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Mubi's series Shooting the Hip: The Cinematography of Sean Price Williams is showing June and July in many countries.Above: The Color WheelThe work of cinematographer Sean Price Williams has become synonymous with contemporary American independent cinema. What separates his filmography from his peers is his ability to shape shift with his various collaborators whether in different film frameworks of fiction and non-fiction, different genres, or just different aesthetics altogether. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with Josh and Ben Safdie (Heaven Knows What and Good Time), but his credits include over ninety feature-length films and shorts— a body of work that when investigating further yields some of the most impressive images in the medium. With his versatile camera Williams brings an electric personal energy to wildly different films, making his name in the credits an enticement to any project.Often the stories about Williams start with...

My first encounter with the work of Alex Ross Perry came in the fall of 2009, at a small festival of extremely low-budget and experimental movies in Chicago. Some friends, long since moved away and lost touch with, had talked me to going into the sole screening of a feature with an odd title. If memory serves, it was the only one in the program to have been shot and projected on film. The movie turned out to be Perry’s debut, Impolex, and though I dread the thought of revisiting whatever it is that I wrote about it at the time, this Thomas Pynchon-inspired surrealist comedy about a narcoleptic World War II soldier who wanders a forest in search of a V-2 rocket left a substantial impression. To be honest, it was probably just as important back then that Perry seemed like one of us. That is, video store people,...

Independent film director Alex Ross Perry has a full slate of upcoming projects, including a new feature film and a yet-to-be-titled live-action “Winnie the Pooh” project, but he found the time to co-direct a music video for the duo Sleigh Bells with the band’s Derek E. Miller. The song is titled “I Can Only Stare” and it’s off their upcoming album “Jessica Rabbit.” The video was shot in 16mm and it features singer Alexis Krauss playing three different women. Watch it below.

Read More: Alex Ross Perry: Indie Filmmakers Can Afford to Shoot Film

Perry has directed four feature films so far. His first two films were “Impolex,” based off Thomas Pynchon’s novel “Gravity’s Rainbow,” and “The Color Wheel,” starring Perry and Carlen Altman as two siblings on a road trip. He garnered much acclaim with his third film “Listen Up Philip,” which stars Jason Schwartzman...

Brûle la mer

Dear Adam,

From your letter, It sounds like I missed quite a film with Counting. That's the curse of even the most active festival-goer: there's always another film playing somewhere else, the promise of an unknown quality and potential. I am no stranger to that twinge of anxiety that the film playing next door is really the one to see, and I just missed its last screening. This conjures another negative kind of energy, too, not just the fear but the hope a film is bad, a film you've written off or missed. Ah, the existentialist dilemmas of the cinephile, how small and privileged they are!

In a way, the event I went to a few days ago exemplifies this somewhere else, some other time, some other film ghost which haunts all festivals. Thursday was the opening night of the very first edition of a kind of breakaway festival in Berlin,...

Underground movies don’t typically lend themselves to commercial interruption, what with their narrative experimentation and their devotion to artistic sensibilities over more profitable concerns. Plus, home media viewers are becoming more accustomed to streaming business ventures that are based financially solely on subscriber fees and not advertiser dollars, e.g. Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Still, there might be a time when a home viewer will be in the mood for something a little more off the beaten path and not want to pay for an additional subscription over what is most likely an outrageous Internet bill — and want to view that off-beat media legally.

So, in that scenario, sometimes Hulu becomes a good option for viewing an oddball movie that screened at an underground film festival — if one doesn’t mind the intrusive ads. Below are five incredible flicks that deserve to be seen, no matter what the option is.

Ifp announced its 2014 slate of 133 new films in development and works in progress selected for its esteemed Project Forum at Independent Film Week. This one-of-a-kind event brings the international film and media community to New York City to advance new projects by nurturing the work of both emerging and established independent artists and filmmakers. Through the Project Forum, creatives connect with financiers, executives, influencers and decision-makers in film, television, new media and cross-platform storytelling that can help them complete their latest works and connect with audiences. Under the curatorial leadership of Deputy Director/Head of Programming Amy Dotson & Senior Director of Programming Milton Tabbot, this one-of-a-kind event takes place September 14-18, 2014 at Lincoln Center supporting bold new content from a wide variety of domestic and international artists.

