Ten Best 2012

I think I broke a personal record with the number of films that I've seen this year. I saw everything that I could. So, here's my list of the best features, non-English, documentaries and shorts that I saw this year.

Sure, some of them are done by friends. Sure some of them maybe didn't come out this year, but I can honestly say these are the films that made me feel (or think) the most. Above all, they motivated and inspired me to make work just as good.

(All in Alphabetical Order)

Ten Fave Feature Films

- Argo (Ben Affleck)
- Boy (Taika Waititi)
- In the Family (Patrick Wang)
- Killer Joe (William Friedkin)
- The Life of Pi (Ang Lee)
- Les Miserables  (Tom Hooper)
- Promised Land (Gus Van Sant)
- The Sound of My Voice (Zal Batmanglij)
- Wolf (Ya'ke Smith)
- Your Sister’s Sister (Lynn Shelton)

Ten Fave Non-English Films

- Amour (Michael Haneke)
- The Forgiveness of Blood (Joshua Marston)
- Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
- The Hunt (Thomas Viterberg)
- Mumbai’s King/ Mumbai Cha Raja (Manjeet Singh)
- No (Pablo Larrain)
- OK, Enough Goodbye (Daniel Garcia, Rannia Attieh)
- A Royal Affair (Nikolaj Arcel)
- Rust & Bone (Jacques Audiard)
- War Witch (Kim Nguyen)

Ten Fave Documentary Films

- Call Me Kuchu (Katherine Fairfax Wright, Malika Zouhali-Worrall)
- Central Park Five (Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon)
- China Heavyweight (Yung Chang)
- Detropia (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady)
- The End of Time (Peter Mettler)
- The House I Live In (Eugene Jarecki)
- How to Survive a Plague (David France)
- Only the Young (Elizabeth Mims, Jason Tippet)
- Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield)
- Samsara (Ron Fricke)
- Searching for Sugarman (Malik Benjelloul)

Ten Fave Short Films

- Belly (Julia Pott)
- Burn to Send (Andinh Ha)
- Edmond Was a Donkey (Franck Dion)
- The Factory (Aly Muritiba)
- Hellion (Kat Candler)
- I am John Wayne (Christina Choe)
- Local Tourists (Doug Lenox)
- The Maker (Christopher Kezelos)
- Remember Me My Ghost (Ross McDonnell) (Documentary)
- Videoboy (Stian Kristiansen)

CRAZY WEEK!

It's been an absurdly busy few weeks. I got back from the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this week and immediately got back down to teaching. There's so much to follow up on and emails to send - but there's just not enough time in the day. To make matters worse, I believe I'm getting a cold.

The good news is that my project Doubles With Slight Pepper won the Pitch This! competition, which came with $10,000. Amazing. 

Here's the Variety article about it http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118059159

If you've ever wanted to know what happens at a film festival, you can check out my diary for what I did and what happened during my time in Toronto. I wrote it for Filmmaker Magazine. 

Or if you're interested in the process of how my pitch was developed (and the experience of doing it in front of 200 people!), here's a cool article that I did for Indie Wire. 

Still lots to catch up on  - but I've got a mountain of assignments that I need to grade!

So Many Formats So Little Time

The life that my film Doubles with Slight Pepper has had is completely unexpected. It premiered about a year ago and is still experiencing a healthy festival run. AWESOME!!

One of the unexpected problems (it's hard to complain about such things) is actually getting the film to an audience - LITERALLY. Each festival requires varying formats in which to screen for their audience. It's been a lot of work (and expensive!) to get the film on to various formats. We've got the film on: DVD, Blu-Ray, HDCam, HDCam SR (not the same as regular HDCam!), ProRes (on the USB drive) and hard drive. In fact we have multiple versions of each to accommodate festivals that happen really close to one another. 

Usually a festival's Film Traffic department requires exhibition copies a few weeks in advance to make their technical checks and put them on drives, other master tapes etc... so it requires a lot of planning on keeping track of exhibition copies. Needless to say, larger films and studios have departments devoted to keeping track of it all.

The one glaring omission is that we don't have an actual film print! In probably a sign of the times, and the way in which distribution and festivals are going, we've never been asked to provide a 35mm print. This is lucky, because a physical film print in this day and age is REALLY expensive. 

More and more theatres are moving towards a total digital distribution method, which I think is a good thing!

We Are News That's Fit To Print!

In one of the most surreal moments of all time, the newspaper of record for us all, The New York Freakin' Times just posted their article on the film!

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/seeking-a-new-york-audience-for-a-film-rooted-in-trinidad/

Of course, this is something that means a lot and will hopefully spread the word about the film and everyone involved.

Thanks to everyone for their support!!

The Boss

OK, so everyone knows Bruce Springsteen - 'the Born in the USA', dude. We grew up on that guy. Something happened though a few weeks ago, Dancing in the Dark came on randomly and I actually listened to it. Like REALLY listened to it - lyrics and all. It pretty much leveled me. Ditto for Born in the USA. Never actually read the lyrics until that day, but holy crap, does anyone actually listen to what he's saying? How can politicians play it at their conventions? Such an incredible songwriter and lyricist - he's been on repeat for weeks now. Sounds completely corny, but he really is THE BOSS! Check this out (never mind the Carlton dancing of Ms. Cox, just listen!):

The Boss

OK, so everyone knows Bruce Springsteen - 'the Born in the USA', dude. We grew up on that guy.

Something happened though a few weeks ago, Dancing in the Dark came on randomly and I actually listened to it. Like REALLY listened to it - lyrics and all.

It pretty much leveled me. Ditto for Born in the USA. Never actually read the lyrics until that day, but holy crap, does anyone actually listen to what he's saying? How can politicians play it at their conventions?

Such an incredible songwriter and lyricist - he's been on repeat for weeks now.

Sounds completely corny, but he really is THE BOSS!

Check this out (never mind the Carlton dancing of Ms. Cox, just listen!):

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/129kuDCQtHs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

A New Face?!

Incredibly proud and humbled to be on Filmmaker Magazine's annual list of 25 New Faces of Independent Film!

This is a list that I'd always look to every year for interesting filmmakers doing amazing work. Needless to say it's prestigious and means so much to me.

I sometimes find it strange to be recognized as an individual when filmmaking is such a collaborative form - so I thank all of those people that helped me get to this point.