ARTHOUSE FILM NEWS - Cosmic Disco Detective Rene at Facets, Chicago 11/29/23

Just saw Clerks II . Me & the rest of the audience at the packed theater in Silver Spring, MD (!sharktown! there is a huge shark on top of the Discovery Channel building right now, Shark Week promo) enjoyed the movie a lot. There are 3 kinds of Kevin Smith movies: the comedies, the drama (Chasing Amy), and the one I was not interested in seeing (Jersey Girl). Of the comedies, Clerks II is the best, and the original Clerks comes in at a close second. Cinematography in Clerks II was the best, if I recall correctly, out of all the Smith flicks. Tonally, this movie feels right. There is more sadness in this one than in the original Clerks. There is also one of the wildest climax (end of Act II?) scenes ever in this movie, involving confession of important secrets, the police, the fire fighters, a donkey and a half naked man in leather. Whereas his peers (of sorts) Jarmusch, Hartley, & Linklater staked their claims to a certain kind of storytelling & kept getting it right more t

From their News page : " 6.29.06 So .... we always say that we release records along with the ebb and flow of our community here in Washington, DC. Well this idea will be well illustrated after a year of relative calm with a VERY active release schedule planned for the second half of 2006. IN 2005 and 2006 the DC punk scene has taken a turn back to the underground and we are now beginning to see the fruits of this period of introspection with forthcoming albums from Channels, Soccer Team, The Evens, Joe Lally, French Toast, The Aquarium and possibly Antelope. " Read the rest of the update here . Dischord Records is an awesome punk label (home of Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses, etc.) and a source of inspiration for D.I.Y. artists everywhere. - Sujewa

Head Trauma gets to play in theaters & also gets into stores nationwide on DVD while Lance retains all the important distribution rights to the flick. Here's the initial Indie Features 06 post that introduced the HT DVD distribution topic. Here's a portion of Lance's comment re: a question about how he is getting his DVD into stores nationwide while doing DIY distribution of the film: " I'm doing a hybrid model. The theatrical is DIY and the DVD release is in conjunction with a small label. After running my own label I wanted to find a partner that I could do the release with. Last time I spent 2 much time on management. So this time I struck a deal with a small label that helps me reach retail and rental BUT allows me to hold all rights. Plus I was able to create an amazing deal - I leveraged the theatrical release to help get me the best terms possible. I carved away all digital rights, VOD, Theatrical, even the rights to sell DVD's over my sites and I ge

There is yet another place on the web to promote your film, and this one is connected to a website w/ a rapidly increasing membership: indieLOOP. iLOOP has a Groups choice called Film Projects, so far 5 projects are a part of this group. iLOOP now has over 2500 members, and I find it more relevant to me than MySpace (vast majority of the iLOOP members are involved w/ indie film, as far as I can tell, & iLOOP does not have any underage teen scandals associated w/ it, yet? :) at this point. I created an iLOOP group called Date Number One to promote my movie. Posted an update on the DNO distribution project there. - Sujewa

Saw the PBS re-broadcast of the Canadian made doc No More Tears Sister last night. Sister is excellent. It tells the story of Dr. Rajani Thiranagama, a young Sri Lankan Tamil professor of anatomy, mother & human rights activist who was most likely killed by the LTTE/Tamil Tigers because of her non-violent, peace & justice demanding work. The doc is a good, relatively brief introduction to the violence that has been rocking Sri Lanka since the early 1950's, the volume of which grew massively after July 1983 or Black July when 1000-3000 (by most accounts) Tamils were killed by Sinhala mobs while the then government & police stood by & watched & in some cases aided in the killings & other violence against Tamils. At present the LTTE runs a military dictatorship in some of the Tamil populated areas in the north of Sri Lanka and there are frequent clashes between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government and its allied paramilitary groups. As it was pointed out i

That's right, there's a person out there who draws images from & inspired by Fassbinder flicks & flicks by several other filmmakers on t-shirts & sells them at $150 a pop. That person is Jordan Mattos , a filmmaker who works for IndiePix . Jordan's t-shirt samples can be found at his site. I think this is a cool little hobby. Possibly a good way to raise $s for a project, special handmade t-shirts. Chloe Sevigny is a fan of the shirts. If you feel like getting one of those special t-shirts, you can order one throught the site. - Sujewa

Either I haven't been reading my blogs very carefully or Ed Burns' new flick's distro company has not sent any press material to the blogs I read. Anyways, the good news is Burns has a new flick called The Groomsmen , playing now in NYC & LA, according to the flick's website . Burns' Sidewalks of New York saved my life when I was shooting Date Number One in '04. Sidewalks' DVD extras had a segment where Burns talks about shooting the flick like a doc or editing it like a doc (quick shooting, jump cuts, etc.) and that approach helped me save the shooting of Story 2 in Date Number One. So, as a thank you, & since he's always made pretty decent movies (not as experimental as Jarmusch & Hartley, not as funky as Linklater, but solid stuff, & more enjoyable than Kevin Smith's work, to compare Burns with some of his peers) I am going to check out The Groomsmen as soon as I can. Maybe it'll play in DC, if not I'll check it out on DVD.

