Join us for
brunch/conversation with two legendary figures from the film and music
industry. At 2 pm catch the academy-award winning Bound For Glory
at the Tinker Street cinema.
HASKELL
WEXLER
Haskell
Wexler, ASC, is considered to be one of the most important
cinematographers of our time. His wide body of work has earned him five
Academy Award nominations and two Oscars for Best Cinematography. His
nominations came for his work on his first feature documentary, The
Living City; a short film, T for Tumbleweed; Milos Forman’s
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; John Sayle’s Matewan; and
Blaze. He took home statuettes for his work on Mike Nichols’
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory.
As a
director, Wexler directed Medium Cool, a groundbreaking film shot
during the Democratic convention in Chicago and Latino in
Nicaragua. In addition he has directed over fifty documentaries, rock
videos and award-winning commercials including: Introduction to the
Enemy, Interview with My Lai Veterans, which also won an
Academy Award; No Nukes with Barbara Kopple, Target Nicaragua:
Inside a Secret War and Five Days in March.
Wexler has
been elected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to the
Board of Governors to represent the cinematographers branch. He has also
received the American Society of Cinematographers’ Lifetime Achievement
Award and his the first cinematographer in over thirty-five years to
receive a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.
HAROLD LEVENTHAL
photo by David Ganr
Harold
Leventhal has had a varied career as a personal manger, music publisher,
theatrical and film producer, and concert promoter spanning the last
fifty years. He has long been revered for his
tireless devotion to folk music and the people who create and perform
it. In the course of time, Harold represented such outstanding
artists as Cisco Houston, Judy Collins, The Tarriers, Theodore Bikel,
Alan Arkin, and Arlo Guthrie. As a
concert promoter, Harold was the first to bring folk music artists to
the stages of New York's great concert halls, presenting The Weavers,
Jacque Brel, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem,
Joni Mitchell and many others from all over the world.
In addition to producing Bound For Glory,
he produced Arthur Penn’s Alice’s Restaurant, the film
starring Arlo Guthrie, based on his popular song.
C elebrity
interviewer Martha Frankel will hold a conversation with actors,
Parker Posey and Marcia Gay Harden
Parker Posey who co-stars in Personal
Velocity was named "Queen of Indies" by Time Magazine, has appeared in
over 30 films in the last 7 years including "The House of Yes" (Special
Jury Prize 1997 Sundance Film Festival, dir: Mark Waters) "SubUrbia"
(dir: Richard Linklater), "Waiting For Guffman" (dir: Christopher
Guest), "The Daytrippers" (dir: Greg Mottola), "Dazed and Confused"
(dir: Richard Linklater), "You've Got Mail" (dir:Nora Ephron), and three
films for Hal Hartley; "Amateur," "Flirt" and "Henry Fool." She has also
appeared in all three installments of Armistad Maupin's "Tales of The
City" trilogy. She can
be seen reuniting with her "Waiting For Guffman" team in Christopher
Guest's "Best in Show," which is about the world of dog shows. Parker
starred in the Los Angeles premiere of John Patrick Shanley's "Four Dogs
and a Bone" and made her Broadway debut starring opposite Matthew
Broderick in Elaine May's "Taller Than a Dwarf." She can also be seen in
"Anniversary Party," a
film co-directed by her "Josie and the Pussycats" co-star Alan Cumming.
Posey can be last seen in Roger Krumble's "The Sweetest Thing" and is
currently in production on Christopher Guest's "A Mighty Wind."
Marcia Gay Harden received the Supporting Actress Oscar® for her
portrayal of Lee Krasner, the artist wife of abstract expressionist
painter Jackson Pollock, in Pollock. This stage-trained player of film
and TV made her feature debut in Joel and Ethan Coen¹s Miller's Crossing
and has since appeared in many films including Meet Joe Black,The
Daytrippers, The
Spitfire Grill. She recently finished work on John Sayles¹s Casa de Los
Babys and Clint Eastwood¹s Mystic River.
(Other guest may be
announced. Actors, participation is subject to their schedule)
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A CONVERSATION WITH ISMAIL MERCHANT |
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| Mr. Ismail Merchant will be
speakingabout his
experiences making indie films.
ISMAIL MERCHANT (Producer
and Director)
Although Ismail Merchant was born in Bombay,
he has lived and worked for most of his life in the West, completing
his education at New York University where he earned his Masters
Degree in Business Administration.
