Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
The word “edit” has a bad reputation. To lay folk, the word brings to mind overindulgence, censorship, and the property neighbored by “File” and “View.” But people in film know better. Walter Murch, the editing savant behind Apocalypse Now and The English Patient, once compared film editing to translation in that the challenge is not… Read more »
Author: Charlie Sweitzer
Charlie Sweitzer is a New York-based writer.
Articles Written by Charlie Sweitzer:
Courting cash
Lots of things pile up after a shoot. For Steve Gentile, producer of Loaded Gun: Life, Death, and Dickinson, the end of post-production brought a surplus of bills and lots of beer. “When we were premiering at the Museum of Fine Arts [MFA] here in Boston, they said, ‘Hey, can we help?’” recalls Gentile. “And… Read more »
Two Steps Back
The Federal Communications Commission has voted to loosen media ownership laws, allowing one company to own television stations that reach forty-five percent of the American viewing audience (up from thirty-five percent). The new rules also permit cross-media ownership. Now, one corporation can own both a television station and a newspaper in the same market. On… Read more »
“EGG” Expands
Even though no new episodes will be produced past the current season, the production unit behind PBS’s "EGG": The Arts Show is going strong. Not only has the show recently picked up a 2002 Peabody Award (the third for the production unit, which also received Peabodies in 1997 for "City Arts" and in 2000 for… Read more »
CPB Faces Possible Budget Cuts
President Bush’s proposed budgets for 2004 and 2005 will introduce deep cuts and radical changes for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) if they pass through Congress later this year unaltered. In addition to a tighter budget, CPB would not receive advance appropriations for 2006. Advance appropriations allow CPB and the media entities it funds,… Read more »
Guerrilla Girls Take On Film Industry Sexism
From our billboard last year we were invited on a few conservative radio talk shows, which really surprised us,” says the Käthe Kollwitz of the Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous feminist arts agitation group. “But we learned something really interesting—the only thing ultra-conservatives hate more than feminism is the film industry! So they’re our new best… Read more »
FCC Changes Afoot?
What do a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, the host of a long-running Harlem public access show, vice presidents at Fox and CBS, and Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell have in common? They’re all concerned about the future of media ownership laws, and were among the several dozen panelists who assembled at… Read more »
Beth Harrington
It’s been said that every filmmaker secretly wants to be a rock star, and vice versa. Beth Harrington has been both. In what she calls “a former lifetime,” she performed with Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. She’s since worked on an array of documentary programs, from NOVA to Frontline to Health Quarterly. But her… Read more »
Screening No More
Earlier this year the Carnegie Museum announced it would close one of Pittsburgh’s oldest and most renowned screening series and shut down the museum’s film and video department, the result of a $4 million budget cut for 2003. In addition to dropping the film and video program, Carnegie Museum is eliminating seventeen full-time and four… Read more »
News: Short List Turns Ten
The Short List, the Emmy award-winning television series showcasing short films from around the world, celebrated the premiere of its tenth season on November 3. Produced by Jack Ofield, San Diego State University’s filmmaker in residence, and veteran writer/producer Helen-Maria Erawan, this season boasts forty-three shorts—ranging from documentary to fiction to animation—from sixteen countries, all… Read more »