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Five Thoughts on Independent Filmmaking from SXSW Film/Interactive

Five Thoughts on Independent Filmmaking from SXSW Film/Interactive

erickohn
By Eric Kohn posted 8 months ago
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It’s no coincidence that SXSW’s Film and Interactive conferences take place simultaneously, before the hefty barrage of musicians rock and roll into town for the second half of the festival. With Internet-based tools no longer merely an option for all filmmakers to get a handle on but a requirement, the usual discourse on industry issues like distribution and marketing belong squarely within the progressive region of the interactive conference. Even certain Film conference panels not directly advertised as taking the film/interactive crossover approach still had to address a number of questions about the evolution of the industry in the face of new media paradigms. Here’s a snapshot look at some of the more potent themes that emerged at the Austin Convention Center last week. At least, these are the ones that stood out on my notepad; feel free to share yours in the comments section below.

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Alec Baldwin, Naomi Wolf Talk ‘The End of America’

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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Before the Hamptons Film Festival this weekend, I wrote a post about The End of America, a documentary based on Naomi Wolf’s book of the same name, which I was interested in not least because of its unusual distribution strategy: it will premiere on SnagFilms tomorrow, before debuting theatrically in New York in December before becoming available on DVD in January. I’ll have a more review-y take on the film tomorrow. In the meantime, an anonymous (but angry!) SpoutBlog reader commented on his/her experience at the film’s first screening in the Hamptons:

First, the film was late to arrive and so we sat for an hour listening to live commentary from Alec Baldwin and Naomi “Preach to You” Watts [sic]. Then the film played and we had to hear it all over again. Naomi is out for one thing… to sell books.

I can’t speak to the motives of Naomi Wolf *or* Naomi Watts, but I can confirm that some aspect of this comment is accurate: the screening did start late, because there was an accident on the highway between Manhattan and East Hampton, and the master tape was stuck in traffic with co-director Annie Sundberg. But most of those in attendance seemed to get some value out the improvised program which preceded the movie, in which Alec Baldwin moderated a conversation about The End of America’s themes with Wolf, co-director Ricki Stern, and ACLU rep Jameel Jaffer. I was there, and I recorded the bulk of the conversation and had it transcribed. That transcript, edited for clarity, can be found after the jump.

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Batman is a Criminal. BlogNosh 07/21/08

Karina Longworth
By Karina Longworth posted 1 year ago
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  • Is Bruce Wayne, as John Carney wonders at Dealbreaker, “exactly the ‘better class of criminal’ that the Joker describes”? Spoileriffic analysis of Batman’s white-collar misdeeds follows.
  • Mike Jones weighs in on the sale of indieWIRE to SnagFilms. “Despite the owners’ (which included myself, to a very small extent) desire to sell under the right terms, indieWIRE seemed destined to be independent.” Buuut…”The difficult truth about being independent is that it’s mostly for the young.”
  • Glenn “Lists are Bullshit” Kenny offers 14 numbered thoughts on Mamma Mia! He begins by contemplating “the comingled semens of Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth competing in the fallopian tubes of Meryl Streep”; he ends with the admission, “I kind of want to have sex with Christine Baranski.”