New York Film Festival

It has been a very busy couple of weeks. I've now done a couple of short screen writing exercises, one scene for my acting class (David Mamet's "Cold"), and one directing exercise to name a few. The directing exercise was fun and challenging. We had to come up with a story and shoot two people in a room. Character A is sitting a table engaged in an activity. Character B enters (must show the entrance) and sits across from A and engages in an activity which attracts or repels character A. Character A leaves (must show the exit) and B takes his spot. This exercise was fun and a bit tough, despite how simple it sounds. We had to use at least ten shots and use a number of certain types of shots. I learned a lot doing it and was overall fairly happy with my results. In class, everyone's was ripped apart, so I didn't feel so bad about my mistakes. I really love my directing class. My teacher is Bette Gordon. She is fairly preoccupied since she had a film at TriBeca and is still dealing with distributors. I'm not totally in love with her, but I respect what she is trying to do and have learned a lot form her. I wish I had this class twice a week and that there were twice as much homework.

Elements of dramatic narrative is my favorite class. The professor is Andy Bienen. He co-wrote

"Boys Don't Cry" and is incredibly humble but has a clear mastery of screenwriting. We are beginning to develop feature films in this class. Also, every Sunday night we have to go to a double feature. Last week we watched the Godfather, which is amazing every time I watch it.

Richard Pena, my film theory professor, is the director of the New York Film Festival. We have had two of the films screened at our school with Q & A's with the director to follow. We watched "Police, Adjective" which was a (Polish?) absurdist film. The dialogue scenes were incredible, but the first half hour of the film was more or less a policeman just waiting with no cutting. I was particularly tired that day, so I can't say I was too awake for the waiting. Yesterday, Harmony Korine, who made one of my favorite films "Gummo" came and screened his film "Trash Humpers." The film was pretty insane. Here is a link to a review: http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941100.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

I personally wasn't proud I saw the film. It crossed some boundaries that I wished it hadn't. I didn't feel right about some of the people he showed, and honestly wondered if they knew that they were in the NYFF. I know the people agreed to be on camera, but I still didn't feel right about seeing them. I thought at 20-minutes it got its point across.

Harmony's q&a was very interesting. He is basically just a liar in a very funny way. He would dodge our questions about the film with witty comebacks. Q: How did you get the black prostitute to be in your film? A: She was my girlfriend from high school and she said she would of course be in it. She was a lot skinnier then. Q: How did you find the guy in the trailer? A: Well he actually doesn't sleep in the trailer, he sleeps under it, but I found him...

My friend in the lab right now suggested I watch Harmony's Letterman interview which was very similar to what we got. So if you are interested, look at that.

I agreed with about half the things Harmony said. He made a claim that narrative three-act structure filmmaking is going to be dead soon. That's absurd. It won't die. I doubt that people want to go and see an hour and a half of people humping trash cans every time they go see a movie. I think that artists like Harmony will for sure have an affect on filmmaking. The formwill shift because of artists like him. But narrative three-act structure is too effective to ever be tossed out completely. I did, however, love Harmony's enthusiasm for making cheap films. He seemed to be sincere in his excitement about how anyone can make a film because of the digital revolution. He was very encouraging and after the interview was over and people had finished there applause, he stood up and gave a very sincere and awkward little conclusion in which he said that we shouldn't give up and that our stories should be told etc. etc. I really liked that. He is a brave filmmaker. I don't totally dig him, but I think he's on to something.

I went and saw "Lebanon" by Samuel Maoz, an Israeli filmmaker. It won the golden lion at the Venice Film Fest and I'm sure it will go onto win many more. The whole film is set inside a war tank. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090912/wl_mideast_afp/entertainmentvenicefilmwin

It was one of the best movies I've seen this year. When you can, see it.

I should really get back to work. I am thinking of buying a canon 7D:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=19356

A lot of filmmakers I know are getting it and I have been looking at still cameras for a while. There are a few draw backs (no full frame, etc.). But the image quality seems fantastic and I could shoot so many films inconspicuously since it is so small. Any advice? Comment me...

I went to check out Polanski's "Repulsion" but it wasn't up for circulation. Bummer! I want to see it...

Hope all is well for everybody reading this. I'll try to do more updates as the semester pushes on.

Love, Lulu