Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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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 […]
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In With The New at The 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
This edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th-25th) — now in its third decade, but also marking its inaugural year under the exciting new leadership of Syrian documentarian Orwa Nyrabia — offered one of the most binge-worthy lineups I’ve experienced in all my years covering the world’s largest doc fest. Of the nearly two-dozen films I managed to catch both in Amsterdam during my stay (once again guests were put up at the lovely — and couldn’t get more convenient — Hotel NH Carlton, which doubles as the fest’s headquarters) and online, not one disappointed. Indeed, veteran […]
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IDFA 2018 Presents Industry Talk: Steve James and Claire Simon on Storytelling in Serialized Documentaries
People are “natural scriptwriters,” Claire Simon noted towards the beginning of what turned out to be a surprisingly lively discussion between the French documentarian and the US’s own Steve James about one of the hottest topics in the doc industry today: serialized storytelling. The setting was an intimate theater at De Brakke Grond (the longtime headquarters of IDFA DocLab, where this year’s Humanoid Cookbook theme whimsically allowed for browsing a menu before ordering, or rather requesting, VR experience time slots). The moderator was film programmer Sean Farnel. The two veteran directors opened by acknowledging the biggest difference between feature films […]
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“High Security Was Essential, In Order to Protect My Sources, My Crew and the Ability To Complete the Film”: Alex Winter on The Panama Papers
Alex Winter’s The Panama Papers is a globetrotting, newsroom-hopping peek inside the multinational process, which ultimately brought together over 100 media organizations in 80 countries under the auspices of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). That led to the 2016 mass publication of documents from the highly secretive, Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca — which in turn brought down heads of state and business leaders the world over, and cost the lives of at least two reporters affiliated with the leaked trove. I was fortunate enough to catch Winter’s film at this year’s IDFA (in the stunning Tuschinski Theater, […]
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Indie Memphis: Not Just an Inclusion Rider
In Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, two rock ‘n’ roll-loving Japanese teenagers arrive in Memphis, Tennessee, and make their way over to Sun Studio, the legendary recording studio once the stomping grounds for the likes of Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and, of course, Elvis Presley, who recorded his first song there at the age of 18. In part because of the faint replay of this scene that had lingered in my head for some years, I’ve long wanted to take the Sun tour, one of my many Memphis to-dos, which also included a bunch of famous barbecue […]
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Top 10 Picks for IDFA 2018
The program for the 31st International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (November 14th – 25th) — the first under the new artistic directorship of Syrian documentary filmmaker Orwa Nyrabia — feels equal parts familiar and fresh. On the one hand, as in years past, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world’s largest nonfiction film festival. Once again the fest will include exceptional industry events like the IDFA Forum (and Docs for Sale, the IDFA Bertha Fund, IDFA Academy, etc.), competitions (14 in total), and more meet-and-greets and parties than one can reasonably attend. (Do I […]
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“What We Really Seem To Be Documenting…Is A Concerted Shift Away From An America That Sees Itself As A Land Of Immigrants Towards Something Else”: Andrés Caballero And Sofian Khan On Their DOC NYC Premiering The Interpreters
With anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise globally, and with a U.S. president who champions a ban on all Muslims to this country, Andrés Caballero and Sofian Khan’s (IFP-supported) The Interpreters serves as a timely corrective, to say the least. Their up-close-and-personal doc follows three men from Iraq and Afghanistan (and one American sergeant fighting the byzantine U.S. bureaucracy on behalf of his Baghdadi friend) who served U.S. troops as interpreters — not “translators,” since their role as intermediaries went well beyond mere language — as they struggle to keep the faith and avoid death while waiting to gain asylum in […]
