Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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U.S. in Progress 2024 Submissions Now Open for American Independents Seeking Finishing Funds
U.S. in Progress is now through September 8 accepting submissions from American independent filmmakers with pictures in post-production seeking finishing funds. Accepted filmmakers and projects will attend the in-person event at Wroclaw, Poland’s American Film Festival from November 7 – 9, where they will present the rough cuts of their narrative projects to European buyers and Polish post-production companies providing over $100,000 in post services. Recent and upcoming projects that are alumni of U.S. in Progress include the Venice-bound Familiar Touch, directed by 2023 25 New Face Sarah Friedland; the recently released Summer Solstice, by writer/director Noah Schamus; India Donaldson’s […]
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“I Wanted to Make a Black, Gay Paris, Texas“: Shatara Michelle Ford on Their BlackStar-Premiering Sophomore Feature Dreams in Nightmares
Three cross-coastal best friends reunite for a spontaneous road trip across the American underbelly in Dreams in Nightmares, the sophomore feature from writer-director Shatara Michelle Ford. Though a significant pivot in theme and scope from their lean yet intense debut feature Test Pattern, Ford’s latest continues to plainly indicts the oppression that finds Black, femme, queer bodies at a stark institutional disadvantage. After being laid off from their respective jobs in academia and finance, Z (Denée Benton) and Tasha (Sasha Compère) hop on the phone to reschedule a planned trip to the Dominican Republic. Instead of lounging in paradise, Tasha […]
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28 Projects Selected for Sundance Institute Documentary Fund 2024 Grants
Sundance Institute announced today the recipients of this year’s Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, which awarded unrestricted grants with a total granting pool standing at $1,450,000 to 28 projects. From the press release: The Documentary Fund prioritizes the support of artists from historically marginalized communities and seeks to amplify global voices telling crucial stories. More than half of the grant proposals came from outside the U.S., with the final group of grantees representing 25 countries. The majority of projects (92%) receiving grants are directed by artists from communities that have been traditionally marginalized and 60% are from first-time feature directors. Through […]
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Is There Life After Fire?: A Trip to Greece’s Evia Film Project 2024
One of the evergreen questions of filmmaking is: Can cinema make a difference? Usually, the issue is raised in connection with specific movies, such as those championing change, including SeaWorld-skewering doc Blackfish, or better husbandry of the planet. Take one step back, though, and there’s another, perhaps more vital way that cinema can make a difference — by bringing a community together in shared experience and cause. This latter force for good is firmly in evidence at Greece’s Evia Film Project, which has just wrapped its third edition on the island nestled near the mainland a couple of hours from […]
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Screening Before the Storm: Drowning in Anxiety at Fantaspoa
The rain started just as our plane took off from Porto Alegre, sealing our narrow escape. Forty-eight hours later, the airport was underwater, as Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul faced its worst flooding in nearly a century. How could this happen? We had just premiered my new film there a few nights before. Was it a dream? A quick glance at my arm confirms otherwise. Like many filmmakers who attend the so-called “coolest” of the Méliès Federation’s consortium of fantastic film festivals, I got inked by Laiss, a native tattoo artist who specializes in blackwork. Mine is a simple line drawing […]
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BlackStar Projects Releases Full Schedule of Programs for 2024 Film Festival
BlackStar Projects, the organization celebrating visionary Black, Brown and Indigenous film and media artists, announced today the full program for its 2024 BlackStar Film Festival. This 13th edition of BlackStar takes place August 1 – 4 at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, with additional screenings, parties and events at various venues in Center City Philadelphia. Among the highlights are the Opening Night selection, Dreams in Nightmares, writer/director Shatara Michelle Ford’s feature follow-up to their acclaimed Gotham and Spirit Award-nominated debut, Test Pattern. Dreams in Nightmares tells the story of three Black queer femmes on a Midwestern road trip […]
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Sundance Announces 10 2024 Producers Lab Fellows
The Sundance Institute announced today the 10 producers, and their projects, selected as Fellows for the 2024 Producers Lab. The Lab begins today and runs through June 22 at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. From the press release: The Producers Lab nurtures emerging independent film producers with project-specific support through one-on-one meetings and intimate group sessions with veteran producer advisors. The lab encourages fellows to hone their creative instincts and problem-solving skills and to develop strategies for pitching, financing, production, navigating the marketplace, and sustainability. The 2024 cohort includes five fiction film producers and five nonfiction film producers. Fellows in […]
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BendFilm Announces BendFilm: Basecamp, a Three-Day Immersive Retreat
BendFilm, the Oregon-based independent cinema organization which organizes the Bend Film Festival in addition to its year-round activities, has announced a new immersive retreat. From the press release: BendFilm, the nonprofit independent cinema organization, has announced BendFilm: Basecamp, a three-day immersive retreat for emerging creatives and their industry counterparts to connect, learn and collaborate. BendFilm: Basecamp will take place at Caldera Arts outside Sisters, Oregon, from October 7-10, 2024, and flow directly into the 21st annual Bend Film Festival (which takes place October 10-13, 2024, across venues throughout Bend and beyond). BendFilm: Basecamp’s inaugural year is made possible, in part, […]
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UFO (Untitled Filmmaker Org) Announces Spring 2024 Short Film Lab Cohort
UFO (Untitled Filmmaker Org) announced today the three filmmakers who have been selected for the latest edition of its Short Film Lab. At the Lab, which begins this month, Emily May Jampel, Arielle Knight, and Samuel Wright Smith will develop new scripted, documentary, and animated nonfiction projects, respectively. As announced in a press release, filmmakers Tahiel Jimenez Medina, Brydie O’Connor, Bren Wyona, and Kevin Xian Ming Yu from the inaugural cohort will continue in the program through December to develop new projects across nonfiction and scripted approaches, as part of the Lab’s staggered enrollment model. From the press release: The […]
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13 Films to Anticipate at the 2024 Tribeca Festival
The Tribeca Festival gets underway today through June 16 with its customary mixture of high-profile panel discussions, starry celebrity docs (tonight’s opening night is Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Trish Dalton’s Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge), new media work and American and international acquisition titles hoping to attract the eye of buyers. About the new media work, Tribeca Immersive has shied away entirely from the sort of VR/AR pieces that dominated recent Tribeca festivals, opting instead to present eight immersive art pieces at Mercer Labs. Additionally, there’s a (somewhat) controversial partnership with Open AI that will screen shorts made using the […]
