Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
Focus Forward – Short Films, Big Ideas Announces Jury Prize Winners
GE and cinelan today announced the five Jury Prize winners of its $200,000 FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Competition: Callum Cooper (Mine Kafon), Kim Munsamy (Bones Don’t Lie And Don’t Forget”, Paul Lazarus (Slingshot), Jared P. Scott & Kelly Nyks (The Artificial Leaf), and Rafel Duran Torrent (Cyborg Foundation). The Grand Jury Prize of $100,000 will be announced at a live Awards Ceremony on January 22 during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. The jury for the Competition includes Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Caroline Libresco, actress Daryl Hannah (Kill Bill), and award-winning filmmakers Barbara Kopple (Harlan County, USA), José Padilha (Elite Squad), Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost), Floyd Webb (Daughters of the Dust), and Peter Wintonick (Manufacturing Consent). The winning films are live and available to view for free on the FOCUS FORWARD website, along with the 15 other Filmmaker […]
-
Shape of Things to Come: MOMI’s First Look Gives Adventurous New Cinema a Home
If you’re heading off to Sundance in a few weeks (or just wincing at the January film releases), you may want to make a stop off in Queens. First Look, the annual showcase of new international cinema, opens today at the Museum of the Moving Image and offers filmgoers many compelling reasons to shake off the post-holiday doldrums and to leave the Netflix cave. It also suggests the expansiveness of independent cinema worldwide. Curated by Dennis Lim (editor of Moving Image Source, the Museum’s multimedia magazine) and the museum’s film curators, Rachael Rakes and David Schwartz, the series presents a […]
-
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children Pt. 2
Part 1 of this series laid out the overall plan for The Lost Children Premier event at Film Society of Lincoln Center in January 2013. In this post, I’m going to focus on some thinking behind the live immersive portion of the event. As I’ve been working on this, I’ve been thinking a lot about this term “immersive.” Any great piece of art can be immersive. Any time you get sucked into an amazing movie to the point that you forget you’re actually watching a movie, that is immersive. I remember having that experience with No Country for Old Men. But here, I’m […]
-
Networking Can Kill You: Meeting a Murderer at IDFA
The end of the year is nigh. But in 2013 the film festival circuit will continue, contrary the Mayan calendar. So I’m glad I learned an important lesson from a cocktail party at IDFA. As we celebrate a wrap on 2012 and reflect on what we’ve achieved and learned over the course of the year, my mind flies back to one of the festival’s most memorable moments: I was sitting in IDFA’s official “writing room,” just a little stunned. Not just because I was in Amsterdam at the world’s largest documentary film festival, hearing the “Sinterklaas” Christmas parade outside and […]
-
Immersive Storytelling for The Lost Children
My feature film The Lost Children will have its New York City premiere with the Film Society of Lincoln Center in January, 2013. The premiere will not be a film screening alone. It is presented by Convergence: Film Society of Lincoln Center, which is an arm of the FSLC devoted to immersive and transmedia storytelling. Like many organizations in New York City, FSLC is reaching out and exploring new storytelling methods. The 50th anniversary of the NYFF included its first ever series of panels on transmedia. This year, the Tribeca FF is accepting basically any type of project. And the […]
-
2012 Dubai International Film Festival Marks a Pioneering Year for Arab Cinema
It’s difficult to walk around Dubai without being in constant awe of one’s surroundings. The modern city is nothing short of incredible. Built from the ground up within the last 40 years, a main argument it is using to win a World Expo bid in 2020, Dubai seems to boast the biggest and best in the world whether it’s fountains, skyscrapers or gold-plated flag poles. And when it comes to all things grand, the Dubai International Film Festival is no exception. Last year’s festival was taken over by Hollywood with the premiere of Mission: Impossible 4, a film complete with […]
-
Sundance Institute Announces Selections for the Feature Film Program 2013 Screenwriters Lab
Sundance Institute has selected 12 projects for its 2013 January Screenwriters Lab, an immersive, five-day (January 11-16) writers’ workshop at the Sundance Resort in Utah. Participating independent screenwriters will have the opportunity to work intensely on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers including Marcos Bernstein, D.V. DeVincentis, Michael Goldenberg and Erin Cressida Wilson. The 2013 Lab is dedicated to the memory of Frank Pierson (1925-2012), a founding creative advisor of the Feature Film Program. Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, “Across all Sundance Institute Labs, which include offerings for various forms of artistic expression, […]
-
Hawaii International Film Festival 2012
“Cinema in paradise” reads the freshly marketed tagline of the Hawaii International Film Festival, a statement that encompasses both the delights and distractions of attending a film festival in one of the world’s most scenic regions. (After all, faced with the beaches, greenery and warm breezes of paradise, cinema may often find itself second choice.) To its credit, HIFF keeps the importance on “cinema IN paradise,” not “cinema OR paradise,” blending the usual film screenings, Q&A’s, and even that unavoidable beast, the “industry panel,” with more unique, leisurely outings like outdoor events and local get-togethers designed to connect grateful attendees […]
-
Starting Today: 25 New Faces Week at the reRun Theater
During the fall, Filmmaker magazine organized a traveling screening series showcasing the work of this year’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” which included a fantastic show at the IFC Center. Tonight, the 25 New Faces series returns to NYC for a week of screenings at the reRun Theater in Dumbo, with the festivities kicking off with an excellent shorts program followed by an opening night party. Screening this evening are shorts by Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari (Aquadettes), Desiree Akhavan and Ingrid Jungermann (3 episodes of their web series The Slope), Julia Pott (Belly), Ian Harnarine (Doubles with Slight […]
-
Cinema Eye Announces Nominees for the 2013 Heterodox Award, Launches Voting for Audience Choice Prize
Nominees for the Heterodox Award, the Filmmaker-sponsored Cinema Eye award given to a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates non-fiction strategies and aesthetics, were announced today by Cinema Eye Honors. The five nominated films are: Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire), Craig Zobel’s Compliance, Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, Pablo Larraín’s No, and Terence Nance’s An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. Said Scott Macaulay, Editor of Filmmaker Magazine, “In the third year of the Heterodox Award, our nominated filmmakers explore the interstices of documentary and fiction in fascinating and diverse ways, from situating their characters within the confines of […]
