Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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2018: A Year in 14 Festivals
2018 is the year that film festivals were challenged to answer the most basic question: What is cinema? The rise of VOD and streaming platforms have cinema owners worried that audiences will finally abandon theaters and the theatrical experience. The fear stems from the VOD market refusing to worship the primacy of cinema and the dictum that says all films should be played in theaters before arriving on another platform. And who can blame VOD providers for taking this stance, when they operate in a global market place, and when they are funding movies by auteurs themselves? If they fund […]
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Brown Girls Doc Mafia Announces Co-Directors, Advisory Board and $105,000 Grant From John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Brown Girls Doc Mafia, an organization advocating for women and non-binary people of color in the documentary industry, announced today the appointment of its board of directors as well as a two-year, $105,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The board, comprised of filmmaker Ursula Liang, Denae Peters of Film Sprout, and Nicole Tsien of American Documentary POV will work in conjunction with the organization’s Co-Directors, Iyabo Boyd and Tracy Nguyen-Chung. Brown Girls Doc Mafia was founded by Boyd in 2015 and has a global membership of over 2,400. From the press release: “Brown Girls Doc […]
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Talking Gender Parity in the Immersive World at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
No film fest is complete these days without an attempt to tackle the vast gender inequality that’s long afflicted the industry. So it comes as no surprise that the sixth edition of the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival devoted an entire panel to searching for remedies when it comes to immersive media. “Reaching True Gender Parity in Interactive Storytelling” proved to be a fascinating chat amongst four fervent ladies — Marie-Pier Gauthier of the National Film Board of Canada (who also served as panel moderator), HP’s Global Head of Virtual Reality Joanna Popper, Vivian Marthell, who leads local art house O […]
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“If the Content is Sh*t, It Will Still be Sh*t in VR and AR”: Virtual Reality and Hard Truth at the 2018 FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth’s “psychedelic documentary” Awavena, an inner trip that I’d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt’s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the […]
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“If You Want Something to Exist, Figure Out How to Do It”: Ian Clark on Eastern Oregon Film Festival and A Morning Light
As both a programmer and filmmaker, Ian Clark has had a long-standing relationship with Filmmaker. Named a 25 New Face in 2012, Clark is also a co-founder of the Eastern Oregon Film Festival (EOFF), which hosts its annual online program on this very website. I’ve attended EOFF for three years, and every time I am amazed by the sense of community Clark fosters and his prowess as a programmer, a curatorial mindset that feels like a direct extension of his person. Clark and I had a conversation about the festival’s origins, his relationship to his hometown of La Grande, and his […]
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Magic Leap, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Eminem and Traveling While Black: Sundance Announces 2019 New Frontier Slate
The Sundance Film Festival’s always-revelatory New Frontier section announced its 2019 lineup today. Dedicated to work sitting at the “dynamic crossroads of film, art and technology,” New Frontier typically explores various forms of new media, including VR, AR, mixed reality and work implementing artificial intelligence. Amongst the highlights are the first time, I believe, that the Magic Leap technology has appeared in a Sundance selection, here in a work co-created by the Royal Shakespeare Company; Eminem taking you on a nighttime Detroit ride in VR; the VR component of Roger Ross Williams’s multi-format Traveling While Black project; painter turned VR […]
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Sundance Announces 2019 Festival Shorts, Indie Episodic and Special Events
Almost 10,000 shorts — 9,443, to be exact, broken down into 4,720 from the U.S. and 4,723 from the rest of the world — were submitted to the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, yielding today’s announced program of 73 works from 33 countries. (For those doing the math, that’s an acceptance rate of just over three quarters of one percent.) According to the festival, “53% were directed or created by one or more women, 51% were directed or created by one or more filmmaker of color, and 26% by one or more people who identify as LGBTQIA. Twelve were supported by […]
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Sundance Film Festival Announces 2019 Features Line-Up
The Sundance Film Festival has just announced the 112 feature films set to hit Park City next January 24- February 3. From a record breaking 14,259 submissions, these selections represent 33 countries. 40% of the films were directed by one or more women; 36% were directed by one or more filmmaker of color; and 13% by one or more people who identify as LGBTQIA. Highlights include new films from Joanna Hogg, Kim Longinotto, Alma Har’el, Martha Stephens, Penny Layne and Joe Berlinger, as well as the first features from former 25 New Faces Michael Tyburski, Joe Talbot and Pippa Bianco. Scroll […]
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The Rider Tops the 2018 Gotham Awards
The 2018 Gotham Independent Film Awards are in the can and The Rider, Chloe Zhao’s stunning second feature, emerged at the top of the heap, beating out the more bookie friendly bets in The Favourite and First Reformed. Those films did not go home empty handed: Ethan Hawke and Paul Schrader won Best Actor and Best Screenplay, respectively, and Rachel Weisz was on hand to accept her Actress Tribute and an Ensemble Award for The Favourite. Read on for the full list of winners. Best Feature “First Reformed” “The Favourite” “Madeline’s Madeline” “If Beale Street Could Talk” “The Rider” Best Documentary “Bisbee ‘17” “Hale […]
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A Sneak Peek at the 6th FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
The upcoming FilmGate Interactive Media Festival (November 30th – December 6th) will mark its sixth year of bringing the immersive arts to South Florida. A quick glance through the lineup shows it’s the most impressive edition yet. Divided into four programs — Miami @ Play, Festival Panels, Interactive Installations, and the Virtual Reality Portal (with its 35-plus interactive experiences to choose from) — not to mention the many parties (this is Miami after all), the 2018 edition may just make the folks in town that same week for Art Basel look 20th century passé. Starting with the panels (on December […]
