Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Functional Art: Joe Angio on Revenge of The Mekons
The Mekons are the ultimate cult band. They may not have a huge audience, but their hardy host of admirers takes the British-born band and its three-and-a-half-decade history very seriously. The Mekons emerged as U.K. post-punk’s art-school pranksters in the late ’70s, and after major shifts in personnel and approach, eventually evolved into a sort of sonic polyglot encompassing folk, country, world music, and more. Throughout their rough-and-tumble career they’ve maintained a doggedly DIY modus operandi, eschewing complacency and creating more and more fodder for the intensity of their underground acclaim. At the start of 2008, another impassioned admirer, documentarian […]
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Gotham Awards’ Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Screening Series
In the lead-up to the Gotham Independent Film Awards on December 2nd, IFP announced it will hold a screening series to highlight the nominees of the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award. From Thursday, November 21 through Saturday, November 23, the category’s five directorial debuts will screen at the new Made in NY Media Center by IFP in Dumbo. The films are Stacie Passon’s Concussion; Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station; Adam Leon’s Gimme The Loot; Alexandre Moors’ Blue Caprice; and Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine. Adam Leon, Alexandre Moors, and Sun Don’t Shine lead actors Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil will be on hand for a Q&A following their respective screenings. […]
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What to See at DOC NYC
Wedged between international documentary mega-fests CPH:DOX and IDFA on the festival calendar, this country’s largest documentary film fest DOC NYC might seem a humble affair. (Indeed, the four-year-old DOC NYC is downright cozy and laidback compared to Amsterdam’s industry-driven shindig where making sales often eclipses enjoying the sheer pleasure of cinema.) This year’s lineup features 131 films and events, including 11 world premieres and 9 US premieres – not to mention high-caliber attendees from Noam Chomsky to Michel Gondry, to Sarah Polley and Oliver Stone. Yet several small gems that I’ve written about at prior fests are every bit as […]
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A Tale of Two Cities: The 62nd International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg
Situated in the southwestern part of Germany where the Rhine and the Neckar meet, Mannheim, like its sibling city Heidelberg – located upstream from Mannheim on the Neckar and a half hour away – is a university town. Only the University of Mannheim is housed in the 18th century Mannheim Palace, a massive baroque extravaganza that resembles Versailles more than any learning institution I’ve ever encountered. And even that pales in comparison to Heidelberg Castle, still partially in ruins since the Renaissance structure was demolished in the 17th and 18th centuries. This quaint city’s imposing castle emerges from the forested […]
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Indie Memphis Prizes Unheralded Indies in 16th Edition
Memphis is the largest city on the Mississippi River and Tennessee’s most populous; funny that more than a few folks visiting from coasts east and west refer to it as a small town. A place well known for violent reckonings with history, the ghosts of more than a few legendary men haunt the streets east of its unassuming downtown, located on the fourth of the chickasaw bluffs stretching from the Wolf River to the Mississippi. The more sordid aspects of the place’s past, both long ago and fairly recent, mingle freely with its great cultural legacies; Sun Studios, where Elvis […]
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Desert Storm: the 7th Abu Dhabi Film Festival
Poor Tobe Hooper. It’s got to be tough to be best known for movies made over 40 years ago and desperate enough for a paycheck to make something like Djinn, the first movie I saw at this year’s Abu Dhabi Film Festival and perhaps the most astoundingly inane motion picture I’ll see all year. “Rosemary’s Baby meets The Shining in an ominously empty residential tower halfway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi” is apparently a pitch that gets you $9 million from ImageNation, the Abu Dhabi-based film finance outfit to make a rote and clumsy and predictable horror movie, with waves […]
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Five Films Announced for 8th Annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You Series at MoMA
Filmmaker, Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), and The Museum of Modern Art announce today the five films chosen for the organization’s annual Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You series, running November 15 – 18 in MoMA’s Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2. They are: Eddie Mullins’ Doomsdays; Kevin Jerome Everson’s The Island of St. Matthews; Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love; Aaron Douglas Johnston’s My Sister’s Quinceanera and Benjamin Greené’s Survival Prayer. As always, Filmmaker editors (myself, Nick Dawson, Brandon Harris, Alicia Van Couvering and Ray Pride), the IFP’s Milton Tabbot and, new this year, MoMA’s Sophie Cavoulacos have […]
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“25 New Faces” Tour Kicks Off November 16
Following screenings in Tacoma, Portland, and New York, three of this year’s “25 New Faces” are hitting the road to showcase their short films. Joined by Filmmaker Managing Editor Nick Dawson, Scott Blake (Surveyor), Anahita Ghazvinizadeh (Needle) and Mohammad Gorjestani (Refuge) will travel from Madison to Nashville on a tour sponsored by Sony Creative Software and ARRI. The full stops, as well as descriptions of the films and filmmakers, are listed below. THE 25 NEW FACES OF INDEPENDENT FILM TOUR CALENDAR: Saturday, November 16, 2013 UW-Madison Cinematheque, Madison, WI 3pm (tickets) Sunday November 17, 2013 Cleveland Cinematheque, Cleveland, OH 8pm (tickets) Monday November 18, 2013 […]
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Polish Progress: American Indies in Wroclaw
If any one moment encapsulated the fervor for U.S. independent cinema among the young cinephiles of Wroclaw (pronounced Vrot-swof, by the way), it arrived at around 11:00 PM on my final night of attendance at the 4th edition of the city’s American Film Festival (22-27 Oct, 2013). I was strolling back to my hotel in the company of Killer Films honcho Christine Vachon and Tennessee-based producer Ashley Maynor when a lissome young Polish fellow with rosy cheeks, Kurt Cobain hair, and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Hipsters Don’t Wear Frames’ suddenly appeared. With a shallowness of breath that suggested he’d […]
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Nick Kroll to Host 2013 Gotham Independent Film Awards
Comedian and actor Nick Kroll was announced this afternoon as the host of the 2013 Gotham Independent Film Awards, which will take place at Cipriani Wall Street in Manhattan on December 2. Kroll is perhaps best known for playing Ruxin on the FX sitcom The League, and also stars in Kroll Show, which started airing on Comedy Central earlier this year. Commenting on the announcement, IFP’s Executive Director Joana Vicente said, “We are so thrilled that Nick Kroll will be hosting the Gotham Awards this year. Coming off an exciting year with a new Comedy Central series, and winning the […]
