by Darnell L. Moore.

TFW is excited to highlight the inventive work of several phenomenal women filmmakers in a forum that runs from today through Friday. Carmen Torres, tiona m., Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Anna Barsan, Pratibha Parmar, and Nev Nnaji reflect on the plight of women filmmakers in a male-dominated industry, feminist approaches taken up in filmmaking, filmmaking as both an art form and modality for social change, and their processes.

Read the rest of this article from The Feminist Wire.

Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get the first 30 pages of my 238 page Film Directing Multi-Media Online course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar.”

I’m Peter D. Marshall and I created this film directing blog in 2007 as an online movie making resource center for Independent Filmmakers like yourself.

(As of May 17, 1686 film making posts have been published on this blog!)

For over 38 years I’ve worked (and survived) in the Film and TV industry as a Film Director, Television Producer, First Assistant Director and Creative Consultant. (See IMDb Credits.)

In 1999, I started my website, ActionCutPrint which has grown into one of the top film directing websites for Independent Filmmakers on the Internet today featuring online movie making courses, film directing articles, film and television books and filmmaking workshops.

In 2000, I started publishing my free monthly film making ezine, The Director’s Chair which is read by over 5500 filmmakers in 105 countries around the world. (You can read 129 back issues here.)

To fulfill my goal of mentoring and teaching, I developed several filmmaking workshops that I have presented over the past 18 years: from Canada to Singapore to Dubai. I am also a directing instructor at the Vancouver Film School.

So if you want to keep up to date on the latest Online film and television resources, please Bookmark this Page Now or Subscribe to this blog to read daily film making articles written by myself and other film makers from around the world.

by Cristina DC Pastor.

What’s your film about? I asked Ahlam Darwish, 17, from Jerusalem, while waiting for her film to screen at the Curious Pictures studio in Manhattan.

“It’s about a very talented, young girl who plays the piano, but what many do not know is that she is about to go blind,” Darwish replied excitedly.

Who is this girl?

“Me,” she replied before erupting into giggles.

Darwish, an upbeat Arab-Israeli with a smiling face, is one of 10 teens who created short films about their worlds with the UK-based Films Without Borders. It’s a nonprofit organization that works with young filmmakers from “disadvantaged backgrounds” to create films that “break down barriers, build bridges and create a dialogue.” A curated selection of their films were screened in New York this April.

“The Gift,” Darwish’s 20-minute documentary about her love of piano music and her struggle with imminent blindness, was one of the films. The others included “The Ticket,” a story about finding love in a lost bus ticket; “Unknown Circumstances,” a tale of superstition set in Israel; “Love & Obsession,” about a shy girl learning to dance who ends up teaching her classmates her unique style of dancing; and “Football the Wonderful Game,” which chronicles the lifestyle of a devoted football fan in all its hilarity.

Read the rest of this article from Feet in 2 Worlds.

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from Knife Edge Creative.

Ten years ago, I was asked by Heart n Soul Director, Mark Williams, to direct the filming of the Heart n Soul Experience – a pumping soul/funk outfit fronted by Heart n Soul singing legend Lizzie Emeh.

We worked on a number of films documenting, communicating and campaigning around Heart n Soul’s key initiatives, which aim to empower artists, regardless of disability, to create art that touches and changes people’s lives.

It became apparent that a number of Heart n Soul members were interested in writing, directing and acting in their own films – and so a unique collaboration was born between Heart n Soul and Knifedge.

The collaborative process seeks to mentor Heart n Soul artists in the creation of moving image content. And through Knifedge,  they are given opportunities to work with top film and TV industry professionals who donate their time to the realisation of an individual artist’s work.

Gerry Tracey’s film, Twinkletoes - was our first success, and won Best Newcomer at the 2010 Scottish Mental Health Film Festival. With the use of animation, the story of the extraordinary relationship between Gerry and her cat was brought movingly and sympathetically to life. It was screened throughout the UK on the Big Screen Network, moderated by the BBC.

Read the rest of this article from Knife Edge Creative.

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by Paul Sullivan.

FOR most people, investing has not been fun these last few years. At best, it has been stressful.

But there are investments that have nothing to do with stocks or bonds or real estate that may be at least enjoyable if not always moneymaking. I’ve come up with about a half-dozen, and over the next few weeks, I plan to explore some of them, including investments as different as horses and restaurants. My goal is to see how people do this successfully — or whether they have a broader definition of success than just making money.

This week, I’m going to look at films, given that the influential Tribeca Film Festival is under way; it runs through Sunday.

Investing in a movie seems a risky proposition. Movie studios lose tens of millions of dollars on films almost every week. But for some amateurs, being part of the film festival circuit, let alone making it to a big Hollywood premiere, can be glamorous. For a serious investor, with more at stake, there are many ways to make money in films that have little to do with box-office success.

