By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Filmmaker Magazine Announces 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film”

Posted Thursday, July 19th, 2012 - Comments Off on Filmmaker Magazine Announces 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film”
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Speaking to the collaborative spirit and self-sufficiencies of today’s filmmakers, a record 37 people comprise Filmmaker Magazine’s 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Several filmmaking teams and one sprawling collective all occupy slots on the list, the 15th edition of Filmmaker‘s annual survey of up-and-coming directors, screenwriters, actors, producers and cinematographers. Other notable trends this year: an increased number of international filmmakers basing themselves in the U.S. as they begin their careers; creative cross-pollination between the film and visual arts worlds; and U.S. filmmakers venturing abroad, to Europe and Africa, to find compelling global stories.

“Our 25 list has always favored those whose creativity shines in not just their films but in the ways they begin their careers,” commented Filmmaker Editor-in-Chief Scott Macaulay. “The filmmakers on this year’s list demonstrate enormous ingenuity as they find new ways to establish themselves and connect with their audiences.”

Filmmaker Magazine is a publication of IFP, the Independent Filmmaker Project. Past 25 New Faces include: Alma Har’el (Bombay Beach), Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Lena Dunham (Girls), Rashaad Ernesto Green (Gun Hill Road), Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), Danfung Dennis (To Hell and Back Again), Matt Porterfield (Putty Hill), Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow), Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden (Half Nelson), Barry Jenkins (Medicine for Melancholy), Miranda July (Me and You and Everyone We Know), Joshua Safdie (The Pleasure of Being Robbed) and Peter Sollett and Eva Vives (Raising Victor Vargas). Notable actors include several high-profile names in the early stages of their careers such as Ryan Gosling, Ellen Page, Peter Sarsgaard and Hilary Swank.

Complete stories on this year’s “25” can be found in Filmmaker’s Summer issue and online here.

The 2012 “25 New Faces of Independent Film: are:Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann. Described by the filmmakers as “a gay Scenes from a Marriage” about “superficial, homophobic lesbians,” The Slope is Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann’s witty and highly successful web series, which they’re currently developing as a feature.

Jonas Carpigano. A Chjàna, Jonas Carpignano’s explosive short film about street riots involving African immigrants in Rosarno, Italy, won the Best Short Film at the Venice Film Festival. It’s currently being developed as a feature at the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab.

Ian Clark. Oregan-based filmmaker Ian Clark has made a number of shorts that capture the beauty and rhythms of his region’s small-town life. His latest, Searching for Yellow, is about a graffiti artist who makes nature his canvas. Clark also jointly programs the East Oregon Film Festival.

Ryan Coogler. After several acclaimed shorts, Bay Area-based writer/director Ryan Coogler is making his debut feature, Fruitvale, about the New Year’s Eve police killing of Oscar Grant and co-starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer.

Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. Filmmaker Drea Cooper and photographer Zackary Canepari found a visually seductive and highly original approach to depicting Los Angeles in their acclaimed web series, California is a Place.

Chris Dapkins. Cinematographer and filmmaker Chris Dapkins’ dreamy, shallow-focus cinematography transforms late adolescence into modern mythology in Tim Sutton’s Pavilion, due for release from Factory 25 in early 2013. Dapkins’ other credits include the documentaries The Central Park Effect and The Swell Season, which he co-directed.

Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worral. Film producer Katherine Fairfax Wright and journalist/videographer Malika Zouhali-Worral teamed to direct their debut feature doc, Call Me Kuchu, about the imperiled LGBT community in Uganda, where a bill proposed making homosexuality punishable by death. The film has won awards at the Berlin Film Festival and Hot Docs.

Hannah Fidell. Writer/director Hannah Fidell’s debut feature A Teacher, a piercing psychological drama about an unstable female high school teacher, won the post- production prize at the Champs-Elysees Film Festival’s US-in-Progress section in June.

Julia Garner. Appearing in an astonishing number of films since her debut in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Julia Garner recently scored her first lead, playing a Mormon teenager in Rebecca Thomas’s Electrick Children. She brings a guileless, magnetic sincerity to her portrayal of young girl pondering her own mysterious pregnancy.

