On the carpet for the premiere of My Little Pony Equestria Girls By Jane Leigh / LA Film Fest Guest Blogger Families and fans alike came out this Saturday to attend the premiere of Hasbro Studio’s new movie, My Little Pony Equestria Girls, based on the popular television show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The theater was packed with people of all ages, some even dressed as their favorite pony....
Bookending the Festival across the particleboard shelving of our Opening Night title, Colin Trevorrow’s The Book of Henry will be Closing Night selection Ingrid Goes West. Directed by Matt Spicer and starring Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Wyatt Russell, the satirical dramedy follows Ingrid (Plaza), a mentally unstable woman from Pennsylvania who becomes obsessed with an LA-based online beauty influencer named, naturally, Taylor (Olsen). But when Ingrid heads to the West Coast in an attempt to insinuate herself into her idol’s life, things take a dark and unexpected turn....
Set on the South Side of Chicago, The Chi is amelodrama infused with elements of film noir (per Mitchell’s analysis) featuring several interrelated characters belonging to a well-rendered, insular community who become connected to each other after an escalating series of events. In writing the part of lead character Ronnie’s (Ntare Mwine) fiercely loving and protective grandmother Ethel (LaDonna Tittle), Waithe drew from the influence of her own maternal grandmother....
And, of course, if you happen to be a producer, director, writer, editor or actor who—y’know—actually had a movie come out this year, there are far greater things at stake than merely going 20/20 on your Nickelodeon Teen Choice ballot. For you, 2019 has already undoubtedly been a roller coaster; one filled, we hope, with far more ups than downs. So! The bad news? Even though your movie has been (or is about to be) released, there’s still a hell of a lot more work to do....
On hand for the conversation were creator Michael Begler, executive producer Gregory Jacobs, costume designer Ellen Mirojnik and actors David Fierro and Michael Angarano. Not present for the event was the series’ director Steven Soderbergh, but his absence gave his collaborators free reign to discuss the virtues and peculiarities of working with the Academy Award-winning director. Here are eight things we learned: Soderbergh does it all on set “He’s unlike any other director that I’ve ever worked with,” said Angarano....
PRAYERS FOR THE STOLEN (2021) Writer/Director: Tatiana Huezo Producers: Nicolás Celis, Jim Stark Starring: Guillermo Villegas, Mayra Batalla, Eileen Yañez, Alejandra Camacho Synopsis: In a solitary town nestled in the Mexican mountains, the girls wear boyish haircuts and have hiding places underground. Ana and her two best friends take over the houses of those who have fled, and dress up as women when no one is watching. In their own impenetrable universe, magic and joy abound; meanwhile, their mothers train them to flee from those who would turn them into slaves or ghosts....
Today, we’re diving into 2009’s highly successful, Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker, which TIME magazine’s Richard Corliss praised as a “near-perfect movie.” Kathryn Bigelow’s war drama superbly walks the delicate line of simultaneously being both highly macho and highly moving. Bigelow’s visceral depiction of an army bomb squad (and the sergeant who nearly tears them apart with his unconventional approach to the work) is equally fascinating as both an action movie and as a character study....
Either way, we’re just now seeing an explosion of politically minded cinema being produced for mass commercial consumption. Whether an explicit piece of rabble-rousing agit-prop like BlacKkKlansman, the civically inclined nonfiction of RGB or the subtler exploration of identity as an underpowered minority in Roma, politics and protest have suddenly found their way to the top of the call sheet. Such was the focus at the Film Independent We The People panel “Get Up, Stand Up: Politics, Art and Rebellion”—taking place at the 2018 LA Film Festival in September mere weeks before the 2018 Midterm elections last year....
Tribal storytelling began as a survival mechanism to make sense of the world. As ancient peoples gathered around a fire to explore what was happening to and around them, collections of stories were gradually accumulated. With the arrival of the printing press, society was introduced to the idea of a single author directing the audience’s gaze—be the author a writer, composer, artist, designer or film director. “We’ve become accustomed to the idea of a single author who is going to tell us where to look and where to go and frame a narrative for us,” said McDowell, best known for his immersive and groundbreaking work in films such as Minority Report (2002) and Man of Steel (2013)....
The discussion continues this weekend at the 2018 LA Film Festival with We the People. Taking place September 22 and September 23 at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills—a two-day summit committed to advancing inclusion within the entertainment industry, serving as a solution-oriented call to action. The best part? The panels are all free to attend. “We the People is a beautiful phrase that captures the heart of the independent community,” says Film Independent President Josh Welsh....
Kiarostami’s films were often highly inventive, bending time and space and using shifting realities to deconstruct personal relationships—relationships that themselves were often the vehicle for cannily obfuscated social- and political commentary. But despite his formal playfulness, Kiarostami’s subject was seldom Film itself. Instead, his focus was the dynamics between human beings, whether between individuals in microcosm or in more institutionalized settings, like a courtroom or film set. He somehow managed to be conceptual without being cold, empathetic without being sentimental....
