The Sundance Film Festival is regarded as one of the most prestigious independent film festivals, where filmmakers have been premiering their movies and documentaries since 1984.
The festival was founded in 1978 by Sterling Van Wagenen, the head of Robert Redford’s company Wildwood, and John Earle of the Utah Film Commission under the name Utah/US Film Festival to attract more filmmakers to Utah.
Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 to foster independence, risk-taking, and new voices in American film. That year, 10 emerging filmmakers were invited to the Sundance Resort in the mountains of Utah, where they worked with leading writers, directors and actors to develop their original independent projects.
By 1984, the festival had established itself and was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival after Redford’s character in his 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That year, the Grand Jury Prize in Dramatics was awarded to Old Enough, an...
The festival was founded in 1978 by Sterling Van Wagenen, the head of Robert Redford’s company Wildwood, and John Earle of the Utah Film Commission under the name Utah/US Film Festival to attract more filmmakers to Utah.
Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1981 to foster independence, risk-taking, and new voices in American film. That year, 10 emerging filmmakers were invited to the Sundance Resort in the mountains of Utah, where they worked with leading writers, directors and actors to develop their original independent projects.
By 1984, the festival had established itself and was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival after Redford’s character in his 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That year, the Grand Jury Prize in Dramatics was awarded to Old Enough, an...
- 1/26/2024
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.
Film Forum
There’s a rare opportunity to see Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 3D this Sunday, while a stacked series of road movies is underway and the miraculously rediscovered and restored Iranian film Chess of the Wind continues.
Museum of the Moving Image
Seasons 8-11 of On Cinema are screening this weekend; On the Waterfront and Little Fugitive play for “Made in New York“; “See It Big: Extravaganzas!” offers films by von Sternberg, Fellini, and Wes Anderson.
Roxy Cinema
Fox and His Friends and The Last Detail have 35mm showings.
Metrograph
A series on punk cinema is underway,...
Film Forum
There’s a rare opportunity to see Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 3D this Sunday, while a stacked series of road movies is underway and the miraculously rediscovered and restored Iranian film Chess of the Wind continues.
Museum of the Moving Image
Seasons 8-11 of On Cinema are screening this weekend; On the Waterfront and Little Fugitive play for “Made in New York“; “See It Big: Extravaganzas!” offers films by von Sternberg, Fellini, and Wes Anderson.
Roxy Cinema
Fox and His Friends and The Last Detail have 35mm showings.
Metrograph
A series on punk cinema is underway,...
- 11/18/2021
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The Very Eye of Night is a series of columns on non-binary and female avant-garde film and video artists. The title refers to Maya Deren’s last completed film. Anthology Film Archives in New York presents a five-program retrospective of Carole Roussopoulos’s videos from November 7–9, 2017. The screenings will be introduced by Nicole Fernández Ferrer, director of the Simone de Beauvoir Audiovisual Center.Carole Roussopoulos, 1970. Photo by Guy Le Querrec.Jean-Luc Godard wrote a letter to Carole Roussopoulos in 1979 for Cahiers du cinéma in which he reflected on the motivations behind making films, and inquired: “Sometimes I wonder what has happened to all you have filmed in the four corners of France and the world… And I wonder why people in cinema want to film others with so much frenzy.” As Nicole Brenez recalls, the Swiss filmmaker responded to him: “to privilege the approach of those without a voice.” Carole Roussopoulos...
- 11/7/2017
- MUBI
The Royal RoadAttending the Ann Arbor Film Festival is a bit like stepping into a parallel universe. Here, dialogue and narrative lie on the margins, while abstract animation and ethnographic documentary take center stage. Absent are movie stars, paparazzi, and bidding wars; here, a “big name” is someone like Peggy Ahwesh or Lewis Klahr. It’s as if this one week in March at the historic Michigan Theater, just a couple blocks away from the University of Michigan campus, had been carved out of normal space-time and given over to the love of film as an art.At the Aaff, assumptions about 21st century moviegoing don’t necessarily hold water. Slates of short films dominate the festival’s schedule, and even the occasional feature tends to be paired with a short or two. Digital projection is hardly the default, and the sheer diversity of formats makes each program an object...
