Thanks to everyone who came out tonight for the first in our series, "A New World: A User's Guide for Filmmakers and Audiences" at the IFC Center. The speaker was Jon Reiss, who gave listeners an accelerated yet detailed overview of his thoughts on DIY distribution and what a theatrical release means today. (Some of these thoughts can be found in this article in Filmmaker.) There was a lot to take away, but here are a couple of things that impressed themselves on me. 1. During the development of your project, think of five specific audiences your film will appeal to. Jon said that too many people think of their audiences too broadly, like, "I think my film will appeal to women between the...

After a great week of discussions on our Weekly Player forum, Jon Reiss will be at the IFC Center tonight in NYC to conduct our first in a series of events at the Center on new, digital-era ways of financing, distributing, marketing and building an audience for independent films. Reiss's seminar will teach how to create unique distribution and marketing plans for independent films. He will also be selling copies of his new book Think Outside the Box (Office): The Ultimate Guide to Film Distribution and Marketing in the Digital Era. Over at indieWIRE today the site has published a speech Reiss gave recently at at the CPH:DOX Forum in Copenhagen on new distribution methods. Click here to...

Tonight at 7pm we will continue our Meet The Filmmaker series at the Apple Store in SoHo (103 Prince St) with a discussion with The Road director John Hillcoat. Based on the Cormac McCarthy best-selling novel, the film stars Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as a father and son trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. For the Fall 2008 issue we were granted an exclusive visit to Hillcoat's edit room to talk to him as he put the finishing touches on the film. “The material doesn‘t shy away from the worst aspects of humanity, yet what‘s unusual about it is that it also has a sentimental love story at the heart of it, in a world that‘s dark and brutal although believable,” says...

note: not official picture! SIXTH HISTORICAL MATERIALISM ANNUAL CONFERENCE Another World is Necessary: Crisis, Struggle and Political Alternatives 27 - 29 November 2009 Birkbeck College and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Thornhaugh Street, London XC1H OXG REGISTER NOW...

bry Ryland Walker Knight —...on the rich kids.

by Ryland Walker Knight [The Resnais series playing at the PFA this month and next is part of a broader, traveling retrospective with a concurrent run in Chicago at the Gene Siskel Film Center and a proposed stop at the newly renovated Museum of the Moving Image in early 2010.] Some might call Stavinsky... a lavish lark. I called it a "goof" walking out. But its easy charisma, rubbed off Belmondo's debonair superstardom, does not devalue its interest in history (histories, stories) or, again, memory. Though there is no recovery here. The past doesn't loom for Sacha-Alex-Serge; he won't allow it. However, for that matter, he can't out run it. The ellipses matter at...

by Ryland Walker Knight —All things shining. Most of the week was spent not watching movies. But, as happens with an active calendar, the wait for the weekend brought me some special sights made richer by my recess. More Resnais, mostly, but also some time for some TV comedy. If you...

Forget the Oscars, as a producer, I can die now. (You need to watch both clips, and the first one especially to the end.) Original Video- More videos at TinyPic Seriously, when Harmony Korine forwarded me these links, I thought they were great and couldn't stop laughing. And then I thought about what we producers go through when trying to obtain music for our films. I can't remember how much we paid for the music rights for the Roy Orbison version of the Patsy Cline song "Crying" that closes out Gummo, but I'm sure it was a lot less than we'd be charged for it today now that licensors have jacked up their rates to compensate for declining record sales. I think it can be safely said, though...

Donald Richie is in a Tokyo hospital recuperating from pneumonia. If you’ve read a book on Japanese cinema or listened to a Criterion commentary, you probably know his voice. And if you admire Ozu or Kurosawa or Mizoguchi or Kinoshita or Oshima or virtually any other Japanese director, you have...