Merchant’s first film was a theatrical short,
The Creation of Woman, which was nominated in 1961 for an
Academy Award and was an official entry from the United States in
the Cannes Film Festival that same year. While en route to the
Festival, Merchant met James Ivory, who agreed to form a
partnership, Merchant Ivory Productions, to make English-language
theatrical features in India for the international market.
It was not only the visual beauty and charm of
India that attracted Merchant, but also the opportunity to finance
his films with funds from frozen Rupee accounts of major American
distributors. These accounts contained distribution proceeds that
the Indian government would not allow to be repatriated, but which
could be utilized under an agreement to make films in India. Thus,
The Householder was Merchant’s first feature and first Indian
film to be distributed worldwide by a major American company,
Columbia Pictures. It was followed by more Indian features, all in
some way funded wholly or in part by an American studio:
Shakespeare Wallah (1965), The Guru (1969), and Bombay
Talkie (1970).
For over thirty years, Merchant Ivory
Productions has endured as one of the most productive collaborations
in cinema, bringing forth such films as The Europeans,
Quartet, Heat and Dust, A Room with a View, Mr.
and Mrs. Bridge, Howards End, The Remains of the Day,
Jefferson in Paris, Surviving Picasso, and The
Golden Bowl.
In addition to producing, Merchant has
directed two television features of his own: a short entitled
Mahatma and the Mad Boy and a full-length television feature
The Courtesans of Bombay made for Britain’s Channel Four. The
first feature film he directed, In Custody, was based on a
novel by Anita Desai and starred Shashi Kapoor. It was filmed in
Bhopal, India, and went on to win four National Awards from the
Government of India, for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Costume and
Best Production Design. His second feature, The Proprietor,
starred Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Pierre Aumond and Christopher Cazenove,
and was filmed on location in Paris. Cotton Mary, Merchant's
project as Director and Producer which was filmed in Kerala and
released in 1999, has been described as the finest example of his
ability to combine the best of East and West in modern cinema.
Merchant’s most recent film as Director was
The Mystic Masseur, filmed in Trinidad, and starring Om Puri,
Aasif Mandvi, James Fox, Ayesha Dharker, and Sakina Jaffrey. The
film, based on V.S. Naipaul’s novel, tells the tale of Ganesh
Ransumair, a schoolteacher who rises to power through his gifts of
writing and healing, proving that decency and hard work triumph over
chicanery and double-dealing.
Merchant is also a renowned chef and author of
a number of books on cookery. These are Ismail Merchant’s Indian
Cuisine; Ismail Merchant’s Florence; Ismail Merchant’s
Passionate Meals and Ismail Merchant’s Paris: Filming and
Feasting in France. In addition, he has authored a book about
the making of the film “The Deceivers” in 1988 called Hullabaloo
in Old Jeypur, and another about the making of “The Proprietor”
called Once Upon a Time . . . The Proprietor. His new book,
Ismail Merchant: My Passage to India, will be published by
Viking Studios in October 2002.
The most recent Merchant Ivory collaboration,
Le Divorce, from the novel by Diane Johnson, starring Kate
Hudson, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Matthew Modine, Stockard Channing,
and Sam Waterston, is currently in post production and will be
released by Fox Searchlight in early 2003.
In addition to numerous accolades Merchant has
won in the world of film, he is also an Honorary Doctor of Arts at
Bard’s College, New York, and an Honorary Doctor of Arts at Wesleyan
College, University of Illinois. He has been honored by the Mayor
of New York, received the Marie des Paris for his outstanding
contribution to cinema and has also received the Commandeur de
L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the Ministry of Culture in
France.
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Unions and guilds
representing both "above the line" and "below the line" film personnel
are gathering at the Woodstock Film Festival to present a panel
discussion on the production of independent films under their collective
bargaining agreements. Panelists will include the union representatives
responsible for independent film production in both digital and film
form: the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists; AFL-CIO;
the Directors Guild of America; the International Brotherhood of
Teamsters; the Screen Actors Guild and the Writers Guild of America.
Produced by attorney Don T. Carmody.