- 4/17/2015
- by Andreas Stoehr
- MUBI
“Because so many images already exist, I am discouraged to make new ones; I prefer to make a different use of pre-existing images. But not every image can be recycled; a hidden value must pre-exist.” (Harun Farocki, 2008 interview with the South China Morning Post)
As part of the Repeat as Necessary: The Art of Real at the Film Society Lincoln Center program, German director Harun Farocki’s anti-war film "Inextinguishable Fire" (1969, black and white, 29 minutes) screened first followed by Jill Godmilow’s "What Farocki Taught" (1998, 16 mm 30 minutes) a shot-for-shot remake of "Inextinguishable Fire." Translated from German into English and filmed on color Kodachrome, the backdrops, props, script, costumes and shots are all copies of the original. Every shot is reproduced -- with an occasional superimposition of Farocki’s on set about her project: “We don’t have a name for this type of film… it replaces the documentary’s pornography of the real.”
Filmmaker and video artist Faroki (1944-2014) made over 100 films, many of which were experimental documentaries, often addressing the use of images to instruct and propagandize.
Director Jill Godmilow’s films include the 1974 Academy Award-nominated "Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman" co-directed with Judy Collins, "Far From Poland" (1984), about the Polish Solidarity movement known for its ground-breaking deconstructive approach to the juxtaposition of fact and fiction in documentary, and the Sundance fiction winner "Waiting for the Moon" (1987) about Gertrude Stein.
"Inextinguishable Fire" explores the manufacturing and use of napalm by dramatizing the inner workings of Dow Chemical Company’s Michigan headquarters during the Vietnam War, incorporating only a small amount of actual combat footage. At the beginning of this Brechtian anti-war film we hear the words: "When we show you pictures of napalm victims, you'll shut your eyes. You'll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you'll close them to the memory. And then you'll close your eyes to the facts."
In the Q & A after the screening of the two films Godmilow talked about her decision to remake "Inextinguishable Fire:" “I was moved by Farocki. The Vietnam War wasn’t his war. He was German.” Godmilow went on to talk about “agitprop,” a term often used to describe Farocki’s film. “It is agitprop. Agitate and propagate. That’s what this film does. It agitates. It propagates. There is an essential contract between the audience and filmmaker. The audience watching a documentary is thinking, ‘Thank God that’s not me.’ You sit in horror but continue to watch the film.”
When asked about authenticity in documentary films, Godmilow smiled, responding: “For me? I’m a thief. I steal everything. It’s all up for grabs.”
Repeat as Necessary: The Art of the Real continues through April 26 at the Film Society Lincoln Center in New York. http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/art-of-the-real
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...
As part of the Repeat as Necessary: The Art of Real at the Film Society Lincoln Center program, German director Harun Farocki’s anti-war film "Inextinguishable Fire" (1969, black and white, 29 minutes) screened first followed by Jill Godmilow’s "What Farocki Taught" (1998, 16 mm 30 minutes) a shot-for-shot remake of "Inextinguishable Fire." Translated from German into English and filmed on color Kodachrome, the backdrops, props, script, costumes and shots are all copies of the original. Every shot is reproduced -- with an occasional superimposition of Farocki’s on set about her project: “We don’t have a name for this type of film… it replaces the documentary’s pornography of the real.”
Filmmaker and video artist Faroki (1944-2014) made over 100 films, many of which were experimental documentaries, often addressing the use of images to instruct and propagandize.
Director Jill Godmilow’s films include the 1974 Academy Award-nominated "Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman" co-directed with Judy Collins, "Far From Poland" (1984), about the Polish Solidarity movement known for its ground-breaking deconstructive approach to the juxtaposition of fact and fiction in documentary, and the Sundance fiction winner "Waiting for the Moon" (1987) about Gertrude Stein.
"Inextinguishable Fire" explores the manufacturing and use of napalm by dramatizing the inner workings of Dow Chemical Company’s Michigan headquarters during the Vietnam War, incorporating only a small amount of actual combat footage. At the beginning of this Brechtian anti-war film we hear the words: "When we show you pictures of napalm victims, you'll shut your eyes. You'll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you'll close them to the memory. And then you'll close your eyes to the facts."
In the Q & A after the screening of the two films Godmilow talked about her decision to remake "Inextinguishable Fire:" “I was moved by Farocki. The Vietnam War wasn’t his war. He was German.” Godmilow went on to talk about “agitprop,” a term often used to describe Farocki’s film. “It is agitprop. Agitate and propagate. That’s what this film does. It agitates. It propagates. There is an essential contract between the audience and filmmaker. The audience watching a documentary is thinking, ‘Thank God that’s not me.’ You sit in horror but continue to watch the film.”
