I received a suggestion from Dave about how to save the university whilst it nevertheless does its best to destroy itself: 'What about a self-organised 'proletarian university' that runs one night a week in cheap spaces? Given enough willing lecturers, academics could offer one 2-hour lecture of their choice (or in a more co-ordinated way?) once every three or six months. These could be lectures with the aim of introducing people, including beginners, to topics and thinkers of interest. Participants would go away with some ideas, maybe reading lists, to help with further study. Proletarian university could start with an open-ended syllabus entitled 'Proletarian Philosophy'. Who knows after...

Film Independent announced the nominations for this year's Spirit Awards. The award will be celebrating its 25th anniversary this year when the ceremony takes place on Friday, March 5. Precious and The Last Station lead in nominations with five each, including Best Feature and Best Director. Full list of nominations below. BEST FEATURE (500) Days Of Summer Amreeka Precious Sin Nombre The Last Station BEST DIRECTOR Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, A Serious Man Lee Daniels, Precious Cary Joji Fukunaga, Sin Nombre James Gray, Two Lovers Michael Hoffman, The Last Station BEST FIRST FEATURE A Single Man Crazy Heart Easier With Practice Paranormal Activity The Messenger Awards Guide JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD...

by Ryland Walker Knight Today you can go out and buy one of my favorite movies not only of last year but of all time: Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. I'll have more to say over in The Auteurs Notebook shortly, but for here, for now, know now that it's worth every...

Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker won Best Ensemble Performance and Best Feature at IFP's Gotham Independent Film Awards, which was held last night in downtown Manhattan at Cipriani Wall Street. Bigelow was also given one of the evening's Tribute awards. Also receiving Tributes were Natalie Portman, Stanley Tucci and Working Title Films' Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. Other winners include Ry Russo-Young's You Wont Miss Me, which received the Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Award (which is chosen by Filmmaker Magazine); Robert Siegel, director of Big Fan, won Breakthrough Director and Robert Kenner's Food, Inc. won Best Documentary. The full list of winners are below: Best Feature...

by Ryland Walker Knight — Gorgoneion aegis

by Ryland Walker Knight —No exit

• Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip [Joe Layton, 1982] # So dark, so perfect, so hilarious. So hard to be good at standup. You can watch it online over here, but we watched it on cable. We all fell over a lot.
• Mon...

If you've reached the blog through our home page, you will have probably noticed that Filmmakermagazine.com has received a face lift. Gone is the checkerboard of boxes and in its place is a front-page carousel and three-column design that hopefully directs you to our content a lot better. On the home page you'll now find "The Guide," in which we point you to interesting things to read, stream or hyperlink to. There are also links to our most popular content of the month as well as regularly updated Editors' Picks of content we don't want you to overlook. And, of course, there are our Web Exclusives, Director Interviews, Load and Play and original Filmmaker Videos. We've also added a long...

As we head into the quarter finals, it's Italy, Russian, Germany, India, China, Iran, Africa and Japan... all competing in the Auteurs World Cup 2009. Combining two of the world's favorite spectator sports — soccer and arthouse cinema — the good folks at The Auteurs have come up with a fun competition that focuses attention on regions as well as films. It doesn't cost anything to participate, but you have to have seen the films. So, use this opportunity to see Chantal Akerman's Toute une Nuit, Tarkovsky's The Mirror, Bunuel's Los Olvidados, or Moshen Makhmalbaf's A Moment of Innocence.

The Sundance selection will be announced this week, and we'll have it posted here on the blog as soon as it's released. If you are a filmmaker lucky enough to get in, please keep us at Filmmaker informed of all of your publicity and distribution outreach efforts. Many if not most of you will have publicists, and they will be in direct touch with us. But for those of you doing other things in addition to or perhaps instead of conventional publicity, let us know. Particularly, links to Twitter feeds, blogs, RSS updates, etc. are appreciated. As in previous years we'll be building a standalone Sundance page and will make an effort to feature filmmaker-generated content. And, if you are using...