“As we set to embark on our 36th Independent Film Week, we are impressed by the outstanding slate of both U.S. and international projects selected for this year’s Project Forum,” said Joana Vicente, Executive Director of Ifp. “We know that the industry will be as excited as we are with the accomplished storytellers and their diverse and boundary pushing films.”

Featured works at the 2014 Independent Film Week include filmmakers and content creators from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. From documentarians Tony Gerber ("Full Battle Rattle"), Pamela Yates ("Granito: How To Nail A Dictator"), and Penny Lane ("Our Nixon") to Michelangelo Frammartino ("Quattro Volte") and Alexis Dos Santos ("Unmade Beds"), as well as new work from critically acclaimed artists and directors Aurora Guerrero ("Mosquita y Mari"), Barry Jenkins ("Medicine for Melancholy"), Travis Matthews ("Interior. Leather. Bar") and Yen Tan ("Pit Stop").

Independent Film Week brings the international film and media community to New York City to advance new documentary and narrative works-in-progress and support the future of storytelling. The program nurtures the work of both emerging and established independent artists and filmmakers through the facilitation of over 3,500+ custom, one-to-one meetings with the financiers, executives, influencers and decision-makers in film, television, new media and cross-platform storytelling that can help them complete their latest works and connect with audiences. In recent years, it has also played a vital role in launching the first films of many of today’s rising stars on the independent scene including Rama Burshtein ("Fill The Void"), Derek Cianfrance ("Blue Valentine"), Marshall Curry ("If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth LIberation Front"), Laura Poitras ("The Oath"), Denis Villeneuve ("Incendies") and Benh Zeitlin ("Beasts of the Southern Wild").

For the full 2014 Project Forum slate visit Here

New For 2014

Evenly split between documentary and narrative features, selected projects hail from throughout the U.S., Europe and Canada, as well Africa, Asia, South America, and the Middle East. New this year, Ifp will be including web series in it programming, as well as spotlighting Latin & Central American artists and content with 15 projects featured across all programs in the Forum.

In a joint effort to recognize the importance of career and creative sustainability, Ifp and Durga Entertainment have partnered on a new $20,000 filmmaker grant for an alumnus of Ifp. The grant is intended for active, working filmmakers who are also balancing a filmmaking career with parenting. The grant provides a $20,000 unrestricted prize to encourage the recipient to continue on her or his career path of making quality independent films. American directors or screenwriters working in narrative film who have participated in the Ifp Filmmaker Labs or Ifp Independent Film Week's Emerging Storytellers or No-Borders International Co-Production market are encouraged to apply by the deadline of August 8, 2014.

Narrative Feature Highlights

Narrative features and webseries in Rbc’s Emerging Storytellers and No Borders International Co-Production Market sections highlight new work from top emerging and established creative visionaries on the U.S. and international independent scene.

This year’s slate includes new feature scripts featuring directors Dev Benegal ("Road, Movie"), Alexis Dos Santos ("Unmade Beds"), Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin ("Now, Forager"), Michelangelo Frammartino ("Le Quattro Volte"),Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda"), Rashaad Ernesto Green ("Gun Hill Road"), Aurora Guerrero ("Mosquita Y Mari"), Barry Jenkins ("Medicine for Melancholy"),Alison Klayman ("Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry"), Travis Mathews ("Interior. Leather Bar"), Stacie Passon ("Concussion"), Yen Tan ("Pit Stop"), as well as up-an-coming actor/directors Karrie Crouse ("Land Ho!") and Peter Vack ("Fort Tilden""I Believe in Unicorns").

Producers and executive producers of note attached to participating projects include Jennifer Dubin and Cora Olson ("Good Dick"), Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams ("Hellion"),Laura Heberton ("Gayby"), Dan Janvey ("Beasts of the Southern Wild"), Kishori Rajan ("Gimme the Loot"), Adele Romanski ("The Myth of the American Sleepover"), Kim Sherman ("A Teacher"), Susan Stover ("High Art"), and Alicia Van Couvering ("Tiny Furniture").