When asked about authenticity in documentary films, Godmilow smiled, responding: “For me? I’m a thief. I steal everything. It’s all up for grabs.”
Repeat as Necessary: The Art of the Real continues through April 26 at the Film Society Lincoln Center in New York. http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/art-of-the-real
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...
- 4/16/2015
- by Susan Kouguell
- Sydney's Buzz
The second edition of Art of the Real opens tomorrow at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center with the premieres of new short films by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, Eduardo Williams and Matt Porterfield, all of whom will be present for a Q&A. Closing on April 26 with Jenni Olson's The Royal Road, the series features a tribute to Agnès Varda and a spotlight on reenactments. Other highlights include films by Peter Watkins, James Benning, Harun Farocki, Jill Godmilow, Derek Jarman and more. » - David Hudson...
- 4/9/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The second edition of Art of the Real opens tomorrow at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center with the premieres of new short films by João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, Eduardo Williams and Matt Porterfield, all of whom will be present for a Q&A. Closing on April 26 with Jenni Olson's The Royal Road, the series features a tribute to Agnès Varda and a spotlight on reenactments. Other highlights include films by Peter Watkins, James Benning, Harun Farocki, Jill Godmilow, Derek Jarman and more. » - David Hudson...
- 4/9/2015
- Keyframe
The first peer-reviewed issue of [in]Transition features the likes of Adrian Martin and Kevin B. Lee on a total of four outstanding audiovisual essays on cinema. Also in today’s roundup of news and views: a guide to Stanley Kubrick’s lenses, a forthcoming book on The Shining, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Fritz Lang’s Spies, Colin Beckett’s critique of the work of Joshua Oppenheimer, Errol Morris and Jill Godmilow; interviews with Alex Gibney and Charles Grodin; and remembering Gene Saks, cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek and Italian actor Rik Battaglia. » - David Hudson...
- 3/30/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The first peer-reviewed issue of [in]Transition features the likes of Adrian Martin and Kevin B. Lee on a total of four outstanding audiovisual essays on cinema. Also in today’s roundup of news and views: a guide to Stanley Kubrick’s lenses, a forthcoming book on The Shining, Jonathan Rosenbaum on Fritz Lang’s Spies, Colin Beckett’s critique of the work of Joshua Oppenheimer, Errol Morris and Jill Godmilow; interviews with Alex Gibney and Charles Grodin; and remembering Gene Saks, cinematographer Miroslav Ondrícek and Italian actor Rik Battaglia. » - David Hudson...
- 3/30/2015
- Keyframe
The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrates its epic 53rd annual edition on March 24-29 with a colossal selection of experimental short films and features.
Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.
Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.
Special...
Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.
Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.
Special...
- 3/24/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
When Jill Godmilow’s documentary Roy Cohn/Jack Smith premiered at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival, the number of AIDS-related deaths was reaching an all-time high in the United States (over 270,000). In New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, many artists and filmmakers were grappling with the disease. While Broadway was hosting the second part of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America, downtown New Yorkers were fondly recalling another recent production, Ron Vawter’s one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which the actor, who died of AIDS in April 1994, performed two monologues, first as Cohn, the conservative lawyer, and secondly, as Smith, the flamboyant experimental filmmaker—both of whom died of AIDS-related causes in the late 1980s. Twenty-years later, Godmilow’s movie version of Roy Cohn/Jack Smith provides a vivid time capsule of the era and an uncanny resurrection of all three men’s personas: Vawter,...
- 6/20/2014
- Keyframe
When Jill Godmilow’s documentary Roy Cohn/Jack Smith premiered at the 1994 Toronto International Film Festival, the number of AIDS-related deaths was reaching an all-time high in the United States (over 270,000). In New York City, the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, many artists and filmmakers were grappling with the disease. While Broadway was hosting the second part of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play Angels in America, downtown New Yorkers were fondly recalling another recent production, Ron Vawter’s one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which the actor, who died of AIDS in April 1994, performed two monologues, first as Cohn, the conservative lawyer, and secondly, as Smith, the flamboyant experimental filmmaker—both of whom died of AIDS-related causes in the late 1980s. Twenty-years later, Godmilow’s movie version of Roy Cohn/Jack Smith provides a vivid time capsule of the era and an uncanny resurrection of all three men’s personas: Vawter,...
