Jon H from Finland at JonHs.net has pulled together a remarkable list of 9-11 related documentaries online. All are free to watch and most are created by unfunded groups and individuals. There's a few extreme conspiracy theories but it's is still an impresive collective example of citzen filmmaking. So much seems to have happened in the five years since Tom ran up the stairs…

  I've worked as an actor on a number of film sets and with a wide range of directors and filmmakers.  It's an exciting place to be and when you hit the scene right, there's no better feeling in the world; despite shooting out of chronological order and out of emotional continuity.  Each day, each scene, each take, brings its own challenges for the actor - and when you're tackling…

The low budget digital film making revolution is sweeping the industry like a big brush. But in this case the brush is made of pixels, ones and zeros as opposed to the usual brush construction of celluloid, photosensitive dyes and developing chemicals. One of the leading exponents of this 'Cinema Electronique' is Dutch auteur Hans Von Looz. His films such as, 'Breaking My Patience', 'The Nutters…

A few months ago I downloaded an open source add-on for Joomla, the (free) software that powers Netribution. It's a powerful tool which should make a nice addition here at some point - and it was free. So impressed was I after half an hour of using it that I checked out some of the add - available for it. I could buy alternative templates for $19 a time, an iPhone version, integration with other…

Some very important occasions in your life only comes ones and that's all. Such happening like your wedding, high school graduation party, a trip to a far country or an abnormal happening that you happen to witness are things you will never love to forget. One important thing that is of great important to help you record such occasions is a camera. Now, with a camera in hand, the next thing that…

Dead pan and wry are often traits associated with the national character of Edinburgh International Film Festival’s own natives, the Scots. So it’s intriguing to witness Argentinian and Greek directors – Ana Katz and Filippos Tsitos respectively - tackling family drama or existential inevitability in a dry-as-a-bone manner. Whether Argentinians or Greeks are noted for irony is moot, but consideri…

i have spent the last 6 months trying to make a small impact on my website with my content that hopefully is something different to what is offered by the established networks (as i have no budget there will be cracks here and there in the quality) and seeing as i am not handcuffed by the censorship and regulatory boards my material can be inflammatory if need be depending on what i am thinking a…

Hollywood cult film director and producer, Frank Q Dobbs, has died at 66. Dobbs, a Texan who loved writing Westerns, became a legend in the Texas film industry. He died from cancer. Dobbs was from Houston, and though he spent a lot of time in Hollywood, he often preferred to film in his native Texas. An old colleague described him as a real friend to the Lone Star State. "Frank…

Sydney Pollack, director, actor and writer, has passed away from cancer aged 73, and surrounded by his family. Link to LA Times obituary , Wikipedia page, IMDB page. Pollack was a friend and business partner to Anthony Minghella, who also sadly passed away earlier this year. Back in 2001, filmmaker and blogger Tim Clague caught the two legends in conversation at BAFTA, republished below…

When I was very young I was never as excited by films as I was by going to the theatre - it wasn't until my teens that I started geeking out on films.  The only only exception to that is Buster Keaton, I watched anything and everything by that man. The fact that he directed and wrote and stared in his films was one thing. But that he did his own stunts -  that made him a God…

It is so easy to forget the human stories behind the daily news headlines. BoingBoing has pointed to a couple of great films appearing this week. One from the BBC sees Rageh Omaar, who after a year of wrangling got to film freely inside Iran, and which shows a world a million miles away from the normal footage of angry people protesting. The other, more disturbing yet similarly touching series…

While there is some hint that the new British coalition government will follow through on the Lib Dem policy of rescinding the rushed and hated Digital Economy Bill to let it get full and appropriate scrutiny, I would imagine that many new cabinet members are grateful to Ben Bradshaw and Lord Mandelson for pushing through an unpopular piece of legislation as a parting gift and saving them from ha…

"The Love Bug features a car that comes to life. Is it powered by the love of Jesus Christ? We aren't offered any evidence that this is the case so we must, unfortunately, assume that it is in fact animated purely by the power of the Lord of Darkness. I still feel an urge to pray whenever I see a Volkswagen Beetle." Watching4Jesus.com is a website run by the Divine Church of Holy Interventi…

I recently heard from a music industry insider that Radiohead make some 80% of their income from touring, which opened up the question of why they put so much effort into packaging, selling and protecting albums. A question that has now been answered. Free from a record label after their six album deal with EMI had come to an end, one of the most revered bands of the last 20 years have taken th…

Come in come in. Is anyone there?Just lost a whole page of data when I went to upload it. PHUT. gone, finito, marrungad, kaputo. I was logged in, but when the upload completed it told me I could not have access to that page without being registered and shuit me out! And my data went west, wasting a whiole precious hour of work Oh boy am, I not nice to know at the moment..... I have some…

  Sunflower3 - from vimeo's danLinfield

From IADT Nashville: What makes a good animated movie? While beautiful art is certainly important, it takes an engaging story and memorable characters to help an animated film truly stand out. Here’s IADT Nashville's list of the 10 best animated films since 2000. What do you think? Did we leave anyone out? 10. Monsters, Inc (2001) No animation studio has more consistently produced great movies…

 Hallam Foe, Edinburgh 2000, Protagonist, Rataouille & Planet B-Boy "You know, everytime someone says they don't believe in cinema, someone, somewhere makes a sequel to a bad movie."  I'm slammed head first into multiplex A&E. Pulse falling, blood pressure dropping fast. I don't believe in anything any more. A sugar rush of Butterkist popcorn barely gets me into the trailers…

Do you know those moments where everything seems larger than life? Where the taste of baked beans rivals haute cuisine? Where the hazy sunlight and slow summer pace make you feel so much lighter you could have lost a stone in weight. It's as if the great post production supervisor in the sky has decided to apply a luminosity filter, upped the brightness and contrast, balanced the audio…

“Our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.&rd…

From the ever dependable BoingBoing comes details of Brain Water, a exquisite Mayazaki-esque short 3D animation from Johann Poo, by way of Jason Li. I like its illustration of the power of playful communication. Incidentally - in light of recent revelations about Vimeo's terms of service, Lumiera's Raffaella Traniello brings news of Vimeo's answer to her in their forums that they are working on…

Last year I built the website for a new documentary due to premiere this year about the issue of land-grabbing in Africa. I'd first been introduced to the production team at an remarkable week as part of the Swim Lab, and been struck silent as the director, Joakim Demmer, explained in plain terms how while we are sending billions in aid to countries like Ethiopia, we are also, inadvertently, he…

"This is a short film about my job as a Projectionist. I am quite proud of this film, mostly because I’m so proud of my job – it seems like a fulfilment of my childhood romantic notions of what I wanted to be when I grew up. Nonetheless what it most discernibly omits is how truly magnificent all the other staff are who work there too. It is dedicated to the other projectio…

Roy Disney, nephew of Walt and general protector of Disney, has passed away. I was lucky enough to meet Roy in 2000 at the Belfast Cinemagic Conference, and it has stood as one of the more memorable encounters of my working life. I was quite nervous beforehand yet without need - he was warm and genuine in his convictions, unassuming with a quiet strength. [Netribution, Dec 2000] Roy worked for…

A film Spike Jonze made after spendning a day with presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000 has just been released online.. given that Gore lost the election to only 500 votes, one wonders what impact this could have had on the election - and in turn the world today - had it been shown.  {google}29385328971143264{/google}