Ian Harnarine. New York-based, Trinidadian-Canadian writer/director Ian Harnarine studied nuclear physics, teaches both physics and sound recording at NYU, and won awards at the Toronto Film Festival and Canada’s Genies with his short Doubles with Slight Pepper. Now being expanded into a feature, it is about a Trinidadian food vendor confronted with his long-lost, gravely ill father.

Cutter Hodierne. L.A.-based Cutter Hodierne has 2012’s best filmmaking story: the saga of his travel to Kenya to make Fishing Without Nets, a riveting short film about a reluctant Somali pirate. The film won the Jury Award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Alexa Karolinski. Berlin-born, New York-based Alexa Karolinski’s first doc, Oma & Bella — a warm portrait of two octogenarian Holocaust survivors — was recently acquired by Oscilloscope. She’s currently at work on a short doc about Warhol superstar Billy Name.

Penny Lane and Brian Frye. Currently in post-production, Our Nixon is Lexington, Ky.-based Penny Lane and Brian Frye’s debut feature documentary. Using rediscovered archival footage and period songs, it captures, in the words of the filmmakers, “the hubris, tragedy and banality of [the Nixon] presidency.”

Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva. Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva mashed up notorious Southern rappers 2 Live Crew and French art film hero Chris Marker in Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke, a short that screened at Sundance and SXSW this year. It’s just one of many projects, many of them internet-based, from this team of Miami artists.

Alexandre Moors. Paris-born, New York-based Alexandre Moors is a prolific music video director and is also in post on his riveting and disquieting first feature, Blue Caprice, a dark drama about the 2002 Beltway sniper attacks in Washington, D.C.

Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq. The filmmaking team of Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq recently screened a work-in-progress version of their Marachi, Pakistan-set debut documentary, These Birds Walk, at the True/False Film Festival. A thoughtful portrait of the young boys residing at Pakistan’s Edhi Foundation, it’s also a universal meditation on the precarious beauty of childhood.

Terence Nance. An obsessively creative romantic drama with a wonderfully elastic form, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is New York-based writer, director, actor and composer Terence Nance’s feature debut. The film premiered in the 2012 New Frontiers section of the Sundance Film Festival before playing New Directors/New Films.

Ornana. Georgia-based film collective Ornana mixes animation and live action in their various short and long-form projects. The animated (notes on) biology was an internet sensation, while Euphonia, a live-action film about a teenager obsessed with recording the world around him, is on its way.

Julia Pott. An elephant, a horse and a monster are the characters in British-born, Brooklyn-based animator Julia Pott’s heartbreakingly poignant animated film, Belly.

A. G. Rojas. L.A.-based A.G. Rojas has brought his sometimes surreal, sometimes shocking storytelling sensibility to music videos from Spiritualized, Jack White and Earl Sweatshirt. His equally astonishing short film, Crown, is currently on the festival circuit.

Kim Sherman. Columbia, Mo.-based producer Kim Sherman is behind some of the year’s best independent films, including Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine and Adam Wingard’s You’re Next. She’s also the producer of a film by another of this year’s 25 — Hannah Fidell’s A Teacher — and she drums in the rock band Jerusalem and the Starbaskets.

Jason Tippet and Elisabeth Mims. After meeting at CalArts, filmmakers Jason Tippet and Elisabeth Mims developed a visually striking, deeply empathetic documentary style, seen clearly in their debut feature, Only the Young. After premiering this year at True/False, it went on to the win the Grand Prize at Silverdocs.

Wu Tsang. Wu Tsang impacted both the film and art worlds this year with Wildness, a politically questioning, playfully engaging portrait of the Los Angeles trans bar Silver Platter. The feature played MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight, Hot Docs, SXSW and Outfest, while an installation version showed at the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Patrick Wang. First-time filmmaker Patrick Wang’s In the Family, an intense and thoughtful drama about a gay man facing child custody issues, was a sleeper indie success this past year. Currently in extended theatrical release, it was nominated for a Best First Feature Spirit Award.

Treva Wurmfeld. Dividing her time between Los Angeles, New York and Austin, director Treva Wurmfeld is completing her debut doc, Shepard and Dark, which chronicles a decades-long, mostly epistolary relationship between actor and playwright Sam Shepard and his friend Johnny Dark.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon