The Last Big Thing is the debut indie feature film from Writer/Director/Actor Dan Zukovic, featuring an important early role by Mark Ruffalo. It also starred Dan Zukovic and Sibel Ergener.
The Last Big Thing premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival in 1996 and went on to play at other festivals including the Hamptons International Film Festival, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, Boston Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Gen Art Film Festival, Galway Film Fleah, and the Umea Film Festival. The film received a US theatrical release in 1998 through Stratosphere Entertainment, and was sold to SHOWTIME, playing numerous times on all Showtime channels since 2000.
Cited as "the most important and overlooked indie film of the 90's" by Chris Gore in Film Threat, the film was also called "a distinctly original and brilliant work" by Kevin Thomas in the Los Angeles Times and "a satire whose sharpest moments echo the tone of a Nathanial West novel" by Stephen Holden in the New York Times. [1] Ken Eisner in Variety [2] characterized the film as "a consistently funny, relentlessly scabrous critique of fin-de-siecle media culture" and John Hartl in the Seattle Times [3] called it "one of the few truly original low budget comedies of recent years." Justine Elias of the Village Voice [4] went on to say "this furiously original movie could become the Repo Man of the '90s".
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.
Julia O'Hara Stiles is an American actress. Born and raised in New York City, Stiles began acting at the age of 11 as part of New York's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Her film debut was a small role at age 15 in I Love You, I Love You Not (1996), followed by a lead role in Wicked (1998) for which she received the Karlovy Vary Film Festival Award for Best Actress. She rose to prominence with leading roles in teen films such as 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Down to You (2000), and Save the Last Dance (2001). Her accolades include a Teen Choice Award and two MTV Movie Awards, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe Award, and Primetime Emmy Award.
Parker Christian Posey is an American actress. She was labeled "Queen of the Indies" for her roles in a succession of independent films throughout the 1990s, such as Dazed and Confused (1993), Party Girl, The Doom Generation, Kicking and Screaming, The Daytrippers (1996), The House of Yes, Clockwatchers, and Henry Fool (1998). She is the recipient of nominations for an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Satellite Award, and two Independent Spirit Awards.
Julia Anne Sweeney is an American actress and comedian. She gained fame as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1990 to 1994. She played Mrs. Keeper in the film Stuart Little and voiced Brittany in Father of the Pride. She appeared in the Hulu series Shrill, the Showtime series Work in Progress, and the Starz series American Gods.
Jennifer Westfeldt is an American actress, screenwriter, and producer. She is best known for co-writing, co-producing, and starring in the 2002 indie film Kissing Jessica Stein, for which she received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. She is also known for writing, producing, starring in, and making her directorial debut in the indie film, Friends with Kids (2012).
Miranda July is an American film director, screenwriter, actress and author. Her body of work includes film, fiction, monologue, digital presentations and live performance art.
Judith Therese Evans, known professionally as Judy Greer, is an American actress. She is primarily known as a character actress who has appeared in a wide variety of films. She rose to prominence for her supporting roles in the films Jawbreaker (1999), What Women Want (2000), 13 Going on 30 (2004), Elizabethtown (2005), 27 Dresses (2008), and Love & Other Drugs (2010).
Sheetal Sheth is an American actress, author, producer, and activist of Indian descent.
Things Behind the Sun is a 2001 drama film directed by Allison Anders and starring Kim Dickens and Gabriel Mann. It premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and was later aired on television by Showtime on August 18, 2001, before receiving a limited theatrical release. The film is based on an early adolescent experience of Anders'.
Neil Norman Burger is an American filmmaker. He is known for the fake-documentary Interview with the Assassin (2002), the period drama The Illusionist (2006), Limitless (2011), and the sci-fi action film Divergent (2014).
Aaron and Adam Nee, sometimes referred to as the Nee brothers, are an American filmmaking duo best known for their feature films The Last Romantic (2006), Band of Robbers (2015), and The Lost City (2022).
Cevin Soling is an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, musician, music producer, and artist.
Humpday is a 2009 American mumblecore comedy-drama film directed, produced, and written by Lynn Shelton and starring Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, and Alycia Delmore. It premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. International distribution rights were purchased by Magnolia Pictures for a mid-six figure sum. The film opened in New York City in a limited release on July 10, 2009. The story line follows two male heterosexual best friends, Ben and Andrew. The plot line centers around a "mutual dare" that is introduced at a party, which involves the two main characters engaging in a pornographic film together. The film was shot on-location in Washington state around Seattle from September 2008 to January 2009, and much of the dialogue for the film was improvised.
Last Train Home is a 2009 Canadian documentary film directed by Lixin Fan and produced by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin of EyeSteelFilm. It won the Best Documentary Feature at 2009 IDFA and has been distributed by Zeitgeist Films in the US.
The 27th annual Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20, 2011 until January 30, 2011 in Park City, Utah, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ogden, Utah, and Sundance, Utah.
Bryan W. Simon is a stage, film director and writer from Waukegan, Illinois. He directed his first professional stage play at 17, the regional tour of a children's show entitled Jack and The Wishing Beans, for the Roundtree Players.
Larysa Kondracki is a Canadian producer, director and screenwriter. Her debut feature film, The Whistleblower, was released in 2011 and received nominations for six Genies at the 32nd Genie Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. She has received international accolades for reporting on the stories of victims of trafficking in the former Yugoslavia.
Daniel Nearing is a Chicago, Illinois-based director, screenwriter, and independent filmmaker. Hogtown, his "period-less" American film, has been called "the most original film made in Chicago about Chicago to date" and named one of the 10 Best Films of 2016 by Ben Kenigsberg, who reviewed the film for The New York Times. Nearing was named the inaugural Filmmaker in Residence for the City of Chicago and Chicagoan of the Year for Film (2016–17) by the Chicago Tribune
A Brony Tale is a 2014 Canadian-American documentary film directed by Brent Hodge. The film explores the brony phenomenon, the adult fan base of the children's animated show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic that arose shortly after its premiere in 2010. The film is structured around the journey of Ashleigh Ball, one of the principal voice actresses for the show, including her initial reactions to learning of this older fanbase, and her travel as a Guest of Honor to one of the first fan conventions BronyCon held in New York City in 2012. Hodge, a close friend of and previous collaborator with Ball, was curious as she was as to this phenomenon and opted to film her travel and appearance at the convention for the documentary.
Geoff Marslett is an American film director, writer, producer, animator and actor. His early career started with the animated short Monkey vs. Robot which was distributed internationally by Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation on video and Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation in theatres. More recently he directed several successful narrative feature films including MARS, as well as producing and acting in the experimental documentary Yakona. He appears onscreen in Josephine Decker's Thou Wast Mild and Lovely which was released theatrically in 2014. He currently resides in Austin, Texas and splits his time between filmmaking and teaching at the University of Colorado at Boulder.