Web Storytellers Highlights

For the first time this year, Ifp presents a dedicated spotlight within the Rbc’s Emerging Storytellers program for creators developing episodic content for digital platforms. The inaugural slate for the Web Storytellers spotlight includes new works from filmmakers Desiree Akhavan ("Appropriate Behavior", HBO’s Girls), Calvin Reeder ("The Rambler"), and Gregory Bayne ("Person of Interest"), as well as producers Elisabeth Holm ("Obvious Child"), Susan Leber ( "Down to the Bone"), and Amanda Warman ("The Outs,"Whatever This Is"). Two of the series participating are currently in post-production, and will be making their online debut in the coming months – Rachel Morgan’s Middle Americans, starring Scott Thompson, Carlen Altman, and Alex Rennie, and Daniel Zimbler and Elisabeth Gray’s Understudies, starring Richard Kind and David Rasche. [p Spotlight On Documentaries Highlights

The documentary selection includes new work from seasoned non-fiction directors such as Emmy winners Robert Bahar andAlmudena Carracedo ("Made in La"), Pamela Yates ("Granito: How to Nail a Dictator"),Ramona Diaz ("Imelda," "Don’t Stop Believin’") Gini Reticker ("Pray the Devil Back to Hell") Tony Gerber ("Full Battle Rattle"); from producers such as Court 13’s Benh Zeitlin and Dan Janvey ("Beasts of the Southern Wild"), Liran Atzmor ("The Law in These Parts"), Tim Williams ("Once In A Lifetime") and Hilla Medalia ("Web Junkie"), and follow-up second features from recent doc world “breakouts”Steve Hoover ("Blood Brother") Penny Lane ("Our Nixon"), Michael Collins ("Give Up Tomorrow"), and Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker ("Flex is Kings").

Exciting new work from debut documentary directors previously known for fiction films include Alex Sichel ("All over Me") with her personal doc The Movie about Anna, Lisa Cortés (producer, "Precious") with "Mothership: The Untold Story of Women and Hip Hop," and Daniel Patrick Carbone ("Hide Your Smiling Faces") with Phantom Cowboys.

Sponsors

Independent Film Week’s Premier sponsors are Royal Bank of Canada (Rbc) and HBO. Gold sponsors are A&E IndieFilms and SAGIndie. Silver sponsors are Durga Entertainment, Eastman Kodak Company, National Film & Video Foundation of South Africa and Telefilm Canada. Official Independent Film Week Partner is Film Society of Lincoln Center. Independent Film Week is supported, in part, by funds provided by the Ford Foundation, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council for the Arts and Time Warner Foundation.

About Ifp

The Independent Filmmaker Project (Ifp) champions the future of storytelling by connecting artists with essential resources at all stages of development and distribution. The organization fosters a vibrant and sustainable independent storytelling community through its year-round programs, which include Independent Film Week, Filmmaker Magazine, the Gotham Independent Film Awards and the Made in NY Media Center by Ifp, a new incubator space developed with the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Ifp represents a growing network of 10,000 storytellers around the world, and plays a key role in developing 350 new feature and documentary works each year. During its 35-year history, Ifp has supported over 8,000 projects and offered resources to more than 20,000 filmmakers, including Debra Granik, Miranda July, Michael Moore, Dee Rees, and Benh Zeitlin. More info at www.ifp.org.

The holidays are nigh, so here are ten dysfunctional family films to bring you all together (or drive you apart). The dysfunctional family film can run the gamut from depressing ("Capturing the Friedmans" or "Cries and Whispers," anyone?) to surprisingly warm ("Hannah and Her Sisters"). Below, we've categorized our ten titles into the Dark Meat and the Light(er) Meat -- because everyone has their own preference.  The Dark Meat, by Ryan Lattanzio:"The Color Wheel" (2011) Dir. Alex Ross Perry Dream team Alex Ross Perry and Carlen Altman created one of the most memorable indies of recent years with "The Color Wheel." They play Jr (Altman) and Colin (Perry), two late-twentysomething siblings who hash out their neuroses and push each other's buttons on the road to moving Jr out of her professor boyfriend's apartment. Honest and hilarious, and shot in 16mm, this unflinching sendup of millennial malaise takes a queasy...

