Categories
These Are Those Things

Shadowy “Found” Footage Makes Great Noir

I really love this short “Dans L’Ombre” (In the Shadows) directed by Fabrice Mathieu. It won the Honorable Mention at the Disposable Film Festival 2012. I was a judge and I think it is really smartly done.

I look forward to seeing more by this director.

Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Lil’ Aliens

Categories
Truly Free Film

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards Announces Tickets, Judges & Schedule

2012 VIMEO FESTIVAL + AWARDS PROGRAM GATHERS THE GREATS TO EXPLORE WHAT’S NEXT FOR CREATIVE VIDEO

Tickets Now Available; Awards Voting Open To The Public;
Complete List of Judges Released, Including Peter Greenaway, Mike Figgis, Casey Neistat And Alana Blanchard
Vimeo®, an operating business of IAC [NASDAQ: IACI], today announced its program for the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards, featuring conversations with industry leaders; educational workshops for beginners, enthusiasts, and professionals; and a wide range of video screenings. Vimeo also released the complete list of Awards judges and opened up shortlist voting to the public.
“There has never been a better time to be creator,” said Jeremy Boxer, Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards. “The Internet has created a leveled playing field, so that now everyone can fundraise, shoot, edit, and distribute their projects. What’s next for online video? Well, that’s what we will be exploring at this year’s festival with the help of our awesome speakers. We have designed the festival to have something for everyone from any level of experience. Now that the barrier to entry has come crashing down perhaps we can find new creators with ideas yet to be seen and encourage so many others to start using their imagination so they too can start to create.”
The Vimeo Festival + Awards will take place on June 7-9, 2012, in New York City at the Vimeo HQ and surrounding area. Film and video luminaries such as Mike Figgis, Ted Hope, Kyle Cooper, and Lucy Walker, will gather to address critical themes such as storytelling, creativity, building an audience and fundraising. Vimeo will host screenings of the winning videos and premiere work including Limbo, a new film by 2010 Grand Prize Winner Eliot Rausch, made using grant money from his award.
Festival highlights include:
Attendees can participate in a variety of workshops that cater to all ability levels — including:
·         Animation Creation Station, Audience Participation with Andy Bruntel, Sean Pecknold and Kirsten Lepore;
·         Beginning for Beginners with Vimeo’s Dan Hayek;
·         Digi Bootcamp – Featuring The Sloth Invasion! with Lucy Cooke and Shooting People’s Ingrid Kopp;
·         Impossible Things On A Shoestring with Josh Ruben and Vincent Peone;
·         Proactive Storytelling Instead Of Reactive Coverage with Stillmotion;
·         The Right Camera for the Right Job with Philip Bloom;
·         Sound: The Other Half Of Your Video with Michael Coleman;
·         The Self-Expression Tsunami with Casey Neistat;
·         Vimeo Tips & Tricks;
·         Vimeo Developer Workshops; and many more.
The event will kick off with the Vimeo Awards show, held on June 7 at NYU Skirball Center, where Vimeo will recognize the best videos online by revealing the 2012 winners. The show will combine innovative projection, staging, sound, and sensory-reactive technologies with live performances and special surprises.
Attendees of the Vimeo Festival can choose from a two-day ticket package (including access to Closing Night Party) for $60, a one-day package for $40, or a screening pass for $20. A limited number of tickets to the Awards show are available for $25 each atvimeo.com/awards/tickets.
Newly announced judges for the 2012 Vimeo Awards include professional surfer Alana Blanchard in the Action Sports category, acclaimed directors/producers Mike FiggisPeter Greenaway in Experimental, and Casey Neistat in Narrative. See the complete list of judges atvimeo.com/awards/judges.
In addition, the public-voting phase for the Vimeo Awards begins today. Video enthusiasts throughout the world are encouraged to vote online at www.vimeoawards.com. Each category will be evaluated by a mix of industry experts in that category and the category winner from the 2010 Awards, taking into account the community vote. Voting closes on April 30, 2012.
For additional information, visit the Vimeo Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Vimeo) or follow Vimeo on Twitter (@Vimeo and @VimeoFestAwards). The official hashtag for the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards is #VimeoFest.
Categories
These Are Those Things

We Will Never Know What It Really Feels Like

But from here, in front of my computer screen, outer space paired with the right soundtrack feels so fucking free and hopeful. There’s so much of it and an infinite possibility of what still is to come. Wow. I love this colossal world and all it might still become.

Categories
Uncategorized

Time To Teach My Pet Some New Tricks

It’s not enough to just run and fetch.

