I had the privilege of being on the Sterling Short Film Jury at SILVERDOCS, along with Angela Tucker and Bryan Stamp. The films were superb, Angela and Bryan were fantastic fellow jurors and Sky Sitney and the entire SILVERDOCS staff did a really impressive job this year. We awarded the shorts prize to 12 Notes Down by Andreas Koefoed, a beautiful and moving portrait of talent, music and adolescence. We also felt compelled to give an honorary mention to Michael Angus and Murray Fredericks for the cinematic Salt, which follows photographer Fredericks as he works on his lonely and awesome (I mean this in the literal sense) photos in the remote salt flats of Australia.

Other big winners were October Country by Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher (good friends and super-talented filmmakers) and Mugabe and the White African by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson.  Congrats to Luciano Blotta for winning a music documentary award for Riseup, a very accomplished and enjoyable film about contemporary reggae mucians in Jamaica that I really hope more people will get the chance to see. You can see the full list of winners here. Audience awards went to The Cove and 12 Notes Down.

Here are some photos from my adventures in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Albert Maysles is honored at the Guggenheim Symposium

Debbie Zimmerman, Simon Kilmurry and Danielle DiGiacomo

AJ Schnack shows how it’s done. King of Karaoke Michael Lerman is behind him.

Trish Dalton and Brendan Canty enjoy nuclear drinks

The audience sing along

The rocking short film jury at the awards ceremony: me, Angela Tucker, Bryan Stamp

Juror Margaret Brown flanked by October Country award-winners Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri

Ion gets political with the ladeeeeeees…

…while Pamela Cohn shares a moment with Obama

Yoav Shamir opens a bottle of bubbly for us

Michael Palmieri, Sandi DuBowski and Donal Mosher show me their tonsils

This is a post about the recent and very successful edition of SILVERDOCS by Trish Dalton, filmmaker, Shooting People member, and all round amazing person.

Trish riding the Bolt bus back to NYC wearing her newly acquired and very fetching cowboy hat.

I just got back from my first Silverdocs.  My primary objective was to visit filmmakers from Canada and Isreal, who I’m collaborating with, and to learn more about educational distribution (Silverdocs offers panels focused on education called ‘school docs’).  Beyond the meetings and panels, watching films and hanging out with other filmmakers and distributors, hearing about  adventures in documentary is my favorite thing about film festivals, and Silverdocs made hanging out easy… from the Bolt bus ($18 with wifi), where I chatted and emailed with festival goers from New York… to the festival where everything was within a two block radius (except for the happy hour bar, Jackies, which was a sobering ten minute walk). The only thing that made getting from one event/screening to the next difficult was that I’d stop and chat with a dozen people on my way and it would take me up to an hour to get down the block.  The convenience of having the panels at the Discovery headquarters, films at the AFI theater, and after-parties at the hotels so close together, combined with the relaxed Maryland setting, made for a very chill festival…but that’s not to say we didn’t party… On Thursday night, we drank pina colada’s and packed a basement dive bar singing karaoke… and on Friday night, we got free cowboy hats (I can’t help it, I love those things) with a Makers Mark shot, to prep us for Grey Gardens on the big screen, followed by a theater lobby party, dj’d by Ionic – that was some sweet Silverdocs action.
On my megabus ride home, Jesse and I shared stories and inspirations, feeling rejuvenated in our quest to make documentaries – Trish Dalton.

The sunglasses crew: Pamela Cohn (Still in Motion), Sandi DuBowski (Good Pitch, filmmaker, connector), Heather Croall (Sheffield DocFest), Debbie Zimmerman (Women Make Movies), Danielle DiGiacomo (Producer), Patricia Finneran (Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program), Ryan Harrington (Producer), Ingrid Kopp (Shooting People)

Jesse Epstein finds the whisky at Jackies!

Todd Griffin, musician and composer extraordinaire

This last week Los Angeles was of course gripped by a phenomenon very much other than its fine annual Film Festival, run by Film Independent.

