Category: Film

  Oscar Winning Sound Editor/Designer Eugene Gearty to Receive Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award at BIFF   Story & Photos by Mark Shaffer, Editor at Large There is a moment in Martin Scorsese’s period epic Gangs of New York where Daniel Day Lewis’ Bill “The Butcher” Cutting is confronted by Jim Broadbent’s Boss Tweed for his very public murder of the local sheriff. The lord of the Five Points may be a homicidal maniac, but he is a man of principle who long ago cut out his own eye to prove his self-worth. He’s slicing up a steak with a very sharp knife, seething in rage. The tension is palpable as Tweed declares, “You don’t know what you’ve done to yourself!” Bill glares up at him then slowly taps his glass eye with the point of his blade. Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink…

By Mark Shaffer, Editor at Large With each iteration, the Beaufort International Film Festival continues to grow and evolve as word spreads and buzz builds around the festival circuit. Once again we reached out to a cross section of attending filmmakers and asked them to participate in a short Q&A to get a sense of what to expect.

Charleston-based industry veteran John Reynolds honored at Beaufort film festival for his behind the scenes work  By Mindy Lucas

Beaufort’s Film Festival enjoying increased numbers since its “break out year” By Mindy Lucas

The 14th Beaufort International Film Festival Heats Up February By Mark Shaffer, Editor At Large Much has changed since we first started covering the Beaufort International Film Festival back in 2009. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU) had just laid the foundation for the next decade’s campaign of worldwide cinematic domination with Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. James Cameron’s Avatar was about to shatter box office records on its way to becoming the top grossing film of all time with box office numbers so huge they were thought to be untouchable. Heath Ledger posthumously becomes the first actor to win an Oscar for the role of a comic book villain as Joker in The Dark Knight. And Ridley Scott’s acid rain-soaked dystopian world of Blade Runnerstill lurked somewhere in the future.  

Wherein the Author Gets a Window Into the Movie Business. Literally. By Mark Shaffer, Editor at Large This is it. I finally made it into the movie business. It’s almost like I imagined it would be as a kid. I’m dressed to kill in a white dinner jacket and black bowtie, hair combed back like a mid 20th century matinee idol, cigarette in my right hand (unlit), my left hand caresses a tumbler of bourbon. I am positioned – no, posed – at a café table shrouded in linen and littered with vintage World War II identification papers in both French and German.  At my back is an old fashioned upright piano. All of this and me are on display in the massive center window of Beaufort’s NeverMore Books. And if you haven’t figured it out, I am a very poor stand-in for Humphrey Bogart’s iconic Rick Blaine character in Casablanca, the cynical, world-weary American ex-pat owner of Rick’s Café American and some of the best lines ever uttered on film. 

20 Year Movie Drought Ends With “Crimson Tide”  By Mark Shaffer, Editor at Large Welcome Back to Alabama On November 9thsomething will happen in Beaufort that hasn’t happened in 20 years. When Director VW Scheich calls, “Action!” it will mark the first time a feature film has rolled in Beaufort since William Freidkin shot the mega-budget war drama Rules of Engagement here in 1999.