- 6/20/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Back to New York, post New Years. The Rabbi at the closing of the New Year said we still have until the next holiday (Sukkot) to ask forgiveness and to be written up in the Book of Life, and so I continue the blog I was writing regarding not only our recent New York trip but the unfinished topics that I did not get to complete in the past year, mostly about Cannes. As in Part I, this is a rambling account, so get ready for a long read.
We went to NYC after Tiff 12. Being at Ifp Filmweek in NYC where my partner Peter Belsito was on a speed dating table, we appreciated its new venue at Lincoln Center. At the same time as our event, Nyff was having its press screenings. Our own L.A. Times gave its Los Angeles stars some ink today. We hugged Rose Kuo, chatted with Eugene Hernandez, Eric Kohn and Peter Kneght, all hanging around together just like in the old Indiewire days. The layout of Ifp and Nyff at the newly designed Lincoln Center and the convergence between the two events is a great development. Joana Vicente has infused Ifp with new energy.
Rose (Kuo) is also so smart! I had wanted to discuss her unique views on distribution, festivals and exhibition in a blog. We talked about it at length during our 2 hour drive home from Monte Carlo during Cannes. Another conversation I had wanted to blog about was one held over lunch at the Plage des Palmes in Cannes with French producer, Sylvain Burnsztejn and John Kochman of Unifrance about the futility of factoring in U.S. revenues when writing up budgets and projections for French films. U.S. has to be ignored as a market because the chances of foreign language films making any money are so negligible, even when they are French which have proven to be the most popular of all foreign language films in the U.S. U.S. box office and video numbers are so small that the U.S. is excluded from important participation in the film activities among European countries unless, like the French, they offer incentives even for English language films. This is something new which is proving lucrative for mid-range U.S. productions. I spoke more about it over dinner at Antonia Dauphin and Peter Newman's 5th Avenue apartment. (Another New York great spots!)
Antonia has been casting American name actors in European funded films with great success. I told her I wanted to introduce her to my friend in Berlin, Geno Lechner of Volume57, a unique collective of international performers - actors, dancers, musicians and vagabonds - dedicated to the promotion of outstanding, independent performing artists. Geno, an actress in European art films is also the owner of an extraordinary house in Berlin which she is considering using for artist retreats. If you are lucky you could rent a unit that was recently rented by one of my favorite actresses, Tilda Swinton. You can read more about Antonia and casting in Backstage.
As Antonia and I talked, I told her about Tiff 12's Casting By, a new documentary paying tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty. It shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking. Packed with interviews with a "who's who" of top stars and filmmakers (she discovered James Dean and told Warren Beatty to lose his Brando accent), this world premiere screening was followed by a live, onstage discussion with people who were deeply affected by Dougherty, including some of the participants in the film. Dougherty surely would have won an Academy Award for Casting had there been any. I had never thought about this before, but the film seemed like a call to action about this issue. I am for adding an Oscar for Best Casting. The craft of casting seems like a predominately female craft. It also reminded me that I had wanted to write a blog about casting and my friend Ronnie Yeskel and her new British casting director partner. Another issue casting directors face every day is that when they submit a script to a talent agent for a client, by law the agent is supposed to send the script to the client. However, this often does not happen. This was not brought up in the film because Marion, her director clients and the actors she chose to push (Richard Dreyfus for The Graduate, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, etc.) did not work that way. She brought new Broadway and off-Broadway talent to the directors. Anyway see the movie; it’s a great piece of New York and Hollywood history. HBO picked up No. American rights, but Submarine is still repping the film for the world.
That was quite a day; earlier the same day, my Peter (Belsito) and I had presented our ideas on the world market at Peter Newman’s 3rd year graduate class at Nyu’s Tisch School of Film. At our dinner with Peter and Antonia, we also talked with their 14 year old daughter recently returned from a year in Paris with her mother where Brodlie had studied at Gordon Bleu. She is already an accomplished food writer, and is being presented to the King and Queen of Sweden for her talent.
Another great dinner with a couple of friends, Richard Lorber, his wife Dovie Wingarsd, was at Back 40 West at Prince and Crosby in SoHo, formerly Savoy, a restaurant our friend Larry Bognanow designed and had taken us to before. We ate and rushed to the screening of his film Radio Unnamable. Speak of being So New York. This film got great coverage that very day in the N.Y. Times, not only with A.O. Scott’s review but with a separate article about “The Cuban Boys”. It was held at Karen Cooper’s Film Forum. The audience had film people in it I had not seen since my heady New York days in the early 80s like Jill Godmilow. I knew the audience was made of other New York intelligentsia though I did not know them, and consequently I did not go to the after party, a mistake I frequently make due to my innate shyness. Oh well, try as I might, I cannot entirely rid myself of this...Maybe during the New Year I'll be better.
