Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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The Gotham, Focus Features, Jet Blue and Westridge Foundation Premiere Student Shorts Online and In the Air
Four winners of the 2020-21 Student Short Film Showcase award, a collaboration between The Gotham, Focus Features, Jet Blue and the Westridge Foundation, are now streaming on Focus Features’s digital platforms as well as in the air on JetBlue’s inflight entertainment systems. The films were chosen from the submissions of 16 film schools and represent a real diversity of subject matter and storytelling styles. In Edward Hancox’s (University of Texas, Austin) cleverly conceived and sharply acted Things That Happen in the Bathroom, a bathroom, typically a place of privacy and solitude, becomes the site of complicated relationship dynamics between a […]
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First Titles Announces for the 2021 Fantasia Film Festival
The Fantasia Film Festival has just announced the first titles from its upcoming 25th anniversary edition, which will take place as a virtual event from August 5 – 21. Films will be accessible to Canadian audiences via a platform created by Festival Scope and Shift72. The festival organizers will be listening to the advice of local health authorities and may add a limited number of in-person events closer to the festival date. The titles and descriptions, from the fest’s high-spirited press release, are below. THE LAST THING MARY SAW. Brace yourself for THE LAST THING MARY SAW, a breathtaking period occult […]
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Another Screen Launches Streaming Series “For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women”
Another Screen, the streaming arm of feminist film journal Another Gaze, launched today “For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women.” The films all stream for free worldwide, and donations are encouraged that will go towards “facilitating medical, legal, and infrastructure aid on the ground. Secondary donations go to as supporting filmmaking in Gaza; restoration projects of older Palestinian films; cultural centers for refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and more.” Already on the site are films by Jumana Manna, Basma Alsharif, Rosalind Nashashibi, Razan AlSalah, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, and Larissa Sansour, and to be posted in the next few days […]
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Six Favorites from the Just Concluded 2021 New Directors/New Films Festival
After moving its 2020 edition to December and shifting to online-only viewing, New Directors/New Films returned to its usual springtime slot for its 50th iteration in 2021, combining virtual screenings with in-person ones at the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center. The fest celebrated its golden anniversary with a streamable selection of films that played at ND/NF in years past — early work by luminaries such as Chantal Akerman, Charles Burnett, Lee Chang-dong, Christopher Nolan, and Humberto Solás. However, this well-deserved victory lap was just a sidebar to the main program: 27 new feature films, along with […]
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“Those Years of Ecological Collapse and Pandemics”: Visions du Réel 2021
Last April, the opportunity to scope out Visions du Réel—a festival I’d never had the budget to attend in-person—came as a novel, welcome distraction. A year later, NYC’s weather is increasingly tolerable and the CDC says I’m ready to roam, but I enjoyed having the hybrid festival option once again on my way out the door; two years of browsing VdR have definitely expanded my understanding of global nonfiction norms, and I’d cheerfully make time at home for the rest in a re-opened world. Amid the films in this year’s lineup, one title, Kind Regards From the Anthropocene, pops out as […]
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Sundance Institute Announces the 20 Fellows Selected for the 2021 Native, Directors and Screenwriters Labs
The Sundance Institute announced today the first 20 fellows participating in Sundance’s summer Labs. Beginning with the Native Lab (May 10 – 21) and running through the Directors Lab (June 1 – July 2) and Screenwriters Lab (July 6 – 9), the programs will offer selected filmmakers a variety of development and learning opportunities and will connect them with advisors and the larger creative community. Sundance’s online learning platform, Sundance Collab, will host some parts of the labs. From the press release: These Labs are organized under the aegis of Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter, FFP Deputy Director […]
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Exquisite Shorts Program, A New Online Platform, Opens Submissions
Last year, Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari (who’s previously written for Filmmaker) launched the concept and a campaign for a new online short film platform. The Exquisite Shorts Program is designed to create a new model for short film exhibition. After a development period, the website and submissions are now live and ready to receive short films. Every film that screens in the program will be selected from submissions made through the website. The first short film will be selected by acclaimed Lingua Franca filmmaker, Isabel Sandoval. Here’s a refresher on how the program works: Filmmaker 1 → Picks a short […]
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New Directors/New Films 2021: Short Vacation, Wood and Water, Azor, Moon, 66 Questions and Madalena
Kwol Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol’s Short Vacation is a graduate thesis film, a side benefit of which is not needing two opening minutes for production company logos but instead being able to jump right into a trim, conflict-free 79 minutes. Four South Korean middle school girls—three long-time friends, the fourth a new-in-town addition to their group—take a long train trip to photograph the rural end of the railroad line. Their photography club teacher has handed out disposable 35mm cameras with the summer vacation assignment to photograph “the end of the world,” however they’d like to interpret that. Taking the train a few […]
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Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, I May Destroy You Win Multiple 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards
The Film Independent Spirit Awards were held last night — virtually, as opposed to at its customary Santa Monica beach location — and Nomadland was the big multiple winner, scoring wins for Best Feature, Director, Editing, and Cinematography. Other multiple winners included Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal and, in the new television categories, I May Destroy You and Unorthodox. The complete list of winners follows as well as Melissa Villaseñor’s opening monologue. BEST FEATURE – Nomandland (PRODUCERS: Mollye Asher, Dan Javey, Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Chloé Zhao) BEST DIRECTOR – Chloé Zhao, Nomadland BEST FEMALE LEAD – Carey Mulligan, […]
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CPH:DOX 2021: Live and Inter:Active
After a full year of attending virtual fests – CPH:DOX 2020 marked the start – I can honestly say that the most exciting and unexpected upside has been the democratization of the film festival experience. A surprising number of fests have not only thrown open the gates of exclusivity, allowing non-jet-setting cinephiles to stream films at a reasonable cost from home, but also gone out of their way to make select portions of their programs free to the general public. And though it’s long been at the forefront of accessibility, the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (which takes place in a […]
