Sundance season has kicked off 2012 for the independent film world but CinemATL is looking ahead with a local production that will be making noise in the near future. Encuentrate is a film about a young woman, Anais, who alienates herself from her family, her culture and her grandfather’s spiritual teachings because of issues she has with her [Read More]
Atlanta has some excellent Film Collectives. Obviously, Film Collectives are nothing new, they’ve been around for years and in many places but in Atlanta they occupy a special place in the independent film scene. We’ve had a relatively recent history of success stories that came from film collectives from Atlanta . The thing with [Read More]
The notion that General Orders No. 9 is a ghost was born from the necessity to communicate at once the mystery it preserves, the perspective it exhibits, and the polarized reactions it will continue to yield. For some, this equation reinforces their belief that the film is a transparent spook; they can see right through [Read More]
Most people know Curtis Jackson as 50 Cent, a hugely successful rapper with Platinum albums and a humdinger of a survival story that tops even the most hardcore gangsta Rap peers. Yes, he was shot 9 times and got stronger. What people may not know is how serious Curtis Jackson is at becoming a thespian. [Read More]
The Atlanta Film Festival brings a documentary Beatboxing – The Fifth Element of Hip-Hop that documents the history and evolution of Beatboxing. It has become a multilingual, diverse and technically complex form of expression that almost four decades later continues to cross musical genres and influence artists around the globe. [Read More]
Everybody loves puppets, or so it seems. Whether they live on Sesame Street and teach kids the alphabet or make prank phone calls or entertain at marquee shows in Las Vegas , it seems that puppets can do little wrong. That idea is put to the test in Sam Carter’s short film Shadow Puppets. It [Read More]
Anthony McHie’s short film LAUGH. takes place in a familiar cinematic world these days. A post-Apocalyptic Zombie world. However, he tells the story of a human survivor unlike many we’ve seen in the genre. From a script by Olufemi Sowemimo, McHie tells the story of a young comedian who is trapped with only a camera at his disposal. What he [Read More]
Ryan Prows’ bio describes him, among other things, as a conspiracy theorist which brings us to his film .22 that won the 2005 Atlanta leg of the 48 Hour Film Project. The fact that his film capably took on a JFK-like assassination story also lends credence to his bio’s claim. Ryan spent many years as part of Atlanta ’s film community. He [Read More]
Ever since the phenomenal success of The Blair Witch Project, there seems to be a fascination as well as an eagerness to blur the lines between reality and fiction to keep an audience off guard as to what feelings to be drawn from what they are watching unfold on the screen in front of them. It can be effective marketing to boot. [Read More]
When it comes to the mysteries of making it as a filmmaker, few independent filmmakers consider the most important aspect of reaching an audience. What could that be? A distributor, in case you were wondering. In the south one might feel like a distributor is thousands of miles away figuratively when truthfully they are literally. [Read More]
CinemATL first caught up with Brandon and his team in 2007 when we first saw the trailer for his then current film Alabaster. He’s gone on to make many other short films in the time since. Of those films, his latest has a message that deals specifically with a startling topic that hits home here in Atlanta. Although it may sound incongruent [Read More]
Bret Wood is an example of an atypical filmmaker for the Atlanta scene. He’s a scholar of classic film and someone bold enough to make period pieces on an ultra-low budget. The fact that he’s also been an enthusiastic participant in the popular community film activities like the 48 Hour Film Project right next to the weekend warrior auteurs [Read More]
Coming to Atlanta July 15-18 is the 9th edition of ARGFest, a conference and gaming festival that’s all about Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) and Transmedia Storytelling. If you think you haven’t heard of, or participated in an ARG, who’d be wrong if you followed on any level of The Dark Knight’s Why So Serious, Halo [Read More]
Rebound relationships can be a real bitch. So goes the theme of the RomCom/Horror mash-up Love on the Rocks which is written and directed by Georgia Tech grad Justin Edwards whose feature film marks his debut at the Atlanta Film Festival. The film tells the story of Amber and Gavin who are ending their relationship [Read More]
Interviews with the Directors of Four Short Films Short films are often overlooked in the hype surrounding film festivals and truthfully it is somewhat understandable. The features are like the quarterbacks of the film world. They’re the ones that bring home the big prizes and can change the face of film-making for at least 6 months. However, [Read More]
The Things We Carry is the debut feature of the Lobit Sisters. Athena Lobit produces while Alyssa Lobit wrote the script and stars in the movie directed by Ian McCrudden. The film tells the story of Emmie (Alyssa Lobit) revisiting home after the death of her drug-addict mother. She reluctantly reconnects with her estranged sister [Read More]