Welcome to District 9. Director Neill Blomkamp turns his sci-fi short "Alive in Joburg" into a full-length feature film - examining xenophobia in an allegory of Apartheid, set in a slum recalling District 6 of Cape Town in South Africa.
posted by crossoverman on Aug 23, 2009 - 135 comments

“The most revolutionary thing is to just love yourself and love what you do. You can't do anything more than that”

A Milwaukee tomboy got a $100 Fisher-Price Pixelvision as a Christmas gift from her dad at age 15. She left high school at age 16, under homophobic pressures, and came out as a lesbian at age 17. Sadie Benning used her kiddiecorder to tell this story, creating a series of intimate short films full of personality, desperation and fantastic hope, and founded on the intimacy of immediacy.

A New Year (1989) - Living Inside (1989) - Me and Rubyfruit (1990)
If Every Girl Had A Diary (1990) - It Wasn't Love 1, 2 (1992)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur on Dec 14, 2008 - 44 comments

Who's Gonna Save My Soul directed by Chris Milk
posted by gwint on Nov 5, 2008 - 37 comments

The Room: The Movie. Triple-threat (actor/writer/director) Tommy Wiseau made his cinematic debut in 2003 with the The Room (see trailer and various scenes), "a blend between a softcore porn flick and a Tennessee Williams stageplay." Wiseau ("who's not just one of the most unusual looking and sounding-with an unidentifiable Eastern European accent-leading men ever to grace the screen, but a narcissist nonpareil whose movie makes Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" seem the apotheosis of cinematic self-restraint...may be something of a first: A movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back-before even 30 minutes have passed." - Variety), allegedly raised $6 million outside Hollywood to cover production and marketing costs of the self-described "black comedy about love, passion, betrayal and lies" (see various rough dress rehersals). Audience members, including comedian David Cross, have been "marveling at the bizarre editing, bad bluescreen, uncomfortably explicit sex scenes and, of course, the enigma of Wiseau himself" as the film played monthly for years in Los Angeles. Available on DVD, diehard "roomies" swear by the theatrical experience, shout out their own commentary, hurl spoons at the screen and singalong to the soundtrack. Some call it "The Rocky Horror of the New Millenium" and stage "Room" parties. If you look at the marketing campaign or survived a screening you might see The Room as "a seminar on how NOT to make a movie." [Inspired by Boing Boing]
posted by boost ventilator on Jun 1, 2006 - 28 comments

A filmmaker and festival director goes on a morning news show to promote his local theater and a traveling flim festival. Totally routine interview until - d'oh! A good reason not to go on tv when you're either super nervous or hungover (Quicktime movie). (via)
posted by billysumday on Nov 9, 2005 - 34 comments

Pine Lake Films
Steven Dempsey (bio) makes gorgeous short nature films (more here) in the wilds around Seattle using a digital videocamera and techniques that give video a film-like appearance. The videos linked on the bio page are also worth viewing.
posted by planetkyoto on Oct 18, 2005 - 10 comments

Update from Holland. After the filmmaker Theo van Gogh's murder by Mohammed Bouyeri, the Dutch creed of tolerance has come under siege.
posted by semmi on Dec 27, 2004 - 12 comments

In the Mood for Rapture. "Forget the completion anxiety that attended Wong Kar-wai's new film 2046 — four years in the gestating, with scenes still being shot a few weeks ago — what 2046 makes unavoidably clear, is that Wong Kar-wai is the most romantic filmmaker in the world. Love, the playwright Terry Johnson wrote, is something you fall in. Wong's films make art out of that vertiginous feeling. They soar as their characters plummet". It is a sequel of sorts to Wong's In the Mood for Love. It is the story of a writer: in his novel, a mysterious train left for 2046 every once in a while. Everyone who went there had the same intention: to recapture their lost memories. (more inside)
posted by matteo on May 24, 2004 - 21 comments

"Hitler must have committed suicide after he found a skinny Jewish kid from Brooklyn stomped on his top hat." The story of a Jewish G.I. that stole a tophat from Hitler's Munich apartment is the latest documentary vehicle by noted independent filmmaker, Jeff Krulik. Famous for "Heavy Metal Parking Lot", Krulik will be viewing "Hitler's Hat" at the MOMA in December. You can read current interviews with the artist here and here, or view his movies in quicktime and realplayer format here. Unfamiliar with his work? Start with these two shorts.
posted by machaus on Oct 29, 2002 - 5 comments