Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“We Imagined the Queer London of Our Dreams” | Amrou Al-Kadhi, Layla
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Layla is a film of imagined space. Though set and filmed in East London, home to a vibrant queer scene and history, LGBTQ+ spaces in cities around the globe are currently victim to rapid gentrification. London is no exception. The majority of the […]
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“I Knew Right Then the Filmmaking Gods Were Looking Down on Us” | Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Belfast is more than just a setting of my film Kneecap—it is almost a character itself. It is a city that wears its heart both on its sleeve and on its walls. Colorful graffiti, often politically charged, is everywhere. And for a […]
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The 2024 Sundance Question: What Place Tells Its Own Story About Your Film?
Each year, Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see last year’s question and responses, click here.) We also send out cinematographer, editor and first-time producer questionnaires. This year’s question: Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Below, find links to each director’s individual response […]
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Prepared — and Unprepared — on the Way to Sundance: Taylor Hess’s Producer Diary #1
I am packing for Sundance. I have some sweaters, some warm pants, a bottle of Wellness Formula, and a portable humidifier. My mini portable humidifier was lost in the vortex of production and my medium-sized portable humidifier may not fit in my suitcase. But I am prone to nosebleeds, and so it must fit. I feel prepared. And unprepared. I haven’t been to Sundance in nine years. Back then, there was a day in Park City when all I ate was Chobani yogurt, which was handed out for free from a little tent. The memory is strong: there I am, […]
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Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Named Favorite All-Time Sundance Film
Over 500 members of Sundance’s filmmaking community took part in a poll that named Damien Chazelle’s jazz drummer drama Whiplash as their favorite film of the festival’s 40 years. World premiering at the 2014 festival, the film won Sundance’s Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and Grand Jury Prize; U.S. Dramatic. Of note is that the film was based on a proof-of-concept short that itself won the top prize at Sundance only the year before. The other nine selections are similarly well-known pictures by directors who have gone on to stellar careers. It’s a list that includes the first features by the […]
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SXSW Announces 2024 Competition Selections, Opening Night 3 Body Problem TV Premiere and More
The SXSW Film Festival has announced its competition selection, opening night TV premiere and other titles for its 2024 edition, which takes place March 8 – 16. From the press release, the titles announced today follow. Opening Night TV Premiere The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. In this must-watch adaptation of the internationally celebrated bestseller, a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across […]
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2023 in Review: 5 Quick Tech Takeaways from September’s New York Film Festival
Those of us who live in New York are treated each fall to a Whitman’s Sampler of world cinema, a curated selection of highlights from some of the year’s most prestigious international festivals. It’s hardly a large sample size, given the annual output of theatrical films worldwide, but it’s a weathervane nonetheless. Which way were the winds blowing this year? Take what I say below with a grain of salt. I saw 27 feature films at NYFF 61, out of the 44 selections programmed in the Main Slate and Spotlight sections. A modest sample within a modest sample, in other […]
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Stories Shared, Stories Known: the 2023 Hawai’i International Film Festival Presented by Halekulani
Like many film events this past summer and fall, this year’s Hawai’i International Film Festival found cinema in a bit of an uneasy holding pattern, what with the Hollywood strikes, the after-effects of pandemic production delays, a rising fear of an A.I.-dominated future, and a growing dissatisfaction with commercial cinema’s superhero-centric fixations. But rather than the paranoia and uncertainty that dominated mainland festivals, Hawai’i seemed invigorated by what was rising up in its place. News that much-anticipated titles like Alika Tengan’s feature Molokai’i Bound, Mitchel Merrick’s Native Hawaiian martial-arts actioneer Kūkini, and Zoë Eisenberg’s debut Chaperone had neared completion gave […]
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Festival Report: The 2023 JIO MAMI Mumbai Film Festival
“Things are bad all over,” I thought to myself, as I left ceasefire protests in New York to attend a film festival in Bombay, India, whose recent news cycle included the political persecution of writer Arundhati Roy for a comment made about Kashmir in 2010 — indicating an opportunistically timed defense of occupation. India, too, agreed to send 1,000 workers to Israel as replacements for deported Gazans (before Indian trade unions refused in protest), and the country’s military remains Israel’s biggest arms client. All of this gave me a queasy feeling as I was thrust into the pomp of the […]
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Filmmaker and Metrograph Partner on “25 New Faces: Highlights, Favorites and Deep Cuts”
Filmmaker and New York’s Metrograph Theater have partnered on a screening series as well as online streaming selection, “25 New Faces: Highlights, Favorites and Deep Cuts.” As the title suggests, it spotlights filmmakers chosen for our popular annual survey of new talent. Three programs run this weekend (Friday, December 15 and Saturday, December 16): one program of short films curated from our 2023 selection and then two drawn from prior years. In addition, a number of the shorts will stream online for Metrograph members. I’ll be there this weekend hosting the screenings along with some of the filmmakers and hope […]
