAR'S KRISTIAN FRAGA AND MIKE SCOTTI
By Alicia Van Couvering

Severe Clear premiered at SXSW this week, five years to the day after the US invasion of Baghdad. Back then, Kristian Fraga was just one of millions, watching events unfold on cable news. First Lieutenant Mike Scotti was crossing the Iraqi border in an artillery tank, and he had a video camera. [continue]

FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES' GERALD PEARY
By Alicia Van Couvering

Gerald Peary is not a cell phone person. He has witnessed a quarter century of films and criticism, from when Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris drew their lines in the critical sand to the currently expanding blogosphere. Gerald Peary is old school. A working film critic for 25 years, his work has [continue]

CREATIVE NONFICTION'S LENA DUNHAM
By Alicia Van Couvering

There is an actual college Creative Nonfiction class in Lena Dunham’s Creative Nonfiction, which premieres in the Emerging Visions section at SXSW this week. There is also the actual Dunham, who plays both Ella, a college student trying to get a grip on an ambiguous non-starter romance, as well [continue]

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE'S DAVID RUSSO
By Alicia Van Couvering

David Russo’s The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is not your average Seattle-based, night-shift janitors eating self-heating cookies as unwitting test subjects male pregnancy special effects-peppered butt fish movie. The film’s official synopsis is: “When Dory’s life seems like [continue]

ST. NICK'S DAVID LOWERY
By Alicia Van Couvering

There is almost no dialogue in the first half of David Lowery’s feature debut, St. Nick. A young boy and a girl enter an abandoned house, clean it up, build a fire, forget to open a window and fill the house with smoke, figure out a chimney and watch the embers turn into flames. They sleep, [continue]

BROCK ENRIGHT'S JODY LEE LIPES
By Alicia Van Couvering

When Jody Lee Lipes set out to follow his friend Brock Enright prepare a solo art show for the prestigious Perry Rubenstein gallery, he knew he wasn’t going to change anyone’s opinion about contemporary art. If you hate the art world, you might still hate it after watching Enright’s [continue]

AMERICAN PRINCE'S TOMMY PALLOTTA
By Scott Macaulay

Even if you consider yourself a literate, well-viewed, cinema completist, you may not remember the name “Steven Prince.” I could jog your memory and tell you that he was influential to the films of Quentin Tarantino, Rick Linklater, and, most directly, Martin Scorsese, and the name still might [continue]

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SXSW HOTEL ROOMS : SARDINES AWARD

The WINNER of the Filmmaker Blog  "Around Austin" ridiculous festival hotel room set-up is:  TEAM EMBASSY SWEETS: Director David Lowery, Director Joe Swanberg, Director Kris Swanberg, Writer Jade Healy, composer Mike Vasitch, Actor Chris Trujillo, and several more who wish not to pay for their [continue]

GOODBYE AUSTIN

Last Day in Austin. Lack of sleep + hangovers + five girls in one room = So it seemed like a good idea to get out of the Alamo (where they serve BEER AND HAMBURGERS to you while you watch movies!) (!!!!!!!!!!!!)  A group trip to Barton Springs was organized. Below, Creative Nonfiction's Lena [continue]

SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT

Arms locked together, smiles frozen in place awaiting the digital flash — we all have these photos on our cameras and phones when we return from a film festival. These moments sure look like happy ones now that a festival premiere has spackled over all the fractures that production wrought. At [continue]

#1 RULE ABOUT TEXAS

Everything is big in Texas. Take for example this giant cabbage, growing freely in a parking lot, in Texas.

WEILER REVEALS HIS SECRET

If you were at SXSW up until yesterday, you may have been accosted in one of several ways by protesters of a group who hated a man named Cain and wanted to "Stop Tarp." They threw a protest in the streets, threw dollar bills around the convention center, caused twitter uproars and otherwise seeped [continue]

SWANBERG... KRIS SWANBERG

Joe Swanberg's Alexander the Last is not the only Swanberg film here at SXSW. His wife Kris's movie, It Was Great, But I Was Ready To Come Home, premieres at the festival too. Pictured above at last night's Florida Fish Fry, from left to right, are Alexander the Last star Amy Seimetz, Swanberg, [continue]

THE DUDE BLASPHEMES

When Jeff "The Dude" Dowd told David Lee Miller that Miller's movie My Suicide was as epic and groundbreaking as 2001: A Space Odyssey,  humble Miller replied that such a statement was blasphemy and insulting to filmmakers everywhere. Still seeking word on whether or not the Dude abides. [continue]

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