Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“I Can Make This Happen”: Danny Glover on Producing
Danny Glover is one of America’s most beloved actors, but few know about his equally impressive accomplishments as a producer. He’s served as executive producer on multiple films to help see them through to completion, and with Joslyn Barnes he created his own company, Louverture Films, in order to give voice to underrepresented filmmakers. Their first project, Abderrahmane Sissako’s award-winning 2006 Bamako, was followed by an incredibly rich slate of films, including Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Trouble the Water, Eugene Jarecki’s The House I Live In, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. They recently released […]
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The 2014 NoBudge Awards Winners
The NoBudge Awards may not be as hotly anticipated as other statuettes doled out at this time of year, but Kentucker Audley’s annual selections are still well worth paying attention to, if not solely for the fact that you won’t find their winners anywhere else on the circuit. A quasi year in review of his own programming, the NoBudge Awards spotlight films that screened on the site for a minimum of thirty days. I’ll cop to not having seen most of these, but can recommend Joy Kevin, Whiffed Out and The Greggs. Another nice detail that sets this list apart is that Audley doesn’t […]
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“Richard Helped Me Think About Myself”: 5 Questions for Boyhood’s Ellar Coltrane
There are few breakout roles that can top having your life documented on screen over the course of 12 years. Ellar Coltrane grew up in front of millions of eyes playing the role of young Mason in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. It’s near impossible for audiences not to relate to Mason’s character as he navigates school, friendships, moving, relationships and family. But Boyhood is also a film that leaves a lasting impression from its sum over its parts. The power of experiencing the characters transform over a dozen years is one that lets viewers appreciate more their own lives and changes. The […]
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10 Tips and Observations on Pitching Documentaries from the IDFA Forum
The 27th annual International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is one of the largest and most prestigious documentary film festivals in the world. Beyond being just a festival, though, for the past 22 years IDFA has hosted a networking and business-oriented pitch session, the IDFA Forum, where selected documentary filmmakers have an opportunity to meet with an array of commissioning editors from around the world (with a high concentration of European broadcasters, naturally). Over the course of nearly three full days, commissioners sit around small round tables or in a large auditorium arena and weigh in on project pitches while […]
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“The Last 50 Years Destroyed Our Old World”: Five Questions for Actress/Director Mélanie Laurent
French actress Mélanie Laurent may be best known to American audiences for her role as Shosanna Dreyfus in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. But in addition to acting in over 35 international roles, Laurent has also directed two feature films. Based on the YA novel by Anne-Sophie Brasme, her latest film Breathe premiered at Cannes this year. Laurent expertly crafts the world of adolescent codependency. She claims she’s learned from every director she’s worked with: one tip she stole from Tarantino is to play music in between scenes to get people to be more comfortable on the set. Laurent served on the […]
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Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups to Premiere at Berlinale 2015
Knight of Cups, one of the three (known) projects Terrence Malick currently has ruminating in the editing room, will world premiere in competition at the upcoming Berlinale. Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, the film assesses the excesses and temptations of a man in modern-day Los Angeles. It should be interesting to see Malick take what is his characteristically lyrical lens to a more middle of the road subject matter. The Competition section of the festival, which runs from February 5 to 15 for its 65th edition, will also feature Andrew Haigh’s anticipated Weekend follow-up, 45 Years, starring Charlotte Rampling. Previously announced titles […]
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“Finish Your Scene Before You Go to Lunch”: Five Questions for After the Fall Director Saar Klein
First-time director Saar Klein got his start in Hollywood as an editor, where he’s been working with top directors for the past two decades. He has two Academy Award nominations under his belt, for Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. His feature debut After the Fall joins the strong lineup of this year’s recession-era dramas. Wes Bentley plays a mediocre insurance appraisal agent who loses his job after being too generous with payouts. He turns to a life of crime in order to make payments on his house and keep his family above water. Becoming a petty […]
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On Golden Frog: The 22nd Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography
Located in the nearly unpronounceable Polish town of Bydgoszcz, Camerimage – the International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography – is the must-attend event of the year for DPs, aspiring DPs, or any cinephile prizing visual craft over auteur theory. At this 22-year-old fest, folks like Caleb Deschanel (who received a Lifetime Achievement Award, a retrospective, and a massive hardcover book highlighting his career) and Vilmos Zsigmond are the stars, complete with their names in lights on the marquee of the massive Opera Nova, the festival’s headquarters and main venue on the scenic Brda River. Far from passive honorees, […]
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Festival Trailer Watch: Borscht 9
December 17 – 21 I should be concentrated on Christmas shopping, but I’ll be at Borscht 9 in Miami. (Sorry, friends and family.) Borscht 8 was my favorite film event of 2012, and I can’t wait for this year’s edition. What’s Borscht? (Aside from a soup?) Here, from the site: The Borscht Film Festival (est. 2004 by New World School of the Arts high school students) is a quasi-yearly event held at iconic Miami venues that commissions, produces, and showcases movies created by emerging regional filmmakers telling Miami stories that go beyond the city’s insipid exterior. Borscht Corp is an […]
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On the Southern Circuit During the Season of Republican Resurgence: Hot Springs, Savannah, Memphis & Key West
I first heard the term “southern circuit” while talking to former New York Times film critic, The Treatment radio host and venerated international playboy Elvis Mitchell. Over lunch in Krakow several years ago, he described the series of spring and fall film festivals throughout the American south. After a relatively quiet summer, come late August a festival seems to unfurl almost every week somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line, starting with the Sidewalk Moving Pictures Festival in Birmingham, Alabama. While high-profile southern fests such as SXSW, Atlanta, Oxford, Little Rock and Nashville take place during the spring, an even larger share […]