Read the rest of this article from NY Times.

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by Elaine Hou.

Taiwan will continue to expand and promote its filmmaking industry, following a strong performance by a number of Taiwanese movies in 2011, Premier Sean Chen said Thursday.

Chen said related government agencies should take advantage of the Chinese-speaking market and the Economic Framework Cooperation Agreement (ECFA) between Taiwan and China, which has expanded the presence of Taiwanese films in China.

The premier’s remarks came at a weekly Cabinet meeting, during which Government Information Office (GIO) officials gave a briefing on the progress of a four-year project to boost Taiwan’s filmmaking industry.

Read the rest of this article from Focus Taiwan.

Sign up now for your own FREE monthly subscription to “The Director’s Chair” filmmaking ezine and get the first 30 pages of my 238 page Film Directing Multi-Media Online course, “The Art and Craft of the Director Audio Seminar.”

by Farid Farid.

War and revolutions are fertile grounds for the growth of documentary film-making in the Arab world. A mini-film festival showcasing such films opened in Sydney last week.

Australian visual artist and Blake Prize winner Khaled Sabsabi travelled to Lebanon to meet with the independent film and video collective Beirut DC and convinced them to bring a small collections of Lebanese films to Australia for the diverse audience of Sydney.

Beirut DC hosted Sabasabi for a professional development residency after he won the prestigious Helen Lempiere Travelling Art Scholarship for visual arts.

Director Ahmed Ghossein and member of Beirut DC, travelled to Sydney to curate the film festival, Lives in Montage: Beirut, which screened in the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre in southwest Sydney.

Ghossein won the best director prize at the Beirut International Film Festival in 2004 for his film ‘Operation N…’ and most recently he won honourable mention at Tribeca Doha Film Festival in 2011 for his documentary ‘My Father is still a communist : Intimate secrets to be published’. The award was presented by actors Omar Sharif and Antonio Banderas.

Read the rest of this article from World News.

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by Michael Varrati.

This very weekend in the Springsteen-lauded town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, a convergence of freaks, geeks, and celebrities will occur to celebrate all things cinema.

The unifying event is known as Tromadance, and even amongst the film making community, it is relatively unique. Unlike large institutions such as Sundance or Cannes, Tromadance requires no submission fees from artists looking to have their work screened. Furthermore, there’s no admission cost for attendees, and no velvet ropes. It is a festival where celebrities and film-goers are equal, and encouraged to mingle openly.

Sponsored by the world’s longest running independent film studio, Troma Entertainment, the perks of Tromadance certainly must seem like a sweet deal to the casual onlooker. However, for those of us who are well aware of Troma’s history, it’s just another in a long line of contributions the studio has made to the championing of independent art.

The man most directly responsible for Troma’s long history is Lloyd Kaufman. A filmmaker and cinematic impresario, Kaufman has been on the front lines of the battle for artistic rights for nearly four decades.

Read the rest of this article from Huffington Post.

by Paul Grondahl.

Filmmakers shot short films on cellphones and the Tribeca Film Festival screened them and streamed the content digitally via an iPhone app.

A dozen of the feature films shown last month at Tribeca were low-budget indie projects funded by Kickstarter, a “crowd funding” Internet site that helps creative people use social media to cobble together hundreds of micro-investments of $25 to $100 to finance their movies.

The filmmaking landscape is becoming increasingly flat. Yesteryear’s movie studio moguls have been eclipsed by a couple of twentysomething dudes with a Mac and a wi-fi connection who post shorts to YouTube from a suburban garage.

The digital revolution is rewriting the rules of making and distributing movies at a dizzying velocity in what Tribeca’s co-founder, Craig Hatkoff, calls a “disruptive innovation” upending the film industry.

Read the rest of this article from Hispanic Business.

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by Edward Wong.

James Cameron, director of “Titanic” and “Avatar,” among other well-known movies, visited Beijing in mid-April for the Beijing International Film Festival. The festival was screening the 3-D version of “Titanic,” which had recently opened in theaters here. More important, Mr. Cameron was here to meet with people in the Chinese film industry to talk about doing joint productions and getting greater distribution for his 3-D films, which use technology developed by Cameron Pace Group, or C.P.G.

China has a strict limit on the number of foreign films allowed to be shown in theaters here, although that number was raised in February when Chinese officials announced an agreement with Hollywood studio executives during a trip to the United States by Xi Jinping, the vice president and presumed next leader of China (and reportedly a fan of Hollywood World War II films).

On April 22, the day after his arrival in Beijing, Mr. Cameron talked about his projects and the Chinese film industry in an interview with The New York Times and The Economist. (The interview took place before it was reported that regulators in the United States were looking into whether American studios might have made improper payments to Chinese officials, so that was not a topic of discussion). Edited and condensed excerpts from the interview follow.

Read the rest to this article from Media Decoder.

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