Wellywood Woman

Sally Potter's last blog entry was her stunning Barefoot Filmmaking  manifesto. I'm not going to quote from it. It deserves to be read as a whole.  Her latest response to a comment on her site is about money, money, money and films.  Her clarity and her courage make me cry. (Her  The Gold Diggers  (1983) was an inspiration for some bits of  Development.  And I can't wait to see her latest film, RAGE. Here's a still from it, of Judi Dench.) When I saw the picture of Sally Potter's boots that seemed an ideal way to show her. These two recent postings are so generous; I can now imagine a little of what it means to stand in those boots (while filming barefoot). And then, still looking at photographs, I found this  article  about her, in  Vertigo,  by John Berger, another of my all-time heroes. So I'm sitting here in the twilight thinking that these gifts may be a sign, just when I need one.  Tomorrow some amazing actors will read 34 pages of  Development for a litt...

Remember when Christine Vachon from Killer Films visited to New Zealand last year (& the impressive way she juggled two Blackberries, according to my Auckland mate who went along to hear her speak)? She didn't give a talk in Wellywood but I love her books and always go to see a new Killer film asap.  And now, via the San Francisco International Women's Film Festival, here's news about an initiative we can take part in (if we can manage the May 14 deadline).  Christine Vachon writes about the project on Indiewire  and the details are  here  (including some comments from New Zealand's own Leo Woodhead). This is the intro: Massify and Killer Films ( Boys Don't Cry, Kids, Far From Heaven ) have joined forces to create a provocative and humorous short film developed entirely through the Massify production network. At the forefront of independent cinema, Killer is looking for an outsider's story, the kind you don't normally hear about. But this project rea...