Rooftop Films Rocks!

I had a great time with the Under Water's Mercy team watching trailers from 20 great projects - narrative and documentary - that were part of the IFP Independent Filmmaker Labs  this summer.

The docs were especially strong, including Dear Mandela, about three young slum dwellers who refuse to be evicted from their homes in one of Durban's sprawling shantytowns; 25 to Life, about an HIV-positive man who seeks redemption from the women of his promiscuous past; and Smokin' Fish, about a young Tlingit Indian man who makes a pilgrimage to rural Alaska to spend a summer living off the land.

The show was part of IFP Film Week, and was put on outdoors along the Hudson River in New York City by Rooftop Films. I had barely heard of Rooftop Films before this, and now I'm a huge fan! "Underground Movies Outdoors"... we hope we'll have a chance to screen Under Water's Mercy this way when we're done.

It has been a productive and fun week at IFP's Independent Film Week - a real powerhouse of an event.

Changes at IFP

At Filmmakers Workshop last night we were visited by Milton Tabbot, Senior Director of Programming at IFP (Independent Feature Project). We were first to hear about some exciting changes in the IFP Market as it approaches its 30th year. These changes will be officially announced in March, when applications for this September's Market go online. Some of them include:

• only 60-75 documentary films will be accepted (with a roughly equal number of narrative works), continuing IFP's push to be more helpful to filmmakers and industry professionals and less of a "circus"
• documentaries will only be accepted as works-in-progress, and narrative films only at the script stage

We really appreciate Milton making a special trip to Boston to meet with our thriving filmmaker community - thank you, Milton, and keep up the great work!