Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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2014 Cinema Eye Honors Nominees Announced
The nominees have been announced for the eighth annual Cinema Eye Honors (of which Filmmaker is an industry sponsor), which recognize outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking. A quick breakdown: CITIZENFOUR (the cover story subject of our latest issue) leads the pack with six nominations, closely followed by Life Itself and 20,000 Days on Earth with five apiece. Below, find the bulk of the nominations. For more information, visit the Cinema Eye Honors website, which also contains more trivia and facts about the nominees in each category. The Cinema Eye Honors winners will be announced on Wednesday, January 7 at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image. […]
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The Yes Men, Con Men and a Trans Man: What to See at DOC NYC
DOC NYC, “America’s largest documentary festival,” certainly lives up to its billing. With a whopping 153 films and events, there’s quite a bit to navigate, from critically acclaimed historic revivals to Toronto darlings to fresh premieres. For this fifth edition several sections have been broadened, and a few themes even added. There’s now “Centerstage” (performance focused films), “Jock Docs” (sports-centric flicks), “Fight the Power” (activist docs) and, perhaps most stimulating for nonfiction geeks, “Docs Redux.” That would be a sidebar of seven oldies but goodies, most with their legendary directors – Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert Maysles, all three receiving […]
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“Is This Line to See the Avant-Garde Show?”: NYFF 2014 Projections
There was an inauspicious start to the New York Film Festival’s inaugural Projections sidebar, a weekend showcase of experimental film and video, which, for 17 years prior as “Views from the Avant-Garde,” had been curated by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith. Nearly an hour before the first screening, a long line extended along the exterior glass wall of the Eleanor Bunin Film Center. Having successfully secured my tickets, I scuttled around looking for familiar faces in the crowd. As I began chatting with a friend, an elderly gentleman with a confused expression approached us. “Excuse me. Is this line to […]
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Men, Women and Children: The 8th Abu Dhabi Film Festival
In Abu Dhabi, it’s easy to let the smoke cozy up to your eyes. The festival, now in its 8th year, unfolds in one of the city’s most dazzling corners, with the mammoth, labyrinthine, five star Emirates Palace as its proverbial hub. Gold dripping from its vending machines and balconies alike, the place is sheer, 11 billion Dirham, stadium sized spectacle. As a festival guest, you are chauffeured from the seaside St. Regis tower to screening venues in a designated Mercedes, which, barring the unwanted sexual advances that come with being a long-haired, white American female, can make you feel […]
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Wroc and Roll: 5th American Film Festival, Poland
Recently announced as a European Capital of Culture for 2016, the picturesque western Polish city of Wroclaw (actually pronounced Vrotz-wav, thus rendering the title pun sadly unworkable) welcomed an extremely distinguished guest for its fifth annual American Film Festival: none other than flying POTUS Barack Obama. Well, it seemed so for a moment, but appearances can be deceptive. A closer look revealed the man to be Louis Ortiz, top Barack-alike and star of Ryan Murdock’s enjoyable Bronx Obama, which screened as part of the festival’s documentary slate. The personable Ortiz’s social ubiquity made for a pleasingly incongruous addition to a […]
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Boyhood, Birdman, CITIZENFOUR, and More Receive 24th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards
Nominees were announced this morning for the 24th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards by IFP, with Richard Linklater’s Boyhood receiving the most nominations, including Best Picture. Birdman received two awards, including Best Director (for Alejandro G. Iñárritu) and Best Actor (Michael Keaton). The Best Picture nominations were rounded out by Ira Sachs’ Love is Strange, Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and a left-field pick, Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling tale of alien visitation, Under the Skin. The Gothams are also awarding a Special Jury Award to the three lead actors of Foxcatcher: Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo, and Channing Tatum. “Each year […]
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Little Accidents Director Sara Colangelo Wins Tangerine Juice Award at the Hamptons
Congratulations to Filmmaker 25 New Face Sara Colangelo, who was awarded today the Tangerine Juice Award at the Hamptons International Film Festival. Created to honor a female first- or second-time narrative feature director, the prize comes with $1,000 cash and five hours of consultation with Tangerine Entertainment. Starring Elizabeth Banks, Boyd Holbrook and Chloe Sevigny, Little Accidents is a drama set in the aftermath of the disappearance of a teenager in a small American coal-mining town. It premiered at Sundance 2014 and will be released by Amplify. “The competition for our award was tough this year,” said Tangerine co-founder Anne […]
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Mad Men: The NYFF’s Go-To Films (II)
Can we permanently delete the term “home stretch” in a festival context? All right then. In the NYFF’s final week, the best fiction in the Main Slate is stronger (arguably) and more obscure (undoubtedly) than just about everything that has come before. Products of exceptional minds creating in different keys, these three gems (Horse Money, Jauja, Life of Riley) do share some elements that could make them off-putting for the passive viewer. All bets are off for anyone looking for the expected visual and aural cues. Each of these directors builds a self-contained universe with its own rules of engagement. […]
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NYFF ’14: David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars and Consumed
There’s something about anti-Hollywood satire that brings out the worst/most facile in otherwise great filmmakers. The prime example is probably Robert Altman’s The Player, which pretends to be aghast that studio executives have never heard of The Bicycle Thief and concludes that’s why everything sucks. Oddly, Scream 3 may be the only satire in this vein with real teeth, since its murderous mayhem is instigated by a need to avenge a decades-old casting couch act of sexual aggression, something of more consequence than the usual “those philistines rewrote my script by committee” japery. David Cronenberg is decidedly not calling from […]
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Pintxos and Co-Production Forums: The 62nd San Sebastián International Film Festival
If ever there was a city that embraced variety, San Sebastián is surely it. From its wide boulevards and art nouveau buildings, where Spanish royalty took time off in the 19th century, to its Bay of Biscay beaches that see surfers mixing with families and the higgledy-piggledy Old Town, where every bar is groaning under the weight of creative canapes (pintxos), this is a town that celebrates its own strengths while still being open to adventure. The same could be said of its film festival, which just celebrated its 62nd year and fourth edition under the directorship of José Luis […]