Ifp, publisher of Filmmaker Magazine, announced today 163 projects in development selected for its Independent Film Week Project Forum. Projects include documentaries by such directors as Academy Award Winners Louis Psihoyos and Cynthia Wade; fiction features by documentarians Jennifer Fox and Jeremiah Zagar; fiction features by web creators Mesh Flinders and Thom Woodley; and an original web series, Awesome Asian Bad Guys, by Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco. In addition, a number of projects from Filmmaker Magazine 25 New Faces have been selected, including new work from Carlen Altman, Sophia Takal, the Zellner Brothers, Alex Jablonski, Pete Ohs & Andrea …...

It would be the film with the juju in David O. Russell’s zany black comedy that was the toast of the 28th Independent Spirit Awards beating Beasts Of The Southern Wild – its fiercest rival in all major categories. Silver Linings Playbook cleaned up, grabbing Best Feature, Director, Screenplay and Best Actress went to Jennifer Lawrence – the heavy favorite for tomorrow’s Oscar. Fox Searchlight might have grabbed only one award for Beasts in the Cinematography category, but it’s other Sundance pick-up The Sessions managed to nab a pair of acting prizes for Helen Hunt and Oscar snubbed John Hawkes for Best Male Lead. In our favorite grant categories, Adam Leon (Gimme the Loot) nabbed the Someone to Watch Award (last year it went to Mark Jackson), the Piaget Producers Award went to Mynette Louie (she produced Tze Chun’s sophomore film Eye of Winter which we are keeping...

David O. Russell's "Silver Linings Playbook" was the big winner at the 28th annual Independent Spirit Awards held in Santa Monica, CA this afternoon and hosted by Andy Samberg. "Silver Linings" took home the Best Feature, Actress (Jennifer Lawrence), Director, and Screenplay trophies.

McConaughey, who nearly stole the show in Steven Soderbergh's "Magic Mike," won the Best Supporting Male award for a performance that was largely ignored by the Academy Awards. As Samberg astutely observed, "We've got Matthew McConaughey...Hollywood fuck you!"

Jennifer Lawrence won the Best Female Lead award for "Silver Linings Playbook," while John Hawkes took home the Best Male Lead trophy for "Sessions." His co-star, Helen Hunt, won the Best Supporting Female award.

Michael Haneke's "Amour," a darling of the 85th Academy Awards, deservingly won Best International Film.

The awards show can be seen on IFC tonight at 10 pm (Est).

Here's the full list...

Today the 2013 Spirit Awards were handed out and it was a dominating effort from Silver Linings Playbook as it won Best Picture, Director (David O. Russell), Actress (Jennifer Lawrence) and Screenplay (Russell). The only award it was nominated for and didn't win was Best Actor where Bradley Cooper lost to John Hawkes for The Sessions, but that's only a minor blip on the radar when you win this big. Among the early awards handed out, Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower won for Best First Feature while Derek Connolly won for Best First Screenplay for the romantic sci-fi film Safety Not Guaranteed. Then the Twitterverse exploded with a Best Supporting Actor win for Matthew McConaughey and his work in Magic Mike, which, for a time, seemed like it may be able to eek into that last Supporting slot at the Oscars. No dice, a Spirit Award it will have to be.

#30: Cloud Atlas

Directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

Written by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski

Cloud Atlas is essentially a patchwork of narratives thematically linked with minor coincidences and recurring symbolism. With six stories spanning several centuries, Cloud Atlas explores how the actions and consequences of individual lives impact one another throughout the past, the present and the future. As a parable of how we are all connected, each protagonist in Cloud Atlas wrestles with some form of oppression, based on either gender, age, race, sexual orientation, genetics and so on. In 1850, a young American lawyer sailing on a ship through the South Pacific is slowly being poisoned by a doctor who wants the treasure of gold he is hiding. In the 1930s, an inspiring composer follows his dreams while recounting his journey via love letters to his gay lover. A journalistic potboiler set...

