The Film Panel Notetaker

A Day of Docs at the Montclair Film Festival
First Position, Unraveled & Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
Notes from the Discussions by Brian Geldin

Montclair, New Jersey, is a town in which I fondly spent some time working for a public relations firm a few years back. On Saturday, I returned to the happy hamlet to [...]

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Hard to believe 2011 is almost over already. It’s been another great year of notes from film panels and filmmaker Q&As, but I have to give most of the credit to my contributing notetakers Erin Scherer, Liz Nord, Erin Essenmacher, and Rebecca Banach, all of whom have an incredible knack for transforming source discussion into compelling summations and analysis. We also had the great privilege to be chosen by The Christian Science Monitor as a blog partners in its Culture Cafe.

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WIFV DC Presents: Thelma and Louise 20th Anniversary Screening
and
Q and A with Geena Davis
by Erin Essenmacher
This year marks the 20th birthday of some of America’s greatest exports: The World Wide Web.  Pearl Jam. Thelma and Louise.  While I missed Eddie Veder and the guys at Destination Weekend festival in Wisconsin, I was able to [...]

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Notes from The Swell Season Q&A
AFI/Discovery Channel Silverdocs
Silver Spring, Marlyand
June 20, 2011
Notes by Erin Essenmacher
June 24 Update: Read this also on The Christian Science Monitor’s Culture Cafe.

I know it won’t exactly come as a newsflash, but love stories in the movies don’t always reflect the reality of love stories in real life. Real world [...]

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DIY Days New York
March 5, 2011
Notes by Brian Geldin
DIY Days returned to New York where I attended another full day of discussions and workshops at the New School organized by WorkBook Project founder and Do-it-Yourself filmmaker and guru Lance Weiler. Below are my raw notes I typed on my laptop that I hope can be [...]

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Putty Hill Q&A
Opening Night at Cinema Village in New York
February 18, 2011
By Brian Geldin
Putty Hill, directed by Matt Porterfield and filmed in his hometown of Baltimore, opened Friday in New York at Cinema Village. The film recently won the first ever Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox Award, bestowed to a film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, [...]

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The Tillman Story
Q&A with Director Amir Bar-Lev
Stranger Than Fiction
December 20, 2010
IFC Center
New York, NY
The Film Panel Notetaker is no stranger to Stranger Than Fiction, but for the first time we co-presented an evening at the invitation of STF founder Thom Powers on the occasion of our 5th anniversary, and what a powerful film [...]

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12th & Delaware
Q&A with Co-Director Rachel Grady
Stranger Than Fiction
November 16, 2010
IFC Center
New York, NY
Notes by Brian Geldin
For those of The Film Panel Notetaker’s loyal followers who’ve been pining for some more notes from film discussions, my apologies for the long wait. The past two months have been extremely busy for me, but in the best [...]

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WFF Woodstock in the City Series Presents
FutureStates
92Y Tribeca
June 30, 2010
By Brian Geldin
A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), FutureStates is a compilation of science fiction short films by acclaimed filmmakers that poses the theoretical question: What could possibly happen in America within the near future that might reshape humanity, the environment, the economy and [...]

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Q & A with Family Affair Director Chico Colvard
Silverdocs
June 24, 2010
By Erin Essenmacher
Family Affair starts with the memory of a shooting. Director Chico Colvard, who narrates the film, explains how in 1978, as a ten year-old boy emulating scenes from his favorite show the “The Rifleman,” he shot his sister with one of the many [...]

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