DNO in NYC, it's gonna be awesome! Date Number One , the ultra indie DIY self-distro movie of mine playing in New York City, the traditional homeland of indie film, will be magical. First stop to check: the Pioneer theater, the CBGB of new indie films. Pioneer should have received the DNO screener today. So, at some point this month, hopefully, I'll know if I will be screening DNO at Pioneer or not. And that's the latest from Date Number One land. Maxin' & relaxin' & getting ready for the early August DVD v1 release, preparing it, & getting ready for Fall screenings & some festival play. Working on the slow transformation of self into a smooth operatin' DNO distribution machine. Also waiting for some new reviews. Details coming very soon on various juicy DNO distro projects.

There's a PBS (i think) show on French painters right now. Other, older, forms of art, & the people who made them, can be inspirational & useful for filmmakers I think. I've learned a lot from indie rock (some aesthetic stuff, lots of bidness stuff), maybe I can learn stuff from painting too. So in July & August I am going to blog about painters & I would like you to comment & tell us about your favorite painters & other interesting stuff about painting. Painting is thousands of years old. Filmmaking is a little over 100 years old. US Indie filmmaking as we know it is perhaps a little over 50 years old (w/ the beginning somewhere around the time when the Cassavetes generation got its inspiration/started work). Us new indie filmmakers - the digital/web/DIY generation, can probably learn a lot by taking a look at/getting to know, painting & other older art forms. I'll start w/ Edward Hopper . Here's page w/ a lot of info on him. His most famou

The latest effort to assist the filmmaking scene from the fine folks at Hollywood Is Talking blog is a project called Actor Eclipz. The Eclipz are 1-minute clips of aspiring actors performing a piece from a play, film, book or original work for 1: our enjoyment and 2: to get work! Here's a link to the post about this new feature: http://hollywoodistalking.com/Blog/ and here's a direct link to the page: http://hollywoodistalking.com/acting/ . Now go discover some hot new talent! - Sujewa

Hey Real Indie Filmmakers, Mike Everleth from IFILM asked me a couple of days ago to spread the word about their indie section: IFILM's Indie Film page http://www.ifilm.com/indiefilms . Mike said that while IFILM gets a lot of video material from the bigger distributors, they do not at the moment get a lot of video material from smaller, real indie, DIY, and self-distributed projects. So go check out their page & submit your trailers & clips to them. Could result in a higher profile for your movie. One thing I've learned from DIY distribution is that we can never have too much publicity for our small-promotional-budget projects. IFILM & other real indie friendly web sites can help us a lot. As soon as I take care of some overdue work that should have been done like 6 months ago, I am going to cut a trailer for Date Number One & send it off to IFILM & other websites that promote indie films through clips & trailers. I should be able to get the trailer

Just got home from showing Date Number One at Takoma Park, MD. Highlights: awesome venue, Sangha does Fair Trade business w/ artisans from around the world, very cool place to play. Pretty decent turn out, everyone seemed to enjoy the movie. An audience member named Roland laughed a lot, almost at every funny situation. Dele William's (one of the stars in Story 2) sister & a cousin showed up to the screening, enjoyed the movie, asked some interesting questions about the film after the screening. Takoma Park has a film festival coming up later this year, perhaps I'll submit DNO, maybe I can sell some DVDs at the event or because of the exposure from the event, if the film gets in. I guess I should submit the film to at least a few festivals (even though I am not all that excited about the festival route, see previous post), mainly because quite a few important-to-the-project people expect me to do so, they think it will be good for the movie in the long run. So I will submi

Of course the generally accepted and probably overwhelmingly true answer is: yes, indie film festivals are very valuable and if your film gets into one & plays, it will be a useful thing in selling the film to a distributor or to the audience. But there is always a but, and that's probably why I have not yet submitted my new indie feature Date Number One to a single indie film festival and probably will not do so in the future. Read on. The problems with the festival route: 1. The Psychological Factor or dude, rejection is tough. When starting off on a new epic endeavor such as distributing a feature film you need all the feel good energy you can get. Getting rejected by a festival or festivals will probably affect how you see the film and probably yourself, and not in a good way. So I think it is useful to avoid getting rejected by a film organization early on in the distribution process. Maybe avoiding that option forever is a good thing. 2. The Right to Judge or who gave the