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

At ShortEnd Magazine . From the interview: "SM: (laughing) See that’s funny because I always feel like on a set the DP has the most responsibility. AS: To be honest, I haven’t had much responsibility DP’ing for narrative. Natural Causes was my first time doing that so I don’t have too much to base that on. With that experience in particular, the four of us [Siddiky and collaborating directors Michael Lerman and brothers Alex and Paul Cannon] were sort of sharing the load of making that film. And so in some ways I had the least to worry about of the four of us. I’ve definitely worked on films doing behind the scenes documentaries for bigger productions, and I’ve seen that; I’ve seen the hundred man crews and all the lighting and all the stuff that goes on to produce the one shot after hours of work, and as I’m thinking about where I want to go with this, that’s really not the direction I want to head in at all. I prefer to work with small crews." Read the rest of the intervie

Discovered a new blog called The Obenson Report - focusing on Africa related filmmaking (or re-discovered it, I think I saw it at one point in the past), & the blogger Tambay Obeson is interested in being interviewed for my new doc The Indie Film Bloggers , so, that interview will be happening this weekend in NYC. Check out The Obenson Report if you haven't yet, the first few posts that I read were interesting. There are thousands of indie film bloggers, at least, and my movie can probably provide portraits of at least a dozen or so. So far the line up of subjects for the doc is shaping up well; self /Sri Lankan-American DIY filmmaker & blogger, Brian Geldin/ Film Panel Notetaker ; NYC based unique film blog (i don't know of any other blogger that does what Brian does - as the 100% focus of their blog), Chuck Tryon ; media professor & blogger (thus his writing style is generally different & more detailed than those of most other non-academic bloggers), Noralil o

Yes, some divisions - the "indiewood" ones - of Hollywood may be in trouble, as Mark Gill spoke of in his recent speech; but, the list of problems don't really affect real indie filmmakers. See the indieWIRE article for Gill's list of woes in their full & original version; I'll just offer a brief version of each "sky is falling" item & my brief thoughts about each as it relates to real indie film: 1: Re: Picturehouse and Warner Independent closing That's an indiewood thing, does not affect real indie filmmaking & distribution. 2: Re: New Line 's staff cut Again, an indiewood thing. 3: Re: Paramount Vantage Another indiewood thing. 4: Re: Sidney Kimmel Another indiewood thing (i think, not too familiar with SK). 5: Re: ThinkFilm 's financial troubles, lawsuits, etc. Now we are bordering on the real indie world. Hopefully Think & filmmakers, vendors will work out their problems (meaning people owed money will get paid

I'll be in NYC this coming weekend (Sat 6/28 & Sun 6/29) interviewing & filming indie film bloggers for my new film - the documentary The Indie Film Bloggers . Any NYC based bloggers who write about indie film & are interested in participating in the doc (specially if we have not spoken about it already) can e-mail me ( wilddiner@aol.com ), and we can see if you/your blog is of interest to the doc and if this doc is a project relevant to you/your blog. Thanks. - Sujewa

Here's the SilverDocs award winners press release: "SILVERDOCS ANNOUNCES FESTIVAL WINNERS THE GARDEN Wins Sterling US Feature Award Special Jury Mention to TROUBLE THE WATER THE ENGLISH SURGEON Wins Sterling World Feature Award Special Jury Mention to THE RED RACE WHAT WOULD THE DROP KNOW ABOUT THAT? Wins Sterling Short Award Honorable Mention went to GROUND FLOOR RIGHT and ONE DAY Music Documentary Award Goes to THROW DOWN YOUR HEART THE ORDER OF MYTHS Wins The Cinematic Vision Award The WITNESS Award Goes to PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL KASSIM THE DREAM Wins the American Film Market/SILVERDOCS Award Writers Guild of America Documentary Screenplay Award to FORBIDDEN LIE$ Feature Audience Award to be announced Monday, June 23, 2008 Short Audience Award to be announced Monday, June 23, 2008 ACE Grant winner is THE ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM Silver Spring, Maryland, June 22, 2008—SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival announced its distinguished award winners, cu

