Tag Archives | Filmmaking

Spanish Cult Horror Director Jesus ‘Jess’ Franco Dies At 82

By on April 8, 2013 in News 0

Beginning in 1959, filmmaker Jess Franco walked the line between art and exploitation, dreaming up underground classics that combined shock, sex, perversion, the surreal, and groovy soundtracks in groundbreaking fashion. 1970′s Vampyros Lesbos, below, established the cinematic trope of lesbian vampires. Via FEARnet:

Euro-cult great Jess Franco has passed away after producing nearly 200 films. A unique filmmaker, Franco’s work fits in a category all its own, combining art, the erotic, and the macabre into titles like Lorna the Exorcist, The Awful Dr. Orloff, Succubus, Venus in Furs and of course, the eponymous Vampyros Lesbos. While Franco isn’t to everyone’s taste, he certainly stretched the definition of erotic horror cinema.

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Hollywood Now Needs Censorship Consultants In China

By on January 15, 2013 in News 4

Two of the booming occupations of the future: government mole who weeds out and reports dangerous movies and cultural works, and consultant who helps creators navigate censorship standards. The Atlantic Wire writes:

China’s censorship has become a huge headache for Hollywood lately, as movie studios struggle to break in to the world’s second largest film market. Every single film bound for Chinese theaters has to make it past China’s all-powerful State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) whose guidelines for what is and isn’t acceptable is more or less subjective and entirely unpredictable. All the studios can do is hire consultants who are familiar with the ins and outs of censorship in China and hope for the best.

Bringing in consultants does help movie studios frame projects in a censor-friendly manner, but after filming begins the filmmakers have to be very careful not to deviate from the plan. SARFT sends spies to the set to make sure everything is going as planned.

… Read the rest

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The Birth Of Surveillance Video Filmmaking

By on May 8, 2012 in News 0

A trailer for the 2007 film Faceless, which includes Tilda Swinton in its cast and is comprised only of CCTV camera footage. The United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act allows people to access stored information on themselves, including surveillance video. Director and star Manu Luksch has explained that as a filmmaker, she realized it was pointless to bring her own camera since she and the other actors were already being filmed all of the time:

FACELESS was produced under the rules of the ‘Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers’. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation.

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A Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age

By on April 13, 2012 in News 22

Jason SilvaRoss Andersen writes in the Atlantic:

I want to introduce you to Jason Silva, but first I want you to watch this short video that he made. It will only take two minutes, and watching it will give you a good idea if it’s worth your time to read the extensive interview that follows. If you ever wondered what would happen if a young Timothy Leary was wormholed into 2012, complete with a film degree and a Vimeo account, you have your answer: Jason Silva. If Silva, who was born in Venezuela, seems to have natural screen presence, it’s because he’s no stranger to media; he worked for six years as a host at Current TV before leaving the network last year to become a part-time filmmaker and full-time walking, talking TEDTalk.

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Free Exclusive: Clark, A Gonzomentary

By on March 27, 2012 in News 5

Clark: A Gonzomentary“This lunatic ‘Clark’ has Adonis DNA in his veins,” —Charlie Sheen

“This movie is a complete trainwreck. And I mean that in the best way imaginable.”  —Entertainment Weekly

Clark: A Gonzomentary explores the struggles of Clark, an outsider artist who struggles to gain a following for his phallic art series, “Body.”

The fourth wall is broken in about a thousand pieces as the documentarian himself is pulled into the nightmarish downward spiral that concludes this psychedelic-soaked commentary on art in a capitalistic society.… Read the rest

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Sex, Lies & Media: New Wave of Activists Challenge Notions of Beauty

By on March 10, 2012 in News 4

Miss RepresentationEmanuella Grinberg writes on CNN:

Here’s the fantasy: A half-naked woman lies across a couch, lips pouty and cleavage prominent as her sultry gaze implores you to buy this bottle of perfume.

The reality: Women make up 51% of the United States yet only 17% of seats in the House of Representatives. They’re 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs and 7% of directors in the top 250 grossing films.

What’s the connection? We live in a sexualized society where the gap between fantasy and reality is vast and harmful, director and activist Jennifer Siebel-Newsom says. “Women are aspiring to do great things in leadership, yet the glass ceiling is still there because of the way media depict women,” Siebel-Newsom said. “It influences our culture and dictates our gender norms and values.”

Siebel-Newsom’s documentary, Miss Representation, is the latest cinematic foray in the movement to challenge portrayals of beauty in “the media,” a term used to describe all forms of mass communication, from the internet, TV, film, magazines, radio and advertising …

Read More: CNN… Read the rest

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Eat The Academy

By on February 26, 2012 in News 6

On Preventing the Ceremonies of Dumb People in Hollywood From Being a Burden on Their Parent Companies or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public

Kill screen from the Cartoon Network video game Orphan Feast

Kill screen from the Cartoon Network video game Orphan Feast

“I am giving an account of what…ought…to be.”
― William Daniel Defoe, A Friendly Proposal for Foundlings and Bastard Children Moll Flanders

Much like the birth of Christ, historians of film rarely agree on when it happened: the birth of cinema, that is. Perhaps even more controversial, however, is the question of paternity. Who’s your daddy, indeed?

Francophiles will forever laud Méliès, Teutons will zealously campaign for Murnau, the Russians <3 Eisenstein and proud Americans some of D.W. Griffith’s first, err, exploits. And yet, no matter the geographic genesis of film, one fact about its origin remains clear across the national board: it was, in fact, a silent birth. #Scientology.

If radio had delivered the psychologically bewildering disembodied voice (i.e.… Read the rest

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Dau: The Biggest, Most Insane Movie In Cinema History

By on November 2, 2011 in News 10

movie-set-ate-itself-628From GQ, Michael Idov visits the cult-like set of the Ukrainian film Dau — an enclosed bubble where thousands of actors have been living the lives of their characters 24 hours a day, ever since production began in 2006, using Soviet passports and money, in a world that is exactly as things were in the 1950s, while their real lives recede into the past:

Five years ago, a relatively unknown (and unhinged) director began one of the wildest experiments in film history. Armed with total creative control, he invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home.

The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town of 1.4 million in the country’s east, making…something.

… Read the rest

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