OFFICIAL PRESENTATION OF THE 54TH SAN SEBASTIAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALThis year’s Festival will pay homage to the career of fabulous creator Ernst Lubitsch, dedicating its thematic retrospective to emigration, a harsh reality of our time repeatedly appearing in other epochs and always energetically reflected by the cinema.At its presentation on 12th May, the Festival unveiled its 54th official poster in addition to the posters representing the different sections. A meeting with friends fr...
If you think the only San Francisco love fest took place during the summer of 1967, think again. No one was wearing flowers in their hair at the Castro Theatre on the May 4th Closing Night of the San Francisco International Film Festival, but a special feeling was certainly in the air. Graham Leggat, the executive director of the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS), took the stage to applause and hoots and whistles, stating, “G’d evening, guys. No festival from Alaska to Argentina has done so...
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney joins the director of American Blackout for the closing night of the alive! Deep Focus Film FestivalOrganizers of the second annual alive! Deep Focus Film Festival, Columbus’ own festival of great independent film, are happy to announce that Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney will be a guest at the festival’s closing night screening of American Blackout. She’ll join a previously announced guest, director Ian Inaba, in introducing the film to Columbus audi...
The revolution may not be televised by the major networks or covered by the mainstream press, but it’s certainly playing on screens large and small somewhere near you. On Saturday afternoon at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Susan Gerhard, the editor/bureau chief of the newly launched web film magazine SF360 (www.SF360.org), moderated a panel tagged “The Revolution Now Playing: Film as a Tool for Social and Political Change.” Activist filmmakers Jeff Zimbalist (FAVELA RISING...
2006 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Announces Awards2007 Festival Tenth Anniversary Dates Set for April 12-15, 2007Ninth annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival came to a close Sunday April 9th with record-breaking attendance. The final ticket number for the 2006 festival was 20,121, with an estimated 2540 additional viewers coming for the films showing post-barbecue bringing the total number of tickets to 22,661 for 2006. Last year, as of Sunday's Southern Style Barbecue and Awards Ce...
Sheffield International Documentary Festival is delighted to announce the appointment of its new Director. Heather Croall, formerly Director of the Australian International Documentary Conference, will start in post early April. Heather’s career in the Australian screen industry has included working as a company director, independent documentary producer, festival director and consultant. Heather has also worked for government film funding agency the South Australian Film Corporation, has ga...
Financing a movie? Well you might want to read this for inspiration. StrangeLand Films and Director Farnaz Samiinia, with producing partner, Isabel Gallardo, did just that for suspense thriller Body of Work. Welcome to Newport, California: where the film will screen at April’s Newport Beach Film Festival. With a vision to boot, the film’s inspiration came from a published play by Brian Alan Lane, also the writer of the film. Samiinia exudes,“When I read the play the very first time, I fell...
The “Other” Venice Film Festival
Venice California was one man's dream of a place to resemble Venice, Italy. In 1900 Abbot Kinney founded Venice, California. At first Venice was a romantic network of canals but Kinney's idea never really worked, and with the arrival of cars and freeways to LA, the canals were abandoned. In the 1960s Venice, California became a low rent district on the ocean that attracted artists and young radicals from across the nation.
Always slightly on the margin...
SPOTLIGHT ON WOMEN DIRECTORSThe Directors Guild of America reports that less than 10% of its membership are women. In the history of the Academy Awards, only three women have ever been nominated for Best Director (Lina Wertmuller, Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola). While women head major studios and are prolific producers, there still is a “glass ceiling” regarding women directors. But at the Miami International Film Festival....it's a woman's world, and male journalists like myself just have ...
Susan Gerhard Will Edit Online Magazine Devoted to Daily Year-Round Coverage of Thriving San Francisco Film and Media Scene San Francisco, CA ‹ Graham Leggat, executive director of the San Francisco Film Society, and Brian Clark, cofounder and managing member of indieWIRE, the leading online publication dedicated to American and international independent film, announced today that Susan Gerhard has come on board as the editor and bureau chief of SF360.org. The new copublished site, dedicated t...
Several films by area and regional filmmakers are included in the 30th Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF). A festival regular, Local Heroes is the way we honor area filmmakers, actors, and crew; films set or shot in Ohio; filmmakers or subjects born here; and films that have a strong local connection. Our Local Heroes section is presented with the generous support of Cleveland State University and Tim & Nancy Callahan. You’ll find them under the category “Local Heroes” in our ...
“The Talent Campus provides an inspiring opportunity for filmmakers to come together and gives us all the chance to listen to and learn from each other“, summarizes film music composer Stephen Warbeck (Shakespeare in Love) his experience at the Berlinale Talent Campus. The concluding event of the Campus yesterday was the presentation of the awards: the winner of the Volkswagen Score Competition is Alasdair Reid from Great Britain. In a vote, the 520 talents from 101 countries named High Main...
BUDAPEST FEST SETS RECORD IN SPITE OF BOMB SCAREby Alex Deleon, BudapestFebruary 12, 2OO6With ticket sales now counted and statistics compiled, it turns out that the 37th Hungarian Film Review (Magyar Film Szemle) in Budapest set a new paid attendance record in spite of the fact that an entire evening of screenings had to be canceled because of a bomb threat. The phoned in threat turned out to be a false alarm, probably the act of a twisted mind rather than a Moslem terrorist cell, however, with...
