{"id":123890,"date":"2023-12-15T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T14:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/?p=123890"},"modified":"2023-12-11T11:59:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T16:59:18","slug":"editors-letter-39","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/123890-editors-letter-39\/","title":{"rendered":"Editor’s Letter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the winter 2024 issue of Filmmaker<\/i>. If my editor\u2019s letter last issue felt tentative in places, that was because, as I noted, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were underway, and I, like many, had given up predicting when they would end. Happily, as we now go to press, both strikes have been resolved, although the SAG-AFTRA membership vote, 78% in favor, evidenced some opposition to the contract\u2019s AI provisions, which grapple with issues around artificial intelligence and \u201csynthetic performers\u201d\u2014concepts that might have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago and are now very real issues in labor negotiations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All of which is to say that even with the strikes over, disruptive change is affecting all aspects of the film business, making the present moment a time for both activism as well as learning. Our regular columnist Holly Willis writes about the latter in her Extra Curricular column as she discusses her work building a new class, \u201cAI and Creativity,\u201d at USC\u2014a place where students can \u201cthink, make, critique and\u2014eventually\u2014help teach others.\u201d AI is part of Emergence columnist Deniz Tortum\u2019s regular beat, and this issue he meditates on how the VR work at this year\u2019s Venice Biennale speaks to the ways in which human experiences are sliced and diced into \u201cinstances,\u201d making us all live in our own parallel worlds. Anthony Kaufman explores the future by way of returning to the recent past in his Industry Beat column. As he does each winter, Kaufman diagnoses the state of independent film distribution through case studies of the previous year\u2019s theatrical releases\u2014a sobering report that, particularly in his takeaways from the makers of King Coal<\/i>, illuminates possible future pathways. Pair this with Darren Hughes’s account of his launching, with Paul Harrill, of FILM FEST KNOX, a new regional festival, and begin imagining alternative distribution models less beholden to the A-list festivals and coastal markets.<\/p>\n

Our cover film this quarter is The Taste of Things<\/i>, Tran Anh Hung\u2019s sumptuous story of love expressed through the art of French cooking. We are fortunate to have as Hung\u2019s interviewer the great documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, whose own recent Menus-Plaisirs\u2014Les Troisgros<\/i>, capturing as it does the rhythms and customs of a family-owned Michelin-starred restaurant in central France, is perfect companion viewing. Writer-director Lulu Wang interviews Andrew Haigh about his eerily beautiful ghost story of sorts, All of Us Strangers<\/i>. And we also have two articles recapping 2023 in cinematography. Vadim Rizov returns with his survey of the year\u2019s 35mm productions, while David Leitner provides a characteristically deep dive into the year\u2019s major tech advancements. Finally, speaking of Holly Willis, we also reprint her cover story from our spring 1994 edition detailing the making (and Sundance dealmaking) of Rose Troche\u2019s lesbian microbudget classic, Go Fish<\/i>, which I can\u2019t wait to see next month at Sundance in its newly restored edition.<\/p>\n

See you next year.<\/p>\n

Best,<\/p>\n

Scott Macaulay<\/p>\n

Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the winter 2024 issue of Filmmaker. If my editor\u2019s letter last issue felt tentative in places, that was because, as I noted, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes were underway, and I, like many, had given up predicting when they would end. Happily, as we now go to press, both strikes have been resolved, although the SAG-AFTRA membership vote, 78% in favor, evidenced some opposition to the contract\u2019s AI provisions, which grapple with issues around artificial intelligence and \u201csynthetic performers\u201d\u2014concepts that might have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago and are now very real issues in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_column":0},"categories":[3407],"tags":[24626],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123890"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123892,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123890\/revisions\/123892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/filmmakermagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}