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Welcome
Welcome to the STUDENT FILM PROJECT brought to you by the San Antonio Film Commission. The Student Film Project, a unique grant program is targeted to graduate-level thesis and pre-thesis student filmmakers who will compete for a $25K grant to produce their student film in San Antonio, Texas. Grant recipients will be required to blog about their experience, post photos, experiences, video clips and updates, here, on www.studentfilmproject.com.2 0 1 3 Filmmaker Selected!
We’ll announce the 2013 Student Film Project winner soon!
2012 Filmmaker Journal – Once more into the breach !
It’s been a while, friends. We’ve been slaving away at the Avid workstation for some time — yes, in and around my duties as a dad, a teacher, and an MFA Candidate at Columbia. And as of early March, we started showing the cut around among the Columbia faculty.
The footage we have from Texas is so striking, my producers and I wondered if maybe we already have a great film on our hands.
Answer: soon, maybe, but not yet.
I always envisioned we’d go into the studio for close shots after the location shoot. So in some ways, the feedback is an affirmation of my design. And now, after a bit of a break, I’m climbing back on my horse and riding back into battle.
So it’s time to raise more money and hit the studio. Here we go!
2013 SFP Review Panel – A Closer Look
This year’s review panel is comprised of filmmakers and educators alike, from across the world – brought together by the powerful, and beautiful medium of film.
The panel includes:
Fernando Cano
Fernando S. Cano II, Producer/Production Manager/Line Producer, has been involved in the film industry for almost two decades. Fernando has produced a variety of projects over the years, including the features Painflower (16mm), EvenHand (35mm), and No Pain No Gain (35mm), and served as Production Supervisor and Production Coordinator on two PBS/ITVS-funded programs: Come & Take It Day (Mini-DV) and the Foto- Novelas II series (16mm, directed by Carlos Avila), respectively.
A UT Film School graduate, Fernando brings a strong production background to any project. His production credits include feature films like Syriana, Selena, The Newton Boys, All The Pretty Horses, Miss Congeniality, Mission Park and Sanitarium, to shorts, documentaries, music videos, commercials (for clients such as Valero Energy, Walmart, Dodge, Cuervo Gold, CPS Energy, Chevy, Coors Light, Negra Modelo) and public service announcements – as producer, cinematographer, production manager, production coordinator, assistant director and various other crew positions.
As Long As I Remember: American Veteranos (a feature documentary nationally broadcast on PBS in Fall 2010) and The Cleto Show (a hybrid sitcom fresh off its 1st Season on FOX) are two recent producing credits along with Living the American Dream (a feature documentary produced by Cevallos Brothers Productions, directed by Eva Longoria-Parker and aired nationally Fall 2010 via Mun2), on which he served as line producer. Currently, Fernando works as a freelancer and tackles production logistics for various companies from across Texas and the USA.
Juan Manuel González
Juan Manuel González was born in Puebla, México. He studied communications at the Universidad de Monterrey, in Monterrey, México and later received an MFA in Film from Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California, where he studied under a Fulbright scholarship.
He has received several grants and awards in film production, and “Asi” a feature film he produced in 2005, was selected for the 20 Settimana dellla Critica at the 2005 Venice Film Festival. His short, Al Fin, has been selected to many international film festivals, among them the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland.
Juan Manuel now serves as the director of the Monterrey International Film Festival, a post he has held since 2005, and is an educator and director of the Communications and Information BA program at la Universidad de Monterrey.
Boaz Lavie
Boaz is a writer, filmmaker and game inventor residing in Tel Aviv, Israel. He has extensive experience writing for TV, web sites and literary magazines. In 2009 he wrote and directed “The Lake”, a short film that became a film festivals hit and was an official selection at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Slamdance, Hamburg, Palm Springs, Boston, San Antonio and many others.
In 2010 his company launched an original social game called “Shobo”, that was played by tens of thousands of players on Facebook and won critical acclaim. Among other projects, he is currently working with the celebrated illustrators Asaf and Tomer Hanuka on a graphic novel, to be published in the USA and France.
Jim LaVilla-Havelin
Jim LaVilla-Havelin is a poet, educator, and arts administrator. Author of four books of poems – RITES OF PASSAGE (Charon Press 1968), WHAT THE DIAMOND DOES IS HOLD IT ALL IN (White Pine Press 1978), SIMON’S MASTERPIECE (White Pine Press 1983), and most recently, COUNTING (Pecan Grove Press, 2010). LaVilla-Havelin’s poems have appeared in TEXAS OBSERVER, anthologies IS THIS FOREVER. OR WHAT? and BETWEEN HEAVEN & TEXAS, and in the 2006 – 2013 editions of the TEXAS POETRY CALENDAR, and in BIG LAND,BIG SKY,BIG HAIR, Dos Gatos Press’ anthology from the Texas Poetry Calendar.
LaVilla-Havelin is an arts administrator, educator and critic. He has been the Director of the Young Artist Programs at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, TX, and is retiring after seventeen years in May 2013, to teach, write and consult. He is editing a collection of poetry and visual art about sport, entitled LEVELLING THE FIELD, and is working on a book-length poem about jazz, PLAYLIST.
Ingrid Rudefors
Ingrid began her film career working in New York with filmmakers and producers, among them Hal Hartley and Ted Hope, both in front of and behind the camera.
She has worked as production manager, 1st AD, location manager and line producer on more than ten Swedish feature films (among them Jen Jonsson’s The King Of Ping-Pong, winning a prize at Sundance in 2008) . She has taught film at the Stockholm Film School and in 2008, and shortly thereafter she was head hunted for the position as Film Commissioner for Sweden covering the Stockholm Region, where she continues to serve.
Filmmaker Journal – Our Robert Johnson
For years, there were thought to be only two photos of Robert Johnson.
This one taken in a dime store photo booth:
Which the US Post Office later used to create a commemorative stamp — with the cigarette removed!
And this photo, taken on the occasion of the Dallas recordings, his second and final recording session:
As I was adapting DEVIL DEAL BLUES from Willy Holtzman’s SAN ANTONIO SUNSET, my friend and counselor, Rose Marie Meade sent me this photo:
And I said — that’s him. That’s our Johnson in this film.
Well, over the past year, I can’t tell you how many people have patiently or angrily explained that this photo is a fake, or of someone else, or whatever. And I said, I do not care. This is the Robert Johnson in DEVIL DEAL BLUES.
And now, apparently after eight years of forensic and legal disputes, it has been announced that this photo is authenticated. It is Robert Johnson, with his buddy Johnny Shines.
As a fiction filmmaker, I still don’t care. But blues historians and Robert Johnson fans do. And I have to admit, it’s pretty exciting, a third photo authenticated.
Look at him, his whole life ahead of him. Youth, bravado, vulnerability — charisma. I love this man here in this photo.
Here is the article in The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/03/robert-johnson-photograph-identified