The Festival’s centre in Westwood is right around the corner from UCLA’s medical Centre, where Michael Jackson was rushed after collapsing, and delegates could barely hear themselves network, for the buzz of helicopters. And today, Monday 29 June, days on from his demise, there remains a solid throng of hundreds of mourners gathered outside Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, near the star’s pavement star; this just around the corner, again, from the Ford Ampitheater, which hosted nightly screenings;

Cave let's his hair down in All Tomorrow's Parties

I saw our own Vincent Moon’s All Tomorrow’s Parties underneath the moonlight, and thoroughly enjoyed the bemused head shaking of some of the hipsters in attendance – ‘those crazy Brits!’.

As you might expect from a festival in LA, many screenings were starry affairs. ATP was preceded by the debut of Spike Jonze’s wierd and hilarious We Were Once a Fairytale, starring Kanye West as an out of control version of himself, and attended by the rapper himself. See this film, and never let it be said West can’t have a goodly laugh at himself.

Passenger Side

Film Independent and staff must be very pleased – from what I could divine from the last few days of the Festival that I attended, everything ran super smoothly, and many screenings had lines of people on stand by. I couldn’t get into Shooter Mitch Glick’s (prod.) Passenger Side. Instead I saw the moving and gentle documentary the Last Beekeeper which gave me the urge to plant out rosemary and roses with alacrity. We learn that if the pestilential Colony Collapse Disorder continues at this rate, there will be no honey bees at all by 2050. God only knows what that would do to the eco system.

He IS smiling

Back at the Ford, I howled with laughter at Black Dynamite, which promises to do for Blaxploitation what Austin Powers did for Bond. Cleverly self reverential, and wildly politically incorrect, it perhaps does try to pack two films’ worth of gaggery into one, but works is a real pleaser.

The Festival hosts many awards, and the two biggies are the Target Filmmaker Award (Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace’s Wah Do Dem / What They Do) and the Target Documentary Award (Juan Carlos Rulfo and Carlos Hagerman’s Those Who Remain).

There’s a lively round up of the Festival on indiewire here . And well done to the ten Shooters with film in the Fest – the most we’ve had yet. Say ‘hi’ to them here.

Sweet Californian dreaming.

Mullighan.

Shooters,

Mullighan recently presented a panel at the London Short Film Festival, entitled ‘Luck = Preparedness + Opportunity’. With him were the delightful filmmakers (and Shooters), Ben Slotover and Eva Weber.

If you weren’t lucky enough to make it down to the Curzon for the event, no fear! Ben has kindly made his notes from the panel available to you all here.

Ben, as it turns out, has actually made short instructional videos, very good tools for the newer indie filmmaker. You can watch his Zero Budget Filmmaking Compilation below, but he has uploaded more videos to his profile on Shooters which I thoroughly recommend you watch.

Make sure you have a look at the Sundance Film Festival channel on YouTube. I attended this Panic Button panel during the fest (featuring some heavy hitters in indie film distribution: James Schamus, Ted Hope, Mark Gill, Michael Barker, Marcus Hu, Peter Broderick and Jonathan Sehring) and highly recommend that you watch it, you’ll learn a lot about how distribution currently works and a little bit about what needs to change. Ted Hope has some good feedback on the panel on his Truly Free Film blog, and indieWIRE have written it up too.

Here’s Part 1:

And Part 2:

Spout Blog have been keeping a running tally of all the Sundance 09 deals, with links for more info. Very handy!

This is the lovely Chelsea Hernandez. Chelsea is not a zombie but she was at Slamdance with the Zombie Girl crew (the film was directed by Justin Johnson, Aaron Marshall and Eric Mauck). Zombie Girl follows Emily Hagins as she makes her first horror movie. A familiar story perhaps except Emily is twelve.

The film had sold out screenings and has been getting some rave reviews. It also won a Spirit of Slamdance Award -  “Awarded by the Class of 2009 filmmakers to the film teams that best exhibit passion and talent, commitment to the independent community, and enthusiastically embrace all Slamdance has to offer.” Chelsea wrote about her adventures at Slamdance on her blog so check it out!

I had the opportunity to sit down with Roberta Munroe, author of the new book How Not to Make a Short Film: Secrets from a Sundance Programmer, in the Filmmakers Lodge right after Obama’s Inauguration on Tuesday. We were both in good spirits and it was inspiring to talk to someone who is so passionate about short films. Roberta was a short film programmer at Sundance for five years. She has also been a member of many film juries, mentors students at Inner-City Filmmakers, and is a filmmaker herself (Dani and Alice and Happy Birthday). So she knows her stuff.