Check out the notes here . From the post: "Q: How did you decide before the storm to start doing the videotaping? What was going through your mind? Why did you decide you wanted to document what was happening? Kimberly: I purchased the camera I had used a week maybe or so before the storm came. My purpose for purchasing the camera was to record family events. I had never used a camera before in my life until the day before I started recording. That's not in the movie, but I was just playing with it. Once we realized we were going to stay, I figured that it would be history. Once we realized we couldn't leave, it was like we have no other choice but to stick it out. If it's going to happen how they say it is, we're going to record it. We were like, we can sell this to the news if we get something good. (Audience laughs out loud.) Another aspects was if we die, people would know exactly how we died if they found the tape somehow." Read the rest of the Q & A

From Paul Constant's Text Message from Los Angeles article in The Stranger: "BEA attracts 36,000 booksellers, publishers, publicists, sales representatives, agents, lawyers, and authors (along with 1,000 journalists who report incredibly polite accounts of the weekend's events) to a different city every year, and every year the American Booksellers Association (ABA) kicks off the weekend with a party in a grand ballroom. This year, there is actually something to celebrate—something that cuts against the industry's self-fulfilling death wish: One hundred new independent bookstores opened in America last year. One speaker describes "recolonizing the parts of America that chain stores had left barren." This is, by any measure, a big deal." Read the rest of the article here . Thanks GreenCine Daily for the link. - Sujewa

At The House Next Door .

It was a long day in badly designed dress shoes but on the bright side, an awesome wedding, good times hanging out with many members of the family, good food, lots of videotaping. I plan on checking out some SilverDocs action tomorrow & Sunday. Too bad I missed the Spike Lee event on Thu; would have been cool to see a discussion featuring one of the most relevant US filmmakers of the last quarter century. - Sujewa

Just watched a screener DVD of Jay Rosenblatt's short film Beginning Filmmaking, about his attempt to get his 4 year old daughter Ella interested in filmmaking. Short is funny, simple, touching/sweet, and at times surreal (also at times I wondered if parents pushing what they are into too hard on their kids is a bad idea), and overall relatively unweird goodness. Here is SilverDoc's description of the film; from this page : "In this endearing portrait of a very young artist, an enthusiastic father discovers truth in the cliché “creative differences” when he attempts to teach his 4-year-old daughter about filmmaking. Ella learns what she wants to, discards what she doesn’t, and is determined to be a star in her own mind." Short screens in the Shorts Program 3 on Friday 6/20. Go here for more info. - Sujewa

indieWIRE reports that Medicine for Melancholy will be distributed by IFC Films. Read about it @ iW: http://www.indiewire.com/buzz/080615.html#012604 . Thanks Camera Stilo blog for the link. - Sujewa

Check out the films list here . And go to the front page & scroll down for some video from Day 1 of SilverDocs. - Sujewa

Note to current or future film/indie film entrepreneurs out there; 1. there is a market for interesting, well done writing about art/indie/foreign movies (as there is a consumer appetite for such movies; witness the mushrooming of film festivals), 2. a lot of the people - film critics - who can do the writing are being let go by their employers - newspapers, 3. if you can create profitable platforms to deliver good writing about art/indie/foreign films, there will be a large pool of talent who can do the work, 4. so, get busy, think about ways to build businesses/revenue streams that make use of the talents of film writers; not only will such businesses be very interesting ones to be a part of & operate, you'll contribute to the preservation and broadening the influence of a rewarding - on several levels - art/entertainment form. For an introduction to the world of people who take art/indie/foreign movies seriously & can write well about them, check out the New York

I plan on interviewing both Chuck Tryon & Amir Motlagh for The Indie Film Bloggers this summer. - Sujewa

Buying used gear is always tricky (hell, even buying new camera gear can be tricky, once I bought a 1 chip camera brand new & had to return it to the manufacturer because of a pixel issue on the flip-out LCD display), but if you know who the seller is, I guess the risk is less. Film fest programmer & blogger Tom Hall is selling his VX-2000 3 CCD DV camera. Comes with a shotgun mic & a few other useful things such as a Beachtek adapter if you want to hook up XLR audio cables to the camera ( all the info., w/ links to info. on accessories, here ). That camera & mic, etc. can be used to shoot features & shorts & whatever else you might want to videotape. Check out the Ebay auction of the camera here , bids start at $999. If the camera is in good shape (Tom says it is, he's gotten it checked out by a service shop, more info. here ), it could be a good deal. And yes, I know a lot of people are thinking about switching over to HD gear, but I feel like I just