At the 2012 inaugural edition of this short film competition, which gives paired filmmakers two weeks to crank out works based on a “theme” quote, Bethany Orr’s Winner was, yes, the winner of both the Audience and First Place awards. This weekend, at a May 4 event featuring Orr as one of the judges, the Audience-First Place winner was A Simple Test.

During Saturday night’s Q&A at Harmony Gold with judges Orr, actor Matthew Lillard, Reason Online critic Kurt Loder, producer-talent manager Andrew Wilson and StyleHaul head of production Melody Hammer (fellow judge and Slamdance co-founder Peter Baxter, who was unable to attend, announced the winners via taped video message), one of the key pieces of advice offered was that it is best for entrants to not try to literally include the theme quote as spoken dialogue. Sure enough, A Simple Test, written and directed by Jonathan Smith with collaborative help from Mike Carrier, never has either one of its principal characters parrot the Emiliano Zapata words, “It is better to die on your feet than live on on your knees.” Rather, it cleverly embodies the Mexican revolutionary’s advice by means of a teenage girl (Lucy Tarquinio), her MIT-bound suitor (Bill Kottkamp) and an imminent pregnancy test.

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Chatting last night with LA Times “Indie Focus” reporter Mark Olsen at his new Sundance Cinemas on Sunset Blvd. after a newspaper subscriber screening of The Company We Keep, the actor-director remembered the time he was presented at age 13 in Santa Monica with a high school athletic award. “I didn’t know who he was,” Redford said of the 1949-50 school year encounter. “He was just a guy in a suit. But it was Earl Warren, the governor, and Nixon, then a senator. When Nixon handed me the award and shook my hand, it was just a vibe. I thought, ‘I don’t like this guy.’”

There was also some great reminiscing during the Q&A about how Redford gradually became interested in the investigative efforts of Bob Woodward and  Carl Bernstein. ”When I read an article about them, I realized one was a Jew and one was a WASP,” Redford recalled. “One guy was a Republican, the other was a radical; one guy was a very good writer, the other wasn’t so good. They didn’t like each other, but they had to work together. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s fascinating, that’s a great story.’”

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As Hopkins told Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter Phillip Zonkel earlier this week for his personal blog “Out in the 562,” the story of Azner stretches well beyond three silent films, 14 “talkies” and the invention of the boom mike:

“Dorothy was a compelling character. She made her place in a completely male world,” says Haines. “Her drive to do what she loved in spite of the world around her telling her it wasn’t possible inspires me.”

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The global screenplay competition, curated by filmmaker Roman Coppola and (his) LA talent agency The Directors Bureau, asked back in August for submissions meeting two simple criteria. Plots had to anchored to a W Hotel and feature an Intel Ultrabook laptop as a central narrative component.

Last night at the Bruin Theatre, four winning filmed entries were screened, as chosen by Coppola, actor judges Chloe Sevigny, Michael Pitt, PJ Ransone and W Hotels global music director Michaelangelo L’acqua. There was also a fifth bonus entry from Coppola himself, vampire spoof Hollywood: Die Again, Undead One, starring Jason Schwartzman. That one was filmed across the street from The Pantages.

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What’s cool about this particular keynote address is that among those in the audience listening to Singleton was – you guessed it – Allain:

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DuVernay’s sophomore effort Middle of Nowhere has received Twitter seal of approval from Oprah Winfrey. Her previous, first effort was endorsed by Roger Ebert. With that kind of Chicago backing, it’s no surprise that DuVernay is already hard at work on her next project – a documentary about Venus Williams – and palns to make a movie a year. From Cohen’s profile piece:

There’s a massive congratulatory bouquet of orchids on the desk in her small office overlooking Van Nuys Boulevard… A magnum of Moet with a big gold bow on top sits on the floor…

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Thomas Woodruff, Noah Scruggs and Chris Armand (pictured, above) won the grand prize for their short Western The Legend of Luther Anderson. The film was was one of more than 80 entries and 20 finalists at the inaugural Louisiana Film Prize Festival Weekend (October 5-7). From today’s announcement:

The Legend of Luther Anderson is a Western comedy about a set of boots that transforms Luther Anderson, a meek cowboy, into a hero and an instant legend. As Luther blazes a trail across the frontier, his evil nemesis is in hot pursuit after the magical cowboy boots. In the end, the two men stand tall in a showdown to the death.