Roberta has seen a lot of short films in her time and she often wishes that filmmakers were armed with the knowledge to make the sort of changes that would make a programmer really fight for their films. She mentioned this to fellow filmmaker Tiffany Shlain who told her to write this book. “And when Tiffany tells you to do something you do it, she’s very persuasive.” The book contains interviews with Shlain, as well as Mark Duplass (Baghead), Sara Pollack (YouTube), Cynthia Wade (Freeheld), Diane Weyermann (Participant Media) and others.

How Not to Make a Short Film covers both narrative and documentary and runs the gamut from funding and casting to festival and distribution strategy. The book contains a nifty appendix with a sample budget and a list of resources. It also includes a very funny (and very true) list of Top Short Filmmaker Clichés to avoid, written by the excellent Mike Plante, another short film programmer at Sundance. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Is there a Japanese tea ritual opening scene?

Is there a ninja in your film?

Does your protagonist drive down a foggy road, all of a sudden seeing a child in a white nightgown who mysteriously disappears on the reverse shot?

Do you have a character in a bathtub just under the water?

Is there a close-up of a clock ticking?

Are there four guys driving to Vegas and one of them accidentally dies?

Don’t do it people!

For Roberta it all comes down to filmmakers realizing their personal vision. “You develop an innate sense of what works and how the filmmakers have, or haven’t, remained true to this vision. It’s not whether it’s good or bad but whether they have managed to accomplish this, whatever the budget.”

So what advice would Roberta give to filmmakers starting out on a short film:
1. Surround yourself with a team of people who know more than you do.
2. Make sure you have an original voice.
3. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish with the film (and ask this early, not when the film is finished).
4. Your film should not be longer than 15 minutes, especially if it’s narrative. 10 minutes is a good length to aim for.

Roberta is excited about all the changes happening online and she sees short filmmakers as being in the perfect position to take advantage of this. “Attention spans are shortening and bandwidth is growing. There are so many different avenues to make money, or at the very least to get exposure. It makes me happy that people can make, publicize and distribute their films through the web. People are creating communities in this way and these communities are not limited to where you live.”

So check out the book and here’s Roberta with a few final words for y’all.

Roberta Munroe’s Tips on Making Short Films from Ingrid Kopp on Vimeo.

The 15th Slamdance Film Festival wrapped up on Friday. Congratulations to everyone who had films screening in the fest.

These are the award winners:

Grand Jury Awards

Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature
Winner:  “A Quiet Little Marriage,” directed by Mo Perkins

Special Jury Mention for Best Performance: Larry Fessenden in “I Sell the Dead”

Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature
Winner: “Strongman,” directed by Zachary Levy

Special Jury Mention: “Second Sight,” directed by Alison McAlpine

Grand Jury Award for Best Animated Short
Winner: “Undone,” directed by Hayley Morris

Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Short
Winner: “Rare Chicken Rescue,” directed by Randall Wood

Grand Jury Award for Best Experimental Short
Winner: “Funny Guy,” directed by Frank R. Rinaldi

Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Short
Winner: “Princess Margaret Blvd,” directed by Kazik Radwanski

Special Jury Mention: “Tony Zoreil,” directed by Valentin Potier

Grand Jury Award for Best Music Video
Winner: Don McCloskey “Mister Novocaine,” directed by Peter Rhoads

Audience Awards

Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature
Winner: “Punching the Clown,” directed by Gregory Viens

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature
Winner: “Heart of Stone” (formerly It’s Hard to be an Indian), directed by Beth Toni Kruvant

Audience Award for Best Anarchy Film
Winner: “The Tides,” directed by Eva Flodstrom

Spirit of Slamdance Award

Winners (tie): “Zombie Girl,” directed by Aaron Marshall, Erik Mauck, Justin Johnson; and “Vapid Lovelies,” directed by Frank Feldman

Awarded by the Class of 2009 filmmakers to the film teams that best exhibit passion and talent, commitment to the independent community, and enthusiastically embrace all Slamdance has to offer.

