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

At Spout blog there is an interview with me for their feature The Media Diet . From the intro to the interview: "For two and a half years Sujewa Ekanayake has provided the indie film world with one of its funniest and most arresting blogs, DIY Filmmaker Sujewa , where the thirty-four year old Washington D.C. based Sri Lankan offers an insightful glance into the world of the independent filmmaker outside of the New York-LA indie axis. His newest film, Indie Film Blogger Road Trip, brings him into the homes and working spaces of 14 film bloggers and is perhaps the first extended meditation on the impact, limitations and peculiarities of the film blogosphere to date. We caught up with him this week to discuss the charms of Battlestar Galactica, where Kevin Smith went wrong and finding his long lost copy of Tom Wait’s “Rain Dogs”." Read the interview here . Thanks a lot for the press Spout ! - Sujewa

On Sunday night, in Brooklyn, I found myself trapped in a very frustrating conversation that ultimately dealt with feminism & how ideas introduced by that movement/philosophy affects human sexuality - or maybe I should say sex in America & other post-feminist countries (much of the world has not heard of feminism too clearly yet). I was talking with another dude - and a lot of the misunderstandings arose (i think) from each of us having drastically different definitions for & understandings of the same terms/words (also, maybe I was not very clear in making certain arguments). This is also a subject I've talked about with various girlfriends over the years - and, I think, part of the problem (confusions arising at the intersection of feminism & sex - or perhaps feminism & gender roles, responsibilities, expectations - both public & private) is people are afraid to talk about the matter because they are afraid of being perceived as someone having an unaccep

Check it out here .

Godard's movie My Life to Live deals with the how's & why's of a sex worker's life. Princeton Holt's Cookies & Cream deals with a sex worker attempting to have a "normal" life while she engages in sex work - and does not elaborate fully on how she got to where she is in life and why she does not take certain actions to change her life - or even why she does not feel a great need for a complete change. In a way I feel that the two stories can be looked upon as two points in the life of one character or one type of character (even though the two films are separated by many things - time, place, age of the characters, filmmaking style, and perhaps how each filmmaker feels about sex work, etc.). - Sujewa

We'll get to a proper review or the proper reviews of Cookies & Cream soon (we are still thinking it over), but, in the meantime, let me share with you some details from a DIY film event that took place on Saturday night in Manhattan. Things started off around 6 PM in Brooklyn - I was tired from traveling all over Brooklyn searching for apartments in the cold. So, as I finished up my dinner I decided to skip the Cookies & Cream screening, but right then local filmmaker & blogger Tambay Obenson called & said he is on his way to the screening - Tambay was heading out from Brooklyn. And I already knew that Brian "The Film Panel Notetaker" Geldin was heading over to the screening from Queens. So, I decided to ignore the tiredness & drag myself over to Manhattan to check out Princeton Holt's debut feature - specially since I told both Tambay & Brian about the screening & suggested that we all go to it. The screening itself was a well attended &

As noted in Filmmaker Magazine blog & elsewhere, there are four DIY filmmakers on tour together at the moment - a project led by Todd Sklar of Range Life Entertainment. And in New York there are several new filmmakers taking ultra-indie production & self distribution to heart, working together, & coming out with several new feature projects - heard about this new NYC DIY group through Princeton Holt - of 1 Way or Another Productions . I am working on an interview with Sklar and will be attending a screening event (Sexy International Film Festival) featuring a 1 Way film ( Cookies & Cream , directed by Holt) this weekend in NYC, so, more on these two new groups of DIY filmmakers soon at this blog. Also, have received (yet unanswered in some cases) e-mails from several other new DIY filmmakers recently, will look into their projects also. Looks like the ultra-low budget production & self-distribution path is catching on with more & more young filmmakers - most ex

Well, from the trailer (visuals & audio/music) Sandcastles looks like a Mumblecore-type movie but maybe it isn't. Either way, perhaps worth a look: For more on Sandcastles go here . - Sujewa

