News

Directors Niki Caro, Sydney Freeland, Kelly Fremon Craig, Catherine Hardwicke and Haifaa Al-Mansour Headline; Susan Cartsonis Moderates

Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, recognized as one of the premier film schools in the United States, will focus on Hollywood directors with the theme ‘In the Director’s Chair’ at the 18th Annual Women in Focus Conference.

The Women in Focus Conference will feature Academy Award®-nominated director Niki Caro (“The Zookeeper’s Wife”, “Whale Rider”, “North Country”); acclaimed director Sydney Freeland (“Deidra & Laney Rob a Train”, “Drunktown’s Finest”, “Her Story”); award-winning screenwriter and film director, Kelly Fremon Craig (“The Edge of Seventeen”, “Post Grad”, “Streak”); critically-acclaimed director, Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”, “The Twilight Saga”, “Thirteen”); and the first female Saudi Arabian filmmaker, Haifaa Al-Mansour (“Mary Shelley”, “Wadjda”).

The panel will be moderated by producing veteran Susan Cartsonis (“Carrie Pilby”, “What Women Want”, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

It's a paradox. Independent films -- the kind that are often dramas or comedies about everyday people, rather than superheroes -- have all but vanished from theaters, which now show mostly popcorn action blockbusters. And yet, many of the filmmakers who used to make those indie movies have found a home on TV, where that same character-driven sensibility makes their work a critical and commercial success.

Exhibit A is surely Lena Dunham. Her 2010 movie "Tiny Furniture" never played in more than 21 theaters or sold as much as $400,000 in tickets, but her HBO series "Girls," which has a similar directorial and thematic approach, has made her a star.

In recent years, a number of her fellow indie directors and writers have made the same transition, from the art-house to your living room, mostly via premium cable or streaming outlets Netflix and Amazon. Alongside Dunham at HBO, there's Cary Joji Fukunaga ("True Detective...

Reed Martin has kindly provided us with the opening chapter to his book The Reel Truth for free online. Subtitled "Everything you didn't know you need to know about making an independent film," it's a great resource for anybody involved in independent film. Read and enjoy. Do you dream of someday making an independent film? Can you picture your low-budget masterpiece debuting at Sundance next year? Can you see the poster for your indie feature under the lights of New York’s Angelika Theater or L.A.’s Laemmle’s Sunset 5? There has never been a better time to dream and achieve each…...

Reed Martin has kindly provided us with the opening chapter to his book The Reel Truth for free online. Subtitled "Everything you didn't know you need to know about making an independent film," it's a great resource for anybody involved in independent film. Read and enjoy. Do you dream of someday making an independent film? Can you picture your low-budget masterpiece debuting at Sundance next year? Can you see the poster for your indie feature under the lights of New York’s Angelika Theater or L.A.’s Laemmle’s Sunset 5? There has never been a better time to dream and achieve each of these goals if you know what to do and what pitfalls to look out...

By Reed Martin

Editors Note: This blog post originally appeared on YouTube's Biz Blog.

YouTube’s new rentals service, which launched by offering five Sundance films for $3.99 each, drew just over a thousand paying customers nationally – not enough to shift traditional film distribution paradigms or overshadow Steve Jobs – but this humble beginning masks the opportunity for YouTube and for today’s aspiring independent screenwriters, directors and producers. Just as text blogging gave unaffiliated writers new ways to connect to large audiences and even shape ...

Computer graphics have been a game-changer for traditional animation, but the far more analog stop motion is still going strong and relatively unchanged -- see this Friday's release of "Fantastic Mr. Fox," along with the more grown-up stylings of "Mary and Max" and "$9.99."

On this week's IFC News podcast, we ponder the pleasures of stop motion, discuss the qualities that directors that like to work in the medium tend to have (cough, Ocd) and talk about how all those slight imperfections and that retro sensibility can make for a warmer and more welcoming film.

Download: MP3, 47:41 minutes, 43.7 Mb

Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml]

This week's keyword game prizes come courtesy of the David Lynch Foundation and Reed Martin.

By Reed Martin

Danny Boyle

Director, “Slumdog Millionaire”

“After we made '28 Days Later,' people would come up and ask, ‘How do you scare people in a movie? Give me three ways.’ And I would say ‘Sound, sound, and sound.’ Sound is the thing that really ‘sells the blow’ every time. Sometimes in the edit or in a screening you raise the sound up a bit in the mix and certain scenes are unwatchable. People will turn away because the sound amplifies the reality of the image. But if you watch it with the sound off, it’s no problem a...

The only big film festival in my own backyard is back and it runs from November 12th through the 22nd. While it caters more to heavy run fest material and arthouse film, they do have some of the more interesting films playing this year:

Ryan Ward's excellent Son of the Sunshine which is one of my favorite films of the year. (review)

The weird, lengthy comedy The Revenant (review)

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

and much more. Program after the break!

In Competition

Children of Invention

Two first-generation Chinese kids in suburban Boston find themselves on their own after their desperate mother is unwittingly involved in a pyramid scheme and arrested. Older brother Raymond takes a page from her marketing seminars to start creating a life for himself and his sister - casting a strange, pint-sized reflection on the American Dream.

Footprints...