Artists with Walker ties are among those receiving Creative Capital grants in film/video and visual arts. Among 2012 recipients, announced Thursday, are Theaster Gates, My Barbarian, Michael Robinson, Rick Prelinger, Kerry Tribe, and Cam Archer.

Federico Fellini’s fantastical films weren’t the full extent of his oeuvre: In the last two decades of his life, the Italian filmmaker did commercial work for clients including Campari, Barilla pasta, and Bank of Rome—all of which are on YouTube.

Actor/artist James Franco will portray the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in director Ondi Timoner’s narrative film debut. The project is getting financial backing from the Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access Program.

“So many filmmakers are filmmakers in some way or other because of Bob [Nelson],” who died Jan. 8 at age 81. “Peter [Hutton] once told me that when he saw Bob’s films for the first time, his reaction was ‘Wait, you can make movies like that?’”

Confronting technical glitches, managing a plethora of formats, having analog backups ready: This new age of digital projection at film festivals brings a series of challenges, as film scholar David Bordwell chronicles.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences plans to change eligibility requirements for nonfiction films: Starting in 2013 only documentaries reviewed by the New York Times or Los Angeles Times will be considered for Oscars.

The Village Voice has laid off celebrated film critic J. Hoberman. NYT critic A.O. Scott tweets that the paper “has been mostly irrelevant for years, EXCEPT for J Hoberman and a few others.” Hoberman has been a staff writer for the paper since 1983.

A newly struck deal will make Sundance films available to view online at Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, YouTube and SundanceNOW. “The option is open to every film ever shown at the festival, or brought to a Sundance lab, or given a Sundance grant.”

A new short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, which screened at Cannes last week, is streaming free online via Mubi, the site that produced it. Shot on a compact 35mm camera, Ashes is an intimate, diary like film exploring everyday surroundings.