Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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FFA + iGEMStv, + Sub-Genre Launch Industry-Wide Survey: The New Era of Film Exhibition
From Brian Newman, whose Sub-Genre newsletter I highly recommend subscribing to, comes this set of three surveys about the independent film and festival worlds in the age of COVID-19. The three organizing parties — Sub-Genre, Film Festival Alliance and iGEMStv, a movie and TV curation/recommendation platform — promise to aggregate the results with an eye towards helping the industry figure out a way forward amidst the current pandemic. From the organizers: One way to solve the problems… is by collecting data and using it to build better systems. To that end: With COVID having such a major impact on the […]
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FIDMarseille 2020: Night Vision, Shady River, Pajeú
After Visions du Réel, FIDMarseille is the second festival this year I’ve never had a chance to physically attend that I can now at least virtually explore. Compared with VdR’s capacious slate and wide variety of nonfiction approaches, FIDMarseille (now no longer a strictly nonfiction festival) has a reputation for defaulting on the side of formal severity, with zero time for crowd-pleasing softer fare to balance it out. That reputation is in line with what I’ve sampled so far. (Note, too, that there was a physical, in-person edition of FIDMarseille. The United States could never.) I started with Chilean director […]
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Exquisite Shorts, a New Model for Online Shorts Programming, Launched by Sophy Romvari
Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari (who’s previously written for Filmmaker) has announced the launch of a new online short festival. Exquisite Shorts is designed to create a new model for shorts filmmakers, paying them for their work while enabling the public to watch for free. The newly launched crowdfunding campaign explains how online screenings will work: Filmmaker 1 → Picks a short film from a pool of submissions that they love, that inspired them, or that they feel could use a platform. The filmmaker making the selection will record a video introduction that will play prior to their selected film, which will […]
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IFP Announces Project Forum Slate for 42nd IFP Week
Today, IFP (Independent Filmmaker Project), Filmmaker’s parent organization, announced its Project Forum slate, highlighting 144 feature-length and series projects, including, for the first time, a slate of 36 audio projects, in development and production set to participate in the upcoming 42nd annual edition of IFP Week, taking place entirely online September 20-25, 2020. Along with the Project Forum’s consistent and ongoing support for independent artists working in visual storytelling, this year will offer support to creators working in audio through the introduction of the IFP Week Audio Hub. Expanding upon IFP’s core mission of championing and elevating independent storytellers, the Audio […]
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Free Streaming Series “After Civilization,” Hosted by Maysles Documentary Center, Features Work by John Akomfrah, Pat O’Neill and More
Another excellent free streaming series: “After Civilization,” hosted by the Maysles Documentary Center, runs through August 15th. 12 features and shorts are available to stream. Per the Center, the series’ thematic emphasis considers a very immediate question: “when the modern idyll of ‘civilization’ is threatened—whether through active resistance, environmental disaster, or structural collapse—what follows? In an endangered present, the future is not inevitable but to be fought for, reclaimed, reinvented altogether. How do we care for the planet while centering human life, and from where, exactly, will the seeds of collective liberation grow?” Co-curated by Emily Apter, Annie Horner and […]
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Spring 2020 SFFILM Rainin Grant Winners Announced
SFFILM announced today the seven narrative feature films that will receive a total of $195,000 in funding in the Spring, 2020 round of its SFFILM Rainin grants. Awarded twice annually, the funds support films in the “next stage of their creative process,” which can range from screenwriting to post-production, and which “will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community and/or meaningfully explore pressing social issues.” The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions are Sofia Alicastro, SFFILM Artist Development Manager: Filmmaker Programs; Sophie Gunther, SFFILM Artist Development Manager: Film Funds; Anne Lai, SFFILM Executive Director; Angela […]
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Sundance Film Festival Director Tabitha Jackson Outlines 2021 Plans
With the future of pre-vaccine festivals still up in the air, Sundance Film Festival’s Director, Tabitha Jackson, has sent out an announcement (not quite, as she says) as to what next year might look like. The letter is posted in full below. Dear Friends, As we plan for our 2021 Festival — my first in the Director’s chair — and with submissions now open, I wanted to give you an early insight into how we are thinking. This is not an announcement, but rather an invitation into the process of building something together this year. There are very few certainties […]
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The Cannes Marche and the Independent Agency-Led Virtual Market Rethink Film Sales Amidst the Pandemic
Two virtual markets will run side by side next week, marking an unprecedented moment within the film industry. In efforts to reunite global sales forces and together inject a much needed burst of energy into the industry’s current state of play, the Cannes Marche and the new independent agency-led virtual market will begin their events Monday June 22, with the Cannes event ending on Saturday June 27 and the latter on Sunday June 28. When speaking to a number of distributors and sales agents, it seems it’s full speed ahead in terms of lining up meetings and screenings. Almost as […]
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“This Whole Movement is about Performance”: Daniel Lombroso on his Alt-Right Doc White Noise
White Noise, the first feature-length documentary from The Atlantic, often plays more like it was sprung from the mind of Christopher Guest. Director Daniel Lombroso, who’s traveled throughout the world to shoot award-winning shorts for the magazine’s website, exploring everything from Russian espionage to Israeli settlements, now trains his lens on the alt-right — specifically on three of its biggest stars. There’s Lauren Southern, who seems to be crafting herself into a sort of Ann Coulter for the YouTube generation. Also conspiracy theorist and sex blogger Mike Cernovich, who eventually dispenses with fascist ideology in favor of the more lucrative […]
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Firelight Media’s Beyond Resilience Series: A Real-Time Resource for POC Filmmakers
When the coronavirus descended on the U.S., Firelight Media, like every other organization, quickly shifted its activities online. The Harlem-based nonprofit has been supporting nonfiction filmmakers of color since 2008, helping move hundreds of films forward through its Documentary Lab and other programs, and it functioned as a production company for another decade before that. Thus when the pandemic stopped film production and real-world gatherings the Firelight team responded quickly with a range of new programs, a service made all the more critical by COVID-19’s disproportionate affect on the Black population. Then, of course, came the murder of George Floyd […]
