The Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg is right by my apartment and I love seeing it every day so I was very relieved to hear that it has been granted landmark status. Apparently the planned residential development will still go ahead but they will not be allowed to alter the existing exterior which pleases me no end. There are some terrifyingly ugly glass buildings going up in Williamsburg at the moment, with soulless and empty slogans to accompany them. I’ve been thinking a lot about development and community recently, I carry Jane Jacob’s magnificent The Death and Life of Great American Cities around with me, and spend a lot of time taking photographs of old buildings being demolished or new buildings going up. True/False’s David Wilson recently told me that he loved a short film called Grand Luncheonette by Peter Sillen and I just noticed that you can watch it online on Sillen’s website. It’s a beautiful film about what happened to Times Square and it makes a great double bill with Stefan Nadelman’s Terminal Bar, another poignant tribute to a lost era and a vanished neighborhood.

AJ Schnack’s beautiful and haunting Kurt Cobain About a Son is opening in NYC on October 3rd. You can read AJ’s About a Blog for more info on the film and my Beatmag article reviews About a Son as well as some other wonderful films I saw at SXSW this year. Here’s the trailer:

I know I have been rabbiting on a bit about last week’s Filmmaker Conference but there are so many great resources available online which I think will be extremely useful for all those filmmakers who couldn’t make the event itself. As usual Lance Weiler has tons of great links and video on the Workbook Project for your viewing pleasure. This panel on consumer viewing habits, moderated by Weiler, will give you lots of good techy tips on how to create an audience for your work and keep ‘em loyal:

Those of you who read my previous post on copyright will be interested to see that Brett Gaylor is on this panel talking about Open Source Cinema, “a collaborative documentary project to create a feature film about copyright in the digital age.” You, yes you, can get involved in this project too so visit the website to find out more.

If all this geek-talk is getting you hot under the collar and you find yourself muttering words like long tail, crowdsourcing and, oh yes, string theory smackdown, then you should have a browse through the Wired Geekipedia. Do you know your DRM from your SEO? You will after reading this.

Come to think of it, where did September go? Sorry for my blog silence but the IFP Market and Filmmaker Conference sucked me into a worm hole of activity and I’ve only just re-emerged.

I mentioned this on the Shooting People bulletins but for those of you who want to catch up on everything that happened at the Conference you should read the Filmmaker Magazine Blog and Scott Kirsner’s CinemaTech Blog for some good coverage (because Shooting from the Hip will be no good to you whatsover, useless, useless girl).

Hey UK People, Holy Modal Rounders. . . Bound to Lose is screening at the Horse Hospital in London on Wednesday and since I cannot make it I am humbly requesting that some of you go see it in my place. As the leaves start falling off the trees and the nights turn cold there is nothing like a bit of folky psychedelia to keep you happy and the filmmakers are lovely, lovely people.

Details here: www.thehorsehospital.com

I’m moderating a panel on “Creating Content for New Platforms” this afternoon so if you’re attending the IFP Filmmaker Conference come on by and find out more about what’s happening on the web and on a teeny tiny screen near you!

There are lots of great people in town for IFP and the panels I attended yesterday on festival/marketplace strategy and finding your audience provided plenty of food for thought. We’ll be excerpting transcripts from Brian Geldin, the trusty Film Panel Notetaker, on the Shooting People bulletins all this week.

International copyright is such a tricky issue. On the one hand I understand that artists and businesses need to make money in order to survive personally and commercially, but it is also clear that the winds of change are blowing and, as one man says in Steal This Film, “When the winds of change are blowing, some people build shelters while others build windmills.” People thought that the VCR was going to destroy the film industry but it didn’t. What will happen now with the Internet, downloads, file-sharing and peer to peer networks? Some of the windmill builders are the people behind The Pirate Bay, a huge bittorent tracker and the subject of the first part of Steal This Film. I’d love to know what others think about this issue because I have to admit I feel really out of my depth.

Watch the first part of Steal This Film and post your comments.

Some useful resources for those willing to wade into these shark infested waters are the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, the brainchild of Lawrence Lessig, the Center for Social Media, the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the US and The Open Rights Group in the UK, and Cory Doctorow (co-editor of Boing Boing) who is particularly eloquent on the problems with DRM. And of course Creative Commons - allowing content creators to decide which rights are reserved.

UPDATE: Check out the Steal This Film podcast from BRITDOC 07 here.

The Shooters posse went to see DARKON at Rooftop Films last night. I’d forgotten quite how funny the film is and it was lovely to watch it on the lawn of the Automotive High School where we have done Shooting People screenings with Rooftop in the past. By the way there are only a few more Rooftop screening happening this Summer so make sure you go before the frosts set in - it’s a really great experience to sit outside in NYC and watch bands and films under the (light-polluted) stars.

Here’s Shooting People founder Cath le Couteur and NY Editor Jesse Epstein with a man in armor (I don’t know who the random guy in the background is but I’m sure he’s very nice):

I’ve never been to the True/False Film Festival but everybody who has says it is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. The good news is that festival directors David and Paul are spreading the joy by doing a screening at the IFC Center in New York on Tuesday, September 18th. There will be screenings of Super Amigos and that good old British classic Night Mail, with a live soundtrack performed by Gutbucket. There’s also a “special kick-off hoedown with Connecticut hillbillies the Can Kickers” - don’t know what that involves exactly but it sounds like a lot of fun.

To get more info and to buy tickets click here.

More about True/False here.

See you there!

Darkon won the Audience Award at SXSW last year and now finally everybody gets to see it in NYC. Darkon is a documentary about a parallel universe in the heart of Maryland where people take on alternate identities and fight epic battles. And I mean epic! It’s hard not to get utterly sucked into the intrigue and adventure of these weekend warriors so go see the film and embrace your inner geek!

You can check it out for free at Rooftop Films this Thursday. Click here to RSVP.

And the film opens at Cinema Village on Friday so buy tickets now and support the opening weekend! More info and links to buy tickets at www.darkonthemovie.com