Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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IFP Announces 2013 Independent Film Week Selected Projects
IFP, publisher of Filmmaker Magazine, announced today 163 projects in development selected for its Independent Film Week Project Forum. Projects include documentaries by such directors as Academy Award Winners Louis Psihoyos and Cynthia Wade; fiction features by documentarians Jennifer Fox and Jeremiah Zagar; fiction features by web creators Mesh Flinders and Thom Woodley; and an original web series, Awesome Asian Bad Guys, by Patrick Epino and Stephen Dypiangco. In addition, a number of projects from Filmmaker Magazine 25 New Faces have been selected, including new work from Carlen Altman, Sophia Takal, the Zellner Brothers, Alex Jablonski, Pete Ohs & Andrea […]
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U.S. Titles Headline Venice 2013 Slate
Toronto unveiled its initial slate a few days ago, and it’s now Venice’s turn to reveal a ridiculously stacked program of auteur cinema for its 2013 edition. Among a very strong Competition lineup, U.S. cinema is strongly represented by John Curran’s outback epic Tracks, James Franco’s Cormac McCarthy adaptation Child of God, Terry Gilliam’s surreal futuristic drama The Zero Theorem, David Gordon Green’s Southern-set drama Joe, Errol Morris’ enticing The Unknown Known: the Life and Times of Donald Rumsfeld, Kelly Reichardt’s environmental activist drama Night Moves and Peter Landesman’s JFK assassination drama Parkland. Elsewhere in that section there are also new offerings from Xavier Dolan, Philippe Garrel, Stephen […]
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TIFF Announces Bumper Initial Slate
The first sections of the 2013 slate at the Toronto International Film Festival were announced today, and there’s a lot to dig into here. Just skimming the surface, the major points to note are that the fest will open with Bill Condon’s WikiLeaks movie, The Fifth Estate (starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange), and close with Dan Schechter’s Elmore Leonard adaptation Life of Crime, which I have heard some strong buzz about already. In the Galas section, the standouts are world premieres of awards hopefuls Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and August: Osage Count, but it’s the Special Presentations section […]
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“It’ll Never Make a Movie:” Animal House at 35
“No one wants to make this movie.” That’s what studio chief Ned Tanen told John Landis in the mid-70s about this vulgar frat house comedy called Animal House. Thursday night, Landis was reminiscing at the movie’s 35th anniversary at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox with producers Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons, plus co-stars Stephen Furst (Dorfman) and Martha Smith (Babs). Based on stories that ran in The National Lampoon magazine, Animal House pits a dysfunctional fraternity against an uptight university administration. Made for $2.7 million in 1978, Animal House was a box-office smash that made a star of John Belushi and […]
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Pacific Rim: Asian American International Film Festival
Some titles that blur the gray line between ideology and pleasure could well have been fodder for battle between the just-concluded New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) and the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), which runs July 24-August 3. The former is larger and younger (b. 2002) and comprised almost entirely of entertaining generic fiction; the latter, smaller, older (b. 1978), and more diverse, a politicized showcase in which fiction, documentaries, and hybrids share pride of place. Yes, there is telling overlap in their respective agendas. The AAIFF divides its 26 features into six strands (44 shorts are branded separately): Triple […]
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Cannes Film Festival 2013
For American independents, this year’s Cannes Film Festival felt like the end of an era, especially with the high-profile premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s final film, Behind the Candelabra, playing two decades after sex, lies, and videotape seemed to promise the emergence of a vital American independent film culture. These questions re-emerged not just because Soderbergh has announced that he is retiring from filmmaking, but also because he has been widely critical of a film industry that is increasingly focused on international blockbusters. But the events at this year’s Cannes also raised a number of questions about the role of the […]
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Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2013
Greeks, if not Greece, persist. In March, the 15th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival presented 76 Greek premieres among its teeming 10 days of attractions, streaming many films across Greece and Cyprus, as well as 520 films in a Market with 55 buyers from around the world. “Here we are again, despite the hardships,” Dimitri Eipides, artistic director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and TDF reflected on opening night. Of its 1999 inaugural, he said, “Audiences were skeptical then. The establishment of an internationally acclaimed institution celebrating the art of documentary was something unheard of in Greece. But […]
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Sundance Announces Next Weekend, New L.A.-based Mini Festival
Today the Sundance Institute announced the full program for Next Weekend, the L.A.-based mini festival spun off from Sundance’s NEXT strand, which spotlights emerging filmmakers. Running August 8 – 11 at the Sundance Sunset Cinemas and other venues throughout the city, Next Weekend’s lineup is mostly culled from the Park City program, but there are also new additions from Tribeca (Stand Clear of the Closing Doors) and SXSW (12 O’Clock Boys). There are also a couple of world premieres: Madeline Olnek’s The Foxy Merkins and Chadd Harbold’s How to be a Man, the directors’ followups to Codependent Lesbian Space Alien […]
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Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself — Not: Powerful New Work at the Jerusalem International Film Festival
The last years have brought us a number of outstanding films that expose Israel’s brutality in the West Bank and Gaza — areas captured in the 1967 war which have remained under the harsh grip of direct or indirect Israeli control for over 40 years, in total violation of international law, and more importantly, in total violation of any human, moral or spiritual consideration or justice. The Law in These Parts, The Gatekeepers, 5 Broken Cameras and this year’s The Lab by Yotam Feldman, about the booming Israeli weapons industry, are among the excellent documentaries which — if the international community […]
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10 Lessons for Filmmakers from the IFP Narrative Labs
Still the only lab focusing entirely on what happens after rough cut —- from locking picture to devising a distribution strategy — the IFP Narrative Lab concluded its ninth edition last month. When I created the Lab with the IFP almost a decade ago, the idea was simple. A successful career in film is partly based around making mistakes — and then not making those same mistakes again. But first-time filmmakers don’t have prior experience to draw upon, and in today’s hyper-competitive, content-swamped environment, failure is a luxury many of them can’t afford —— especially when that failure is made […]
