Sundance announced today that the in-person portion of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival has been cancelled. As in 2021, the festival will occur this year online, in a virtual edition on Sundance’s bespoke platform. When Sundance announced the return of its live edition back in August, 2021, Festival Director Tabitha Jackson announced a vaccination requirement, and, in recent days, Sundance reupped its protocols, requiring boosters for some attendees as well as offering on-site boosters in addition to the testing already planned. But Jackson also wrote, “Health and safety is paramount… We will continue to assess other elements of health and […]

An indigenous filmmaking focus and the ever-blossoming local film scene helped the 41st edition of the Hawai’i International Film Festival Presented by Halekulani return to an almost-normal state of in-person bliss this November. After a year and more of pandemic uncertainties and isolation, attendees shook off the social rust with varying degrees of success, while fears about being amidst crowds were somewhat abated by Honolulu’s vigorous vaccine requirements and HIFF’s strict 50%-capacity limits. The festival fittingly opened with the world premiere of Isaac Halasima’s documentary Waterman, on the astounding life of Native Hawaiian surfer/Olympian/celebrity Duke Kahanamoku; hit its stride with […]

Covering this year’s hybrid IDFA from home was both blessing and curse. On the downside, I wouldn’t be attending any screenings in one of the most gorgeous cinemas in the world – Amsterdam’s now century-old (and now “Royal Theater”) Tuschinski — nor experiencing all the new media wonders of IDFA DocLab. (Even with the free online exhibition running from November 19-28 I had to forego all VR as I don’t have a headset on hand.) Then again, I did avoid the city’s pandemic-induced partial shutdown (turned closing weekend lockdown) while still having access to the pretty packed P&I library. This […]

The Sundance Institute announced today the 59 shorts that will comprise the Short Film Program for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. In addition, this year there’s a new “From the Archive” section — 40 films that are online exclusives playing for all pass holders during the festival, January 20 – 30. Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming, said in a press release, “Short films are such a vital part of the independent storytelling culture that Sundance Institute has consistently put its full support behind. We’re all happy for the opportunity this year’s hybrid in-person and online Festival model is […]

The Sundance Institute announced today the full Feature Film, Indie Episodic, and New Frontier categories for the upcoming 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Returning from last year’s purely virtual festival, this year’s Sundance will be a hybrid edition, with in-person events at Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Mountain Resort in Utah as well as on an enhanced online platform for remote attendees. Additionally there will be The Spaceship, a “bespoke immersive platform.” Continuing from last year’s experimentation, in-person screenings at seven Satellite Screens venues will occur across the country during the Festival’s second weekend. Films this year — […]

The Slamdance Film Festival — this year a hybrid festival — announced today its full lineup of features and shorts that will comprise its 2022 edition. The festival will run live in Park City Utah, January 20 -23 and virtually January 20 – 30. The selection contains 13 world premieres, six North American and four U.S. reviews. All competition films are feature-length with budgets under $1 million and without U.S. distribution. “We are anti-algorithm,” said Slamdance President and co-founder Peter Baxter in a press release. “That’s always been true, but it’s more urgent than ever as we continue to celebrate […]

The Southern Documentary Fund has just announced ten projects that will receive $10,000 production grants, unrestricted funds supporting projects in varying stages of productions. Half the grants go with aspiring and emerging makers, while non-first-time filmmakers include Julie Dash, whose highly influential Daughters of the Dust was the first feature directed by an African American woman to receive general theatrical release in the U.S. Says  Southern Documentary Fund Executive Director Kristy Garcia Breneman in a press release, “This year’s applicant pool was rich with Southern talent, telling a vast range of powerful stories from across our region – we were […]

We last covered Exquisite Shorts, the shorts film program launched by Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari, when the platform announced that submissions were now open. Now Exquisite Shorts has premiered its first short, as curated by filmmaker Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca). From the platform: After several months of research and feedback from other filmmakers, a website was built from scratch and submissions opened for just $5 per film on an independent platform (avoiding FilmFreeway). The first film in the program is Pablo Hernando’s Solar Noise. This selection was made by filmmaker Isabel Sandoval, who was asked to make the inaugural pick for the program. You can […]

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, The Lost Daughter, adapted from the Elena Ferrante novel, was the big winner at the 2021 Gotham Awards, presented Monday, November 29 at Cipriani Wall Street. The Netflix production, which stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Dagmara Domińczyk and Peter Saarsgard, was awarded Best Feature, and Gyllenhaal won Best Screenplay as well as the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director award. Colman shared the Outstanding Lead Performance Award with The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain‘s Frankie Faison. Colman and Faison’s wasn’t the only split decision; the Gotham jury also split the Outstanding Performance in a New Series award, […]

Mads Brügger’s feature directorial debut, The Red Chapel, took a Tom Green-via-Sacha Baron-Cohen approach to infiltrating North Korea, with the director finagling himself and two comics — both adopted from North Korea, one with spastic paralysis — into the country. Given that it’s not hard to make an actual absurd environment appear absurd on screen, he emerged with fairly pointless cringe comedy: plenty of awkwardness all round but no real surprises. So it’s interesting to hear Brügger admit at the start of The Mole (initially a three-part series, shown at DOC NYC in its presumably final two-episode form) that The Red Chapel, while an […]