Tag Archives: indie roundup

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

San Franciscans, rejoice! Nick Offerman, who plays the meat-lovin’ libertarian and all-around heartthrob Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation, will be in-person at the Roxie Theatre Saturday for the indie flick he stars in, Somebody Up There Likes Me.

MacArthur Foundation just awarded nine documentaries grants of more than $1 million total. Check out the lucky grantees, including ITVS-funded Cooked by Judith Helfand.

The 42nd edition of New Directors/New Films runs March 20 to 31 in New York City at the MoMA and the Films Society of Lincoln Center. Here are Hammer to Nail’s picks to watch.

Destin Daniel Cretton just won SXSW’s 2013 Grand Jury Award and the Audience Award for Narrative Feature competition for his premiere of Short Term 12. The San Francisco Film Society produced a lovely video interview of Cretton, where he talks about his filmmaking process and his start as a young storyteller, “building forts or making plays to perform to my mom or creating choreographed dance moves.”

Live chat with Ashley Sabin, director of Girl Model, and model Rachel Blais March 24th at 7 p.m. EST at POV.

Good news for The Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, featured in the documentary Typeface! The collection of “over one million pieces of wood type” has a new location in its hometown of Two Rivers, Wisconsin, but twice the size. (via @Kartemquin)

“Should Filmmakers Learn to Code?” asks MIT Open Documentary Lab as part of its new blog series. In the second installment, documentarian Elaine McMillion (Hollow) said, “As an interactive storyteller, you need to have an understanding of user experience, design and coding, but most importantly you have to understand what makes a strong narrative.”

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Guaranteed to put a goofy smile on your face: When filmmaker Bianca Giaever asked a six-year-old what her movie should be about, she recorded the interview as narration and took up each of the kid’s dares. The resulting short film, the Scared is scared, includes whimsical animations, costumes, a bear, a mouse, sage advice, and a good ol’ fashioned sleepover. (via @CDSduke)

Filmmakers, you don’t need to survive on ramen! Moviemaker Lena Khan insists there is a middle path between Hollywood elites and indies who don’t pay their crews.

Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Rios Montt will stand trial in Guatemalan court on charges of genocide. The ITVS and POV co-production about the dictator and the movement to bring him to justice, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, will be streaming online, in English and Spanish, until February 11.If you were debating a road trip through Missouri, now is the time. The True/False Film Fest showcases the best in documentaries Feb. 28 to March 3 in Columbia, Missouri.

With the rise of digital effects and high-quality post-production, filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky are spending fewer hours and dollars on production.

Check out the Short of the Week Awards 2013 nominees! Innovative and quirky films abound in the categories of live-action, animation, and new media. Winners will be announced next week.

Portland International Film Festival kicked off Thursday night and runs to Feb. 23.

 

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Female directors are way more likely to have directed a documentary at Sundance than a narrative film — 34.5 percent of documentaries were directed by women, compared to 16.9 percent of narrative films in the last decade of the festival.

One filmmaker at Sundance, Sarah Polley, proudly declared her preference for documentaries in an interview:  “I’ve always liked documentaries more than fictional narrative films. I can sit through any documentary and it will be educational even if it’s terrible, but a bad feature film can make me want to die.”

But more women than ever are competing in the dramatic competition at Sundance this year, and the topic of sexism in the film industry is out in the open. Check out videos of a Sundance panel featuring six female directors as they air out their gender-based challenges. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

More documentary films are being made now than ever. To make sense of their impact, social scientists are using Big Data to measure cultural shifts within social media.

People of all professions go through quarter-life crises, but young filmmakers have a specific set of anxieties. Raindance ticks off the fears of twenty-something directors, including financial insecurity and getting into the “inside track.”

“If you don’t know who’s funding you on day one, do not start your campaign,” said Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin at DOC NYC. Learn other invaluable crowdfunding tips from Vimeo’s synopsis of DOC NYC’s online fundraising event. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Our friends at Chicken & Egg Pictures just granted more than $200,000 to 25 documentaries produced by female filmmakers. Take a look at this year’s enticing list films.

Become a pre-interview pro with these tips from the directors of Better This World and ITVS’s The Revisionaries, including how to make your subjects feel like you aren’t “against them.”

Would you let the world see what’s inside your refrigerator? The subjects of this photography series did: You Are What You Eat by San Antonio photographer Mark Menjivar proves that the smallest details inside a person’s home often reveal so much about their character. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indie Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Has the film industry given up on liberal arts? At least two recent movies suggest that might be the case.

The 50th New York Film Festival opens up today at the Lincoln Center, and will hopefully calm our fears about the death of cinema.

West Coasters yearning for a film festival would be wise to check out the Berlin and Beyond Film Festival in San Francisco starting this weekend. Courtesy of 7×7, here are film recommendations from the festival, which celebrates the cinema of German-speaking countries.

For a Friday laugh, watch the most horrendously acted death scene from the 1974 Turkish martial-arts movie, Kareteci Kiz. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indies Roundup

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A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Hey, internet dunces: You, too, could create a multimedia package for your film! Knight News Challenge winner the Tiziano Project pulls from existing technology on the web to help storytellers with amateur web skills polish their online videos.

“Get comfortable with the idea that you won’t know what’s good until it’s already happened,” said Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad. The storytelling genius (no, really, he just won a MacArthur Genius Grant) shared the origins of Radiolab with the Transom. (via @brainpicker)

Follow one of the oldest film festivals in Europe, the Locarno Film Festival, Aug. 1-11, through the eyes of some of its critics-in-training. A new Critic Academy sharpens the chops of aspiring film reviewers. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indies Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

They say to never judge a book by its cover, nor a movie by its book, but here’s an excuse to do both: The Atlantic compiled iconic book covers next to their movie posters, such as The Great Gatsby. Prepare to drool over the design.

“I can haz film fest?” The first-ever Internet Video Cat Film Festival has arrived! On August 30, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis will host the keyboard cat on the big screen. “It is an experiment,” organizer Katie Czarniecki Hill told the Los Angeles Times. “It will be interesting to see if people think it is silly, or great, or a waste of time. But I like the idea of everyone admitting they like cat videos.”
Continue reading →

The ITVS Indies Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Who said there’s no money in documentary filmmaking? You could score $100,000 for producing a three-minute nonfiction film about invention or innovation in the Focus Forward Filmmaker Challenge. The deadline for submissions is August 23.

While we’re on the subject of money, the CEO of the portfolio platform Behance talked with Indiewire about how creatives will find more meaningful work (and moolah) in the future.

Pop quiz: Where is the second-biggest movie capital behind Hollywood and Bollywood? It’s Nollywood. New York Times Magazine published a juicy profile on Nigeria’s burgeoning film industry, probing into the work of cutting-edge filmmaker Kunle Afolayan. Continue reading →

The ITVS Indies Roundup

Posted on by

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Are you obsessed with GIFs yet? If you’re not, now’s the time to start. PBS Off Book produced an excellent primer into the art of the moving still image, known as the Graphic Interchange Format, from its uncool, corporate beginnings in the 1990s to its current heyday.

Here’s a chuckle-worthy photo of Bill Murray looking twee against a wall of paparazzi at the Cannes Film Festival 2012. The festival featured the premiere of Wes Anderson’s latest whimsical confection, Moonrise Kingdom, in which Murray stars.

Also at Cannes, Saudi Arabia experienced a lot of firsts. The country’s first female director, Haiffa al Mansour, brought Wadjda, the first film ever shot in Saudi Arabia, to the festival. The coming-of-age drama follows an 11-year-old girl in the outskirts of Riyadh. Continue reading →