Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Medieval Masterwork: Marketa Lazarova at BAM
In memory of Elliott Stein, the purest film maven I’ve ever known and the friend who first drew my attention to this film. The most familiar films of the Czech New Wave in the U.S. are most likely the dry dark comedies of Milos Forman and Ivan Passer; the diverse works of Jiri Menzel, Jan Kadar, Vera Chytilova and Juraj Jakubisko are recognized in more specialized circles. For Eastern and Central European cinephiles, however, the modernist historical drama Marketa Lazarova (1967), never lumped together with the movement, is not only the masterpiece of the era but also one of the […]
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True/False: A Place for World Premieres?
Despite its stated policy about not announcing a film’s premiere status, is the True/False Film Fest the new place to launch your documentary? In part one of a three part series, filmmaker and writer Robert Greene will chronicle the fortunes of five films that will world premiere at the 2014 True/False Film Festival, including his own, Actress. No film festival has meant more to me than True/False. My last two films (Kati with an I and Fake It So Real) began their lives in Columbia, MO — in front of the festival’s famously engaged crowds, amidst its street parades and […]
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Tribeca Film Festival’s #6SecFilms Competition Now Open
What happens when you distill filmmaking to its barebones, limiting runtime to six seconds, and the recording apparatus to a cell phone? Judging from last year’s winners of Tribeca’s #6SecFilms Vine competition, the answer is some pretty inventive stuff. Animators and genre fans alike can submit their Vines to the competition through March 27, using the #6SecFilms hashtag, along with the appropriate category: #drama, #comedy, #animation and #genre. The winners will receive a meeting with GrapeStory, a mobile marketing agency and production house. Last year’s winners and short-listers went on to be featured in the Super Bowl Budweiser ads and currently […]
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Hot in the City: Previewing the 11th Annual CineKink NYC
This year’s edition of CineKink NYC, now in the final day of its Kickstarter fundraising drive, wastes no time heating up, opening on February 26 with a cinematic bang in the form of Wiktor Ericsson’s The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies, a stellar pic about softcore pornographers with a love story at its heart. (The festival’s gala kickoff party is the day before, February 25.) The titular elderly couple at the center of this doc are the legendary porn director Joe — the “Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street” — and his longtime wife and support system (and sometime actress) […]
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Full Lineup for 2014 New Directors/New Films
A Sundance heavy set of additional titles has been announced for this year’s New Directors/New Films series, taking place at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center from March 19 – 30. I covered the first announcement back in January, noting that the festival’s obscure spirit was alive and well, though the recent inclusions appear to be verging on BAMcinemaFest territory, with such buzzed titles as Obvious Child, Dear White People, She’s Lost Control, The Babadook, To Kill A Man and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. I’ve enjoyed the festival for international discoveries, and we still have plenty of those too: Fish & Cat […]
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Noah Cowan Named Executive Director of San Francisco Film Society
Noah Cowan, the founding Artistic Director of the Bell Lightbox, is leaving Toronto for the Bay Area, where he will take over as the Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society. “I am grateful to the Board of Directors of the Film Society for providing this remarkable opportunity,” said Cowan in a press release. “The Bay Area has a storied relationship to cinema’s century-plus history and is currently home to the technology companies that will decisively influence the medium’s future. SFFS is uniquely positioned to work with filmmakers, educators and enthusiastic local audiences to embrace the dynamic and exciting […]
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Nas Documentary Time Is Illmatic To Open 2014 Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca Film Festival announced that Time Is Illmatic, a documentary commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Nas’s iconic debut album, will open its 13th festival on April 16. Directed by multimedia artist One9 and written by Erik Parker, the film tracks the musical legacy of Nas’s family and his youth in Queensbridge, among other facets that shaped this modern benchmark of East Coast hip hop. To celebrate the world premiere, Nas will be on hand to perform Illmatic, front to back. Time Is Illmatic was supported by the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access program and The Ford Foundation’s Just Films. For two years running, […]
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Video: Ellen Page Comes Out as Gay at Conference for LGBT Youth
Actress Ellen Page (Juno, X Men: Days of Future) came out as gay yesterday at the Human Rights Campaign’s inaugural Time to THRIVE conference in Las Vegas. “I’m here today because I am gay,” Page said in a moving speech at the conference dedicated to LGBT youth. “And because… maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time. Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility. I also do it selfishly, because I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission.” In the speech, in […]
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The Festival of (In)appropriation #6 at Los Angeles Filmforum
The Festival of (In)appropriation, a celebration of “contemporary short audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate and inventive ways” is the brainchild of co-founder and co-curator Jaimie Baron (who, not inappropriately, has a book on found-footage filmmaking coming out soon). Presented by Los Angeles Filmforum (no relation to NYC’s Film Forum – more like the West Coast’s answer to Anthology Film Archives, as for close to four decades it’s been L.A.’s longest-running organization dedicated to experimental film and animation, docs and video art) the annual event is now in its sixth year. For more […]
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Submit to True/False’s “Gimme Truth!”
This should be fun. For “Gimme Truth!,” an off-kilter game show at the True/False Film Festival, attending filmmakers (or celebrities, depending on your definition) judge 10 two-minute short films not on quality, but on their persuasiveness. The objective is to craft a scenario that is 100% false and convince the judges it’s 100% true, and vice versa. The three winning films will receive passes to next year’s festival, with the first place netting a RED rental package and four-hour color grading session, among other prizes. Head to their site for more information on how to submit. The deadline is February […]
