Headlamp Pictures Blog

This Week on EXTRA

June 3rd, 2010 @ 8:30pm

LAKE PLACID FILM FORUM

The Lake Placid Film Forum is celebrating 10-years, with special guests including actors Hal Holbrook, Parker Posey, and authors William Kennedy and Jay Parini. The festival host screenings of 2 locally produced films, The Summers of Walter Hacks by Vermont filmmaker George Woodard; and Skatopia: 88 Acres of Anarchy by filmmakers Colin Powers and Laurie House from Essex, New York.
For information on events and screenings: www.lakeplacidfilmforum.com

SKATOPIA

We’ll talk with filmmaker Laurie House and Brewce Martin, who is the force behind the outrageous skateboard park in rural Appalacia.

• www.skatopiathemovie.com

DOUBLE FEATURE

Our film critic Rick Kisonak has his own mini-film-festival with a double feature of 2 of the summer blockbusters: Robin Hood and Macgruber.

• www.7dvt.com

It’s fair to say that this’ll be the only time Skatopia shares the bill with Hal Holbrook and Parker Posey! Come check us out in Lake Placid – June 11th at 11 PM!

skatopia: 88 acres of anarchy. june 11 at 11.

May 25, 2010 by tjbrearton

There’s a lot of talk out there about anarchy, about anti-establishmentarianism.  There’s a lot of talk about living the dream.  The creator of the real-place “Skatopia” and his constituents are doing it.  Skating, hedonism, and the impulses of the id reign.  Not for the faint of heart, “Skatopia” delves into the philosophies of aggressive patriarch Brewce Martin, a self-described dictator, and the mythos of his disciples, prone to foul mouths, crash-up derby driving, and escaping from realities of life outside the park.  Director of Programming for MLPBS Colin Powers and filmmaker Laurie House helm this down and dirty documentary.

“He comes to Skatopia for genuine reasons…to skateboard, get drunk, and [get] chicks….”

- Brewce, describing a regular visitor

Come for the skating, stay for the life.

Showing at the Lake Placid Film Forum Friday June 11th, at 11pm, Palace Theatre. Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

Dispatch from Toronto | Hot Docs ’10: Pitch Perfect at the Toronto Documentary Forum

by Basil Tsiokos (May 7, 2010)

The scene at the Toronto Documentary Forum. Photo courtesy of Hot Docs/Joseph Michael.

Hundreds of broadcasters, funders, filmmakers, and other observers convened this Wednesday and Thursday morning for the Toronto Documentary Forum, North America’s largest documentary market, as part of the ongoing Hot Docs film festival. Led for the second year by Elizabeth Radshaw, the TDF selects twenty promising new projects for filmmakers to pitch for potential co-production support, providing invaluable access to the movers and shakers of the non-fiction world and allowing them to make an early impression that may pay off with a broadcast deal or at least open a door to acquisition meetings down the line.

A number of strong-sounding docs got pitched at this year’s TDF at HotDocs… but I’m a little astounded by the proposed budgets. When producers of fiction features (generally higher grossing than docs) are being told to keep budgets to the $200K range (see Ted Hope’s comments at IFP marketplace last fall), how do documentary makers think their ever going to recoup these budgets?

Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festival

By JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago

NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.

Whitecross estimates that 90 percent of the films that were influential to him — such as “Taxi Driver” and “La Dolce Vita” — he watched “on very dodgy, knocked-off VHS tapes” or on TV early in the morning with commercial breaks.

“Better to have seen them that way than not at all,” he says.

Whitecross’ experience guides the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday amid concern that the volcanic ash disrupting air travel in Europe might ground some of the many European filmmakers who were planning to attend.

. In an effort to help films find audiences, movies won’t just be screening in downtown Manhattan.

A new distribution company, Tribeca Film, founded by the festival’s parent company, Tribeca Enterprises, will make a dozen movies — including Whitecross’ directorial debut “sex & drugs & rock & roll” — available on TV by way of video-on-demand in some 40 million homes. A “virtual festival” will also stream eight movies and 18 shorts online for viewers willing to shell out $45.

…ctd

A win-win for indy filmmakers and indy-loving audiences who can’t get to Manhattan (or can’t get a ticket.) Get the films on VOD and watch in your home theater. Now I’ve got to convince my little cableco to sign up!

This year there are some local films, that after speaking with Athena director, Ruth Bradley, could really contend to win Best Film. There is the film Skatopia that focuses on the Meigs County skate park. Bradley said that this could be the biggest of all of them and it was almost sold out when I spoke to her on Wednesday. This is a local film with local people and is being shown to a local audience. This is really cool especially for local filmmakers because the movie industry is so tough to break into and now there is an opportunity for a local production to break into the market and be shown to an audience that has vested interest in this product.

Nice write up from WOUB TV that interviewed Laurie the day before the show.