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

For info. on Zombie Girl: The Movie , go here . Here's the trailer for ZG:

The new doc Gogol Bordello Non-Stop will play at the AFI Fest in LA on Nov. 1. Here's the trailer:

indieWIRE's got a new first person piece , text from a speech given by Ted Hope, kind of an anti-"the sky is falling" speech. From the article: "I can't talk about the "crisis" of the indie film industry. There is no crisis. The country is in crisis. The economy is in crisis. We, the filmmakers, aren't in crisis. The business is changing, but for us -- us who are called Indie Filmmakers -- that's good that the business is changing. Filmmaking is an incredible privilege and we need to accept it as such -- and accept the full responsibility that comes with that privilege." Read the rest of the article at iW . - Sujewa

At TrustMovies blog . Here's a little bit: "But is true film criticism in any more of a crisis now than at any earlier time? The panel seemed not all that concerned with the "crisis now" attitude." Read the rest of the post here . - Sujewa

"NEW YORK—Citing unsafe practices and potential toxic contamination, the Environmental Protection Agency shut down a small ghost- entrapment operation in downtown Manhattan today, and had four of the business' spectral-containment specialists arrested in the process." More here .

From the interview : " There are a lot of people speaking in their native languages in this movie. I could not make a WWII film with Nazis speaking English. I made the decision that everyone speak their native language. This film is about barriers, language, culture, all that stuff. So how you gonna have a scene where Train is teaching [Angelo] to communicate by tapping on his chest if they're both speaking English? Where is going to be the conflict, the drama, with these four black American soldiers stumbling into a small Tuscan village if everyone is speaking the same language?" Read the rest at Salon . - Sujewa

Cinematical 's got a nice review of Spike Lee's new movie Miracle at St. Anna . So far, since She's Gotta Have It, I've liked every Spike Lee joint that I've seen - I think I've seen most of them - perhaps all but 2 or 3, so I am looking forward to checking out Miracle, and I like it already. I like the idea of Miracle because the lead characters are four non-"white" World War II US soldiers. As far as I know hundreds of thousands of non-"white" soldiers (coming mostly from colonies in Asia & Africa, and of course the segregated US) fought on the side of the Allies but, over 60 years after the end of the war, their stories have barely begun to be told in fiction films. I enjoyed the recent French movie Indigenes , which dealt with a group of non-"white" soldiers from French colonies fighting for the Allies in WWII - even though the ending of that movie was kind of depressing (but then war in general is depressing & the movi

Kinda nice being too busy to blog 'cause I've been editing like 8-10 hours a day (& working at the bookstore when not editing or sleeping) for the last 5 days or so (better than the opposite situation; blogging too much & not putting enough time into filmmaking). But, very soon I should be done with both Indie Film Blogger Road Trip (IFBRT) editing & fest submission #1 & Date Number One DVD production (on that project just need to finalize the DVD cover design & order the DVDs), & then will be back for some blogging. Also nice to have '08 projects #1 (DNO DVD) & #2 (IFBRT) very near completion at this point, so that I can plan on starting work on '08 projects #3 & #4 (two feature length, ultra-ultra low budget & superdelicious comedies) in October in NYC. Until I get back to blogging, check out the blog links at IFBRT's blog , on the right side - scroll down - it's like a mini iW blogs page over there - headlines from about

Nice, some extra web publicity for this blog from the FilmInFocus interview , check it out here . Also check out the Movie City: Washington, DC section at FilmInFocus ; several interesting articles about DC & the movies. - Sujewa

Get info. on that & another job opening at Docs Interactive . - Sujewa

At New American Vision , check it out. - Sujewa

Been busy editing Indie Film Blogger Road Trip , have not had much time to blog this week, but did read a few interesting articles, posts about the changing world of indie film distribution. A lot of the ideas presented in these linked articles are not new to DIY/self-distributing filmmakers; however, it looks like that new combinations of DIY + working-with-several-companies distribution approaches (with publicity coming from fests, the web) may soon be tried out by regular indie filmmakers - the kinds that formerly relied or tried to rely solely on distributors for getting their work out. The end goals are (or should be, if you want to build a catalog of work that can be released through new avenues, have some say on how work gets marketed, make money) distribution AND holding on to long term control & ownership of projects, and simple paths for achieving those goals will probably appear after this current period of experimentation. Here are the links (if you haven't read th

Tom Quinn's got the notes , check 'em out. Here's a little bit: "For “City of God” Fernando looked at 2,000 kids saying their name and some information about themselves on videotape. He then selected 250 and broke them into 6 groups. Rehearsals would run from 8am to 9pm, giving him 2 hours with each group. Initially, he worked on making them less self conscious in front of the camera and building their confidence. While the entire film was scripted, the actors were never given anything to read. Instead, Fernando would give them a scene and have them go work on it as a group. Once they prepared, he would meet with them and shape it, slim it down and feed them lines from the script to throw in. During the shoot, he will often say “keep going” instead of “cut” because actors will often think they are improvising, but resort to the scripted lines making them sound more natural than the initial performance." A lot more at The Workbook Project . - Sujewa

All in all, I think this Variety article by Anthony Kaufman has a lot of good news in it for real indie filmmakers. Don't be lazy, click over & read the whole thing, & to encourage you, here are some quotes: "...more than two years after the initial hoopla, is day-and-date the distribution solution indies have been hoping for? Executives at IFC and within Cuban's indie empire still believe it is, and now they have the numbers to show for it." And: "For foreign and American indie producers, the model has proved largely worthwhile. Paul Trijbits , an exec producer on two of IFC's VOD successes (Ken Loach's "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and Shane Meadows' "This Is England"), says day-and-date uniquely helped the films to thrive where other releases have failed. "On previous films from Loach and Meadows, there were no overages. Never. They were largely unrecouped films," he says. "Before, we couldn't