2012 wasn’t a bad year for movies. It was actually a great year. The problem is, the movies we were most anticipating, specifically the Hollywood blockbusters like Prometheus and The Hobbit, didn’t live up to our expectations. With that said I still managed to make a list of 50 films I loved. Maybe I just have bad taste or maybe I just love movies but the most time consuming factor when making this list was sitting down and deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t. Even with 50 films listed below, I found it hard to not include movies like Frankenweenie, The Loneliest Planet, Footnote, Compliance, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, and Searching For Sugar Man. Come to think of it, every film featured on our list of best documentaries could have easily snuck into this list. I haven’t seen everything of course. Below is...

The 28th Annual Film Independent Spirit Award nominations were announced eaelier today and while Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook both grabbed five noms a piece, it is Bernie, Keep The Lights On and Beasts of the Southern Wild who are glowing with their four noms each. Our jeers, cheers and snubs commentary shall be coming soon. Here are the entire list of nominees for the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards:

Best Feature:

Beasts of the Southern Wild – Producers: Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey & Josh Penn

Bernie – Producers: Liz Glotzer, Richard Linklater, David McFadzean, Dete Meserve, Judd Payne, Celine Rattray, Martin Shafer, Ginger Sledge, Matt Williams

Keep the Lights On – Producers: Marie Therese Guirgis, Lucas Joaquin, Ira Sachs

Moonrise Kingdom – Producers: Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales, Scott Rudin

Silver Linings Playbook – Producers: Bruce Cohen, Donna Gigliotti, Jonathan Gordon

Best Director

Wes Anderson – Moonrise Kingdom

Julia Loktev – The Loneliest Planet

David O. Russell...

Nominations for the 28th Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced today and were led by Moonrise Kingdom and Silver Linings Playbook with five nominations each followed closely by fellow Best Feature nominees Beasts of the Southern Wild and Keep the Lights On as well as Ava DuVernay's Middle of Nowhere, each with four nominations. Richard Linklater's Bernie was the fifth Best Feature nominee while Middle of Nowhere found its four nominations largely in the acting categories with Emayatzy Corinealdi, David Oyelowo and Lorraine Toussant all being nominated and the fourth for the John Cassavetes Award, which goes to the "best" film made for under $500,000. Looking over the list of nominees I can't help but shrug at the screenplay nomination for Ruby Sparks (a film I loathed), but it's nice to see some First Time Feature love for Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed and Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower,...

Having taken home the Best Picture award at last night’s Gotham Independent Film Awards, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom finds itself nominated in the same category in the upcoming Independent Spirit Awards, with the full list of nominations announced tonight.

Anderson’s latest film has been nominated in a healthy five categories – Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Male, and Best Cinematography – with David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook also racking up an impressive five nominations, adding Best Female Lead and Best Male Lead to Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay.

Also coming in as strong contenders are Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone; Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the Best Female Lead category for her performance in Smashed; Colin Trevorrow in the Best First Feature category for Safety Not Guaranteed, and Derek Connolly in the Best First Screenplay for the same film; director Benh Zeitlin and Beasts of the Southern Wild...

Actors Anna Kendrick, Zoe Saldana and Common presented the nominees for the 28th Film Independent Spirit Awards in a press conference on Tuesday, November 27 at 10:00 am at The W Hotel in Hollywood.

Both "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Moonrise Kingdom" lead the nominations including best picture where they will compete with "Beasts of the Southern Wild," "Bernie," and "Keep the Lights On."

Directors Wes Anderson ("Moonrise Kingdom") and David O. Russell ("Silver Linings Playbook") are also nominated in the best director category along with Julia Loktev ("The Loneliest Planet"), Ira Sachs ("Keep the Lights On"), and Benh Zeitlin ("Beasts of the Southern Wild").

