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Special kudos—and good luck wishes—go to the Fellows who will be competing in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary competitions. In the Dramatic Competition, we have Jennifer Phang, Moon Molson, Mathew Medlin, Eric Lin, Summer Shelton, Andrew Bujalski, Houston King, Chloe Zhao, Angela Lee, Mollye Asher, Kyle Patric Alvarez and Sophia Lin. Competing for the Documentary award are Laura Gabbert, Clay Tweel, and Bill and Turner Ross. We can’t wait to see what’s next for all our filmmakers at Sundance and for the rest of our talented Fellows and Members who are working to finish films in the upcoming year....

More specifically, they’re Radha Blank (The 40-Year-Old-Version), Heidi Ewing (I Carry You With Me), Channing Godfrey Peoples (Miss Juneteenth), Edson Oda (Nine Days) and Darius Marder (Sound of Metal), who were all on hand for the featured session of Week Four of the Film Independent’s annual Directors Close-Up series—which thus far has featured this award season’s top Best Feature directors, TV Creators and nonfiction filmmakers (of both Feature and TV/streaming Docuseries varieties....

But as much as some auteurs might relish the ability to simply spray their films onto the big screen from ink-sac glands nestled in the folds of their sickly gray heptopod pincers, the fact remains that, for now at least, directors are reliant on the talents and abilities of their collaborators—chief among them, the editor. At least that was the opinion of Oscar-nominated Arrival director Denis Villeneuve, who joined editor Joe Walker (likewise Oscar-nominated) for night three of Film Independent’s 2017 Directors Close-Up series at the Landmark Theater in West LA....

The directors nominated for the 2023 John Cassavetes Award include Araceli Lemos (Holy Emy), Max Walker-Silverman (A Love Song), Martine Syms (The African Desperate), Justin Benson and Aaron Moorehead (Something in the Dirt) and Ricky D’Ambrose (The Cathedral). This year’s Directors’ Close-Up series allowed for a more detailed look into the production of these films and gave rise to a discussion of the great efforts involved in stretching limited capital....

Two years ago, I poached a script called Dear White People from an assistant over at Sony. I’d just begun as Stephanie Allain’s assistant and the filmmakers wanted me to set a meeting. As the newly appointed gatekeeper, I couldn’t stick my neck out without giving the script a few reads. The filmmakers had apparently been reaching out to Stephanie and until this time had been unable get a meeting....

MONTAGE: Screenwriting Fellows engaged in an intensive five-week lab program, developing their projects through individualized story sessions and seminars, being coached on both the craft and business of screenwriting from top industry speakers and creative advisors. WHIP-PAN to reveal: Lead Creative Advisor Robin Swicord (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) lending her expertise to the group. CUT TO: additional guest speakers and advisors, hard at work. They include Shelia Hanahan Taylor (the Final Destination series) and Meg LeFauve (Inside Out, Captain Marvel), among others....

DAY SIX Do you ever imagine yourself on stage presenting your film as it premieres at the LA Film Festival? I can’t help fantasizing about that as I attend these screenings: how might I address a room full of ticket and pass holders and try to set some sort of context for my carefully constructed work of art? There would be so many thoughts and stories and people to thank. Getting there would be a huge accomplishment, with the screening as the cherry on top....

For filmmakers eager to develop partnerships for the financing, production and distribution of their projects, no better forum exists for meeting potential champions and collaborators than Film Independent’s Fast Track Film Finance Market—an intensive, four-day film financing marketplace connecting a select group of participants with established financiers, production companies, agents, managers and other industry pros with to power to make things happen. Already underway, this year’s Fast Track program boasts 15 individual projects—10 narrative features and five documentary features—covering a wide range of genre and subject matter, from MMA to music to the celestial status of Pluto....

The next two months are chockablock full of opportunities to reflect back on our parents and the effect they continue to assert on our steadily unfolding lives, with US Mothers Day looming next weekend and Fathers Day lurking close behind, in June. Sometimes the legacies our families leave us are as simple as the stubborn genetic predisposition for a pronounced front-tooth gap (your humble blogger) or as grand as the stewardship of a vast media empire (the Roys and/or Murdochs)....

