Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Deep Pockets, High Ambitions and In-Development Projects at the Riviera Maya Film Festival
The Riviera Maya Film Festival (RMFF), which takes place throughout Mexico’s beautiful, tourist-ridden state of Quintana Roo, seems to have unfathomably deep pockets at its disposal. I was flown in for its fourth edition as a representative of the True/False Film Fest and housed, along with several dozen other industry delegates, in Hotel Cacao, the poshest place I’ve ever slept. Over the course of a few days, I was relieved to discover that the festival wasn’t just blowing resources on lavish guest accommodations. Its organizers seem ambitious, practical and equally committed to serving two communities: those who reside in Quintana Roo […]
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Chronicle of a Dream Foretold: BAMcinemaFest 2015
“Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy,” comments one of the tenuously overlapping characters in Richard Linklater’s 1991 game-changer Slacker. The word itself, fairly recent at the time of production, is a moniker the speaker fully embraces. The branding may sound tactless, if not downright pejorative, but it’s not at all: It implies enough empathy and humanity to seek out options to offset destructive disinterest in matters tangible, ethical, or both. In the creative sphere, the shift in course can lead to an untried M.O. and the models it might generate — if the stars are properly aligned, […]
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From Family-Friendly Sheep to the Greek Weird Wave: The 2015 Seattle International Film Festival
The 41st Seattle International Film Festival ran for 24 days. To put that in context, it began one day after Cannes and remained in full effect for two weeks after the red carpet was rolled up on the Croisette. Arriving to such a long-running event for the closing weekend had the effect of making me feel like a cinephile-come-lately, an outsider there to scavenge the crumbs of a very elaborate cake. It also made writing a summation of the nearly month-long affair feel like a fool’s errand: 450 films comprised SIFF’s program this year; I saw approximately 1% of them. […]
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Five Picks for the 2015 Northside Film Festival
Clocking in at just three days, the Northside Film Festival still provides enough breadth in programming to rival an event three times its size. In addition to the centerpiece DIY Competition and short programs, the fest has added an episodics sidebar this year, featuring Doron Max Hagay’s Monica web series, among others. Due to pre-screener availability, the following recommendations are features only, but that scarcely means you shouldn’t keep any eye on the other sections. Northside runs from today through Wednesday at UnionDocs, Nitehawk, Videology and the Wythe Hotel. Tired Moonlight If you missed Britni West’s Slamdance Grand Jury Prize winner at New Directors/New Films, […]
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A Festival is its City: Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival 2015
Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital, is a big city, at least for me: I live in another capital, Santiago de Chile, but can’t compare how big the two are. That’s especially true when one starts to ask around what’s actually part of Buenos Aires: if the “Conurbano” (poor suburbs surrounding the capital) is included, if here or there is or isn’t part of this “autonomous city.” It’s the same when one starts asking about the importance of the BAFICI (the Spanish acronym for the festival, “Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente”) or how it has changed with time: you get many responses, […]
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“This is Not a Keynote”: Amy Dotson’s SIFF Catalyst Speech
IFP Deputy Director and Head of Programming Amy Dotson gives a keynote (or not!) speech today at the Seattle International Film Festival’s Catalyst brunch. She has kindly provided the text to Filmmaker, which we are printing below. You are not a filmmaker. “The Treachery of Images” was a painting by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte. The picture he painted was simply of a pipe, with a rally cry of a scrawl below it reading: “This is not a pipe.” His paintings were an attempt to understand the impossibility of reconciling words, images and objects and challenged the very notion of what […]
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Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan Wins the Cannes Palme d’Or; Son of Saul, The Assassin, Rooney Mara Score Other Top Prizes
A jury headed by Joel and Ethan Coen awarded the Palme d’Or to Jacques Audiard’s immigrant drama Dheepan at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, which concludes today. The film tells the story of a Tamil fighter fleeing the Sri Lankan civil war who improvises a family — a wife and daughter — in order to better seek asylum in what turns out to be an inhospitable France. The award was something of a surprise, with most English-language journalists pegging either Laszlo Nemes’ Holocaust drama Son of Saul or The Assassin, a period martial-arts picture from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-Hsien for […]
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Cannes 2015: Five Questions For Tale of Tales Star Salma Hayek
Salma Hayek rarely picks up her cell phone when the number is unlisted. But one day she did so while driving around Los Angeles, and the man on the other end was Italian director Matteo Garrone. Having been introduced to modern Italian cinema by her friend Valeria Golina, Hayek was flabbergasted. Garrone’s films Gomorrah and Reality were two of her favorite recent pictures. Not only that, but Garrone was offering her the role in a period film bringing to life the tales of 17th century Neapolitan scribe Giambattista Basile. She would play the role of a Spanish queen, the film would […]
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Cannes 2015: Five Questions For Tale of Tales‘ Vincent Cassel
He’s played a troubled youth in the Paris ghettos in La Haine, a vengeful husband in Irreversible, and an abusive ballet company director in Black Swan. One pattern is clear with French actor Vincent Cassel: he works with directors of a special breed who can’t be boxed up neatly within a genre. His latest Cannes film is no exception. Cassel partnered with Italian director Matteo Garrone to play the role of a casanova Medieval king who’s always on the search for his next sexual conquest in Tale of Tales. Based upon the stories of Giambattista Basile, Europe’s original fairytale scribe, […]
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“I’m Going Back to My Horror Film Roots”: Abel Ferrara Launches Siberia at Cannes 2015
Indie maestro Abel Ferrara launched his latest film project in Cannes this week with his first ever foray into Kickstarter. Siberia, a new film with Willem Dafoe, explores the language of dreams, using the subconscious as a form of language. “There’s nothing more horrific than your own dreams and nightmares,” Ferrara promised the crowd of assembled journalists gathered on the top of the Silencio club in Cannes. “I’m going back to that kind of filmmaking, to my horror film roots.” He’s hoping to raise half a million dollars to begin financing for the new film. “This is Willem being Willem,” […]
