Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Sundance Film Festival Announces 2020 Indie Episodic, Shorts and Special Events
Eighth episodic works, 74 short films and nine special events were announced today as part of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The shorts were selected from 10,397 submissions hailing from 27 countries. In the press release, Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming, said, “Authenticity and independent voices resonate across formats – and that’s evident across the full spectrum of this year’s Indie Episodic and Special Events slates. Defined by distinctive voices and enlightening viewpoints, these are riveting projects that find inspiration in the urgent stories and extraordinary individuals of our times.” Mike Plante, Senior Programmer, Shorts, said, “With an […]
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Sundance 2020 Announces 118 Feature Films
For independent filmmakers the most eagerly awaited announcement of the year is here: the 118 feature films selected for the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The films hail from 27 countries and were chosen from a dizzying record high of 3,853 features. And the 2020 edition is the final one for outgoing Festival Director John Cooper, who says, “The program this year, my last as Director, is a celebration: of art and artists, yes, but also of the community that makes the annual pilgrimage to Park City to see the most exciting new work being made today. Watching this group expand […]
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Spectacle, Controversy and the Septic: Pingyao International Film Festival 2019
This is a strange place to have a revelation. I’m sitting in a movie theatre in Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China. I have shrunken into a cosy corporate space which, once the house lights are put out, is soothingly anonymous. I’m briefly hidden from the startling and imposing hubbub of the Pingyao International Film Festival, a “boutique” film festival founded by the great Jia Zhangke in 2017; hiding, as it were, in plain sight. All this festival’s state-sponsored glitz, its overproduced sleekness, the ubiquity of its many, many attendees, the drone of voices in the street, the scooters caroming by—all of […]
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“How Do You Know If the Festival is a Scam?” Martha Shane on Narrowsburg
A well-meaning regional film festival can be welcoming and tightly curated—a true community endeavor. A bad one can be a deceitful scam. Such was the case with the Narrowsburg International Independent Film Festival, founded in 2001 by a couple from nearby New York City. Things didn’t start out so rocky. After a successful first year and an inaugural picture show in the books, the husband and wife wanted to expand upon the event (and the town’s exposure) by featuring its setting and community in a low-budget indie, Four Deadly Reasons, about the mafia invading the town. Its star? The festival’s […]
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“I Chose to Yell, You Chose to Whisper:” Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke at Pingyao International Film Festival
I was loitering around the ticket office of the Pingyao International Film Festival, waiting for the day to begin. This was the second morning of the festival and, like all international delegates, I was still adjusting to being in China. That adjustment is at least threefold: to the time zone, to the food and to the place. Already I had seen Jia Zhangke, festival founder and one of the greatest of all directors, mobbed by legions of fans. I had seen Zhao Tao standing tall and beautiful in the queue for the opening film, apparently invisible to those around her. […]
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Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Give Me Liberty Score Big as Film Independent Announces 2019 Spirit Award Nominees
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems and Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse topped the nominations list with five nominations each as Film Independent announced today the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Award nominees. Chinonye Chukwu’s Sundance winner Clemency, Julius Onah’s Luce and Alma Har’el’s Honey Boy also received multiple nominations as did lesser-promoted films such as Kirill Mikhanovsky’s Give Me Liberty and Tom Quinn’s Colewell. And so did one festival sleeper that premiered in Tribeca before then going to Netflix: Stefan Bristol’s See You Yesterday. That particular Spirit blend of higher-profile titles mixed with smaller ones continues throughout the rest of the […]
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Five Narrative Feature Winners Announced for Fall 2019 SFFILM Westridge Grant
SFFILM, in partnership with the Westridge Foundation, announced today the five narrative feature film projects that will receive $100,000 in development funding from the organization. Awarded twice annually, the SFFILM Westridge Grants are one of the few U.S. sources of grant support for narrative features in the development phase. The grants target US-based filmmakers whose films take place primarily in the States and which focus on “social issues and questions of our time.” FALL 2019 SFFILM WESTRIDGE GRANT WINNERS all dirt roads taste of salt . Raven Jackson, writer/director; Maria Altamirano, producer – development/packaging – $20,000 Through lyrical portraits evoking the […]
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Homecoming Attitude: Wrapping the 2019 Indie Memphis Film Festival
Last year, after my first Indie Memphis, I penned my love letter to the city and the film festival with a scene from Jim Jarmusch’s own Memphian billet-doux, 1989’s Mystery Train. This year, as if to one-up the experience, the film was programmed during its week-long run (Oct. 30–Nov. 4) with Jarmusch himself present for a Q&A afterwards, in celebration of the film’s 30th anniversary. I don’t have personal ties to Memphis, but neither did Jarmusch when he made Mystery Train, yet the city has a way of touching you deeply; after the screening, the director, now 66, beautifully articulated […]
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Shatterbox Shorts-Makers Channing Godfrey Peoples, Veronica Rodriguez, and Tiffany Johnson Talk “Refinery29 + Level Forward Present Shatterbox” at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival
Moderated by Amy Emmerich, President & Chief Content Officer at Refinery29, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s “Refinery29 + Level Forward Present Shatterbox,” a program of seven quite diverse shorts followed by a post-screening discussion, was presented at the comfy SCAD Museum of Art theater on an industry-heavy Monday afternoon. The event featured Parisa Barani (Human Terrain), Tiffany J. Johnson and Adrienne Childress (Girl Callin), Kantú Lentz (Jack and Jo Don’t Want to Die), Channing Godfrey Peoples (Doretha’s Blues), and Lizzie Nastro (the Chloë Sevigny-directed White Echo) onstage to discuss their work – as well as working with Refinery29 and Level Forward’s […]
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“Redefining Identity, Imagination, and Storytelling Through the Female Lens”: Refinery29 + Level Forward Present Shatterbox at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival
“Come for the glitz. Stay for the substance,” really should be the tagline on my SCAD Savannah Film Festival T-shirt, I thought to myself during this year’s 22nd edition of the US’s largest university-run film festival. Along with the twice Oscar-nominated Alan Silvestri, attending to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award for Composing, the fest invited a dozen high-profile and up-and-coming actors (Aldis Hodge, Daniel Kaluuya, Danielle Macdonald, Samantha Morton, Elisabeth Moss, Valerie Pachner, Olivia Wilde, Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Jharrel Jerome, Mena Massoud, and Camila Morrone) to accept an array of accolades. (It also hosted decidedly not-famous journos like myself […]
