Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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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 […]
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“All Films are about the Tugging of the Heart”: 5 Questions for Jeremy Irons
After attending the inaugural edition in 2001, English actor Jeremy Irons returned to the Marrakech International Film Festival on Saturday night to receive a career tribute award. The Academy Award-winning star greeted fans at the fest’s opening film The Theory of Everything and accepted his award before the screening The Imitation Game the following night. The festival opened with two films about geniuses, and Irons himself plays a mathematician in the upcoming The Man Who Knew Infinity, across from Dev Patel as the famed Ramanujan. Irons has come a long way since his entry into the Hollywood elite with 1981’s […]
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Sundance Announces 2015’s Premieres and Documentary Premieres Lineups
Here’s the last of Sundance’s slate announcements for 2015, this time with the films screening in its Premieres and Documentary Premieres sections, as well as the selections for a new Special Events section and participants for two panels. Previously announced: U.S., World and NEXT sections, and the Spotlight, Midnight and New Frontiers slates. PREMIERES A showcase of world premieres of some of the most highly anticipated narrative films of the coming year. Brooklyn / United Kingdom (Director: John Crowley, Screenwriter: Nick Hornby, based on the book by Colm Tóibín) — 1950s Ireland: Eilis must confront a terrible dilemma — a heartbreaking […]
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Cinema Eye Honors Announces 2015 Heterodex Nominees
The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking today announced the five nominees for its annual Cinema Eye Heterodox Award, sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine, a publication of IFP. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative fiction film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. The five films nominated this year for the Cinema Eye Heterodox Award are: Boyhood directed by Richard Linklater Heaven Knows What directed by Josh and Benny Safdie A Spell to Ward off the Darkness directed by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell Stop the Pounding Heart directed by Roberto Minervini Under the Skin directed […]
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Sundance Announces 2015 Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontiers Sections
A day after unveiling the Competition and NEXT lineups, the Sundance Institute has announced the 2015 Sundance Film Festival’s Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontiers sections. Of the Midnight section, which contains new films by Eli Roth, Rodney Ascher and, from Cannes, David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, Director of Programming Trevor Groth said in a press release, “This year’s Park City at Midnight selections have much to offer genre enthusiasts. With everything from futuristic fantasies to paranormal nightmares, it’s an all-out trip to the cinematic edge.” Of the New Frontiers section of films and installations — the latter […]
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Sundance Announces 2015 U.S. and World Competitions and NEXT Titles
The Sundance Institute today announced its 2015 Competition Titles as well as the 10 titles comprising its NEXT section. In what is always independent film’s biggest announcement of the year, Sundance revealed films that, says Sundance Film Festival Director John Cooper, “take audiences on a wild ride of emotional extremes.” Submissions for 2015 hit a new high, with 4,105 feature films and 8,061 shorts submitted to the Park City, UT event. Said Sundance Institute Executive Director Keri Putnam, “Independent artists are embracing diverse forms of storytelling – from feature film to New Frontier to episodic content. In response to their […]
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Birdman, Citizenfour Top the Gotham Independent Film Awards
One of the more enjoyable aspects of the Gotham Independent Film Awards is that there aren’t really any politics involved. The nominees are selected by critics, and the juries are comprised of filmmakers and actors, resulting in your fair share of wild cards, while the rest of awards season continually awards the pre-ordained “frontrunner.” Last year, it was great to see Inside Llewyn Davis take home the top prize, even if it was scarcely nominated elsewhere. Last evening, at Cipriani Wall Street, there were a few surprises, but I’d wager that Julianne Moore and Michael Keaton are going to continue apace all the way […]
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Top 10 Round-Up: John Waters, Cahiers du Cinéma, Sight and Sound
Year end top 10 lists are, for some reason, an inflammatory exercise. There are those who balk at the notion of reducing 365-ish days of output to tiers, others who seem to pride themselves on plucking unreleased titles from obscurity, along with the underlying question of authority — as though a given arrangement must be the chosen one. In any event, I just think they’re fun, and few, year after year, are as pithy as John Waters’ list for Artforum. Unsurprisingly, Maps to the Stars and Nymphomaniac make the cut, but he also gives a shout-out to the more middle of the road charmer Gloria, […]