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Oyelowo is very good in The Paperboy, playing one half of a crack Miami newspaper reporting team (together with Matthew McConaughey) that comes to Lately, Florida in 1969 to investigate the possibly wrongful Death Row conviction of a local man (John Cusack) for the murder of a town sheriff. The actor has a big fan in Daniels, who planned earlier to make a civil rights era movie with Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. and has the performer in his next film, The Butler. From The Paperboy press notes:

Daniels rewrote the character specifically for Oyelowo, transforming the part of Yardley Acheman from a white reporter into a cultured and sophisticated black man, whose English accent helps him navigate the still largely segregated American South of the 1960s. “As a black man himself, Lee was very interested in how a black reporter in Florida in 1969 would have been greeted and how he would react in that situation,” says Oyelowo.

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A judges’ panel consisting of Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen, producer Cassian Elwes, actor Zachary Quinto, producer Lynette Howell and Sundance Institute feature film program founding director Michelle Satter crowned Fishing Without Nets – a drama about Somali pirates told from the pirates’ point of view – as the Jury Prize winner. The audience vote, gathered via thewrap.com and MTV websites film.com and nextmovie.com, favored The Maker. From Lucas Shaw’s report:

[Fishing Without Nets] director Cutter Hodierne nets a $60,000 reward from Panavision to be used for a future filmmaking project… Hodierne and [The Maker director] Christopher Kezelos will receive a new Sony Alpha A77 DLSR Cameras, as well as a first-look deal with Cinedigm.

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His career began very colorfully at age 15 as a DJ in the Lone Star State, working at a station where the owner was dealing drugs and once got stabbed. The bilingual go-getter’s acting career is now starting to pick up steam here in Hollywood with roles in K-11, a prison drama directed by Kristen Stewart’s mother Jules, the Fuse TV pilot The Hustle and indie drama Fifth Street.

Venegas says that as a reporter covering the red carpet, he sometimes brought relatives to the events he was covering to let them soak in the Hollywood atmosphere. At one such event, this led to a classic “mom” moment:

“After I finished my interview with Sandra Bullock, I was like ‘Where’s my mom?’ I couldn’t find her,” he recalled. Finally, he spotted her. “I was like ‘Mom, where were you?’

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The film will be directed by Paul Schrader and produced by former Lionsgate producer Braxton Pope. In an effort to retain creative control the trio are partially funding the film themselves, with the rest coming from a highly successful Kickstarter campaign that raised almost $160k. No doubt some of that dough came from Deen fans eager to see their porno heartthrob make his mainstream film debut.

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One of the central topics of discussion was El Rey, the national cable channel that Rodriguez will unleash in 2014 with help from Comcast. He has been traveling the country to promote the in-the-works outlet, which is designed to give Latino filmmakers a much needed public airwaves boost. From the Austin360.com report:

Latinos will make up a third of the U.S. population by 2050, according to census estimates, yet, Rodriguez, joked, there was a dog channel before there was one like El Rey…

Rodriguez said the cable channel will be cutting-edge, underground and imbued by an indie sensibility. He has already had multiple conversations with Hollywood stars such as Benicio del Toro and Michelle Rodriguez, who have expressed interest in collaborating with El Rey on original programming.

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Dustin Smith, vp of acquisitions and business affairs for Roadside Attractions, kept things lively with a number of jokes and direct exchanges with the other panelists. He recalled for example that by flying in Jennifer Lawrence from London for a Q&A, he was able to keep Winter’s Bone screening at the Arclight Cinemas Hollywood for a critical early third week. He also had lots to say about the state of “S-VOD” dealmaking with Netlifx; as the streaming service focuses more on episodic TV assets, he recently encountered his first outright rights renewal rejection (Goodbye Solo).

Deborah McIntosh, a member of William Morris Endeavor’s global finance and distribution group, addressed the exciting new distribution arm of client Tim League, co-founder of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse. She also touched on the agency’s imminent plans to release an independent feature exclusively on Facebook.

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Some in the Christian filmmaking community are referring to the planned feature as “God’s sequel” to Mel Gibson’s 2004 smash The Passion of the Christ. Wood and a team of five other producers are starting to put the word out to churches about the project and hope to crowd-source the entire $40 million budget:

A “Spiritual Producer” is described as an individual who has donated a minimum of $25 or more to the not-for-profit, pledged to pray for the Resurrection project, spread the word (i.e. via Facebook, Twitter) and/or committed a serious capital investment in the project with a financial return…

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