Variety film reporter and columnist Charles Lyons
will lead a panel on how new digital technology affects the substance
and style of today’s independent filmmaking. With executive producer
John Sloss (Personal Velocity, Chelsea Walls, Boys Don't Cry),
producer Lemore Syvan, executive producer Richard Hawley
and director/producer Jason Kliot (Love in the Time of Money,
Lovely & Amazing, Chuck & Buck, Site). (update: Gary
Winick will not be available for the panel)
PANELIST BIOS
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John Sloss
has acted as Executive Producer for over twenty-five feature films
including John Sayles' City of Hope, Passion Fish, The Secret of
Roan Inish, Lone Star and Men With Guns; Richard
Linklater's Before Sunrise, subUrbia, The Newton Boys, and
Waking Life; Errol Morris' Mr. Death; Brad
Anderson's Happy Accidents and Session 9;
Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry; Michael Almereyda’s
Hamlet; Ethan Hawke’s Chelsea Walls; Gary
Winick’s Tadpole; Rebecca Miller’s Personal
Velocity and Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven. |
 |
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In
March 2001 Mr. Sloss founded Cinetic Media, a consulting firm
specializing in producer representation (securing distribution for
independent features and other content), providing consulting services
to end users and/or media financiers worldwide, and securing financing
for packaged motion picture projects. Mr. Sloss' other Cinetic
activities include consulting for several high-profile film financiers
and producers, as well as a partnership in Independent Digital
Entertainment (InDigEnt), a series of digital features made in
collaboration with established filmmakers and actors, which is quickly
becoming the gold standard in digital filmmaking. |
Producer, Lemore Syvan's
most recent credits include
Personal
Velocity
(grand prizewinner at 2002 Sundance Film Festival) and
Maze.
She heads up the production company Blue Magic Pictures and is currently
producing
John
Sayles's new film Casa de Los Babys.
Jason Kliot,
along with Joana Vicente, is the co-founder and co-president of Open
City Films and its digital division, Blow Up Pictures, both of which are
dedicated to the discovery and advancement of groundbreaking independent
vision in film. Together and separately they have worked on over thirty
feature films, shorts and commercials, including Three Seasons,
Down To You, Chuck and Buck,
Series 7, Love in the Time of Money and
Welcome to the Dollhouse. Site was
shown at the 2002 Sundance Film festival at the 2002 Berlin Film
festival and at New Directors/New Films. It is part of the permanent
collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
Richard Hawley, Executive producer
Moderator
Charles Lyons is the
New York film reporter for Variety. This is his first film. Prior to
Variety, he was a development executive for Mr. Holland's Opus
director Steve Herek in Los Angeles. The author of the book The
New Censors: Movies and the Culture Wars, Lyons associate
produced the PBS documentary More Than Broken Glass: Memories of
Kristallnacht and worked in production on such films as
Billy Bathgate.
Filmmaker Deedee Hallek,
entertainment lawyer Innes Smolansky, POV executive director Cara Mertes
and Paola Freccero (Sundance Channel) will discuss alternative distribution outlets.
Saturday, September 21.
DeeDee Halleck is a media activist, the
founder of Paper Tiger Television and co-founder of the Deep Dish
Satellite Network. She is Professor Emerita at the University of
California, San Diego and author of the recent book, Hand Held
Visions: The Impossible Possibilities of Community Media.
Her films have been featured at the Venice Film Festival,
Cannes, the London Film Festival and many other international venues.
Currently
the Executive Director of P.O.V./American Documentary,
Cara Mertes has been an
advocate for independent and alternative media for over a decade. She is
an award-winning filmmaker, programmer and writer whose work has been
featured widely in museums, festivals, PBS and internationally. She was
the Executive Producer/Director of SIGNAL TO NOISE: Life with
Television, a PBS series examining the impact of
television on American society, as well as being producer for New
Television for public television, an annual series featuring the
best in international experimental video work, and Independent
Focus for WNET/New York, at the time the premiere public
television showcase for American independent video and film. Recently
she was Consulting Producer for There She Is: A History of Miss
America, featured on PBS’s American Experience,
and is currently researching for her NEH-supported film Catching the
Shadow: Women and 19th Century Photography. Mertes is a
Contributing Editor to The Independent and has served on
the boards of ITVS, the International Flaherty Seminars and Media
Alliance among others.
Paola Freccero is Sundance Channel’s Senior
Vice President, Film Programming. In that role, she supervises the
acquisition, programming and scheduling of Sundance Channel’s film
line-up which includes independent American and international
features, documentaries, and shorts. In addition, Freccero’s
responsibilities include creating the programming plan for the
recently-announced Sundance Documentary Channel. She will also be
overseeing Sundance Channel Home Entertainment, the newly-created home
video line to be distributed by Showtime Entertainment.
Freccero
originally joined Sundance Channel in 1999 as a publicity consultant.
Shortly thereafter, she was appointed Vice President, International,
spearheading Sundance Channel’s business development activities
overseas.
