The Lasting Effects of "Buck"
I went to see Buck for the usual reasons I go to see movies: because a friend urged me to, because I like to be informed, culturally enriched, entertained of course, and maybe if the film is good...
View ArticleSaying Goodbye to My Steenbeck
Editor’s Note: This year’s Mendocino Film Festival‘s annual Albert Maysles Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking Award has been given to Ralph Arlyck and his film Following Sean. The film will be...
View ArticlePersonal Take on 10 to Watch filmmaker Mike Day
Director Mike Day, 10 to Watch in 2012, is the one-man turbine behind Intrepid Cinema’s documentaries. Here, Intrepid’s composer and on-location sound designer Nathaniel Mann tells The Independent...
View ArticleConfessions of a Failed Screenwriter
Editor’s note: Our friend Randy Steinberg sent along an essay he originally wrote for Scriptshadow and we asked if we could re-publish. He said yes.Author’s note: Throughout this essay, when I refer to...
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Festival Diary: Edinburgh International Film Festival (Part Two)
Films at this festival are selected “to represent the most innovative and adventurous developments in world cinema,” and the festival seeks “stylistic boldness, strength of form, and the ambition to...
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From the Archives: First Person Singular, Autobiography in Film
Three decades have passed since David Schwartz’s exploration of the connection between subjective perspectives and objective truths in documentary filmmaking, yet this essay remains as relevant and...
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Examining the ‘Ripple Effects’ of War through “My Father’s Vietnam”
My father was a Vietnam veteran.My father is a Vietnam veteran, though you wouldn’t know it to look at him. He doesn’t have the baseball cap, the button, or the bumper sticker. He doesn’t have the...
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Expanding Off-Screen Relationships, On Screen: A Closer Look at “Twinsburg”
Earlier this year, independent filmmaker Joe Garrity debuted Twinsburg, a short film about identical twin brothers, Jerry and Paul, who reconnect at the largest gathering of twins in a small town in...
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Unearthing Filmmaker Marc Karlin, an Oft-Overlooked Pioneer of Documentary Film
The sets and dioramas that populate Karlin’s films borrow from a dramatic tradition, stretching from Punch and Judy to German Expressionism. His films are literary, with chapters, text and references...
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The Art of the Deal-ing President
We don’t know much about Donald Trump’s art policies. We do have a sense of his aesthetic. He likes marble and especially gold—on walls and stairs and toilet seats. There is a portrait of him that...
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Back to the Feature: How (Some) Shorts Grow Long
Originally published in the January/February 2005 issue of The Independent, this article is also available in our archives.A long time ago, in a film school far, far away (from NYU), a young man with...
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How To Utilize A Painful Past in Creating a Successful Film
Surrender is the 2016 short drama by Director Christopher Carson Emmons. It centers on the inner life of a struggling alcoholic (Aram Hekinian). In the following essay, Screenwriter Mark Renshaw...
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Daniel Lombroso: Profile of a D.C. Filmmaker
An American kid from New York, a devout Muslim from Istanbul, and a group of Syriac Orthodox Christians…. It sounds like the beginnings of a tasteless joke, but in actuality it’s the start of a...
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Telluride: A Film Student’s Reflection
Casual encounters with filmmaking greats, while par for the course at Telluride, did not fail to inspire gratefulness and amazement in me. The 2017 Telluride Student Symposium was my foray into a world...
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Katerina Cizek is Opening up Documentary at MIT’s new Co-Creative Studio
Digital media pioneer Katerina Cizek is a “hometown girl” in Toronto, so the Toronto International Film Festival is always on her calendar. But this year she’s attending the TIFF Docs Conference with a...
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Art House Streaming Platforms Uniquely Poised to Build Online Film Communities
The continued rise of streaming platforms—both large and small—has had reverberating effects in online film communities. Every company in this space, regardless of size and scope, must find, maintain,...
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The Fog Rolls into Boston
For three late Friday and Saturday nights in November and December, The Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts ran a retrospective of Adrienne Barbeau’s major cult films, including Swamp...
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An Evening with a True Artist
Werner Herzog is a filmmaker who, like Alfred Hitchcock and Olson Welles, is perhaps more well-known for his reputation and personality than his films. Prior to last Thursday, I was only peripherally...
View ArticleThe Global Screen: An Essay Series on Contemporary World Cinema
The Independent is excited to launch The Global Screen—a series of bi-monthly essays written by film scholars and academics interested in engaging with our readership of filmmakers, directors, artists,...
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Make-up As The Passport To Femininity
Lilla Puskás was selected to attend the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival’s Talent Press Workshop. Being “Body Politics” was the focus of the festival’s Panorama section, Lilla chose as her main...
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