It’s been a horrendous week here in America. In times like these even the cheeriest among us can struggle to remain optimistic. And as always, the answer remains communication and empathy—which, it just so happens, are two of art’s key functions. While some may celebrate cinema’s ability to provide escapism in times of national distress, one of film’s primary values is in its ability to explore and express difficult issues; its ability to compel us to think about the important stuff....

But John Hughes’ seminal high school hooky comedy actually presents several challenges for the live read format. We can’t wait to see how the following elements are handled: All that singing Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen. You can’t watch the movie with out getting this one in your head. And nearly every character in the film gets it stuck in theirs too. Ferris (Matthew Broderick) starts it, but before long Mr....

A film set can be a magical place: an ad hoc community of creators and craftsmen, all moving together to make art and entertainment a tangible reality. But the average film set can also be one of the most wasteful places on earth. Luckily, there’s a new movement among Hollywood producers striving to make filmmakers more conscientious of their environmental impact—the “green set”. From plastic water bottles to casually idling tranpo vehicles, film production can be staggeringly reckless in its use of resources....

Pappas stars as Plumb Marigold, a budding Olympian who has spent her entire life inside an all-consuming bubble of elite athletic training. When doctors forbid her to run for a few days in order to recover from a minor injury, Plumb is forced to reexamine her routine and contemplate, perhaps for the first time, a life beyond competitive running. It’s a character Pappas—who competed for Greece in the 2016 Rio Olympics last year, coming in 17th worldwide in the 10,000-meter event—says isn’t autobiographical, but rather “a collage of experiences....

Documentarian Lucy Walker is a filmmaker worth keeping an eye on, mainly because she’s made some of the most provocative, inspiring work in recent years—2010’s Waste Land and 2011’s The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom were both nominated for Academy Awards—but also because she’s given a great deal of thought to the processes that work for her and she’s more than willing to share her best strategies with her peers....

What do Beasts of No Nation, Manos Sucias, and Mediterranea all have in common? Aside from being three of this year’s most lauded films, all were made by American film crews outside the U.S. This isn’t a coincidence, but a growing trend in independent filmmaking. But don’t reach for those passports just yet! Taking an American film crew across the border requires careful planning and a keen understanding of international film production standards....

The subject of the April 21 performance was Thank You For Smoking, Reitman’s own 2006 satire—the first script in the Live Reads series that was Reitman’s own (adapted from the 1994 Christopher Buckley novel of the same name). But that wasn’t the only reason to be sentimental: after more than 40 readings over the past five years, Reitman surprised the crowd by announcing that the evening’s Live Read would be the “last one”… for now....

Last month, we interviewed filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes about his experience shooting his film Lupe Under the Sun. (Reyes’s prior project Purgatorio premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and is being released theatrically in Los Angeles today.) We couldn’t help but notice how great his production stills were—often filmmakers don’t have much to choose from and they’re not always the highest quality. Knowing how important good production stills are—just ask a unit publicist), we talked to Reyes and his DP Justin Chin about his secrets to getting those shots....

Official Synopsis: Adventures of a Mathematician is the warmhearted true story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stanislaw “Stan” Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends, all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer. Type of project: Narrative Feature Director: Thor Klein Writer: Thor Klein (based on the memoir by Stanislaw Ulam) Producers: Nell Green, Joanna Szymanska, Lena Vurma, Paul Zischler Budget: $4....

Despite having a half dozen of these columns under my belt, it took a viewing of Day Night Day Night–which won Julia Loktev the award in February of 2007–to get me thinking more deeply about what it means to declare a filmmaker “Someone to Watch.” The baseline explanation—the one from which I’ve been operating—is: “Hey, this person made a great movie and their career is still young! Let’s keep an eye out!...

In my opinion, one of the best decisions made in designing the Someone to Watch Award is that it’s notably not restricted to first features—there’s already an award for that. Instead, the annual Film Independent Spirit Awards prize (and its accompanying $25,000 grant) is bestowed upon a filmmaker who has arrived at the verge of household name status—at least in the kinds of households that tune in to watch the Spirit Awards....