Every year, the Camden International Film Festival manages a nifty magic trick. Its ambition swells within the concise duration of what amounts to a holiday weekend (if the second Friday of September was deemed, say, National Non-Fiction Day), with the same handful of venues, including two opera houses and a gorgeous vintage bijou, in three adjacent towns in northern seaside Maine. Marking its 15th year this September, CIFF–produced under the umbrella of the Points North Institute – consistently ups the stakes for filmmakers and audiences, without suffering from the dreaded festivalitis: the condition that arises when film festivals become all […]

“Who is this film made for, in what way is power present, how does the film understand its relationship to its subjects, and who benefits from the film being made?” That’s Samara Chadwick, Senior Programmer at the Camden International Film Festival, on this 2019 edition’s theme of “Story and Power.” But if you’re attending the festival, don’t look for this theme to be a didactic one, she says. “It’s less a series of affirmations and arrival points and more about the process of questioning — opening up a space where the questioning of power is normalized instead of invisibilized.” The […]

Having already revealed the Foucauldian dynamic that will run through this year’s Camden International Film Festival — a focus on “story and power” — the festival’s parent organization Points North Institute unveiled today the forum and artist programs that will take place over the event’s mid-September weekend. The annual Points North Forum will ask “critical questions about how the documentary film and media community reflects existing power structures, including questions of racial equity, access, funding, and which stories are being told, how, for whom, and by whom,” according to the press release. Other highlights and programs include masterclasses by Apollo […]

The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) announced today the 38 features, 51 short films, and 17 virtual reality and immersive experiences that comprise its 15th edition, taking place September 12-15, 2019 throughout Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. “Story and Power” is the theme of sorts for this year’s festival, which aims to prompt industry-wide conversations that examine “the ways in which power structures deeply embedded in society have continued to shape the documentary field, including which stories are told, by whom and for whom.” “Our 2019 slate celebrates documentary as a reimagining of the ways we engage with stories from […]

A week ago I traveled to a remote part of Maine from Australia. I arrived along with five other filmmaking teams for the Points North Fellowship, a program that provides emerging filmmakers an opportunity to present their works-in-progress to the film industry.  The fellows arrive before the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) is in full swing, before the buzz and “no vacancy” signs and packed waterfront restaurants. At the climax of the festival, the fellows will pitch their projects live to a panel of industry heavyweights (and in front of a 500-person audience) in the Camden Opera House, but before […]

Most film festivals can claim a thing or two: A dramatic location, a slate of coveted premieres, fancy fetes, unique guests, a platoon of industry heavies making the rounds, and, for better or worse, the media spotlight. I’ve never attended any film festival where I had the chance to wrap my arms around a tree–in a public park, no less, and in full view of pedestrians–and plant my ear firmly to its bark, as one of its official selections. And yet, there I was, in Camden, Maine, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, tree-hugging away. The four selected trees on the […]

The Camden International Film Festival announced today its 2018 lineup, which includes 37 features, 43 short films, one episodic series and 20 virtual reality and immersive experiences from over 30 countries. Included among the features are three world premieres: Young Men and Fire, by Kahil Hudson and Alex Jablonski (a latter one of our 25 New Faces); Lana Wilson’s series, The Cure for Fear; and Jane Gillooly’s Where the Pavement Ends. The Opening Night film is Morgan Neville’s Orson Welles doc, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead. Significantly, the festival is reporting that there’s gender parity across all sections, with […]

Each year, the Points North Institute magnetizes the fog-kissed landscape of coastal Maine to lure the best and brightest of the non-fiction universe to the towns of Camden, Rockport and Rockland. The Camden International Film Festival offers an immersive overlay of screenings, panels, workshops, virtual reality installations, parties and intensive personal encounters that elevate the proceedings far above the standard festival formula of films and frolic. Exhibit A: What other festival turns a pitch session into a kind of centerpiece presentation? Staged under the banner of the Points North Institute, the festival’s umbrella organization, the program invites a group of […]

When I arrived at CIFF in 2012, I was attending the Points North Forum Pitch, which runs concurrently with the festival and is the centerpiece of a weekend of panels and discussions. I came to Maine from Los Angeles, a first-time director who somehow couldn’t get the last four union days to join Local 728 and thus decided that shooting my own film would be a perfect antidote to hearing my buddies brag about the shows they worked on — shows that, finally, their friends had heard of. I perfectly remember the anxiety I felt when I arrived. Everyone knew each other, nobody stood […]

An opening night world premiere, more North American film premieres, an expanded Storyforms VR section, and the return of its popular Points North Forum are all notable elements of the 2017 Camden Film Festival, which runs today through September 17 across Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. Hot on the heels of Toronto, CIFF is a growing festival that is luring more and more filmmakers as well as funders to take part in discussions about non-fiction in an enviably bucolic environment. “The line between industry and filmmakers is so blurry here,” says Ben Fowlie, Executive Director of the Points North Institute, […]