The story of Wbai’s Bob Fass, an icon of free speech radio, his legacy and his archives, are, to quote Variety, “as epic as the medium gets”. Indiewire itself says that it “superbly recreates a time when radio mattered”. I loved this doc about the people who never sleep in the city that never sleeps. I knew Wbai’s call letters but did not know Bob Fass. He evokes a NYC that equals that New York of Weegee. The warm testimonies and radio appearances by such friends of his such as Larry Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Kinky Freidman, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joni Collins, Carly Simon evoke an entire era. He created the community network in the days of be-ins and fly-ins, flash mobs via radio. I loved this movie, the venue, the audience. A totally New York experience. Thank you Richard and Dovie! See the film’s website www.radiounnameablemovie.com or on Facebook or via www.kinolorber.com.
We called on Susan Krim, Donald’s recent widow but didn’t connect. She welcomed in the New Year with her two children in a country house she and Don had bought not so long ago.
We went to Rosh Hashanah at B’nai Jeshurin, the Upper Westside Reconstructionist Synagogue whose music Shlomo Carlbach created and which is now under the leadership of Argentinean clergy and cantor. The next day, we were invited by an old friend from Peter’s childhood in Bayside, Queens to Temple Emanu-el, the High Reform Synagogue of the Upper Eastside. Their rabbi retires next year and this year’s sermon was by the woman rabbi there. This brave woman spoke of church and state, faith-based politics, the kashruth of what makes a fetus a human with a soul and what control a woman has over her own body, and when must we speak out for what we believe to be true. (And if now now, when?)
A press screening of Bianconieves (Isa: 6 Sales) which some after-tiff buzz was held in N.Y.and L.A. but I missed it! Pity! I do hope I will see it soon as Snow White ranks with my favorite Sleeping Beauty among childhood fairy tales I loved.
Hilary Davis of Bankside, here for Ifp No Borders, her husband, Peter and I had an outstanding dinner at Robert with a view from the 9th floor of 2 Columbus Circle at the Museum of Arts and Design. So New York! I later returned for lunch with my cousin and afterward visited the Museum whose elevator dropped me on the 3rd floor where there was a native arts’ exhibiton for modern and traditional art from the Americas.
Trisha Robinson who was in acquisitions with me at Lorimar in the late 80s and went on to head Academy Home Video when video was going through its changes, has moved to New York’s Upper East Side for the next year or two. Our dinner at Table d’hote, a small intimate and quiet restaurant with 6 tables on East 92ndStreet at Madison had wonderful waiters and great Italian food. The next day Trisha and I had lunch at the Vienneses café in Neue Galerie and then went to the Guggenheim to see the photograpy retrospective of contemporary Dutch woman, Rineke Dijkstra.
Dinner with Ben Barenholz at an old favorite of his in Chelsea from before he had moved to the Eastside brought up film history in yet another New York light. His first midnight screening (El Topo), his box office all time winner Cousin, Cousine and his experiment with dubbing, his opinions of film today, of the people we know, his remembering having hired John Tilley as soon as he graduated college in North Carolina, and of hiring Eamonn Bowles for his first job outside of college again made me want to write a book! I plan to look up his history on the internet in the coming year. Ben had wanted to go to Gotham Pizza which has the best pizza in N.Y., but it was too crowded, so we went down 9th St. to another old, small and intimate Italian restaurant.
Some of my readers might remember Joy Pereths. She was the first U.S. rep for U.K.’s Channel Four / Film Four and licensed My Beautiful Laundrette to me when I was buying for Lorimar and Orion Classics, in the days when it was run by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Donna Giogliotti. Lorimar paid $75,000 for U.S. rights. That went toward P&A as it opened in N.Y. and L.A. and from there the film went on to make an astonishing $7 million at the box office and sold 75,000 video cassettes at wholesale, $59.95 a unit. The first film I acquired on my return to L.A. for Lorimar (and their first acquisition as well), the first film produced by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radcliffe, the first produced film written by Hanif Kureishi, starring Daniel Day Lewis, sold to U.S. by a British company, gay and with a Pakistani protagonist – what a record of firsts! I recall that when I made the deal, N.Y. was in hurricane-warning mode and Joy and I had to hold on to each other as we crossed the street from Lincoln Center. She is now raising money for marketing a documentary film.