Special Awards

Kodak Vision Award for Best Cinematography
Winner: “I Sell the Dead” cinematographer Richard Lopez

Dos Equis “Most Interesting Film” Award
Winner: “You Might as Well Live,” directed by Simon Ennis

IndieRoad Award
Winner: “Punching the Clown,” directed by Gregory Viens
The online audience award voted on by IndieRoad.net viewers.

Writer Awards

Award for Best Screenplay
Winner: “Numbered,” (Comedy/Thriller) by Neil McGowan

Award for Best Short Screenplay
Winner: “Crybaby,” (Thriller) by Mark Seidel

From the Sundance press release:

The Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary was presented to We Live in Public, directed by Ondi Timoner. The film portrays the story of the Internet’s revolutionary impact on human interaction as told through the eyes of maverick web pioneer, Josh Harris, and his transgressive art project that shocked New York.

The Grand Jury Prize: U.S. Dramatic was presented to Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels and written by Damien Paul. The film tells the redemptive story of Precious Jones, a young girl in Harlem struggling to overcome tremendous obstacles and discover her own voice.

The World Cinema Jury Prize: Documentary was presented to Rough Aunties, directed by Kim Longinotto. Fearless, feisty and unwavering, the ‘Rough Aunties’ protect and care for the abused, neglected and forgotten children of Durban, South Africa. United Kingdom

The World Cinema Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented to The Maid (La Nana), directed by Sebastián Silva. When her mistress brings on another servant to help with the chores, a bitter and introverted maid wreaks havoc on the household. Chile

The Audience Awards are presented to both a dramatic and documentary film in four Competition categories as voted by Sundance Film Festival audiences. The 2009 Sundance Film Festival Audience Awards are presented by Honda.

The Audience Award presented by Honda: U.S. Documentary was presented to The Cove, directed by Louie Psihoyos. The horrors of a secret cove nestled off a small, coastal village in Japan are revealed by a group of activists.

The Audience Award presented by Honda: U.S. Dramatic was presented to Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire, directed by Lee Daniels and written by Damien Paul. The film tells the redemptive story of Precious Jones, a young girl in Harlem struggling to overcome tremendous obstacles and discover her own voice.

The World Cinema Audience Award: Documentary was presented to Afghan Star, directed by Havana Marking. After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, Pop Idol has come to television in Afghanistan: millions are watching and voting for their favorite singer. Marking’s film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk their lives to sing. Afghanistan/United Kingdom

The World Cinema Audience Award: Dramatic was presented to An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Nick Hornby.  In the early 60s, a sharp 16-year-old with sights set on Oxford meets a handsome older man whose sophistication enraptures and sidetracks both her and her parents.United Kingdom

Directing Awards recognize excellence in directing for dramatic and documentary features.

The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary was presented to El General and director Natalia Almada. As great-granddaughter of President Plutarco Eliás Calles, one of Mexico’s most controversial revolutionary figures, the filmmaker paints an intimate portrait of Mexico.

The Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic was presented to Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga.  Filmmaker Fukunaga’s first-hand experiences with Mexican immigrants seeking the promise of the U.S. form the basis of this epic Spanish-language dramatic thriller.

The World Cinema Directing Award: Documentary was presented to Afghan Star, directed by Havana Marking. After 30 years of war and Taliban rule, Pop Idol has come to television in Afghanistan: millions are watching and voting for their favorite singer. Marking’s film follows the dramatic stories of four contestants as they risk their lives to sing. Afghanistan/United Kingdom

The World Cinema Directing Award: Dramatic was presented to Five Minutes of Heaven, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by Guy Hibbert. Two men from the same town but from different sides of the Irish political divide discover that the past is never dead. United Kingdom/Ireland

The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award was presented to Nicholas Jasenovec and Charlyne Yi for Paper Heart. Even though performer Charlyne Yi doesn’t believe in love, she bravely embarks on a quest to discover its true nature – a journey that takes on surprising urgency when she meets unlikely fellow traveler, actor Michael Cera.

