Filmmaker. Winter 08.

Making your film, if you could've had 10 percent more of something, what would it be? Filmmaker asks five directors with films slated to premiere at Sundance: Pietra Brettkelly (The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins), Mark and Jay Duplass (Baghead), Boaz Yakin (Death in Love), Alex Rivera (Sleep Dealer) and Tom Hines (Chronic Town).

"With his recent films (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which he directed, No End in Sight, which he executive produced, and now his new Taxi to the Dark Side), Alex Gibney is filling a void in our American media landscape," writes Scott Macaulay, introducing his interview. "His visually stylish, improbably witty and sadly informative films take the disparate shards of recent news cycles and connect the dots, creating grand politico-historical narratives from what the powers that be would like to characterize as 'isolated incidents' and 'one-time events.'"

Damon Smith talks with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu, who tells him, regarding his fellow Romanian filmmakers:

I think we're perceived as a generation or a new wave because we got recognition pretty much at the same time, and we belong to the same age group. But if you watch the films, there are major differences in the way we see and consider cinema. There are things which are common, but not in all the films. And probably this reaction to the cinema of the late 80s and early 90s generated a feeling of getting back to reality and presenting things as they are - not in this metaphorical, intricate kind of way in which these other people were making their films. Apart from this, we are quite diverse. If we were to write an aesthetic document, it would be difficult.

"There Will Be Blood is one of the most fully-formed, mature films ever made that deals with America's fossil-fuel economy, the myth of Westward expansion, and the tensions that exist in a capitalist society whose leaders cross party lines by claiming to have an allegiance to, first and foremost, God and Christ," writes James Ponsoldt, who finds Paul Thomas Anderson reluctant to discuss his film in such terms. "Do you know John Cameron Mitchell? I asked him to be in the film, in a small part, but he couldn't do it. He finally saw the film and sent me this great message I have to share with you. He says [Anderson reads a text message off his cell phone], 'Besides everything about love and family, it's amazing to see the actual moment when the unholy modern Republican coalition was born. Will it die the same way? Hmmmm.' Better his words than mine."

"2007 might well go down as the year the trend really accelerated," writes Michael Goldman in a piece on the state of the conversion to digital projection.

"[W]hile the WGA and the Hollywood studios duke it out over Internet residuals, many independent filmmakers are simply trying to figure out how to generate any kind of distribution income from the Net. And for these independent filmmakers, the biggest issue is how precisely to navigate today's fragmented world of digital distribution so that revenue even becomes a possibility." Lance Weiler maps the varied routes.

"Less a standard film reference volume than an obsessive and admittedly daunting lifelong labor of love, Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas's mammoth study, Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark, is easily the most elaborate - and potentially intimidating - cinema book of the year," writes Travis Crawford.

Michelle Byrd remembers St Clair Bourne: "As the filmmaker who always documented the great leaders and movements in the African-American community, St Clair spent a good deal of his time as a mentor and educator for those of us disconnected from our history."

And Sharat Raju: "I want to believe there are more people like Mali [Finn] working in the film industry. My fear is that she is the exception, not the rule."

Posted by dwhudson at January 14, 2008 2:13 AM