Directors Naomi Kawase, Bent Hamer, Peter Mullan and Victoria Galardi will compete for the first time at San Sebastian Festival alongside John Sayles, Raúl Ruiz and Daoud Aoulad-Syad, all repeat contenders for the Golden Shell.The Japanese moviemaker Naomi Kawase will present Genpin. Kawase won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes with Moe no Suzako (1997) and was the first woman to win the Special Jury Prize in Cannes in 2007 for Mogari no More (The Mourning Forest). The British director, screenwriter...

Forum and Ex Oriente Film 3rd workshop - October 27 - 30, 2009 East European Forum - public pitching session - October 31 – Nov 1, 2009The Institute of Documentary Film will make this year's selection of East European Forum participants out of a record number of applications. Eighty-two projects from more than 20 countries are applying for participation. However, only the authors of eight to ten most promising projects will be chosen by the international committee and given an opportunity to p...

Celebrating 100 years of German Animation Film, the 16th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film (5 – 10 May 2009) will present a comprehensive anniversary retrospective. The changeful history of this innovative genre will be visualised in six programme sections. The screenings comprise artistically ambitious works, outstanding commercials and state of the art 3D animations. Hardly any other genre within the realm of film reflects the variety and fractures of German film productions as distinctly ...

Tuesday, December 5----The Maya Stendhal Gallery, one of New York's most adventurous gallery spaces, is currently presenting a collection of over 40 short works, created and curated by pioneering avant-garde filmmaker, artist, poet and archivist Jonas Mekas. Dubbed WWW.JONASMEKAS.COM---RECENT WORK, the program includes works shot on film, video and in new media platforms. The 84 year-old Mekas, one of the founders of the independent film movement, remains vitally prolific and engaged in the c...