Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Rotterdam at 44, Volume #3: Then There Were Winners
Rotterdam #44 came and went with less fanfare than in the past. The Hivos Tiger Awards, the main competition’s top prizes, were given out to a trio of films Friday night. The winners — Carlos M. Quintela’s German-Cuban-Argentine co-production La Obra Del Siglo, Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s odd and dreamy Thai drama Vanishing Point and Juan Daniel F. Molero’s pomo comedia-tragedia Videophilia (and other Viral Syndromes) — each took home 15,000 euros. All three remain unseen by this critic, as does the FIPRESCI prize winner Battles, by Isabelle Tollenaere, the KNF Award winner Key House Mirror, by Michael Noer, and the IFFR Audience […]
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Sundance 2015, Dispatch 5: The Chinese Mayor, Cartel Land and City of Gold
The vast world of Chinese independent documentaries was finally acknowledged by Sundance with the inclusion of Zhou Hao’s The Chinese Mayor. That’s not to bag on the festival for an anomalous oversight: this exciting and politically urgent strain of films has been happening for 15 years or so but not often acknowledged by U.S. festivals at large. This is a very good starting point. The mayor of Datong, Geng Yanbo, confesses that he’s happiest with communing with China’s past, so it makes sense that he plans to revitalize the country’s most polluted city by restoring its ancient wall, part of […]
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The 2015 Slamdance Award Winners
Self-explanatory: here are this year’s Slamdance award winners, with descriptions provided by the festival and the respective juries for each category. Slamdance certainly wins some kind of prize for pragmatism in its awards; surely many films and filmmakers would love to receive $3,500 worth of legal services. AUDIENCE AWARDS Audience Award for Narrative Feature: Across the Sea, dir. by Nisan Dağ & Esra Saydam Damla is a Turkish immigrant estranged from her homeland; she lives in New York City with her husband, Kevin, and they’re expecting their first child. But Damla is still haunted by memories of her first love and […]
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“Ideas Just Disappeared”: Cloro | Director Lamberto Sanfelice
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? The day before the first day of shooting I went with part of the crew to the location were we would start shooting the following day. It was in a rather desolated area with just a few big old trees, which in normal circumstances I would find fascinating. But on that day as I was looking around all of a sudden I could find nothing interesting to shoot there. […]
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Transmedia in Miami: Diliana Alexander on FilmGate Interactive
It seems that everywhere you look these days festivals and conferences for new media are springing up, and one of the fastest growing is Miami’s FilmGate Interactive, running this year from February 1-8. Now in its third year, FilmGate has already hosted numerous screenings, presentations, workshops, and works-in-progress. One of last year’s presenters, Jake Price, showed an early version of his new project The Invisible Season, about the Japanese tsunami and nuclear accident, that went on to screen at the New York Film Festival. Other past presenters have included POV Interactive and the NFB, and this year individuals like Murmur’s Mike […]
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“Intimacy: I Do Everything I Can to Avoid It in my Personal Life”: Sleeping with Other People | Director Leslye Headland
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? My fear of intimacy. I do everything I can to avoid it in my personal life and here I was making a movie that required intense intimacy. Not just intimacy between characters who fall in love onscreen but between myself and the actors, the crew, the audience and the rest of the world. I was terrified of being that vulnerable and it got messy at times. But the end […]
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“Pressure’s a Choice”: I’ll See You In My Dreams | Director Brett Haley
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? Making a film – especially an independent film – is full of constant fear: the fear that you won’t have all the money you need, the fear that something beyond your control will go wrong, the fear of making wrong decisions. And once you’ve made what you hope is a good film, you then have to wait to see what other people think of it. What will critics say? […]
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“We Were Going to Climb on Top of a 300-Foot, High Voltage Pylon”: The Summer of Sangaile | Director Alanté Kavaïté
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I was waiting with apprehension for the day we were going to climb on top of a 300-foot, high voltage pylon. With the actress, the DP and a stunt specialist, I did not feel very brave when we were approaching the top. From there, I was watching some painters working on a much higher power plant chimney and I thought that I was not tailored for that. But once […]
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“Big Names Add Value. I Can Dig That”: Fresh Dressed | Director Sasha Jenkins
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? With Fresh Dressed, I had the opportunity to talk to a wide cross section of folks who are, or have been involved with, hip hop culture in one way or another. We were able to strike a serious balance between talking to the folks who are known by the masses and the lesser known folks who had a heavy hand when it comes to the development of hip hop […]
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“You Will Come Through This”: Dreamcatcher | Director Kim Longinotto
What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie? I’m always terrified before making a new film because so much of it’s down to chance…will I find a story? Will I be able to film it? Will I be able to get a beginning, middle and end? It always suddenly feels really daunting. The worst time was before Salma, as most of her story had happened in the past and I wasn’t sure how to make her life […]