Until I got the invite from the people who made the new feature Cookies & Cream , I never know there was a fest called the Sexy International Film Festival. So I am going - really, how can you turn down an invitation to an event called Cookies & Cream at the Sexy Int'l Film Fest :) More info. below, come check out the fest this coming weekend: First, Sexy IFF (I almost typed SIFF - but didn't want people to confuse this fest w/ Seattle Int'l) on Facebook . The fest happens on 11/21 Fri (shorts), & 11/22 Sat (Cookies & Cream - feature). * Sexy International Film Festival Time and Place Start Time: Friday, November 21, 2008 at 7:00pm End Time: Saturday, November 22, 2008 at 9:00pm Location: Helen Mills Theatre Street: 137-139 West 26th Street City/Town: New York, NY View Map * 21st of November 7pm Tickets available at door or email info@sexyfilmfest.com to pre book. JE TE LOVE Canada 9 mins Canada FROM HERE TO MATERNITY Australia 3 mins Dir. Bill Flower

Check it out here . Join up if you are interested in IFBRT, indie film, blogging, blogging about indie film, or related matters.

More on that here .

Is getting a link from a GCD post worth blogging about? Most definitely yes, I think (since maybe 50,000 times more people read that blog than this one :). Check out the GCD mention here . Thanks GreenCine Daily! - Sujewa

Congrats to Mary Bronstein & team Yeast for their victory at the St. Louis International Film Festival. From the St.Louis Post-Dispatch : "Bronstein’s psychodrama about three co-dependent young women is reminiscent of John Cassevetes at his most claustrophobic. None of us jurors–Variety critic Scott Foundas, St. Louis Art Museum assistant education director Bill Appleton, novelist Scott Phillips and P-D critic emeritus Harper Barnes–confessed to actually enjoying it; yet none of us could forget it either. It was a welcome reminder that there are still all kinds of ways to make a movie. As Goodman said, with all the technology at our disposal, there’s never been an easier time time to make a movie–even if there’s never been a harder time to make money at it." Read the rest of the article here . Thanks to Boredom At Its Boredest blog for the link. For the record, I did enjoy Yeast when I saw it at the Maryland Film Festival last year. But that quote above - re: jurors not

If you want to skip this intro & go directly to Chuck Tryon's post about my new doc Indie Film Blogger Road Trip , here's the link , dive in. As Chuck says several times in his post, he is a part of the doc so his post is not really an official review. Regardless, I am glad that the idea I had a little over 6 months ago is now alive & visible & audible as a feature length doc & it is very satisfying to get a response - a lengthy & well thought out response - from someone other than myself/another audience member re: IFBRT. As fas as I know Chuck is the first person (other than myself) to see the completed movie. Certainly he is the first media professional to write about it. From Chuck's post : "At the same time, Sujewa is attentive to the various ways that all of his interviewees are invested in blogging as an activity, even if, as Anthony Kaufman confesses at one point, we don’t always like doing it or like what it has done to film and entertainm

This doc sounds very interesting, all the info. in great detail here: “ PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL” OPENS NOV. 14 AT E STREET CINEMA Uplifting, True Story In Theaters in Nov. and Dec. Including LA, NY, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Portland and Seattle Washington, DC – Opening November 14 in DC, Tribeca’s Best Documentary and SILVERDOCS’ Witness Award-Winning Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the inspiring true story of a group of brave and visionary women who, armed only with white t-shirts, demanded peace for Liberia, a nation torn apart by a decades-old civil war. Directed by Oscar® nominee and Emmy® winner Gini Reticker and produced by Abigail Disney, Pray the Devil Back to Hell has also earned Jackson Hole Film Festival (Audience Choice: Documentary), Traverse City Film Festival (Special Jury Prize: Non-fiction Filmmaking), and the Heartland Film Festival (Best Documentary). Jane Fonda calls Pray the Devil Back to Hell “a real uplift,” while Desmond Tutu sa

I was at a local restaurant today, had a business meeting, eat some food. After the meeting I hung out, made some notes, was enjoying my coffee & thinking about stuff. Started talking with another person - a stranger - at the restaurant. We started talking because it appeared that we were from the same part of the world. Turns out this dude grew up in Sri Lanka, and ultimately moved to India & then came to the US. After talking about many interesting things - religion, missionary work, agnosticism, war in Sri Lanka, etc. - as I was getting ready to leave, this dude told me an interesting story. When he was a kid, in 1958, him & his family lived in a village that was mostly Sinhala, and his family is Tamil (for those unaware of Sri Lankan politics & conflicts, people in that island believe that they belong to two races - Sinhala and Tamil - and have been killing each other for centuries). Anyway, when a Sinhala mob came to kill him & his family in 1958 his fell