The 2009 NEWPORT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL will take place June 3-7 in beautiful Newport, Rhode Island. This year’s Festival will present five days and nights of screenings of over 90 U.S. and international feature, documentary and short films; Rhode Island focus, narrative, documentary and audience award competitions; filmmaker panels; events; a free screening in beautiful Ballard Park; the presentation of the prestigious Claiborne Pell Award; and those fabulous Newport parties. There wil...

The highly regarded Newport International Film Festival (a local Cannes, according to one travel magazine) has announced that Jennifer Maizel has become the new Executive Director of the Newport International Film Festival. Maizel had a prior stint with NIFF in 2006 as the Director of Guest Services. Most recently, she has served, for the past three years, as Managing Director of the Sarasota Film Festival. “Jen is a superb addition to the NIFF, just the kind of person to take us to the nex...

Important regional film festivals like Newport, now in its ninth edition, rarely show outstanding new film makers for the first time since those tend to enter first in national or international fests such as Sundance, Tribeca, Telluride the New York Film Festivals, Toronto or the Berlinale. Yet this apparent disadvantage is not troublesome since the audience views many remarkable productions which gained their cache already in national or other regional festivals. Thus the Newport program fea...