The International Documentary Association (IDA) announces the 20 fellows selected for its inaugural Getting Real Fellowship program. This new initiative is specifically geared towards highlighting emerging and mid-career documentary professionals. The program provides fellows with the opportunity to attend the biennial Getting Real conference, the world’s largest industry conference for documentary practitioners. As part of the fellowship, IDA covers costs concerning airfare, lodging and registration. It also provides fellows a unique communal path through the conference. They will share meals together, attend a celebratory reception and participate in curated meetings with industry delegates. Even after the conference concludes, fellows continue […]
With the 2022 Gotham Week Conference and Expo just a few days away, The Gotham Film & Media Institute (formerly IFP, and Filmmaker’s publisher) has announced four new members to its Board of Directors. Joining the organization are actor Jonathan Majors, actor Stephanie March, entrepreneur and women’s advocate Dee Poku, and entertainment strategic marketing and PR executive Lisa Taback. “We are thrilled that these four brilliant media and entertainment veterans are bringing their unique perspectives and expertise to The Gotham’s board,” Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham Film & Media Institute, said in a press release. “As we find […]
One argument for the eternally vexed question “Why film festivals?” might be “To watch Netflix movies in a theater.” The streamer does, of course, theatrically release some of its prestige titles but, because of its refusal to accommodate 90-day windows, has effectively barred itself from wide releases. Since I live in New York City, I can go see all of Netflix’s big titles when they come out with ease thanks to their acquisition of the Paris Theater, which isn’t all bad: while some of the programming is grimly reserved for week-long runs of titles like Red Notice, there’s room for pleasant […]
After the first UFOs are sighted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a group of true believers gather and wait for more to arrive. A light appears over the horizon, excitement builds—but disillusionment sets in when the approaching vehicles turn out to be helicopters, and everyone scatters. The chopper beams briefly look like trainlights, echoing the mini-train track Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) assembles in his family’s cramped living room and uses to try to demonstrate a math problem to son Barry by sending the train on a collision course towards a stalled miniature stockcar. The Fabelmans tells us where this image, […]
I got out of a jam-packed P&I screening of Jafar Panahi’s No Bears literally two minutes after the Venice Film Festival announced a special jury prize for the film. It’s probably not overly cynical to attribute at least part of both my screening’s high attendance and the festival’s award to the sad news that the director is back in jail—his status as a high-profile Iranian dissident is inextricable from his work since 2011 when, under house arrest and banned from making movies, he started making features with him front and center as the lead protagonist. That on-screen character is by now […]
It seemed fitting to enter Toronto by a new route for my first in-person TIFF in three years. Rather than going straight from the airport to the downtown core where the festival unfolds, I took a streetcar further afield to one end of the line, Bathurst Station. The Ed and Anne Mirvish Parkette is just outside, with a plaque dating itself to 2008 that gives a mini-bio of the couple (“Humanitarians, Retail Innovators, Arts Advocates”). A few meters over, a conspicuously newer plaque memorializes Beverly Mascoll as “a community advocate and the founder of the Mascoll Beauty Supply Ltd., a […]
The Toronto Film Festival is underway, the first purely in-person edition since before the COVID-19 pandemic. There are high profile premieres, including Ryan Johnson’s Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, a number of films traveling on their awards march from Telluride and/or Venice (Florian Zeller’s The Son, Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed), as well as smaller acquisition titles that are always in danger of being overlooked amidst the galas. Below are a number of films, most but not all TIFF premieres, that we’re recommending you check out, whether that recommendation is based on pre-screening or just our knowledge […]
Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente announced today that Eugene Hernandez will join the nonprofit as the new Festival Director and head of public programming of the Sundance Film Festival. His first festival leading as Director will be in 2024, while the forthcoming 2023 edition will be led by Vicente in collaboration with Director of Programming Kim Yutani and the Institute’s broader leadership team. Hernandez is the fourth Festival Director in the Sundance Film Festival’s history, succeeding Tabitha Jackson, who served for two years. He will join the Institute’s core leadership team beginning in November, reporting to Vicente and being based […]
Todd Field’s TÁR simulates ethical complexity to “call into question” cancel culture, which—no matter what Gina Carano, Peter Vack et al. have to say about it—is not an unprecedentedly bold or unthinkable move; millions of Americans are waiting to nod in vociferous agreement. The titular Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) first speaks at the New Yorker Festival, in onstage conversation with the magazine’s Adam Gopnik as himself. This prolonged opening (somewhere around 15 minutes) provides an excuse for a lot of expository background: Tár is an EGOT honoree, a revered modern conductor, a lesbian who’s also the first woman appointed to lead a […]
The non-profit Sundance Institute has shared preliminary updates for the 2023 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, which will take place January 19-29. Most notably, the festival will pivot back to being a largely in-person festival, with screenings kicking off in Utah on January 19 in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Resort. Sundance will then introduce on-demand film streaming via its festival platform on January 24 for all of the competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT) as well as episodic and short film titles. Also kicking off on the […]