Finally, my friend who dates back to before those Lorimar days, to the days she worked for Fox-Lorber and I was looking for my next job in New York after heading a special social issue documentyr branch of Films Inc, started by Charles’ wife Marge Benton. Susan Margolin of New Video had lots of news and ideas to share now that the company has been acquired by Cinedigm. She’s bringing together a new staff. Jeff Reichert from Magnolia heads theatrical marketing and former New Video executive Stephanie Bruder is VP of marketing; Vincent (Vinni) Scordino – who started with Sara Rose at Picurehouse -- is VP of acquisitions, and Bob Fiorella is Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer of Entertainment. Also, Ellen Trost is their Business Affairs Manager is a great asset. We knew each other when she was in London working for a blue chip company, BFI if I remember correctly. I bumped into her on the streets in New York quite by accident.
Finally, we had lunch with Juan Caceras and Vanessa Erazo of the New York Latino Film Festival at Spice, a Thai restaurant on 9th Avenue in Chelsea. My readers know them as the originators ad writers of Latino Buzz which appears on SydneysBuzz every Wednesday (except today!). It was the first time we met face to faces. We discussed their wish to bring light to the Latino filmmakers in the U.S. in their blog and how pleased they are to be receiving news for others requesting blog space. I love having them use SydneysBuzz as their platform. Juan’s film was picked up for North American distribution by Tla and is winding down its festival run of about 20 film festivals. We discussed the Latin Film Festivals in the U.S. Vanessa’s ideas about the feasibility of a sort of Latino Film Festival co-ordinating umbrella and our discussion of the upcoming Film Festival Academy (Ffa) which will hold its first edition with the New York Film Festival this year spurred us on to creating a workable plan.
As I write this the High Holidays have come to a close. Completed are the processes of Atonement, Reconciliation and a Turning Back to what is important with my fellow humankind. Thursday I will take off on my next trip, this time a four- day trip to trinidad + tobago film festival. You’ll hear more from me then.
Until then, Le Shana Tova! A Sweet New Year! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life. Forgive me if my rambling has bored you, though if you got this far, it is a compliment for which I thank you!
We went to NYC after Tiff 12. Being at Ifp Filmweek in NYC where my partner Peter Belsito was on a speed dating table, we appreciated its new venue at Lincoln Center. At the same time as our event, Nyff was having its press screenings. Our own L.A. Times gave its Los Angeles stars some ink today. We hugged Rose Kuo, chatted with Eugene Hernandez, Eric Kohn and Peter Kneght, all hanging around together just like in the old Indiewire days. The layout of Ifp and Nyff at the newly designed Lincoln Center and the convergence between the two events is a great development. Joana Vicente has infused Ifp with new energy.
Rose (Kuo) is also so smart! I had wanted to discuss her unique views on distribution, festivals and exhibition in a blog. We talked about it at length during our 2 hour drive home from Monte Carlo during Cannes. Another conversation I had wanted to blog about was one held over lunch at the Plage des Palmes in Cannes with French producer, Sylvain Burnsztejn and John Kochman of Unifrance about the futility of factoring in U.S. revenues when writing up budgets and projections for French films. U.S. has to be ignored as a market because the chances of foreign language films making any money are so negligible, even when they are French which have proven to be the most popular of all foreign language films in the U.S. U.S. box office and video numbers are so small that the U.S. is excluded from important participation in the film activities among European countries unless, like the French, they offer incentives even for English language films. This is something new which is proving lucrative for mid-range U.S. productions. I spoke more about it over dinner at Antonia Dauphin and Peter Newman's 5th Avenue apartment. (Another New York great spots!)
Antonia has been casting American name actors in European funded films with great success. I told her I wanted to introduce her to my friend in Berlin, Geno Lechner of Volume57, a unique collective of international performers - actors, dancers, musicians and vagabonds - dedicated to the promotion of outstanding, independent performing artists. Geno, an actress in European art films is also the owner of an extraordinary house in Berlin which she is considering using for artist retreats. If you are lucky you could rent a unit that was recently rented by one of my favorite actresses, Tilda Swinton. You can read more about Antonia and casting in Backstage.
