Texas

Making Room

marla — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:00:00 -0500

I’m the director of the low-budget psychological thriller Room (2005), which premiered at Sundance and had its international debut in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes in May. Room was produced by The 7th Floor along with Jim McKay and Michael Stipe’s C-Hundred Film Corp. Our four-week, twenty-four-day production was equally divided between two weeks in Texas and two weeks in New York City. The film centers on the mid-life crisis of a bingo hall employee and mother of two in her late 40s who leaves her family to follow migraine-induced, debilitating visions.

Keeping it Real Weird

marla — Sat, 01 May 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Long gone are the days when Austin, Texas was merely a breeding-ground for progressive types, presidential hopefuls, and music junkies. As home to the South-by-Southwest Film Festival (SXSW), Austin has become the independent filmmaker’s Eden. As first time filmmaker Allison Berg explains it, "I thought [SXSW] was one of the best festivals for my film to get into . . . I think you have maybe a more laid-back crowd, but a great attendance in getting your film going.

Double Vision

marla — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:00:00 -0600

The so-called “Film Brat” generation of the middle to late 1970s has been blamed for, or credited with, many things regarding independent filmmaking—from sparking off a studio-sanctioned Golden Age (Scorsese, Coppola) to ushering in a studio-sanctioned Dark Age (Lucas, Spielberg).

Cave Paintings, Churches, and Rooftops

michele — Sun, 01 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0500

While the Lumiere brothers originally screened their films in a Paris café, the term microcinema was not coined until 1991 with the naming of Rebecca Barten and David Sherman’s Total Mobile Home Microcinema. Since then microcinema has come to define a broad range of small screening spaces specializing in moving image media that hovers out of range of national distributors, air conditioned art houses, and sleek museums. The hermit crabs of screening series, microcinemas claim abandoned spaces, creating surprising, inspiring, and unlikely homes for media.

The Trailer for "Goliath"

mike — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:01:12 -0500

The Trailer for "Crawford"

mike — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 23:55:49 -0500

Blogging SXSW: Will these films find an audience?

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:20:30 -0500

Over halfway through the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth, the film's subject, the enigmatic writer Harlen Ellison, nods towards the camera and mentions that if this film is seen, if at all, it will most likely be on a television screen. This was met with chuckles in the audience because at the time his face took up almost all of the theater's two story screen.

Blogging SXSW: Opening Weekend

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:31:27 -0500

The sheer number of features, documentaries and shorts, not to mention the conference panels, being shown at SXSW 2008 is more than a little overwhelming. The multi-colored grid for the nine days of this film festival is a periodic table of world premieres and special screenings.