And actor Matthew McConaughey's transformation is now complete. He is nominated for both best actor ("Killer Joe") and best supporting actor ("Magic Mike").

Winners of the 28th Film Independent Spirit Awards will be announced on February 23, 2013 when they will hold their traditional Saturday afternoon awards show...

The nominations for the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards were announced this morning by actors Anna Kendrick, Zoe Saldana, and Common. Nominees for Best Feature include Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Bernie, Keep The Lights On, Moonrise Kingdom, and Silver Linings Playbook. Starlet was selected to receive the annual Robert Altman Award, which is given one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast.

Winners will be announced at the Spirit Awards on Saturday, February 23, 2013. The awards ceremony will be held as a daytime luncheon in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica, and the premiere broadcast will air later that evening at 10:00 pm Et/Pt on IFC.

2013 Film Independent Spirit Award Nominations

Best Feature (Award given to the Producer, Executive Producers are not awarded)

Beasts of the Southern Wild Producers: Michael Gottwald, Dan Janvey & Josh Penn Bernie Producers: Liz Glotzer, Richard Linklater, David McFadzean, Dete Meserve, Judd Payne,...

A sibling rivalry relationship film about a brother and sister that can’t seem to get along, yet can’t find anyone else to remotely understand them, is the basis for Alex Ross Perry’s sophomore feature, The Color Wheel. Filmed in grainy black and white and laced with acidic one-liners that recall vintage Woody Allen mixed with early Cassavetes, this interesting venture may seem to be just an unassuming, perhaps pretentious critique about two misfits too smart for their own good. Exploring the consequences of doing anything to achieve your dreams versus letting your dreams die unceremoniously seems to be the crux of Perry’s film, however, what first plays like a bitchy paean to Phillip Roth literature eventually turns into one of the more intriguing resolutions you’ll be lulled into witnessing.

Jr (Carlen Altman) is on her way to pick up her brother Colin (Perry) for a...

Below Alex Ross Perry shares an exclusive scene from his sophomore feature "The Color Wheel," which topped Indiewire's 2011 end-of-year poll for best undistributed film. The film got picked up by Cinema Conservancy after topping that chart and opens Friday at BAMcinematek in New York. Co-staring and co-written by Perry and Carlen Altman ("You Wont Miss Me"), "The Color Wheel" is an odd, funny story of a slacker brother and ambitious sister on a mission to move her things from her ex-lover/ex-professor's home. Check out our profile of Perry Here. The Scene This scene occurs early in the film, like within the first twenty minutes or so. Colin and Jr are beginning day two of their trek to move her stuff out of professor/scorned lover Neil Chadwick’s (Bob Byington) house. It immediately follows a sequence in a motel, where they are told only married couples can share a room.

Don’t Believe The Color Wheel’s Promise to “entertain you with wit and charm the entire ride”

It’s hard to think of a movie more undeserving than Alex Ross Perry’s ultra-indie narcissistic exercise ‘The Color Wheel’ having finagled even limited American theatrical distribution. In the most obvious of many student film-style missteps, the physically off-putting Perry casts himself in the lead as Colin, a going-nowhere 20-something living comfortably with his parents in suburbia, who is coerced into a road trip by his flighty sister J.R. (Carlen Altman), who’s out to get her stuff back from the professor she’d been sleeping with. These siblings don’t like each other much. Or do they?

Though Altman is credited as co-writer, the movie swells with Perry’s grating pathology. J.R. is purportedly Colin’s foil and antagonist, but increasingly she becomes only a vessel for the director’s wish fulfillment,...

(Distributed by Cinema Conservancy and Factory 25, The Color Wheel opens theatrically in NYC at Bam on Friday, May 18, 2012. It world premiered at the 2011 Sarasota Film Festival and co-shared the Best Narrative award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival before screening at BAMcinemaFest and many, many more festivals throughout the world. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. Note: This review was first published on June 22, 2011.)

Full disclosure: I first met Alex Ross Perry in the autumn of 2010. We had attended a screening with a mutual friend and he mentioned to me that he was finishing a new film and offered me a look. As a film festival programmer, I was honored and we met for coffee, where he delivered me a DVD, which I promptly filed in my stack of screeners and didn’t get to watch for roughly three months. When I finally did watch The Color Wheel,...