As Antonia and I talked, I told her about Tiff 12's Casting By, a new documentary paying tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty. It shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking. Packed with interviews with a "who's who" of top stars and filmmakers (she discovered James Dean and told Warren Beatty to lose his Brando accent), this world premiere screening was followed by a live, onstage discussion with people who were deeply affected by Dougherty, including some of the participants in the film. Dougherty surely would have won an Academy Award for Casting had there been any. I had never thought about this before, but the film seemed like a call to action about this issue. I am for adding an Oscar for Best Casting. The craft of casting seems like a predominately female craft. It also reminded me that I had wanted to write a blog about casting and my friend Ronnie Yeskel and her new British casting director partner. Another issue casting directors face every day is that when they submit a script to a talent agent for a client, by law the agent is supposed to send the script to the client. However, this often does not happen. This was not brought up in the film because Marion, her director clients and the actors she chose to push (Richard Dreyfus for The Graduate, Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, etc.) did not work that way. She brought new Broadway and off-Broadway talent to the directors. Anyway see the movie; it’s a great piece of New York and Hollywood history. HBO picked up No. American rights, but Submarine is still repping the film for the world.
That was quite a day; earlier the same day, my Peter (Belsito) and I had presented our ideas on the world market at Peter Newman’s 3rd year graduate class at Nyu’s Tisch School of Film. At our dinner with Peter and Antonia, we also talked with their 14 year old daughter recently returned from a year in Paris with her mother where Brodlie had studied at Gordon Bleu. She is already an accomplished food writer, and is being presented to the King and Queen of Sweden for her talent.
Another great dinner with a couple of friends, Richard Lorber, his wife Dovie Wingarsd, was at Back 40 West at Prince and Crosby in SoHo, formerly Savoy, a restaurant our friend Larry Bognanow designed and had taken us to before. We ate and rushed to the screening of his film Radio Unnamable. Speak of being So New York. This film got great coverage that very day in the N.Y. Times, not only with A.O. Scott’s review but with a separate article about “The Cuban Boys”. It was held at Karen Cooper’s Film Forum. The audience had film people in it I had not seen since my heady New York days in the early 80s like Jill Godmilow. I knew the audience was made of other New York intelligentsia though I did not know them, and consequently I did not go to the after party, a mistake I frequently make due to my innate shyness. Oh well, try as I might, I cannot entirely rid myself of this...Maybe during the New Year I'll be better.
The story of Wbai’s Bob Fass, an icon of free speech radio, his legacy and his archives, are, to quote Variety, “as epic as the medium gets”. Indiewire itself says that it “superbly recreates a time when radio mattered”. I loved this doc about the people who never sleep in the city that never sleeps. I knew Wbai’s call letters but did not know Bob Fass. He evokes a NYC that equals that New York of Weegee. The warm testimonies and radio appearances by such friends of his such as Larry Krassner, Arlo Guthrie, Kinky Freidman, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joni Collins, Carly Simon evoke an entire era. He created the community network in the days of be-ins and fly-ins, flash mobs via radio. I loved this movie, the venue, the audience. A totally New York experience. Thank you Richard and Dovie! See the film’s website www.radiounnameablemovie.com or on Facebook or via www.kinolorber.com.
We called on Susan Krim, Donald’s recent widow but didn’t connect. She welcomed in the New Year with her two children in a country house she and Don had bought not so long ago.
We went to Rosh Hashanah at B’nai Jeshurin, the Upper Westside Reconstructionist Synagogue whose music Shlomo Carlbach created and which is now under the leadership of Argentinean clergy and cantor. The next day, we were invited by an old friend from Peter’s childhood in Bayside, Queens to Temple Emanu-el, the High Reform Synagogue of the Upper Eastside. Their rabbi retires next year and this year’s sermon was by the woman rabbi there. This brave woman spoke of church and state, faith-based politics, the kashruth of what makes a fetus a human with a soul and what control a woman has over her own body, and when must we speak out for what we believe to be true. (And if now now, when?)
A press screening of Bianconieves (Isa: 6 Sales) which some after-tiff buzz was held in N.Y.and L.A. but I missed it! Pity! I do hope I will see it soon as Snow White ranks with my favorite Sleeping Beauty among childhood fairy tales I loved.
Hilary Davis of Bankside, here for Ifp No Borders, her husband, Peter and I had an outstanding dinner at Robert with a view from the 9th floor of 2 Columbus Circle at the Museum of Arts and Design. So New York! I later returned for lunch with my cousin and afterward visited the Museum whose elevator dropped me on the 3rd floor where there was a native arts’ exhibiton for modern and traditional art from the Americas.
