It is not as unusual as it may at first sound…..a filmmaker with over 40 years of experience and over 25 films in the can is lionized in Europe but underappreciated in his home country. That has been the fate of many of the original American indies of the 1970s, including such celebrated auteurs as Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Amos Poe and Susan Seidelman, and a more recent crop that includes Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz. Most prominently on this list is the idiosyncratic filmmaker Abel Ferra...

  Thursday, March 12-----It is not as unusual as it may at first sound…..a filmmaker with over 40 years of experience and over 25 films in the can is lionized in Europe but underappreciated in his home country. That has been the fate of many of the original American indies of the 1970s, including such celebrated auteurs as Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Amos Poe and Susan Seidelman, and a more recent crop that includes Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz. Most prominently on this list is the idi...

  Tuesday, November 11-----American debut filmmaker Brian Hecker has been awarded the first International Film Guide Inspiration Award given at an American film festival, at this past weekend’s Awards Gala at the (www.fliff.com). Hecker won for his feature debut, the comedy Bart Got A Room, which closed the Festival. The film, a winning family comedy shot in south Florida, debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2008 and has been picked up for distribution by Plum Pictures (...

Monday, January 1, 2007------While a lot of ink (or bytes) will be spent on the films and performers who will win accolades in the busy awards season to come (from the Golden Globes through the Independent Spirit Awards to the Oscar extravaganza), it seems appropriate, on this first day of the New Year, to take a moment to list the celebrated actors, directors, producers and other film professionals who took their final curtain calls in 2006. We remember them all, and how wonderful that their ...