Prior to
joining Sundance Channel, Freccero was Artistic Director of the Nortel
Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Palm Springs
International Short Film Festival.
During her tenure, she was credited with making the feature festival,
held annually in January, a showcase for the international films
submitted for Oscar™ consideration for Best Foreign Language Film.
She also launched Palm Springs’ first short film market, which runs
concurrently with the short film festival each year in August.
Before
joining the festival, Freccero spent five years working as a film
publicist on such films as Academy Award™-winners The Usual Suspects,
and Anne Frank Remembered; Oscar™ nominees Before the Rain, and
Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern; and with directors such as Allison
Anders, Gillian Armstrong, John Badham, Steve Buscemi, Marshall
Hershkovitz, Derek Jarman, Roland Joffe, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh,
Richard Linklater, D.A. Pennebaker, Sally Potter, Tim Roth, and Ed
Zwick, among many others. Her previous television experience includes
publicity efforts for ITVS, HBO and Turner Broadcasting.
Innes Smolansky
is an entertainment attorney in New York City. She represents
film and television producers, film production companies, distributors,
financiers, directors, writers and authors in business transactions for
independent film production, documentaries, television, international
co-productions and book publishing.
2002 has been an
important year for digital cinema, including the acquisition of the DV
features Personal Velocity and Tadpole by traditional distributors
United Artists and Miramax respectively, and the mobilization to bring
digital projection to select movie houses for the release of Star Wars:
Episode II. The great promise of the Digital Cinema Revolution is to
slash costs and democratize the production, distribution, and exhibition
of films. Films will be shot cheaply with DV cameras, delivered via
satellite to exhibitors, then screened with digital projectors, leading
to much more diverse and affordable programming in theaters throughout
the world. But is it an urban legend - or just a matter of time?
In this program, industry veterans and pioneers discuss their visions
for the future and tackle questions about the next stage of the Digital
Revolution: widespread distribution and exhibition. Topics include:
What are current distributor strategies for acquiring DV films, vs.
long-term strategies? How long will DV films need to be blown up to
film for wide commercial release? Will the Digital Cinema Revolution
really bring more diverse, independent stories before a wider audience?
Panelists include:
Moderator: Eugene Hernandez,
Editor-in-Chief,
indieWIRE,
Gary Bouchard, Business Development Manager, Cinema
Operations, Eastman Kodak. Gary's 23 years of experience at Eastman
Kodak includes stints in Consumer Imaging, Digital and Applied Imaging,
and Entertainment Imaging. Bouchard's expertise includes understanding
the needs of Kodak's customers, and how products and services can be
designed to meet those needs. Bouchard joined Kodak's Entertainment
Imaging division in 1995 for the launch of Kodak's Vision family of
products. In his current capacity with Kodak's Cinema Operations group,
he is working with the motion picture industry to devise a business
strategy for Digital Cinema that works for all players and which takes
into account the existing structures in the film distribution business.
Ira Deutchman, President and CEO, Emerging
Pictures.
Ira Deutchman has been making, marketing and distributing films for
twenty-seven years. He was one of the founders of Cinecom, the film
distribution company known for such diverse releases as Merchant/Ivory’s
A Room with a View, Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, and John Sayles’
The Brother From Another Planet, and later created Fine Line Features
where he acquired and released Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, Gus
van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, Robert Altman’s The Player, Alan
Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and the award-winning Hoop
Dreams, among many others. Currently Deutchman is President and CEO of
Emerging Pictures, a New York-based digital film production and
exhibition company. He is also a partner in Redeemable Features, an
independent production company that he founded to develop and produce a
wide range of theatrical and television programming, and serves on the
advisory boards of the Sundance Film Festival and the Los Angeles
Independent Film Festival.)
Sarah Lash, Director of Acquisitions, IFC Films
Susan Wrubel, VP Film Acquisitions, Madstone Films
During her eight years in independent film distribution, Susan Wrubel
has worked at Cinepix Film Properties (now Lions Gate Releasing),
October Films, and as VP of Acquisitions and Theatrical Distribution for
New Yorker Films. She worked on acquiring and distributing Jean-Pierre
and Luc Dardenne’s La Promesse, Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry
Us, Claire Denis’s Beau Travail, and Brigitte Roüan's Post Coitum, as
well as films by world-renowned directors Claude Chabrol, Werner Herzog
and Krzysztof Kieslowski. Wrubel currently heads the Madstone Film
Acquisitions department.