Trisha Robinson who was in acquisitions with me at Lorimar in the late 80s and went on to head Academy Home Video when video was going through its changes, has moved to New York’s Upper East Side for the next year or two. Our dinner at Table d’hote, a small intimate and quiet restaurant with 6 tables on East 92ndStreet at Madison had wonderful waiters and great Italian food. The next day Trisha and I had lunch at the Vienneses café in Neue Galerie and then went to the Guggenheim to see the photograpy retrospective of contemporary Dutch woman, Rineke Dijkstra.
Dinner with Ben Barenholz at an old favorite of his in Chelsea from before he had moved to the Eastside brought up film history in yet another New York light. His first midnight screening (El Topo), his box office all time winner Cousin, Cousine and his experiment with dubbing, his opinions of film today, of the people we know, his remembering having hired John Tilley as soon as he graduated college in North Carolina, and of hiring Eamonn Bowles for his first job outside of college again made me want to write a book! I plan to look up his history on the internet in the coming year. Ben had wanted to go to Gotham Pizza which has the best pizza in N.Y., but it was too crowded, so we went down 9th St. to another old, small and intimate Italian restaurant.
Some of my readers might remember Joy Pereths. She was the first U.S. rep for U.K.’s Channel Four / Film Four and licensed My Beautiful Laundrette to me when I was buying for Lorimar and Orion Classics, in the days when it was run by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Donna Giogliotti. Lorimar paid $75,000 for U.S. rights. That went toward P&A as it opened in N.Y. and L.A. and from there the film went on to make an astonishing $7 million at the box office and sold 75,000 video cassettes at wholesale, $59.95 a unit. The first film I acquired on my return to L.A. for Lorimar (and their first acquisition as well), the first film produced by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radcliffe, the first produced film written by Hanif Kureishi, starring Daniel Day Lewis, sold to U.S. by a British company, gay and with a Pakistani protagonist – what a record of firsts! I recall that when I made the deal, N.Y. was in hurricane-warning mode and Joy and I had to hold on to each other as we crossed the street from Lincoln Center. She is now raising money for marketing a documentary film.
Finally, my friend who dates back to before those Lorimar days, to the days she worked for Fox-Lorber and I was looking for my next job in New York after heading a special social issue documentyr branch of Films Inc, started by Charles’ wife Marge Benton. Susan Margolin of New Video had lots of news and ideas to share now that the company has been acquired by Cinedigm. She’s bringing together a new staff. Jeff Reichert from Magnolia heads theatrical marketing and former New Video executive Stephanie Bruder is VP of marketing; Vincent (Vinni) Scordino – who started with Sara Rose at Picurehouse -- is VP of acquisitions, and Bob Fiorella is Executive VP and Chief Strategy Officer of Entertainment. Also, Ellen Trost is their Business Affairs Manager is a great asset. We knew each other when she was in London working for a blue chip company, BFI if I remember correctly. I bumped into her on the streets in New York quite by accident.
Finally, we had lunch with Juan Caceras and Vanessa Erazo of the New York Latino Film Festival at Spice, a Thai restaurant on 9th Avenue in Chelsea. My readers know them as the originators ad writers of Latino Buzz which appears on SydneysBuzz every Wednesday (except today!). It was the first time we met face to faces. We discussed their wish to bring light to the Latino filmmakers in the U.S. in their blog and how pleased they are to be receiving news for others requesting blog space. I love having them use SydneysBuzz as their platform. Juan’s film was picked up for North American distribution by Tla and is winding down its festival run of about 20 film festivals. We discussed the Latin Film Festivals in the U.S. Vanessa’s ideas about the feasibility of a sort of Latino Film Festival co-ordinating umbrella and our discussion of the upcoming Film Festival Academy (Ffa) which will hold its first edition with the New York Film Festival this year spurred us on to creating a workable plan.
As I write this the High Holidays have come to a close. Completed are the processes of Atonement, Reconciliation and a Turning Back to what is important with my fellow humankind. Thursday I will take off on my next trip, this time a four- day trip to trinidad + tobago film festival. You’ll hear more from me then.
Until then, Le Shana Tova! A Sweet New Year! May you be inscribed in the Book of Life. Forgive me if my rambling has bored you, though if you got this far, it is a compliment for which I thank you!
- 9/27/2012
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
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