Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Wins Two Top Prizes at the 30th Sundance Film Festival
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash soared to victory in the major awards categories in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 30th Sundance Film Festival Saturday night. The picture, which was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics during the festival, took home both the U.S. Dramatic Competition Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award. Starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons, Chazelle’s second feature tells the story of an ambitious young jazz drummer and his unrelenting instructor in a no-holds-barred conservatory environment. The 28-year-old Chazelle first gained attention in 2009 when his feature directorial debut Guy and Madeleine on a Park Bench surfaced at […]
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Dance on Camera: Organizing a Dance Film Series
While much of the indie film community’s attention remains on Park City, there’s more than enough going on elsewhere to keep filmmakers and art lovers busy. Foremost among such events is the Dance on Camera film series, co-presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Association and held from January 31 – February 4. Dance films date back at least to Edison’s very first Vitascope exhibition in April 1896 and have been a mainstay of popular and arthouse cinema ever since, from Loie Fuller through Gene Kelly, Maya Deren, and the work of hundreds of choreographers, film directors, and documentarians today. DFA […]
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Grace of Monaco to Open 2014 Cannes Film Festival
Well this is an interesting choice. After yesterday’s news that The Weinstein Company pulled Grace of Monaco from their release calendar had everyone clutching their pearls, it appears the reason behind the move is not nearly as titillating as many presumed. TWC will not release the film as scheduled in March, because it will open the Cannes Film Festival on May 14. Cannes is not necessarily a stickler for surefire quality or intelligence when it comes to their opening night selections — see The Great Gatsby, Moonrise Kingdom and Midnight in Paris — but they do tend to favor a good auteur. Grace of Monaco, however, […]
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2014 Slamdance Award Winners
Yesterday, Slamdance announced its jury, audience and special award winners for its 20th anniversary festival. The jury award for Best Narrative Feature went to Rezeta, the story of a Kosovan model’s trip to Mexico City, while Elliot, which follows the eponymous Elliot “White Lightning” Scott, intent on becoming Canada’s first action hero, scooped up the Best Documentary Feature prize. The winners, perhaps suggestively, received $5,000 in film from Kodak, in addition to $3,500 in legal services. The audience awards went to Copenhagen for Narrative Feature, and Kidnapped for Christ for Documentary Feature. See the full list of winners below. AUDIENCE AWARDS Audience Award for Documentary Feature: Kidnapped […]
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Co-Present Film Festival Connects Solitary Viewers through Twitter
Held once a month on a Saturday and lasting the whole day, CPFF is an online film festival with both public and private viewing capabilities. Conceived by Sherri Wasserman, “a citizen of the realm of timezone independence,” the idea is that viewers watching solo from their homes or private spaces can connect with other viewers watching the same film at the same time. The theme of the festival, born out of this concept of the solitary viewer, is “Prisons Real & Imagined.” Wasserman explains the ideas behind the festival: We, as a group of watchers, are (mostly) in physical isolation. […]
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Director Sydney Freeland Discusses Drunktown’s Finest
I’ve been hearing the praises of Drunktown’s Finest director Sydney Freeland being sung for some time now. The 2004 Fulbright scholar and Sundance alum – whose long list of awards includes a Sundance Institute Screenwriting Fellowship and a Sundance Institute Directing Fellowship in 2010, and a 2009 Sundance Institute Native American Lab Fellowship – has also long been a fixture on the cozy New Mexico filmmaking scene. (Since I programmed the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival 2012 it’s not surprising the Gallup native and I even share mutual friends.) That said, as a jaded critic it’s second nature for me […]
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Jonathan Harris Peeks Inside the Lesbian Porn Industry in I Love Your Work
A three-time Webby Award winner and a 2009 World Economic Forum “Young Global Leader,” who has exhibited at MoMA and built the world’s largest time capsule with Yahoo!, Jonathan Harris can now add the firestarters IDFA DocLab Award for Digital Storytelling – for his latest interactive project I Love Your Work – to his esteemed CV. In it Harris invites us on an online journey not to the Arctic Ocean with Alaskan Eskimos – as he did in his previous piece, The Whale Hunt – but into the lives of nine women residing in a much hotter climate, that of the […]
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Slamdance’s Distribution Arm, Slamdance Studios, To Release Bible Quiz
Providing exposure for its entries is simply not enough for the Slamdance Film Festival, Sundance’s alterna-sister. In January 2010, Slamdance announced a distribution partnership with Xbox and Zune, thus realizing Slamdance Studios. Last year, they partnered with Cinedigm to release four titles on VOD, and today, they announced the acquisition of their 2013 Grand Jury Prize Winner, Nicole Teeny’s Bible Quiz, for a limited theatrical release. In partnership with Virgil Films, Slamdance Studios will release the documentary about the world of competitive Bible verse memorization in New York and Los Angeles, before moving to Houston, Kalamazoo, Lubbock and Austin in cooperation […]
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Park City Critic’s Notes #4: European Road Trips, Higher Learning, Black Iconoclasts and More
It thins out, Park City, usually starting on Monday, but dramatically so by Tuesday. The big premiere parties have come and gone. The agents and sales reps and industry professionals are mostly headed to whatever coast they call home. So too is the sponsored corporate food; if you’re looking for a free Morning Star veggie burger at what is usually a quaint restaurant called The Eating Establishment, you’re out of luck by Day 7 of the Sundance Film Festival. As the sales continue to trickle down, terms almost never disclosed anymore, all that continues is the movies, of course, the […]
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New Husker Cinema beyond Alexander Payne: The Secret Nebraska Connection Behind Slamdance’s 20 Years
As the Slamdance Film Festival celebrates its 20th year in Utah, it’s worth noting the festival’s unique connection to a state one time zone to the east: Nebraska. Founded largely by two teams of filmmakers who’d shot their first movies in the Cornhusker state — paving the way for filmmakers like Oscar-nominee Alexander Payne — Slamdance has had a long history intertwined with the film movement known as “New Husker Cinema.” As a Nebraska native doing my USC thesis in late 1993, I teamed up with Omaha-based producer Dana Altman, grandson of Robert Altman, to make Omaha (the movie) — […]