The World Cinema Screenwriting Award was presented to Five Minutes of Heaven, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel from a screenplay by Guy Hibbert. Two men from the same town but from different sides of the Irish political divide discover that the past is never dead. United Kingdom/Ireland

The U.S. Documentary Editing Award was presented to Sergio. Directed by Greg Barker and edited by Karen Schmeer, the film examines the role of the United Nations and the international community through the life and experiences of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The World Cinema Documentary Editing Award was presented to Burma VJ. Directed by Anders Østergaard and edited by Janus Billeskov Jansen and Thomas Papapetros. The film takes place in September 2007 as Burmese journalists risk life imprisonment to report from inside their sealed-off country. Denmark

The Excellence in Cinematography Awards honor exceptional cinematography in both dramatic and documentary categories.

The Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Documentary was presented to The September Issue. With unprecedented access, director R.J. Cutler, cinematographer Bob Richman and their crew shot for nine months to capture editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and her team preparing the 2007 Vogue September issue, widely accepted as the “fashion bible” for the year’s trends.

The Excellence in Cinematography Award: U.S. Dramatic was presented to Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. Cinematographer: Adriano Goldman. Filmmaker Fukunaga’s first-hand experiences with Mexican immigrants seeking the promise of the U.S. form the basis of this epic Spanish-language dramatic thriller.

The World Cinema Cinematography Award: Documentary was presented to Big River Man, John Maringouin’s documentary about at an overweight, wine-swilling Slovenian world-record-holding endurance swimmer who resolves to brave the mighty Amazon in nothing but a Speedo. U.S.A./United Kingdom

The World Cinema Cinematography Award: Dramatic was presented to An Education, directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Nick Hornby.  Cinematographer: John De Borman. In the early 1960s, a sharp 16-year-old girl with sights set on Oxford meets a handsome older man whose sophistication enraptures and sidetracks both her and her parents. United Kingdom

A World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Originality was presented to Louise-Michel, directed by Benoit Delépine and Gustave de Kervern, about a group of disgruntled female French factory workers who, after the factory abruptly closes, pool their paltry compensation money to hire a hit man to knock off the corrupt executive behind the closure. France

A World Cinema Special Jury Prize: Documentary was presented to Tibet in Song directed by Ngawang Choephel. Through the story of Tibetan music, this film depicts the determined efforts of Tibetan people, both in Tibet and in exile, to preserve their unique cultural identity. Choephel served six years of an 18-year prison sentence for filming in Tibet. Tibet

A World Cinema Special Jury Prize for Acting was presented to Catalina Saavedra for her portrayal of a bitter and introverted maid in The Maid (La Nana). Chile

A Special Jury Prize: U.S. Documentary was presented to Good Hair, directed by Jeff Stilson, in which comedian Chris Rock travels the world to examine the culture of African-American hair and hairstyles.

A Special Jury Prize for Spirit of Independence was presented to Humpday, Lynn Shelton’s farcical comedy about straight male bonding gone a little too far.

A Special Jury Prize for Acting was presented to Mo’Nique for her portrayal of a mentally ill mother who both emotionally and physically imprisons her daughter in Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire.

The 2009 Jury Prize in U.S. Short Filmmaking was awarded to: Short Term 12, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.  The jury also presented the International Jury Prize in International Short Filmmaking to Lies, directed by Jonas Odell. Honorable Mentions in Short Filmmaking were presented to The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5, directed by Chema Garcia Ibarra; Protect You + Me, directed by Brady Corbet; Western Spaghetti, directed by PES; Jerrycan, directed by Julius Avery; Love You More, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, I Live in the Woods, directed by Max Winston, Omelette, directed by Nadejda Koseva; and Treevenge, directed by Jason Eisener.

As announced on Friday, Adam, directed by Max Mayer, is the recipient of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Prize. The Prize, which carries a $20,000 cash award to the filmmaker provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character.

Sundance Institute and NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) on Thursday announced the winners of the 2009 Sundance/NHK International Filmmakers Awards honoring and supporting emerging filmmakers–one each from the United States, Japan, Europe and Latin America. The winning filmmakers and projects for 2009 are Diego Lerman, Ciencias Morales (Moral Sciences) from Argentina; David Riker, The Girl, from the United States; Qurata Kenji, Speed Girl from Japan; and Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Evolution from France.