Concluding its latest edition on yet another rainy late fall afternoon in Bydgoszcz, Plus Camerimage awarded its top prize, the Golden Frog, to War Witch, the celebrated story of a sub-Saharan female child-soldier. The film, also a prize winner at Berlin and Tribeca, beat out a list of fest circuit heavyweights such as The Master, Cloud Atlas, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Argo, Laurence Always, Hyde Park on Hudson and Holy Motors, which won the runner up Silver Frog from Joel Schumacher’s main competition jury. Fifteen prizes were handed out at the closing ceremony at Bydgoszcz’s Opera Nova, a 56-year-old modernist opera house which […]
The credits roll, there is applause, and not too many people walked out. The festival premiere of your debut film is over. You relax, a year’s worth of stress magically departing your body. Sure, there will be tough times ahead; distribution is difficult. But, for the moment, you congratulate yourself on a job well done. But don’t relax too much, warn a trio of festival heads. Your next big job as a director looms sooner than you think. The audience Q&A you’ll lead in just a minute or two is surprisingly important when it comes to your film’s future life. […]
Once in a blue moon a festival competition film comes along that’s a masterpiece, so flawless it’s inconceivable that it won’t take top prize. This year at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, that film was Alan Berliner’s First Cousin Once Removed (which I actually saw before this year’s 25th edition began), and it did indeed nabb the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary, along with a nice sum of 12,500 euros. Fittingly, my reaction towards Berliner’s breathtaking portrait of his mentor and relative, the acclaimed poet and translator Edwin Honig, as he succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease, mirrors my […]
Today is round two of the Sundance announcements, comprised of Spotlight (notable festival films that premiered in 2012), Park City at Midnight (midnight movies) and New Frontiers, the experimental strand of the fest, which includes both films and installations. We now have a few days to parse the program announcements from the past two days, and the lineups for the Premieres & Documentary Premieres and Shorts sections will be announced Monday and Tuesday of next week. SPOTLIGHT Regardless of where these films have played throughout the world, the Spotlight program is a tribute to the cinema we love. Fill […]
The line-ups for the U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Dramatic and World Documentary sections, plus NEXT, have just been announced. There’s a lot to take in here — many films from familiar names (including a healthy number by Filmmaker “25 New Faces” and IFP Lab alums) — and also a lot of movies that I have no point of reference for and will have to do some homework on before what will be a very busy January in Park City. (Tomorrow the Spotlight, Park City at Midnight and New Frontier sections will also be announced, with Premieres & Documentary Premieres […]
David Lynch is a very popular director the world over, but perhaps no place more than Poland. His work is greeted with the same fanfare as the latest disposable, multiplex-bound spectacle in this central European country, his rock star status never more in evidence than at the 20th annual Plus Camerimage. The international film world’s most significant festival focusing mainly on the work of cinematographers (they headline the competition here and are the subjects of press conferences, interviews, workshops, tributes), it moved two years ago from its former host city of Lodz (pronounced “Wod-ge”), home of the national film school […]
Though the New York indie world has still not yet recovered from the exertions of the Gotham Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards nominations are upon us. Unsurprisingly, Beasts, Bernie, Moonrise Kingdom and The Loneliest Planet feature heavily (as they did at the Gothams), while Ira Sachs’ Keep the Lights On here also bags a number of nods in top-level categories. Rama Burshtein’s Fill the Void, Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guaranteed, Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths, David Ayer’s End of Watch, Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot, Zal Batmanglij’s Sound of My Voice, Ben Lewin’s The Sessions, Peter Nicks’ The Waiting Room and Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere also […]
Disclaimer: I attended last night’s Gotham Awards in various capacities: as a journalist, as a Best Film Not Playing at a Theatre Near You jury member, and as an IFP staff member involved in the behind-the-scenes running of the show. So my perspective on the event is somewhat fractured. As the Gothams is the first award show of the season, people are always looking to it as a bellwether for the future. Last night, Beasts of the Southern Wild — although not nominated in the Best Feature category — came away with the headlines and further awards momentum, having won two statuettes […]
Wes Anderson’s ’60s-set ode to childhood imagination and romance, Moonrise Kingdom, picked up the Best Picture Award at the IFP Gotham Awards Monday night at Cipriani’s in New York. Winning two awards was Beasts of the Southern Wild director Benh Zeitlin, who won both the Breakthrough Director Award as well as a newly inaugurated Bingham Ray Award, for “filmmakers who bring a distinctive vision to the world.” The latter award came with $10,000 and $60,000 worth of equipment rental from Panavision. The Breakthrough Actor award went to Emayatzy Corinealdi for her portrayal of a convict’s faithful wife in Ava DuVernay’s […]
It’s the Gotham Independent Film Awards tonight, IFP’s annual celebration of the best in independent film. For all thos unlucky enough not to be attending, you can keep track of the happenings by watching a live stream of the show on the Gothams website here. Also, look out for a recap of the night in this space tomorrow a.m. In the meantime, while we gear up for the show, here’s a full list of Filmmaker’s coverage of the films and individuals being honored tonight: Beasts of the Southern Wild Storm Song: Beasts of the Southern Wild and Tchoupitoulas Bernie […]