Director Sean Ellis and DP Angus Hudson sit on either side of me at the Filmmaker Lodge—Hudson, smart and earnest, Ellis, savvy and charismatic, with an actors expressiveness; they seem an unlikely team until they start trading thoughts about The Broken.

“I’ve never been so proud of something I’ve shot,” Hudson is saying, and that’s an understatement for what the pair accomplished visually. The two previously collaborated on Ellis’ short Cashback produced through Ridley Scott’s company RSA. But they had a much bigger canvas to fill on The Broken and an ambition to do something that has never been easy: scary movie that’s more atmosphere than gore.

Of course if anyone at this festival knows how to manipulate an image for atmosphere it’s Ellis, one of the world’s foremost fashion photographers, known for images that take their glamour from an almost impossible fluency with light and muscular storytelling that is often described as cinematic. It strikes me as he talks about the darkroom techniques of dodging and burning, as his hands make the familiar, urgent motions–shaping the volatile mix of chemicals and time–that he thinks reflexively, like a cinematographer. He describes making movies like making photographs, with the emphasis on making. more

Press Release

Andrew Herwitz, president of the The Film Sales Company, announced that the company has acquired worldwide (less UK) sales and US distribution rights to the documentary Derek. Directed by famed artist and filmmaker Issac Julien (Looking for Langston, Young Soul Rebels), the film was written and is narrated by 2007 Academy Award Nominee Tilda Swinton. Funded by Film London, Channel 4, MoMA and the Sundance Documentary Fund, the film was produced by Eliza Mellor and Colin MacCabe and executive produced by Swinton and James Mackay. more