But just as in other areas of the filmmaking process, the grammar of film action requires the steady hand of a storyteller. And in this case, that means the expert stunt performers and coordinators working to make the unlikely things we see onscreen seem as real as possible—people like veteran action director Lawrence Ribeiro, author of the new book, Action Realism: The Art of Action. In Part Two, Ribeiro will takes a step-by-step look at the process of executing a quality action movies sequence on an indie film budget....
Writer/Director: Lisa Leeman Writer: Cristina Colissimo Producers: Cristina Colissimo, Jordana Glick-Franzheim Co-Producer: Miriam Cutler Executive Producer: Greg Little, Elizabeth Zox Friedman Budget: Mid six-figures Production: 2000-2010 Financing: Filmmakers; Equity Financiers; Donations; Grants Shooting Format: BETA SP; Mini DV, HD, VHS (archival footage) Screening Format: HD Cam, 35mm for theatrical World Premiere: 2010 Los Angeles Film Festival Awards: James Lyons Best Editing Award, Woodstock Film Festival; ACE Grant Award (Humane Society of the United States Animal Content in Entertainment Grant Award Winner 2011), International Wildlife Film Festival Merit Award for Theatrical Presentation and Best Educational Value Website: oneluckyelephant....
Official Synopsis Play the Game is an original comedy about a young ladies’ man, David, who teaches his dating tricks to his lonely, widowed grandfather Joe, while playing his best mind games to meet Julie, the woman of his dreams. But as David’s supposedly foolproof techniques fail him, Grandpa Joe quickly transforms into the Don Juan of the retirement community. Slowly, the teacher becomes the student, and it’s up to Grandpa to teach David that the best way to win the game of love is not to play games at all....
AVA BERKOFSKY In a New Yorker profile of Melina Matsoukas, executive producer of Issa Rae’s acclaimed HBO comedy Insecure, the writer compares the aesthetics of Rae’s cable hit to those of her previous project, the web series Awkward Black Girl. While Awkward was “amateurishly filmed, with nondescript interiors and haphazard lighting,” the New Yorker explains, “Insecure is artfully composed and glossy.” No wonder, then, that Project Involve Fellow and Film Independent Spirit Award nominee Ava Berkofsky (Free in Deed, Share) landed the job of lensing the show’s new second season—there’s nothing haphazard about her lighting....
In 2013, Naar was invited to Film Independent’s Documentary Lab to workshop the film, Mateo—“Matthew dreamed of pop stardom; instead he went to jail, learned Spanish and emerged as the first white mariachi singer.” Now, Naar is on his way to Austin, where the film is world premiering at the SXSW Festival. “Attending the Lab was one of the essential reasons I was able to finish Mateo,” Naar says. “The education, friendships and partnerships I formed within the Lab’s brief time I hope to foster for many years to come....
The Diary of a Teenage Girl When: August 7 Where: Theaters Director: Marielle Heller Starring: Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgaard Why We’re Excited: One of the buzziest films to premiere at Sundance this year was Marielle Heller’s debut, which competed for the Grand Jury Prize and won the Cinematography Award. The film takes place in the 70s and features a breakthrough performance from Bel Powley, who plays a young artist having an affair with her mother’s boyfriend....
But the intersection of hip-hop and faux-luxury mustard is just one of the topics explored by Vox video essayist Estelle Caswell in Season One of her ongoing Vox Pop music series Earworm, which explores topics as wide-ranging as the origins of “gated reverb” drumming and the secret genius of Captain Beefheart’s borderline-unlistenable 1969 freak folk classic, Trout Mast Replica. Though she took a more traditional route through film school, Caswell quickly became a self-taught motion graphics whiz, parlaying her experience as a digital native into a position at Vox Media and finding an unexploited niche in applying Vox’s popular “explainer” editorial voice to the world of pop culture....
Nancy is Choe’s feature debut, inspired in part by the filmmaker’s fascination with imposter stories and the age-old question: if something feels real, does it matter if it’s actually fraudulent? The result is a compelling psychodrama that touches on big ideas without sacrificing the pleasures of genre. Prior to further developing the project in Directing Lab, Choe took the project through Fi’s Fast Track film financing market in 2014. Choe has subsequently directed an episode of OWN’s Queen Sugar for executive producer Ava DuVernay and is prepping a variety of upcoming projects....
Enter PEN15, Hulu’s hit new adult comedy series, created by Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle and starring the two on-and-off-screen BFFs as exaggerated, misfit-teen versions of themselves, alongside an ensemble of real-life 13-year-old costars (Erskine and Konkle both being in their early 30s, IRL.) The uproarious show is a comedy of excess, its creators said. In a Film Independent Presents screening in partnership with KCRW on Monday, June 10, Erskine and Konkle joined Film Independent Members to screen three episodes of the show’s first season, followed by an in-depth Q&A moderated by Film Independent Senior Programmer Jenn Wilson....
