Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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ABU DHABI FILM FESTIVAL
Rich in oil and excess, Abu Dhabi, unlike its slightly more hip and newly bankrupted Emirate cousin Dubai, is for the time being at least, a city on the come. It’s also a place that is a symbol of “progress” in an age when that term has come to have no meaning. Why else would they set the irrepressibly offensive Sex and the City 2 there or have a skyscraper which is unfinished but already in the Guinness Book of World Records for being18 degrees crooked or build a so called “zero emission” city that no one may ever live […]
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DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
It’s all in the mix. I’m going to borrow from the overly quoted urban sociologist Jane Jacobs, who maintained that for a city to be vital it requires a blending of old and new neighborhoods, cultural sites, and areas of commerce. For Jacobs, Lincoln Center was poisonous, a large, concentrated collection of arts facilities that is usually lifeless and could have worked better spread out around New York City. As far as I know, Jacobs never got to Dubai. Almost everything there is new, oversized, and sanitized; the scale is not human. After all, the Emirate boasts the world’s largest […]
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TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO FILM FESTIVAL
While it doesn’t have to stretch to come off as a sexy and intoxicating (or from the number of casually inebriated drivers, intoxicated) place, Trinidad and Tobago has a reputation as relatively unassuming. Although it is not reliant on tourism to fuel its economy thanks to its abundance of oil and natural gas, it hasn’t escaped the fate of many struggling Caribbean economies, trying to gain traction in a world increasingly dominated by information technology and increasingly scarce resources. Trinidad and Tobago’s modest prosperity and egalitarian vibe seem to make this largely forgotten southernmost outpost of the Afro-Caribbean world an […]
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Sundance 2011 Competition Lineup Announced
The Sundance Institute announced today the competition films for its 2011 edition of the Sundance Film Festival. At first glance, it looks like an exciting list with quite a few filmmakers we follow here at the magazine premiering their work, including Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Gun Hill Road, Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene, Andrew Okpeaha MacLean’s On the Ice, Dee Rees’ Pariah, Azazel Jacobs’ Terri and Marshall Curry’s If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front to name just a few. In the release sent out today, festival director John Cooper commented, ““The Festival is a challenge […]
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PAIRING FILMS AT IDFA
For a docu-phile, attending the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam — with its nearly 300 films to choose from — feels less like being a kid in a candy store and more like being stuck in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory for a week and a half. In addition to being Europe’s biggest fest for nonfiction flicks IDFA boasts round the clock events. (Literally — if you were still revved at three in the morning after IDFA Dance Night a program called “Docs Around The Clock” continued until 9AM, breakfast included.) In between screenings at the Pathe de Munt or the […]
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@IDFA: “CLIENT 9,” “PROSECUTOR”
In straightforward PBS style, Canadian Barry Stevens’s Prosecutor follows Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and an unconventional and charismatic Argentinean with a colorful past. Moreno-Ocampo’s resume runs the gamut from bringing to justice the war criminals of his homeland in the 1980s and teaching at Harvard to serving as soccer star Maradona’s lawyer and hosting a Judge Judy-type TV show. Five years on the job and still struggling to reel in big Sudanese fish Omar Al-Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo is finally bringing his first case — the prosecution of a Congolese military leader charged with conscripting child […]
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JUST NORTH OF THE BORDER, A NEW FESTIVAL THRIVES
Although it might be surprising to learn that it isn’t actually held in a loft, the first annual edition of Tucson’s Loft Film Festival, centered at this southern Arizona college town’s venerable, long running Art House the Loft Cinema, maintains the home made, speakeasy vibe that the title implies. Its inaugural run having come to a close with a Thursday night screening of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, this first edition was a glimpse at the type of festival the regional circuit needs more of. Lets hope they keep it going, as it proved to be a welcome […]
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A SHORT TRIP TO CPH:DOX
Invited to deliver a master class seminar on doc/fiction hybrid films at the CPH:DOX Labs, I attended the festival for the first time this year. At the Labs, now in its second year, filmmakers from the Nordic countries and around the world were brought together in teams and charged with collaborating on a film. Because I was teaching the day-long seminar, which took place days before the well-attended Forum (a market for docs seeking financing) opened up, I missed the great majority of the festival’s programming as well as business activity. So, I can’t offer a detailed roundup of the […]
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THE 6TH EURASIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The sixth edition of the Eurasia International Film Festival (Sept 21-25) in Kazakhstan was a showcase of films from Central Asian and Turkish-speaking countries, but what particularly stood out in its various programs was the strong output of Kazakh films, a result of increasing government and private backing in project development, production and post-production facilities. High above Kazakhstan’s former capital and current cultural center Almaty, construction crews were racing to finish buildings for the 2011 Asian Winter Games in the foothills of the majestic Tien Shan mountain range. A country larger than Europe, Kazakhstan spans the oil-rich coast of the […]
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AMAZONAS FILM FEST: CARNIVAL FINALE, “WINTER’S BONE” WINS TOP PRIZE
The Amazonas Film Festival wrapped its 7th edition Thursday night with an unbelievable showcase of one of the state’s most proud traditions. After handing out the jury awards (listed below), the stage in the Teatro Amazonas became the site for an astounding carnival known as the Parintins Folk Festival, which brought roars of applause from the locals and wide-eyed curiosity to those attendees visiting abroad and are used to the usual stale closing night film fest pleasantries. The Parintins Fest is one of the largest folklore festivals in the world, and on this evening the Amazonas Fest gave a small […]
