Category: Independent Film

Columbia Producers Are Coming to Cannes

For the second time, the entire second-year Creative Producing class from Columbia University will be coming to the Cannes Film Festival. The purpose of the trip is to have them witness first hand how the business operates, and to demystify the world’s most prestigious film event. Below is a photo of most of them in Sandra Schulberg’s Feature Film Financing class, the day that Ted Hope (the guy in the middle)was the guest speaker. Memorize those faces and say hi to them on the Croisette.

photo by Sandra Schulberg

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It’s All About Collaboration

One of the many unique attributes of the Columbia University Graduate Film Program is our emphasis on collaboration. So I found it particularly gratifying to see how many of the films that will be showing at this year’s film festival are collaborations between student directors and student producers. Here are a few interviews with the producer/director teams:

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Anyone speak Danish?

De små films store festival

Sidsel Nyholm | 15. januar 2011

Film om eksistensen En lille mormonsk skilandsby er hvert år vært for USA?s vigtigste filmfestival. Robert Redfords Sundance, der går løs i næste uge, har sat uafhængige amerikanske film på verdenskortet

Det meste af året er der stille i Park City, en konservativ mormonsk skilandsby i et lille hjørne af den vestlige amerikanske delstat Utah.

Men stilheden forvandles til et leben i 10 dage hver januar måned, når horder af filmbranchens lykkejægere vælter ind i de tilisede gader for at stå på ski, netværke, feste og – ikke mindst – se og vise film. Continue reading “Anyone speak Danish?”

How do you define good acting?

In a post earlier today,
Reid Rosefelt asked a good question about the nature of acting and the varied definitions that that different parties use to size up performances for awards purposes. Coincidentally this past weekend, after having watched two movies over successive days, “Love and Other Drugs” and “Tiny Furniture,” I ended up having an argument on the same subject.

A few of the people who watched “Tiny Furniture” with me were put off by the performances, and I found myself getting angry. I thought the characters were incredibly believable and naturalistic. In spite of the fact that I knew in advance that Lena Dunham had written and directed the movie in addition to starring in it, and that two members of her family basically play themselves in the film, I found myself forgetting those facts as I watched the film.

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Opera and Indie Film: More Alike Than We Think.

In the parlance of academia, my area of research is film–specifically independent film. I’ve devoted my entire working life to trying to make and distribute films for which there was no place within the major studio system. So it is as surprising to me as it is to all of you that I’ve become somewhat of an opera impresario by virtue of distributing live and recorded broadcasts of opera into movie theaters.

Opera has never been a part of my life. My exposure to it was mainly limited to the soundtracks of movies. The films of Scorsese and Coppola teem with the sounds of opera. The Marx Brothers film “A Night at the Opera” is one of my all-time favorites, and I still smile whenever I hear an aria that I first heard while Marxian mayhem was being performed on screen. In 1981, I distributed the movie “Diva,” and experienced real opera for the first time through a friendship with Wilhelmenia Fernandez, who invited me to see her perform at the New York City Opera. Continue reading “Opera and Indie Film: More Alike Than We Think.”

Podcast: My interview at the IFFS

Just got back from Vegas, one of my least favorite places in the world, where I was on a panel at the International Film Festival Summit. It’s a great event, where the folks who manage and program film festivals all over the world get together to compare notes and learn best practices.

While there, I was interviewed by Patty Fantasia for her blog, “The Filmmakers Notebook.”  Here is the podcast for your listening enjoyment. You should also check out Patty’s other podcasts from the IFFS at www.filmmakersnotebook.com.

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Movie Tweeviews makes its Debut

During Oscar season last year, as I was catching up on the films I had missed, I started tweeting my reactions to each of the films the moment they were over. It was fun trying to fit something meaningful into 140 characters, and with each tweet, I kept trying to top myself in terms of being clever.  Then I got hooked. I started tweeting reviews from festivals… Sundance, then Cannes, then Toronto. Finding just the right combination of words to capture my thoughts was becoming a game. It was like writing a haiku.

About a month ago, I was sitting on an airplane, when suddenly a name popped into my head. Tweeviews. How cute. No wifi was available on this particular flight, so I had to wait until I landed before I could check out whether tweeviews.com was available. Nope, gone. How about movietweeviews.com? Got it. Continue reading “Movie Tweeviews makes its Debut”

It’s Tiempo

As many of you know, I’ve travelled to many places in Latin America over the last few years, mainly talking to Latin filmmakers about both the business and the craft of moviemaking. The most common question that comes up is why, given the size of the Latin population in the U.S., is there not a larger market for their films in our country? The answer is actually quite simple. Just as films from Colombia don’t typically travel to Mexico, and Mexican films don’t necessarily work in Argentina, we don’t have a single Latin culture in the U.S. It is a fragmented market with large, but distinct cultures. There is an available audience, but it’s not the reliable mass audience that people think it ought to be.

Not that I’m truly an expert on the subject, but last week, I was asked to be on Joe Torres’s show “Tiempo” on local WABC-TV to speak on the subject.

Updated 10/8/10: The folks at WABC, in their infinite wisdom, have removed all the streaming videos from their site prior to September. Oh, well. Their loss.

Italian Government Closes National Film School

The following is from one of my students at Columbia. This is an issue that all film lovers should be aware of. Please voice your words of protest as per the instructions below…

Dear Ira,

The Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi decided to close the Italian National Film School (Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia) with the excuse to cut expenses and save the country from a new Greece-like financial collapse.

Even if the general intent can be considered righteous, cutting one of the main institution of the italian cinema and the most important school for the future filmmakers is definitely the wrong place where to look for restoring the budget of a state, especially in a country like Italy where the cost of politics and bureaucracy is one of the highest in the world.

Now, the Italian National Film School students and faculty are protesting against this injustice. Continue reading “Italian Government Closes National Film School”

Columbia Producers on the Croisette

Some of you are already aware that I brought 12 of the Columbia University producing students with me to Cannes this year. My goal was to demystify the event, and to give them a ground level tutorial so that if they end up coming back in any capacity, they could hit the ground running. I asked them to write up some of their experiences at the festival, and I’ll share links when they are posted. In the meantime, here is a great shot of the gang at the IFP party.

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