The theatrical poster for the hilarious sibling road trip story "The Color Wheel" has been released.  The film, which won Indiewire's 2011 poll for Best Undistributed Film, stars director Alex Ross Perry and comedian Carlen Altman as frustrated brother and sister, moving her stuff from the house of her ex, her professor. The film is being released by the Cinema Conservancy, starting in Brooklyn's Bam Theater May 18, followed by a tour across America. For more dates, see Indiewire's story on the acquisition. Here is the film's theatrical poster, painted by Perry's girlfriend, Anna Bak-Kvapil, who has a part in the film:...

Alex Ross Perry's sophomore feature "The Color Wheel," which topped Indiewire's 2011 end-of-year poll for best undistributed film, has received distribution from Cinema Conservancy, a new company from Tyler Brodie and Hunter Gray, who will take the film to Brooklyn for its opening week, and follow that run with 15-city run. Co-staring and co-written by Perry and Carlen Altman ("You Wont Miss Me"), "The Color Wheel" is an odd, funny story of a slacker brother and ambitious sister on a mission to move her things from her ex-lover/ex-professor's home. See Indiewire's Futures profile of Perry here. The full press release follows below: Cinema Conservancy is pleased to announce the Us theatrical premiere release of The Color Wheel, the most acclaimed American Independent film of the moment. After a stellar run as an Official Selection in over twenty international festivals, including Festival del Film...

Director: Alex Ross Perry Writers: Alex Ross Perry, Carlen Altman Starring: Alex Ross Perry, Carlen Altman, Kate Lyn Sheil, Ry Russo-Young, Bob Byington, Anna Bak-Kvapil The Color Wheel begins shortly after J.R. (Carlen Altman) -- an aspiring broadcast journalist -- drops out of college because of a harsh break-up with "one of the top broadcast-journalism professors in the entire state." She arrives unannounced at her brother Colin's (Alex Ross Perry) house to guilt him into going along with her on a road trip to her arrogant ex’s (Bob Byington) home to collect her belongings. It should be noted that the oh so snarky siblings are not friends; in fact, they appear to hate each other with fiery passion. We can only assume that J.R. turned to Colin for assistance with this venture because she was too embarrassed to ask any of her friends. Considering her overall lack...

Confirming Alex Ross Perry as an innovative new voice in American cinema, "The Color Wheel" takes viewers on a comedic and cathartic road trip through the diners, motels and thrift stores of the Northeast. Jr (co-writer Carlen Altman) is an aspiring news anchor who has just dropped out of school after an awful, awkward breakup with her professor/lover. She enlists her reluctant brother, Colin (played by Perry), to drive to ...

Confirming Alex Ross Perry as an innovative new voice in American cinema, "The Color Wheel" takes viewers on a comedic and cathartic road trip through the diners, motels and thrift stores of the Northeast. Jr (co-writer Carlen Altman) is an aspiring news anchor who has just dropped out of school after an awful, awkward breakup with her professor/lover. She enlists her reluctant brother, Colin (played by Perry), to drive to ...

Confirming Alex Ross Perry as an innovative new voice in American cinema, "The Color Wheel" takes viewers on a comedic and cathartic road trip through the diners, motels and thrift stores of the Northeast. Jr (co-writer Carlen Altman) is an aspiring news anchor who has just dropped out of school after an awful, awkward breakup with her professor/lover. She enlists her reluctant brother, Colin (played by Perry), to drive to ...

Confirming Alex Ross Perry as an innovative new voice in American cinema, "The Color Wheel" takes viewers on a comedic and cathartic road trip through the diners, motels and thrift stores of the Northeast. Jr (co-writer Carlen Altman) is an aspiring news anchor who has just dropped out of school after an awful, awkward breakup with her professor/lover. She enlists her reluctant brother, Colin (played by Perry), to drive to ...

