Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Sundance Announces New “Art of Nonfiction” Initiative Supporting Innovative Documentary Filmmaking
“There has been a very vibrant conversation over the last several years about content in documentary,” says Tabitha Jackson, Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. “And when I came to Sundance two years ago, I said, ‘I want to help make a conversation about form and process as loud and vibrant as the one going on about content.’” Announced today by the Sundance Institute is the first step in that process, a new “Art of Nonfiction” initiative that, over the course of a year, supports a curated group of filmmakers exploring creative formal, story and craft possibilities in […]
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A Year in 13 Film Festivals
In 2015 I went to 13 film festivals, the year before it was 12, and what’s interesting is how different my experiences were in ’15 as compared to ’14 at the same festivals, even when those festivals were at the same venues. At a time when Star Wars seems like the only story in the mainstream cinema, it’s interesting to also note a similarly blinkered view on the festival circuit, where only Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Toronto seem to matter. It’s a sign of limited freelance budgets and the desire by editors to only cover events certain to get […]
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Mike Nichols Documentary and Dazed and Confused Event Added to Sundance 2016 Lineup
With just a little more than a month to go until The Sundance Film Festival, the festival has announced additions to the lineup, including the premiere of Douglas McGrath’s documentary Becoming Mike Nichols and three “From the Collection” archival screenings. Becoming Mike Nichols is slated to air on HBO on Feb. 22. Also on the program is a new Special Event featuring Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused along with live commentary from the filmmaker and his pal Jason Reitman. The archival screenings include John Sayles’ City of Hope, Kelly Reichardt’s River of Grass and Nicole Holofcener’s Walking and Talking. The festival runs January 21-31, 2016. Below are the […]
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2016 Tribeca Film Festival Unveils New Storytellers Program
The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) doesn’t take place until April 13-24, 2016, but the festival is already planning ahead. Today TFF announced that it will launch a new platform, Tribeca Talks: Storytellers, a series of in-depth conversations with leading creators, during next year’s festival. Tina Fey and Tom Hanks are the first two creators announced. The panel series will take place at the Tribeca Festival Hub, which will return to Spring Studios this year and will host a series of virtual reality and immersive storytelling experiences, panel discussions and musical experiences. On April 19, Imagination Day, powered by the Hatchery, will […]
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Kickstarter Announces Sundance-Bound Projects
The countdown to Sundance 2016 has begun with a slew of recent announcements of film selections for the festival, which runs from January 21-31. Earlier this week, the crowdfunding platform unveiled the list of Kickstarter-funded works which made the cut for this year’s festival, including new documentary features from Dawn Porter (Trapped), Penny Lane (NUTS!) and Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker (Unlocking the Cage). Read the full blog post here and check out highlights below: This year at Sundance, we’ll be crossing our fingers for a great roster of docs and dramatic features in competition for major awards: NUTS!, Spa Night, Trapped, and When Two Worlds […]
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Rooftop Filmmakers Fund Grant Winners for 2015 Announced
Rooftop Films, which is heading into its 20th season, has awarded 13 cash and service grants to alumni filmmakers. The GarboNYC Feature Film Grants were awarded to directors Kitty Green and Sebastian Silva. Green will receive a monetary grant of $15,000 to help finish her new film, Casting JonBenet, and Silva will receive a $10,000 grant to support his film, Demon Me. Casting JonBenet, a documentary about the infamous murder of child model JonBenet Ramsey, marks Green’s second feature after her 2013 documentary debut Ukraine Is Not a Brothel. Among the films Silva has directed are Crystal Fairy & the Magical Cactus and Nasty […]
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American Movie to Receive Cinema Eye Honors 2016 Legacy Award
Cinema Eye, the nonfiction film organization behind the annual Cinema Eye Honors, will present the 2016 Legacy Award to American Movie, Chris Smith’s 1999 chronicle of an independent filmmaker pursuing his passion project. Smith will accept the award on behalf of the film at the Cinema Eye Honors Lunch, on Tuesday, January 12, 2016 in Manhattan. Award-winning documentary filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams, The Interrupters, Life Itself) will serve as host and master of ceremonies for the 2016 Cinema Eye Honors, which will be held Wednesday, January 13, 2016 at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. Meanwhile, today marks the second day of […]
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Atlanta Film Festival Announces First Six Features for its 2016 Edition
Two narrative films and four documentaries, hailing from Bangladesh, Canada, India, Pakistan, Palestine, South Africa, and the United States, were announced today by the Atlanta Film Festival, which unfolds April 1 – 10, 2016. Currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to support filmmaker travel to the festival, the ’16 edition is also its first within the Atlanta Film Society, “a fortified organization title” birthed in October of this year. From the press release: The ATLFS name reflects a year-round mission to lead the community in creative and cultural discovery through the moving image. Connection with a filmmaker dramatically […]
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Where the Cinematographer is in First Position: The 2015 Camerimage Festival
IMDb buries the cinematographer credit. It’s way below a film’s director, writers, producers, and stars, somewhere underneath the entire cast. And this diminished placement doesn’t just occur on the Internet Movie Database. Besides casting directors, cinematographers might be the most under-sung crew members in the movie business relative to how large a role they play in a film’s success or failure. But at Camerimage, a festival in Poland devoted to the art of cinematography, it’s the DP’s name that’s in the biggest, boldest font, and at a film’s end, it’s the cinematographer credit that gets the loudest applause. Programming a […]
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Sundance Announces its 2016 Festival Short Film Selections
Sundance today announced the 72 short films that will play in its various short film sections at the 2016 festivals. Spanning narrative and documentary, animation and experimental, the films include plenty of 25 New Faces filmmakers (Darius Clark Monroe, Eva Vives, Calvin Lee Reeder, Terrence Nance, Eddie Alcazar, Kim Sherman, Sebastian Silva, Jack Dunphy, to name just a few) as well as the usual assortment of discoveries that will undoubtedly place on our list in the coming year. In a press release, Mike Plante, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “Our longstanding showcase of short films has become […]
