Thursday, December 3, 2009

Santa Fe Film Fest - Movie Madness

by Robert Nott, Santa Fe New Mexican

New Mexico has gone movie crazy in the past few years, what with tax breaks and financial incentives drawing filmmakers from around the globe to shoot their projects here.

But Santa Fe has been stricken with movie madness for at least a decade, since Jon Bowman and a group of dedicated cinephiles started The Santa Fe Film Festival — five days of films, workshops, panel talks and parties, all celebrating the independent cinematic spirit.

The 10th festival kicks off today with a 7 p.m. screening of Everybody's Fine, Kirk Jones' drama about a widower (Robert DeNiro) who journeys cross country to reconnect with his grown children; at the Regal DeVargas theater DeVargas Center. Several other screenings take place at other venues this evening, too, and the festival hosts its usual opening-night parties.

This year's event is a bit scaled down because of financial restraints, and it marks the 10th and final year that Bowman will serve as executive director. He's retiring, to be replaced by festival operations director Karen RedHawk Dallet. Dallet has already announced plans to move next year's festival to October rather than December.

Bowman, found checking out ticket sales at the film festival's box-office headquarters on Old Santa Fe Trail (in the old Fraser's Pharmacy site), said business was healthy and even a tad better than it was this time last year.

A popcorn machine churned out the kernels — an appropriate treat for visitors — as Bowman spoke, and movie posters for various festival entries covered the walls. ("Some of life's greatest journeys begin at the end," reads the tag line for the locally shot Spoken Word poster.) Bowman said the fest usually attracts 5,000 to 7,000 patrons, roughly 15 percent of whom come from out of state.

To read the full article, click here.

Santa Fe Studios betting big on new complex

The producers of the nuclear holocaust film Terminator Salvation, released earlier this year, originally planned to crash a helicopter into a lake in Budapest. But they decided instead to take advantage of New Mexico's film incentives program and make the science-fiction movie right here in the state, much of it at the 28-acre, two-year-old campus of Albuquerque Studios.

A shallow tank on a few acres of flat desert outside the facility became the crash site, monster machines soared over the Rio Grande Gorge, and John Connor (Christian Bale), a future Resistance soldier, rode a motorcycle across the vast mesa west of the Duke City.

Tax rebates, interest-free loans and free use of some state property are luring filmmakers to New Mexico, creating jobs and new sources of revenue. The fourth feature film in the Terminator series was the biggest picture shot in the state last year and one of 44 major TV and film productions made in New Mexico since January 2008.

Albuquerque Studios also are home to the Emmy Award-winning television series Breaking Bad, now in its third season.

But six of its top-of-the-line sound stages built in 2007 and two smaller studios added later are not all fully booked, according to chief operating officer Nick Smerigan. And now he might be getting some competition from a new film studio complex that is expected to break ground this winter on county-owned land off N.M. 14 south of Santa Fe.

That raises the question about whether there is enough demand for another major studio facility in New Mexico.

County officials are gambling there is. State and local officials think so. Lisa Strout, director of the state Film Office, said there's no doubt that Albuquerque Studios has changed the landscape of the film business in New Mexico.

To read the full article, click here.