Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Video: Ellen Page Comes Out as Gay at Conference for LGBT Youth
Actress Ellen Page (Juno, X Men: Days of Future) came out as gay yesterday at the Human Rights Campaign’s inaugural Time to THRIVE conference in Las Vegas. “I’m here today because I am gay,” Page said in a moving speech at the conference dedicated to LGBT youth. “And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selfishly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission.” In the speech, in […]
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The Festival of (In)appropriation #6 at Los Angeles Filmforum
The Festival of (In)appropriation, a celebration of “contemporary short audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate and inventive ways” is the brainchild of co-founder and co-curator Jaimie Baron (who, not inappropriately, has a book on found-footage filmmaking coming out soon). Presented by Los Angeles Filmforum (no relation to NYC’s Film Forum – more like the West Coast’s answer to Anthology Film Archives, as for close to four decades it’s been L.A.’s longest-running organization dedicated to experimental film and animation, docs and video art) the annual event is now in its sixth year. For more […]
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Submit to True/False’s “Gimme Truth!”
This should be fun. For “Gimme Truth!,” an off-kilter game show at the True/False Film Festival, attending filmmakers (or celebrities, depending on your definition) judge 10 two-minute short films not on quality, but on their persuasiveness. The objective is to craft a scenario that is 100% false and convince the judges it’s 100% true, and vice versa. The three winning films will receive passes to next year’s festival, with the first place netting a RED rental package and four-hour color grading session, among other prizes. Head to their site for more information on how to submit. The deadline is February […]
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Tribeca Film Festival Announces “Innovation Week”
The Tribeca Film Festival has made significant strides to transform their trend-buoyed cachet into a boundary pushing enterprise. Last year, TFF introduced Storyscapes, a transmedia installation that probed the intersection of technology, interactivity and installation art, and this year, De Niro and Co. are extrapolating from the initiative, launching a full blown “Innovation Week.” From April 21-26, the festival hopes to become ground zero for hackers, screenwriters, engineers and venture capitalists alike, with a program centered around the Fifth Annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards (TDIA), Future of Film Live with Aaron Sorkin, Tribeca Hacks <Mobile>, a TFI Interactive summit, the Games […]
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Berlinale 2014: Göran Hugo Olsson on Concerning Violence
After years as a multihyphenate creator of a raft of documentaries (one of which is titled, wonderfully, Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much [1998]), Sweden’s Göran Hugo Olsson has recently come to greater prominence. His documentary on soul singer Billy Paul, Am I Black Enough For You, secured international distribution in 2009, while 2011’s vibrant archive collage The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 took him to another level. Olsson’s new film, like its predecessor, screens in the Panorama Documentary strand of the Berlinale. Concerning Violence is based on Frantz Fanon’s famous 1961 book, The Wretched of the Earth, and focuses, in nine discrete chapters, […]
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Fortnight at the Museum: MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight
Most doc venues and festivals serve up collections, films more alike than dissimilar. In fact, the principal variable tends to be content. Now in its 13th edition, Documentary Fortnight: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media (February 14-28) is breaking new ground in doc exhibition. I’m not certain that the museum’s honchos recognize what a coup they have in situ (P.S. 1 is another story), a boundary-pushing program where many of those who follow and determine artsy trending might not think to look. It’s taken far too long for documentaries to be considered hip, but to think of them […]
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Slamdance’s Big Footprint in Hollywood: First-time Directors Have Grossed $10.618 Billion
Feeling self-satisfied and/or congested from your annual Sundance winter camp? I’ve got news for you: Hollywood doesn’t care about another head-scratching indie with pigs in it, or an over-hyped VOD deal from a company you’ve never heard of for a film no one will ever see. Nope. Hollywood counts success in dollars, rubles and yuans. The films in Park City may not spin the world’s turnstyles, but the filmmakers who make them most definitely will. At the Slamdance Film Festival, a snowball’s throw across the street from Sundance, we’ve been saying for 20 years that our focus is on discovering […]
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Berlinale 2014: Josephine Decker on Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and Butter on the Latch.
At every festival, there are “did you see that?” moments which create a buzz among audiences and critics. One such early example at this year’s Berlinale came midway through Josephine Decker’s hypnotic, farm-set thriller Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, when the point of view of a violent, ambiguously-rendered sexual encounter suddenly switches to that of a cow, through whose eyes we see the next few scenes. It’s a playful, idiosyncratic touch which recalls the chimp’s flashback in Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich, although it would be wrong to attempt to draw obvious comparisons between Thou Wast Mild and Lovely and […]
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True/False Announces Full 2014 Slate
The True/False Film Fest today announced its full 2014 program, just days after grabbing headlines for its innovative Pay the Artists! program.The festival takes place in Columbia MO, between February 27 and March 2. Among the 43 films unveiled are a number of world premieres, including Robert Greene’s Actress, a portrait of Brandy Burre (best known for The Wire) which seems perfect for the fest’s embrace of the blurring of lines between nonfiction and fiction, and Kitty Green’s Ukraine is Not A Brothel, about the radical feminist nudist group Femen. Also playing for the first time are Amanda Wilder’s film […]
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Mohammad Gorjestani’s “25 New Faces” Tour Photo Diary
Last November, three short filmmakers from our 2013 “25 New Faces” hit the road for a special traveling screening series, sponsored by ARRI and Sony Creative, with myself in tow. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (Needle), Mohammad Gorjestani (Refuge) and Scott Blake (Surveyor) played their films in six Midwest cities across six days, with myself in tow as Q&A moderator/tour manager/nanny. It was a unique and extremely memorable experience to be part of the tour, and you can now get an inkling of what went on at that time by checking out Gorjestani’s just-posted photo diary on Exposure, which is well worth your time.