Confirming Alex Ross Perry as an innovative new voice in American cinema, "The Color Wheel" takes viewers on a comedic and cathartic road trip through the diners, motels and thrift stores of the Northeast. Jr (co-writer Carlen Altman) is an aspiring news anchor who has just dropped out of school after an awful, awkward breakup with her professor/lover. She enlists her reluctant brother, Colin (played by Perry), to drive to ...

I caught Raoul Walsh's scrabbly, bumpy urban romance shamble Me and My Gal (watchable on YouTube) at Film Forum's Essential Pre-Code series this week and couldn't help but notice—and thoroughly enjoy—the ripping dialog, chock full of nicknames, asides, comebacks and comeons, retorts, repulses, slurs and insults. Part of this must be a document of the vernacular of 1932; part, too, must be intense stylization, a heightened hipness-catalog of the cool phrases of the month, all crammed into one sub-80 minute hodgepodge. It's one of the most pleasurable things about these pre-Coders—the forthright, often proud if not a little impudent cashing in on and recording of the Phrases of the Day.

What brought this to mind? I had just seen Alex Ross Perry's second feature The Color Wheel (extensively discussed and praised by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky earlier), and watching the Walsh made me think about Perry and Carlen Altman's acidic script.

Updated through 6/26.

"The golden age of New York moviegoing is now," argues Ao Scott in the New York Times. "Two events in the coming days offer confirmation of this hunch." Tonight "in Brooklyn the BAMcinemaFest opens with Weekend, Andrew Haigh's bracing, present-tense exploration of sex, intimacy and love, the first of 26 features that will play, along with 24 short films, over the next 10 days. And Friday is the official opening night of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, a charming two-screen jewel box carved (by the architect David Rockwell) out of garage and office space at Lincoln Center." He touches on the Museum of the Moving Image and the reRun Gastropub Theater as well, before returning to BAMcinemaFEST: "Not everything in the lineup is quite so perfectly realized as Weekend, but the range and generosity of the sampling make it hard to go wrong. Even the misfires and train wrecks are interesting,...

The Color Wheel is 83 minutes long. About 9 minutes and 40 seconds of those 83 minutes (i.e. roughly 1/9th) are taken up by a single shot, handheld, in which the cameraman (Sean Price Williams) only moves a few feet, but the characters of Colin (co-writer / editor / director Alex Ross Perry) and J.R. (co-writer Carlen Altman), seated on a couch, complete several transformations and a journey inward, piling on dialogue while stripping away their established personas. As a feat of form, performance and screenwriting, it's a fairly obvious showstopper—a great big narrative pirouette, grand jeté and cartwheel rolled into one, which betrays absolutely nothing that the film has (seemingly haphazardly, though actually carefully) established about the characters beforehand, and which accomplishes more in its 9 minutes and 40 seconds than most movies manage nowadays to do in their whole running times. That is: what's distinctive about the shot is not its duration, but...

Age: 26 Hometown: Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania Why He's on Our Radar: Perry's sophomore feature is "The Color Wheel," a black-and-white, 16mm comedy built on awkward laughs. Screening this Sunday at the Bam Cinemafest in its New York premiere, it debuted at the Sarasota Film Festival and won an award for Best Feature at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Perry stars with Carlen Altman ("You Won't Miss Me;" Altman is also ...

Described as a “comedic symphony of disappointment and forgiveness,” Alex Ross Perry’s new feature, The Color Wheel, is written by lead Carlen Altman and Perry, and shot in a lovely, low contrast B&W by Sean Price Williams. Some of you may remember Altman for her role in Ry Russo-Young’s You Won’t Miss Me. And you’ll remember Ross from his feature Impoplex of a couple of years ago. According to the website, the film rests “uncomfortably somewhere between the solipsistic, unrepressed id of late Jerry Lewis, the confrontational pseudo-sexual self loathing of Philip Roth, and the black and white motels, diners and loners of Robert Frank’s America…”

The Color Wheel premieres at the Sarasota Film Festival and will be at BAMcinemaFEST in June. Check out the trailer.

The Color Wheel – Preview from Alex Ross Perry on Vimeo.