Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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SXSW Announces Opening Night & More
Earlier today, SXSW announced their Opening Night lineup. Set on kicking off the fest with a healthy dose of pizzazz, SXSW first night will host the world premiere of the upcoming Steve Carrell/Steve Buscemi comedy The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. In the film, Carrell and Buscemi play former best friends/magic show partners Burt and Anton. When Anton is injured and leaves the act, Burt is left vulnerable to the opportunistic street performer Steve Gray (Jim Carrey). Also starring in the film are James Gandolfini, Olivia Wilde and Alan Arkin. Joining Wonderstone on opening are six films that are a testament to […]
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2013 Oscar Nominees Announced
Oscars show host Seth MacFarlane and actress Emma Stone announced the nominees for the 85th annual Academy Awards this morning at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The award show telecast will air on Sunday, February 24 at 8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT on ABC. Not surprisingly following the buzz this year, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is the nomination frontrunner, earning 12 nods including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones) and Best Supporting Actress (Sally Field). Life of Pi edged out Zero Dark Thirty […]
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5 Broken Cameras and Detropia Top Cinema Eye Honors
At the Museum of the Moving Image last night, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s 5 Broken Cameras took the headlines at the Cinema Eye Honors by taking the top prize, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking, while Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia also took two prizes, for directing and score. Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims (2012 “25 New Faces” alums for their film Only the Young) won Best Debut Feature, while a slew of acclaimed 2012 docs such as Chasing Ice, How to Survive a Plague, Bully, The Imposter and Searching for Sugar Man picked up statuettes too. With the announcement this morning […]
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Louisiana Film Prize Announces 2013 Competition
After an overwhelmingly successful inaugural year, Executive Director Gregory Kallenberg announced that the second annual Louisiana Film Prize filmmaking competition will launch today, complete with a $50,000 cash prize to be awarded to the Grand Prize Winner. Building on last year’s success, this year’s festival will also increase the number of “Founder’s Circle” Grants from 3 to 5 recipients. These grants, of $3000, are awarded by the judges’ panel during the festival weekend and are meant to enable filmmakers to offset the future costs of creating their submissions for the following year’s festival. The 2013 Louisiana Film Prize jury, a combination of […]
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Five Tips for Approaching Festival Press
For much longer than I care to think about I’ve been hitting the road and traveling the friendly skies far and wide, covering film festivals both nationally and internationally. And yet it never ceases to amaze me how often paid publicists and filmmaker-publicists shoot themselves in the proverbial foot when it comes to obtaining coverage for their indie endeavors. So with Sundance nearly upon us, I thought it might be helpful (and in my case, cathartic) to go over a few dos – and two definite don’ts – when it comes to working the PR machine. DO everything in your […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