Produced by Libby
McInerny
Presented by New
York Women in Film & television
.
Moderator Doreen Ringer
Ross will explore the working relationship between Composer David
Robbins and his brother, filmmaker/actor Tim Robbins. Rejecting
traditional film music formulas, they favor a more fearless and
open-minded approach. This process has led them to create unique sound
tracks for Bob Roberts, Dead Man Walking and Cradle Will Rock.
Sponsored by
Leading film critics will
discuss the tools of their trade, shedding light on some of the things
they look for when they review a film. Panelists will include critics
Godfrey Cheshire (New York Times, New York Press, Variety Talk, former
chairman, NY Film Critics Circle), Amy Taubin (contributing editor to
Film Comment and Sight & Sound), Owen Glieberman (Entertainment Weekly) and others TBA.
Moderated by Jonathan Foreman (New York Post).
An Anglo-American dual national,
Jonathan Foreman
was born in London and grew up there and in Los Angeles. He was educated
at Cambridge University (he read History at Gonville & Caius College)
and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. On receiving his JD in
1991 he came to New York as a corporate attorney for the international
law firm of Shearman & Sterling.
After two years of toil at the bar, Foreman gave up
the law. He went to Asia to travel and write, mostly in the Indian
subcontinent.
On returning from Asia, he embarked on a career as a
freelance journalist, eventually becoming Contributing Editor at City
Journal, the quarterly journal of the Manhattan Institute and a
Contributing Writer at the National Law Journal. He published articles
in periodicals ranging from The New Yorker to New Woman on a variety of
subjects ranging from Anti-Americanism in India, to the New York Taxi
industry, and the pros and cons of workplace romance.
In 1997 he was awarded the South Asian Journalists’
Association First Prize for “Bombay on the Hudson”, an article in the
City Journal exploring the experience of Indian and Pakistani immigrants
to New York.
In April 1998 Foreman joined the staff of the New York
Post as a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Six months later he
was offered and took up the position of Film Critic.
Although a lifelong film-buff, this was not a job he
had long hoped to get. Having grown up in the movie industry (he is the
son of Carl Foreman, the blacklisted screenwriter of “High Noon”) and
worked as a p.a. on films as a youth, Foreman was raised in at
atmosphere generally suspicious of, if not actually hostile to film
critics.
Amy Taubin
is a contributor to Film
Comment and Sight and Sound. Her first weekly film criticism job was at
the Soho Weekly News. She has also written for the New York Times, Art
Forum, the Millennium Film Journal, US, Mirabella and many other
magazines. From 1987 until her departure in 2001, she was a film critic
for the Village Voice.
Her book, Taxi Driver, was published in 2000 in
the British Film Institute's Film Classics series and is already in its
second printing.
She started her professional life as an actress,
appearing on Broadway most notably in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,
and in avant-garde films, among them Michael Snow's Wavelength,
Andy Warhol's Couch, and Jonas Mekas' Diaries, Notebooks and
Sketches.
Her own avant-garde film, In the Bag (1981) is
in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Friends of Young
Cinema Archives in Berlin.
She has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A.
from N.Y.U. in Cinema studies. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts.
"Truth or fiction: Which
makes a better film story?" When working from historical fact, do
writers have a responsibility to not embellish? Or like political
cartoonists, can writers get to a deeper truth by exaggerating reality?
And even in a work of supposedly pure fiction, do the characters become
richer if the writer bases them on people he or she knows? This panel
will explore these questions, along with the process of creating good
stories. Panelists include Tim Robbins (Cradle Will Rock, Dead Man
Walking, Bob Roberts), Tim Blake Nelson (The Grey Zone, Kansas,
Eye of God), Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol)
and Zachary Sklar (JFK).
Moderated by editor Annie Nocenti (Scenario magazine). Sponsored by .
Hear ye, hear ye--An invitation to all Knights, Ladies and Swains to
joust with us at our Day at the Roundtables. Join us for an
informal chat with industry professionals who will discuss what they do
and how they do it so very well. This is an excellent opportunity to
learn where your role may be in the exciting and ever-changing
film/television/documentary/rock video/commercial industry.
At the event, there will be a grouping of roundtables that you will be
able to sit at and move between while industry professionals discuss
their role in “the business." From the world of Producers to the role of
the cameraman, to the work of a director. Find out exactly what a
casting director and documentary filmmaker does. Learn how an editor
puts a film together and what a development director looks for when
choosing a film script.
Produced by Jeremiah Newton, industry liaison, New York University.
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