Taos Talking Pictures was a non-profit corporation registered with the State of New Mexico in 1994 by actor Joshua Bryant, Phillip Kirk, and attorney Stephen Rose for the purpose of producing The Taos Talking Picture Festival, which premiered in April 1995. After four years, it was named by writer Chris Gore as one of the top ten film festivals in the world. [1] The festival was also notable for offering a Land Grant Prize, which gave the filmmaker with the winning feature-length film five acres of land located Northwest of Taos on nearby Cerro Montoso. [2]
In the unsettled national climate after the September 11 attacks, Taos Talking Pictures found it more and more difficult to raise enough funding to continue its work.[ citation needed ] It folded The Taos Talking Picture Festival in 2003.
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases. Some festivals focus on a specific filmmaker, genre of film, or subject matter. Several film festivals focus solely on presenting short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians, including Jerry Beck, do not consider film festivals as official releases of the film.
Taos is a town in Taos County in the north-central region of New Mexico in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Initially founded in 1615, it was intermittently occupied until its formal establishment in 1795 by Nuevo México Governor Fernando Chacón to act as fortified plaza and trading outpost for the neighboring Native American Taos Pueblo and Hispano communities, including Ranchos de Taos, Cañon, Taos Canyon, Ranchitos, El Prado, and Arroyo Seco. The town was incorporated in 1934. As of the 2010 census, its population was 5,716.
An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies. Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and the way in which the filmmakers' personal artistic vision is realized. Usually, but not always, independent films are made with considerably lower budgets than major studio films. In fact, it is not unusual for well known actors who are cast in independent films to take substantial pay cuts if they truly believe in the message of the film, or because they want to work under an independent director who has a solid reputation for being highly talented, or if they are returning a favor. There are many examples of the latter, including John Travolta and Bruce Willis taking less pay to star in Pulp Fiction.
Denis Villeneuve is a French Canadian filmmaker. He is a four-time recipient of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction, winning for Maelström in 2001, Polytechnique in 2009, Incendies in 2010 and Enemy in 2013. The first three of these films also won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Motion Picture, while the latter was awarded the prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association.
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for films that revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993), the Before trilogy romance films—Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013), the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003), the animated films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014), and the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016).
Smoke Signals is a Canadian-American independent film released in 1998, directed and co-produced by Chris Eyre and with a screenplay by Sherman Alexie, based on the short story "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). The film won several awards and accolades, and was well received at numerous film festivals.
Film Threat is an online film review publication, and earlier, a national magazine that focused primarily on independent film, although it also reviewed videos and DVDs of mainstream films, as well as Hollywood movies in theaters. It first appeared as a photocopied zine in 1985, created by Wayne State University students Chris Gore and André Seewood. In 1997, Film Threat was converted to a solely online resource.
Christopher Patrick Gore is an American speaker and writer on the topic of independent film.
Herschell Gordon Lewis was an American filmmaker, best known for creating the "splatter" subgenre of horror films. He is often called the "Godfather of Gore", though his film career included works in a range of exploitation film genres including juvenile delinquent films, nudie-cuties, two children's films and at least one rural comedy. On Lewis' career, AllMovie wrote, "With his better-known gore films, Herschell Gordon Lewis was a pioneer, going further than anyone else dared, probing the depths of disgust and discomfort onscreen with more bad taste and imagination than anyone of his era."
Gregor Justin "Gore" Verbinski is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and musician. He is best known for directing The Ring, the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and Rango. He won the Academy Award, the BAFTA, and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film for his work on Rango.
Participant is a Los Angeles, California-based film production company founded in 2004 by Jeffrey Skoll, dedicated to entertainment intended to spur social change. The company finances and co-produces film and television content, as well as digital entertainment through its subsidiary SoulPancake, which the company acquired in 2016.
Jeffrey Clark Wadlow is an American writer, producer and director.
Film Comment is an arts and culture magazine now published by the Film at Lincoln Center, of which it is the official publication. Film Comment features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, Film Comment began publishing on a bi-monthly basis with the Nov/Dec issue of 1972. The magazine's editorial team also hosts the annual Film Comment Selects at the Film at Lincoln Center. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, publication of the magazine was suspended in May 2020, and its website was updated on March 10, 2021, with news of the relaunch of the Film Comment podcast and a weekly letter.
Jonathan David Stack is an American documentary filmmaker. He is also a co-founder of World Vasectomy Day.
The Farm: Angola, USA is a 1998 award-winning documentary set in the notorious and largest American maximum-security prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola. Loosely based on articles published in Life Sentences, drawn from the prison magazine, The Angolite, the film was directed and produced by Jonathan Stack and Liz Garbus. Wilbert Rideau, a life prisoner who had been editor of the magazine since 1975, also participated in direction and was credited on the film.
Jackie Kong is an American screenwriter, film producer, and film director known for the cult horror film Blood Diner.
Jodi Leib is an American artist and independent filmmaker, focusing primarily on issues of human rights, music, popular culture, and reproductive health.
Bertha Bay-Sa Pan is a Taiwanese-American Director, Writer and Producer. Born in New Jersey and raised in Taiwan, Pan was educated at Boston University and the Columbia University Graduate Film School receiving a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Directing, while working as a Sales Executive in Film Distribution. Pan's graduate thesis short film at Columbia University, entitled "Face," garnered various awards from Film Festivals worldwide, including the Director's Guild Award for Best Asian American Student Filmmaker and the Polo Ralph Lauren Award for Best Screenplay.
Christopher Elwin Fuller is an American film director, writer, producer, editor, actor and entrepreneur. His films have been compared to the early, avant-garde works of Gus Van Sant, Harmony Korine and Robert Bresson, though his peers consider him a rarity in that his films are entirely unique.
Gigi Saul Guerrero is a Mexican-Canadian filmmaker and actress. She gained recognition for creating and directing the 2017 horror web series, La Quinceañera. In 2019, she directed episodes of The Purge and the anthology horror series, Into the Dark.