Today is the last day of Oscar nominations voting, which brings an end to “phase one” of campaigning. With the noms being announced next Thursday, January 22—at the ungodly hour of 5 a.m. PT—there will be barely enough time to relax before things kick into full gear once again. Now, I can’t imagine being an Academy member and waiting a whole week to fill out my ballot. But unlike us pundits, most voters haven’t spent the last few months obsessively tracking dozens of movies they did not work on. Academy members are hopefully busy making other movies! I can also […]

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The Big Sky Documentary Film Festival announces the lineup for its 23rd annual incarnation today, and Filmmaker has an exclusive early look at the 46 features and 69 short and mini docs slated for inclusion. Montana’s largest annual cinematic event will roar back to life in Missoula from February 13 through 22, and this year’s program features a slew of world premieres, along with a large handful of films set to debut at Sundance later this month, among them Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever, Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s Jaripeo, Rachael J. Morrison’s Joybubbles, and Sam Green’s The Oldest Person in […]

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Carolyn Michelle is an actress, producer, educator, and entrepreneur. Her credits include: Brilliant Minds, And Just Like That, The Chi, Russian Doll, House of Cards, and the role of Vanessa, opposite Kathleen Chalfant’s Ruth, in Sarah Friedland’s celebrated indie film Familiar Touch. On this episode, she talks about her deep roots with that project, and what she told Friedland she needed to bring that character to life. She takes us back to her earliest days as an actor, and the mentor whose influence is still felt today. Carolyn has served as co-director of Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Mentorship Lab, and […]

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If awards season is useful for anything, it’s to provide a distraction. Bombarded as we are by bleak headlines, there’s something soothing about watching a lot of very famous people collect trophies and crack jokes for a few hours. At the 83rd Annual Golden Globes, host Nikki Glaser set the tone for a fun celebration. But there was substance too. Those of us looking for clues to Oscar outcomes (I don’t mean Polymarket bettors, but, hey, they’re welcome too) were left with plenty to chew on.Warner Bros.’ One Battle After Another continued its hot streak, taking best picture (musical or […]

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In 2017, for the 25th anniversary of Filmmaker, we commissioned a radical redesign and also initiated a new upfront section: Reflections. For four issues we published pieces looking back at the history of the magazine as well as ones that meditated anew on its enduring concerns, such as struggles of early career filmmakers, the changing models of independent producing, the role of print magazines in a digital culture, and the shifting definitions of the word “independent.” When our anniversary year was over, I decided to keep the section, reasoning that “reflections” didn’t have to just refer to the past; these […]

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As I devoted more time and energy to the Filmmaker newsletter throughout the last decade-plus, I’d often find myself in some form of dialogue with producer, strategist and consultant Brian Newman. His invaluable Sub-genre newsletter arrives on Thursdays (now, biweekly), mine on Fridays, and, like me, he’ll often comment on the production and distribution challenges facing independent filmmakers in an increasingly commercialized, politically cautious and algorithmically-driven media landscape. So, many Fridays, I have found myself trying to add something new to Brian’s erudite musings on the topic of the week, often defaulting to just throwing him a link. But our […]

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I first met producer, director and non-profit executive Esther Robinson in the early aughts, when she was Film/Video Program Director at Creative Capital, a still invaluable organization that not only funds bold work but helps artists in their paths towards overall sustainability. Later, in 2006, I selected her for our 25 New Faces while she was in production on her luminous documentary A Walk Into the Sea, about her uncle, Danny Lyons, a filmmaker at Warhol’s Factory. In the years since, Robinson has been a contributor here, conducting the occasional interview but most notably writing columns that spoke uncomfortable but […]

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Steam pouring from manhole covers, the neon-lights of 42nd street seen through rain-streaked taxicab windows, phalanxes of cops spied from tenement rooftops as they sweep a city block — David C. Roberts’s Song of My City distills the visual rushes of a score of 1970s and early ’80s New York City-set film classics into a 15-minute city symphony of sorts. Drawing inspiration from 1920s pictures such as Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, Roberts has pulled shots from Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Across 110th Street, The Warriors in order to capture not just ’70s New York but the […]

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For the first time since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson has made a movie with a contemporary setting. To do so, he used a film format dormant for the last half century. Anderson’s One Battle After Another continues a resurgence of VistaVision that now includes The Brutalist and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and Bugonia. The format, which uses 8-perf 35mm traveling through the camera horizontally rather than vertically to create a larger negative, gained popularity as a non-anamorphic widescreen alternative in the mid-1950s. It was used for everything from Biblical epics (The Ten Commandments) to musicals (White Christmas) to […]

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When I realized I’d be laid off (via: restructuring) from the publication I’ve worked at for 11+ years, I went back through the print archives to round up work I was proud of as an interviewer and commissioning editor. It holds up better than I hoped: I came out swinging in my second print issue with what I’m reasonably sure was the first non-video, written-out English-language interview with Roberto Minervini for Stop the Pounding Heart; his next film, The Other Side, is a defining work of the decade. There’s a solid mixture of European arthouse known quantities (Arnaud Desplechin, Mia […]

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