Come back next week and I will have my pet rapping and break dancing. Forget about a dog on skateboard or a cat on a piano. What is spectacular is our pet is bearded dragon.

Categories
Truly Free Film

Film Society at Lincoln Center and Double Hope Films Present: Indie Night Screening Series — CARRÉ BLANC — Wednesday May 2nd

This will be our 3rd Indie Night at Film Society Of Lincoln Center, and although I have been programming movies for you for close to three years now, I have not yet been able to bring you any sci-fi films.  That changes with this offering, and, man, it's been worth the wait.

When first features work, as this one does, they can be remarkable displays, often representing what the director has long dreamed of expressing, free of the general self-censorship that market considerations bring.  On their first feature,  creators often feel a far greater pressure to demonstrate what their authorial voice represents; perhaps it is because of this pressure that it is hard to find true confidence and discipline on display in many early works.  But, holy cow, that is that not the case with Jean-Baptiste Leonetti's CARRÉ BLANC (White Square) — yet a further proof of the colossal wave of international greatness that is defining cinema today.

Whereas America's corporately engineered cinema implicitly lusts for a dystopian future while it delivers pat excuses of psychological backstory (instead of character complexity), empty images full of flash (but devoid of real-world emotion, politics, ethics, or meaning), surface level editing (that removes any understanding of place), a willingness to introduce new narrative elements solely to advance the plot, & shock  (for sensation not understanding), cinema worthy of the term art — like CARRÉ BLANC — does quite the opposite.   If you are looking  for an antidote to THE HUNGER GAMES or even want to see a true alternative, join us.  Some people may call CARRÉ BLANC too tense or brooding, dark or bleak — but for me it is nothing short of exhilarating, heartfelt, electrifying. thoughtful, and fully capable of maintaining a sense of humor and fun in these dark times.  

Leonetti's nameless and brutal totalitarian regime is far more scary than what we've been delivered as of late precisely because it seems like a future we not only could have had, but still might.  CARRÉ BLANC is delivered in haunting precise images, sounds, and actions. Full of legitimate suspense, references and riffs, from Stanley Milgram's social science experiments to classic sic-fi cinema like SOYLENT GREEN & SILENT RUNNING, we are given a world that extends far beyond the narrative's confines, where constant threat of violence indicates the begging need for revolution — be it of the society and it's practices or that of the individual's heart and mind.  At the heart of CARRÉ BLANC remains a love story, capturing both the trauma and shared mission that modern society needs to breed honest love and it does this with us, not in spite of us.

This is a world of cinema that I want more of: sci-fi for adults, expressing ideas while maintaining a discipline, love, and even sense of humor for composition, and an appreciative commitment to both restraint and excess — the ying/yang that makes each element truly sing.  CARRÉ BLANC is a film that benefits from its financial limitations, enhancing its art with imagination, while remaining committed to cinema's core attributes of image, sound, & time (composition, juxtaposition, pace).  It raises the bar for what we should demand from all cinema.

CARRÉ BLANC is the type of film that summons your memories of great works by the great directors, and it doesn't suffer for it.  BRAZIL, 2001, SOLARIS, THX 1138.  It made me giddy in the same way that Aronofsky's PI & Jone's MOON did, in that I knew a major new director arrived, and one that would take me to places I myself would never imagine, yet once arrived, would forever dream (not always pleasantly!) about.

Order tickets: www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/carre-blanc

If the following review doesn't make you order a ticket right now then you clearly are not the audience for the film: www.dailyfilmdose.com/2011/09/tiff-2011-carre-blabc.html

"George Orwell as filtered through Andrei Tarkovsky" — Todd Brown / Twitch.com

And more: smellslikescreenspirit.com/2011/09/carre-blanc-review/

Watch the trailer here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3X4YW50Ptk

And please come see the film Wednesday May 2nd at 8:00 PM at the Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Wed, May 2

8:00 PM

Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center

144 W. 65TH St

New York, NY 10023

Take a break and come join me, director Jean-Baptiste Leonetti, and some of his team at Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “Indie Night”.

Most sincerely, and forever hopeful about film,

Ted



Categories
Bowl Of Noses

Build It And They Will Come (Thanks To The Internet!)

Caine is a nine year old boy who built his own cardboard arcade. He only had one customer but he did not let that stop him. One day, everything changed…

Visit the site for Caine’s Arcade: http://cainesarcade.com/
And give a little something to Caine’s scholarship fund.

I can’t help but think that this only a moment of minutes before Chase or some other thief masquerading as an institution steals this lovely short and makes it into a commercial without paying the originators (like they did with the Brooklyn Space Program).