AmyBerg Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We're trying out something new here on Cinematical Indie: Cinematical Indie Chats, short-form email or AIM interviews with indie filmmakers wherein we'll chat with them about indie film, what they're working on, what they love and hate, and whatever else they want to share with us.

First up is Deliver Us from Evil director Amy Berg, who very kindly took time out of her busy schedule to chat with us through email. Coming up next week we'll have a chat with Billy the Kid director Jennifer Venditti, and we have lots of other indie filmmakers in the line-up as well. If there's someone you particularly want to hear from, let us know, and we'll do our darndest to line them up for you.

And hey, if you're an indie filmmaker and you'd like to chat with us, drop me a line at kim(at)cinematical(dot)com.

What indie films out in theaters or DVDs have you been watching lately?

Have you been reading Cinematical Indie lately? If not, here's what you've been missing ...


INDIE FILM GRAB BAG

• Atom Egoyan will start shooting on his newest film, Adoration, this fall -- his first since 2005's Where the Truth Lies.
• Cinematical Indie Seven: Documentaries worth catching on DVD ...
• Deliver Us From Evil director Amy Berg (pictured) talks to Cinematical Indie about the $660 million payout by the Catholic Church to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and how she feels about Cardinal Roger Mahony's "apology" to the victims.

FEST NEWS

• Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Fest announces its lineup, which includes some retro films (Grease, Raiders of the Lost Ark). It's Michael Moore's fest, so it's a given that there are plenty of social-issue films, but there will also be other fest fare like Waitress, Paprika and The King of Kong.
• Heading to a slightly more exotic locale, news from the Thessaloniki Film Festival is that the fest will be honoring one of Monika's fave directors, John Sayles, with a "Golden Alexander." The fest will also screen the European premiere of Sayle's latest film, Honeydripper (Monika wrote earlier this month about Honeydripper being selected for Toronto ... busy year for Sayles.
• The Middle East International Film Festival, announced at Cannes earlier this year, has a Festival Director: film fest veteran Jon Fitzgerald, who helped launch Slamdance and has worked for AFI and, well, lots of other fests. The fest will be held in October in Abu Dhabi, and the main site of the fest is the truly stunning Emirates Palace. Seems like the organizers of the fest intend to make it a major business-oriented fest with lots of deal-making going on ... it will be interesting to see how Fitzgerald grows the fest, and if it eventually becomes a key fest for dealmakers -- kind of like the Toronto or Sundance of the Middle East. Interesting ...
• The AFI Dallas Film Fest has announced its call for entries for 2008, the second year of the fest, so get your films submitted.
• Cinematical Indie gears up for our coverage of the major fall film fests, Telluride, Toronto and Venice.

DEALS and DISTRIBUTION

• Just when we got all excited about the July 20 release of one of our fave flicks from Toronto last year, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, things got curiouser and curiouser, culminating with the announcement that -- too bad, so sad -- we're going to have to wait until 2008 for the film's official release now. Wha --? Poor Mandy -- first, she didn't get a freaking poster until two weeks before her release date, then she got dumped by the Weinsteins' Dimension and acquired by Senator Entertainment. But never fear, the Brothers Weinstein have a positive spin on the bizarre dumping of the film, saying that Senator will give Mandy a wider release than they had planned for her, and Senator already owned her German rights anyhow ... and there's less competition in the film's new release slot (and, just maybe, the horror genre will recover from the dreadful opening of Captivity by then -- though Elisha Cuthbert's career may not). Ah, Mandy. The guys dying to see the film will just have to wait a while longer ... but I guess as long as a girl is trading up, it's all good.
• Speaking of the Weinstein boys, The Weinstein Company (TWC) also acquired Benny Chan's Invisible Target ... and Peter Martin ponders whether this one might head straight to DVD ...
• Here! Films picks up Tribeca player Fat Girls, while First Run (finally, it's about time someone did) acquires one of my own fave Sundance flicks, For the Bible Tells Me So.

INDIES ONLINE AND ON DVD

• Robert Bresson's first film, Les Anges du Péché, finally gets a DVD release, but you have to buy it from a French website.
• Willy Wiggins reinvents The Outlaw Son.
• Peter Martin writes up the latest indie DVD releases, including his top pick-of-the-week, Avenue Montaigne.

A couple days ago, Cardinal Roger Mahony, bishop of the Los Angeles diocese, made a public apology to the over 500 victims of alleged sexual abuse by priests he was in charge of, and announced a $660 million payout to the victims. While Father Oliver O'Grady, the priest profiled in the documentary Deliver Us From Evil, was not one of the priests this specific settlement dealt with, the film, directed by Amy Berg, has played a crucial role in bringing the issue to light and drawing the attention of the district attorney's office to Mahony.

Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart played a brief clip of Mahony's apology, in which he said he was sorry to "anyone who might have been offended ... " Offended, as Stewart noted, hardly seems the right word to use when you are supposedly apologizing to people who were sexually molested as children by priests under your charge. I emailed Berg this morning about the payout, her film's impact on the case, and Mahony's apology, and this is what she had to say (Berg's response in its entirety is after the jump ... ):

In an announcement this morning, Cardinal Roger Mahony, who is featured prominently in Amy Berg's Oscar-shortlisted documentary Deliver Us From Evil, disclosed that the Los Angeles Archdiocese will pay out $60 million to abuse victims. Although $60 million seems like a huge sum, the payout only covers 45 victims - -just 8% of the 562 claims against the LA Archdiocese -- who will receive approximately $1.3 million each. Mahony was quote in a story in the Los Angeles Times as saying that $40 million of that total had been held back from last year, and that parishes will not feel the hit of the payout, but that there will be "more pain" as the rest of the claims are settled.

You know how I feel about the proliferation of film festivals all over the globe, but as this particular one happens to be in my own backyard, I guess I can make an exception ... this time. Which film festival gets this special treatment? Why, it's the Film Independent Los Angeles Film Festival of course.

According to Variety, the festival announced this week that on October 24 it will start accepting submissions for the 13th annual event, held June 21 - July 1 2007 in Los Angeles. The entry deadline for short films and music videos is Feb. 9, while the deadline for feature-length narrative and documentary films is March 1. And, if you act now (or at least before January 12) you can even get a discount on your entry fees. Not a bad thing considering the minuscule budgets of most of these films.

Some of last years fest winners include Steve Collins, writer/director of Gretchen, who won for best narrative feature and Amy Berg, writer/director of Deliver Us From Evil, (which our own Kim reviewed) who won for best documentary feature. Both winners received $50,000, money they will probably use to pay off all the credit cards they maxed out to finance their films. Oscar-winning actress and producer Charlize Theron, whose indie credits include Monster and the documentary East of Havana, was also awarded the Spirit of Independence Award for her commitment to artistic independence in film at the event.

Especially of note for aspiring filmmakers looking for exposure is that the Los Angeles Film Festival is a qualifying fest in all categories for not only the Independent Spirit Awards but for the Academy Awards' short film categories as well. So indie filmmakers, dust off those scripts hidden in your drawer, borrow your parents' video camera, gather your friends, find a barn and start shooting because the next Academy Award for short films might just go to you. (And if it does, Cinematical wants a spot in that acceptance speech.)

Browsing CNN at 5:00 am yesterday -- it was TV morning -- I saw the story that the MPAA has decided to 'red-band' the trailer for the upcoming doc Deliver Us From Evil. The trailer -- cut by Lionsgate from Amy Berg's excellent documentary -- has, essentially, been rated 'R,' and can't play anywhere except in front of an R or NC-17 movie. Of course, as the CNN story explains many theater chains won't play 'red-band' trailers at all, meaning that the most traditional mode of publicizing a movie -- in the Coming Attractions -- isn't available to Lionsgate or Deliver Us From Evil in many cases. This decision is prompting Lionsgate to release the film unrated -- again, affecting where the film can be shown and advertised. (I wish Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated had done a better job of explaining that, in fact -- the mall leases and newspaper policies that strangle unrated films in their crib with red tape.) I've seen Deliver Us From Evil, and while it's about rough stuff -- a serial child abuser who was essentially protected by the Catholic Church for 20 years -- it's real stuff; this all happened, and nothing in director Amy Berg's treatment of the story is salacious or sensational or cheap. But the MPAA (whose anonymous ratings board includes representatives of clergy) is choosing to significantly impact the marketing of Deliver Us From Evil with their decision. As has been asked before: Who are these people again? And what, exactly, are they protecting us from? (Addenda: For the trailer, click here.)

Deliver Us From Evil, Amy Berg's gut-wrenching documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, is playing to rave reviews here at the Toronto International Film Festival. Cinematical's James Rocchi sat down with director Amy Berg to talk to her about the four-year process of making this film, and what it was like to interview and interact with Father Oliver O'Grady, the pedophiliac priest who is the focus of the story. You can download the video here, or see it here from Google Video (Quicktime format, 67MBs, 12 minutes), below. You can also read our review of the film to find out more about it.

Credits:

Host: James Rocchi

Video: Alexia Prichard

Music: Molly Zenobia