Madeinusa/ClaudiaLlosa Madeinusa is a sweet girl who lives in an isolated religiously zealous village in mountainous Peru. Everything changes when a geologist from Lima arrives and unknowingly reshapes Madeinusa's destiny. Kinky Boots/Julian JarroldIn an effort to save his father's small town shoe factory, a man finds an unlikely ally in Lola, a brassy cabaret singer. DeNADIE/Tin DirdamalThe story of Maria, a Central American immigrant forced to leave her family in search of a better life. O...
Directors Guild of America Vice President Betty Thomas today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2005. “What makes the DGA award truly meaningful to directors is the knowledge that only this award is decided solely by their peers – the men and women who know the passion and energy that go into each production,” said Thomas in announcing the nominations. “My congratulations to all five nominees for demonstrating how vi...
PAN AFRICAN FILM AND ARTS FESTIVALLargest U.S. Black History Month Event Set for February 9-20 South Africa’s official nomination for the 78th Annual Academy Awards® in the foreign language film category, TSOTSI, has been selected as the opening night film for the 14th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival. The star-studded event will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 9th at the Directors Guild of America with principal cast and filmmakers in attendance. The evening will be hosted b...
The 23rd Annual Miami International Film Festival will take placeMarch 3 - 12, 2006 In March of 2006, the Miami International Film Festival (MIFF), presented by Miami Dade College (MDC), will launch a new program, MIFF Abroad, which will celebrate the filmmaking of one Latin American country each year, starting with Chile at this year’s festival. The announcement was made today by Festival Director Nicole Guillemet.“For the first year of MIFF Abroad, we have chosen Chile. It is a logical and...
The Festivalists is a new Sydney-based non-profit organisation dedicated to the production of film festivals and touring programs. Founded partly in reaction to the void left by the closure of truly independent cinemas such as the Chauvel and the Valhalla, the organisation is dedicated to providing new opportunities for audiences to access Australian and world cinema.Their first project is Young at Heart – Sydney Seniors Film Festival. The event will run from April 2nd to 9th 2006 to coincide ...
For the twentieth time, the annual gay and lesbian Teddy Award will be presented at the upcoming Berlinale. For the anniversary the Panorama, working with the Berlin Film Museum, has put together a Retrospective. The Teddy Twenty Tribute will present Teddy Award winners from the past two decades, documenting the turbulent history of gay and lesbian film. An interview with Wieland Speck, director of the Panorama and prime witness to the development of the Teddy, about early battles, old wounds an...
The Cinema & Literature International Forum of Monte CarloNames Edith Grant Executive Director of the MIAL & RFM MarketsUnder the High Patronage of H.S.H Prince Albert II, The Cinema & Literature International Forum of Monte Carlo will celebrate its fifth anniversary, from April 7 to 9, 2006.The Forum uniquely links literature and comics to cinema and television by organizing discussion panels, master-classes, book-readings and film previews. In 2006, as in the past editions, it will bring toget...
Jorgen Leth interview by Wendy Dent Festival dei Popoli, Florence 7 December 2005WD: This festival was very unique in that it expanded my definitions of what documentary is and this is what stunned me about your films, is they were staged and it really broadened my idea of what documentary is but made me wonder where is the line, where is the definition? Once you start to have actors and you make a comment about society, but even drama is a comment on humanity so I am wondering what you feel abo...
Feature filmsHari Om by BharatbalaThe directorBharatbala, a filmmaker with a distinctive visual style, has produced innovating images of India throughout his entire career. Crossing the whole length and breadth of India and its rich cultural heritage, his films seem to capture the essence of the land, resulting in some of the most dynamic works to be rewarded at the Cannes and New York Film Festivals. Hari Om is the first of a series of stories from India that Bharatbala has envisioned to tell a...
On the occasion of the seventh edition of Thespo, one of the most publicised youth festivals in India, Quasar Thakore Padamsee speaks to filmfestivals.com and eSTQ.Q. You're the son of famous theatre parents? What's your early memories about the theatre? Late night rehearsals, hanging around back-stage, being allowed to play the fool? Mother memorising her lines while readying you for school?A. My early memories of theatre are all about backstage. And peering through the wings. I remember being ...
RICHARD PENA ON HIS WORK III Do you think that the continued expansion of film festivals is indication of the growing cinematic interest by the audience?I wish it were that. I don’t know. It is probably an indication of more people looking for ways of having jobs that are more glamorous. I am not sure how much it helps films. The vast majority of the festivals have no impact on the films at all. In the best possible of all worlds it is a nice cultural activity, but they do not really affec...
This is the first of a three part interview for filmfestivals.com by Claus MuellerRichard Peña on his WorkRichard Peña, noted film curator and scholar, is in charge of the New York Film Festival and the programs of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Since his appointment in 1988, Mr. Peña has enhanced festival standing as the most selective and influential cinema event in North America, and extended the Film Society’s programs to cover in depth year-round retrospectives of influential film...
