“I’m so happy,” producer Park Tae-joon said at the Jeonju Cinema Project awards, one of the ceremonies indicating the festival was drawing to a close. “Every day I drank […] festival drinking.” Park’s admission was funny and honest, the kind of thing no one on-stage at an American festival would say even/especially if it were true (bad optics). But in fact, Jeonju was one of the most temperate festivals I’ve ever attended, with official parties ending by 10:30 or 11 and many choosing to go back and sleep after that. They could, if they liked, go to Soseul, unofficially dubbed […]

The post Jeonju 2024: Walker, A Chronicle in Spirals, Puan first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

MEMORY, the L.A.-based production and now distribution company featured in Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list announced today the release plans for New Strains, a microbudget, camcorder-shot pandemic comedy from a pair of filmmakers, Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan, also featured on our list. The film will screen at the Roxy Cinema in New York (June 13), Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg (June 15 & 16), and Los Angeles’ Now Instant Image Hall (June 21 & 22), with a North American digital release to follow on Friday, July 19. In New Strains, a pandemic — not necessarily COVID-19 — strands a couple, Kallia […]

The post MEMORY Announces Summer Theatrical and Digital Release Dates for Microbudget Pandemic Comedy New Strains first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Slamdance announced last week that the Slamdance Film Festival will move from Park City, Utah, where it’s been since its founding in 1995, to Los Angeles beginning with next year’s edition. The dates will shift slightly to February 20-26, and the move will afford the festival bigger and more professional screening facilities, including at Landmark Theatres and the DGA Theater complex. As Slamdance co-founder and President Peter Baxter notes in our interview below, Slamdance has long had a Los Angeles presence, through both its year-round office but also through its summer AGBO+Slamdance Summer Showcase. About the move, filmmakers and AGBO […]

The post “When We First Started It Was a Variation of the Salon des Refusés…”: Slamdance President Peter Baxter on Accessibility, Community and Moving to L.A. first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

In The Last Stop in Yuma County, an empty pump at an isolated desert gas station strands a collection of characters (including a pair of bank robbers and knife salesman Jim Cummings) at the adjoining roadside diner. Written around the standing sets available at Four Aces Movie Ranch in Palmdale, California, the feature debut from director Francis Galluppi was partially funded by the sale of producer James Claeys’ house. That provided enough budget for a 20-day shooting schedule, a cast of familiar genre faces (including Richard Brake, Gene Jones and Barbara Crampton), a few epic needle drops and one talented […]

The post “Dolly and Slider Inside, Steadicam Outside”: DP Mac Fisken on The Last Stop in Yuma County first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Jeonju International Film Festival, which has become over the last two decades one of the must-go fests in East Asia, prides itself on its innovative curation. The 25th edition in 2024 was packed with film folk, especially from East and Southeast Asia. They were making their way through a thicket of information on 232 films, almost half of which were Korean. (Translators helped with Q&A sessions, and with interviews, and films were typically subtitled in English.) In their spare time, attendees were wandering through historic streets (Jeonju is the origin city of Korea’s great Joseon empire, familiar to viewers of […]

The post Jeonju International Film Festival: Cutting-Edge Films in an Ancient Capital first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

This year’s 31st edition of Hot Docs (April 25-May 5) was chockfull of drama, both onscreen and off. And while there were no protests (such as at IDFA) nor riot police dispatched (see Thessaloniki) there was quite an upheaval in the run up to the event itself. Which then led to much speculation as to the health and future of North America’s largest nonfiction fest. Indeed, before the event even began 10 programmers abruptly resigned and the artistic director stepped down. (Not exactly the type of news you want upstaging your press conference to unveil Dawn Porter’s Vandross biopic Luther: Never […]

The post Euro Division: Hot Docs 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

It’s not necessarily that, in a pathetic version of Henry Hill’s childhood desire to be a gangster, I’ve “always wanted to attend a pitch forum.” But I’ve admittedly been curious to see how this particular part of the festival-film apparatus works and never had ready access; impelled by both that and ties of friendship, I went on my third day at this year’s Jeonju International Film Festival to the Jeonju Cinema Project pitching panel. Fellow Filmmaker writer and pal Blake Williams was one of the seven projects—four Korean, three international, with one finalist selected from each category—selected to pitch at […]

The post Jeonju 2024: Cinema Projects Past and Future first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia.  “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused […]

The post “This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

The American Pavilion announced today the 36 short films selected for its 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase, sponsored this year by the non-profit Gold House. From the press release: The 2024 showcase features 36 official selection films in four showcases – Student Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker Short Films & Documentaries; Emerging Filmmaker LGBTQ+ films, and an Alumni Showcase. The 2024 selections include International films from Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sevap/Mitzvah), China (A Roadside Banquet), Panama (Ojue), Colombia (Bogotá Story), the United Kingdom (Under the Blue), Mexico (Balam), and Ukraine (Ukrainians in Exile). Female directors are again well represented with more […]

The post The American Pavilion Announces 2024 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

“I love the feeling of the room in a packed house watching a good movie,” says writer, director and actor Al Warren on the phone from Los Angeles. “I want to model my career on that. It’s become a priority for how I approach my work. How will it be shown to an audience in-person? When I see a friend who has put their soul into the making and completion of their movie and then they don’t really have any plans on how they want to show it, I am confused.”   At this moment, when the future of independent film […]

The post “It’s About the Energy You Bring to the Life of Your Movie, Not Just About the Movie Itself”: Al Warren on Dogleg’s Six-Year Journey first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.