Authors — Melissa Silvestri

SARAH JACOBSON GRANT APPLICATION DEADLINE NEXT WEEK

In the ’90s, Sarah Jacobson was a rising indie filmmaker. Beginning with her half-hour short film I Was A Teenage Serial Killer in 1993, she garnered enough underground critical success to make her feature debut, Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore, a coming-of-age tale about a teenage girl’s loss of virginity and her friends’ experiences with their first times. Jacobson was set to move on to bigger films, but she sadly passed away from endometrial cancer at age 32 in 2004. To carry on her life’s work and support for fellow filmmakers, Jacobson’s mother and film producer Ruth Jacobson and […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Nov 11, 2010
“TWELVE WAYS TO SUNDAY” COMES TO ROOFTOP FILMS

In this time of economic peril, many Americans have begun to shed frivolous spending for small but rich pleasures. With less nights of take-out or cineplex movies, they’ve learned that it’s the homemade things that count in this world. Filmmaker Anna Farrell portrays a tight-knit community in her documentary Twelve Ways to Sunday, one that always knew about the basic and organic things in life. Fixing up motorcycles, dishing up meals at the local diner, and canning fruit preserves, the people of Allegany County, New York, have always sustained through the good and bad times. Playing this Wednesday at Rooftop […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Sep 22, 2010
D.A. PENNEBAKER & CHRIS HEGEDUS, “KINGS OF PASTRY”

D.A. Pennebaker is a legend in the world of documentary filmmaking. A pioneer in the art of cinema verite, he first made his mark with the 1967 classic Don’t Look Back, chronicling Bob Dylan’s final acoustic tour in the U.K. He met his partner (in directing and matrimony) Chris Hegedus in the 1970s, and they have co-directed nearly 30 films together since 1977, including the Oscar-nominated The War Room and the Sundance entry Startup.com. Their latest collaboration is Kings of Pastry, a whirlwind peek into the M.O.F. competition, a French pastry chef contest in which 16 of the world’s best […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Sep 15, 2010
VIC SKOLNICK, R.I.P.

I was saddened to hear of the death of Vic Skolnick, an influential co-founder of Long Island’s first major art house movie theater, The Cinema Arts Center, in Huntington, N.Y. Passing away at 81 on June 10th, Skolnick, along with his wife, Charlotte Sky, founded what was originally known as the New Community Cinema in 1973. Skolnick, a teacher for twenty years at N.Y. public schools, combined his passion for history with a lifelong love of films. His ambition was to show as many diverse films as possible and educate his loyal audience in innovative cinema. The cinema went through […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Jun 24, 2010
50th KRAKOW FILM FEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED

The Krakow Film Festival ended yesterday closing its landmark 50th year. The oldest film festival in Poland, Krakow Fest is one of the most beloved events spotlighting the work of docs, animation and shorts in Europe. This year’s Documentary Competition had two winners: Sanya and Sparrow, directed by Andriej Griazew, about the early consequences of capitalism in the Soviet Union, and the Golden Horn winner Beyond This Place, directed by Kaleo La Belle, about inter-generational drama between a father and son. The winners of the Silver Horns in the same category were Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, who chronicled the […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Jun 7, 2010
SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES FOUR PROJECTS SELECTED FOR FIRST-EVER EAST AFRICA THEATRE LAB

The Sundance Institute have announced the projects chosen to be a part of the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in East Africa. The Lab will take place July 9-29 on the island of Manda off the coast of Kenya. The Lab will provide these projects with guidance in their creative development towards the end product. Styled from the Sundance Institute Theatre Labs, Sundance Institute East Africa is an exchange and development program, and participants will receive training and mentoring from American and African Creative Advisors. The projects included this year are Cut Off My Tongue by Sitawa Namwalie, The Book of […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Apr 4, 2010
TRIBECA GALA PREMIERES ANNOUNCED

The Tribeca Film Festival has announced that Freaknomics will serve as the closing gala of the festival on April 30. Freaknomics is a documentary that was based on the bestseller Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Exposes the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. It melds pop culture with economics, and examines economics in such diverse subject matter as legalized abotion, drug dealing, education, and naming children. The film is directed by an array of critically acclaimed documentary filmmakers: Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room), Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me), Rachel Grady and Heidi […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Mar 30, 2010
ROGER EBERT TO RECEIVE AWARD AT SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

Celebrated film critic, screenwriter and national arbiter of taste for the moviegoing public, Roger Ebert, will be honored at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22 – May 6) with the Mel Novikoff Award, an award that celebrates an individual or institution’s achievement in bringing to the public a treasured appreciation of world cinema. He will be honored on Saturday, May 1 at 5:30 pm as part of a presentation entitled An Evening with Roger Ebert and Friends at the Castro Theatre. Guests include directors Jason Reitman and Terry Zwigoff, with others to be announced soon. The festival […]
by Melissa Silvestri on Mar 2, 2010

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