On the occasion of the seventh edition of Thespo, one of the most publicised youth festivals in India, Quasar Thakore Padamsee speaks to filmfestivals.com and eSTQ.Q. You're the son of famous theatre parents? What's your early memories about the theatre? Late night rehearsals, hanging around back-stage, being allowed to play the fool? Mother memorising her lines while readying you for school?A. My early memories of theatre are all about backstage. And peering through the wings. I remember being ...
Olga, the opening film of the festival was the major attractions for all filmgoers in the iffi-Goa and directorate of the festival have to schedule repeat screening on demand.The film is a adoption of Fernando Morais’ best seller of the same title chronicles the true life story of the German revolutionary Olga Benario Prestes from her youth in Munich to her romance with communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes and finally to her death in Gas chamber under Hitler’s Nazi regime. Olga was born in J...
The 2006 Sundance Film Festival, taking place January 19-29, 2006Independent Feature Film Competition: DramaticAmerican independent cinema yields some of the most exciting and highly anticipated film in the world. These 16 films were selected from 1,004 submissions. From disaffected Latino youth finding family to a southern woman finding love, this section is filled with coming of age comedies and dramas, stories of love and addition with some characters seeking forgiveness for past sins. The...
Against the odds, the low budget feature RA CHOI has beaten its fellow nominees to scoop the prestigious BEST FEATURE FILM award at the 38th annual Australian Writers Guild Awards (The AWGIEs) held in Melbourne’s Regent Theatre Plaza Ballroom on Friday 25th November 2005. A multi award winner for his short film work, writer, director and producer M. Frank’s debut feature competed against Little Fish, Three Dollars and Look Both Ways. The AWGIE awards celebrate t he success of Australian wri...
International Documentary Festival Amsterdam 200524 November, 4 decemberSisters in Law (England, 2005) by Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi will be the opening film at the 18th International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), to be held from 24 November through 4 December. In addition, IDFA will be presenting a retrospective programme of documentaries by French filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon, part of a large-scale overview of his work being organised by the Filmmuseum Amsterdam ...
SDIFF28 will also feature the first-ever, live KIDS FIRST! Best Awards ceremony. Children can be their own critics and vote until October 15th on the KIDS FIRST! website (www.kidsfirstmedia.com). Programming is designed for kids 2-18 and includes never-before-seen TV series and feature film titles such as DORA THE EXPLORER, SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS and sneak previews of feature films.SDIFF28 and The KIDS FIRST! Film Festival will also host a special, Red Carpet event on Saturday, Nov. 19 at 2:00 p....
This year’s CINECITY, the Brighton Film Festival (17 November – 4 December), presents a season of ten films - nine features and one short, including: Havana Blues the ‘Buena Vista Social Club for the MTV Generation’; the epic 1964 Soviet/Cuban collaboration I am Cuba, and the 2005 Spanish box office smash and Cannes Film Festival winner, Viva Cuba – all of which explore Havana, the capital of Cuba – providing a rare chance to see both new and classic films from the cinema of a revolu...
ANNOUNCING THE 2005 AWARD WINNERSMontreal, October 31, 2005 — The nine (9) 2005 ADVENTURA Prizes were awarded yesterday at the closing ceremony of the 4th Montreal International Adventure Film Festival (also know by its French acronym FIFAM). Over 170 films from the four corners of the world had been submitted in preselection and 38 of them were retained for the official selection presented to the Montreal public over 4 days, namely from October 27 to 30, 2005. This year, the prizes are reward...
AVIGNON/NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL, Nov. 9-13, 2005The festival celebrates French and American independent film with premieres, retrospectives, round-table discussions on pertinent issues with industry experts, interviews with filmmakers, along with receptions, gourmet foods and high-caliber beverages, wines and liqueurs, and prizes for emerging filmmakers.To kick off its second decade of organizing high-calibre film festivals in New York City, the organization has moved “Avignon/New York” from ...
Regent Park Film Festival Nov 9 – 13th 2005; Focus East Asia This free festival runs from November 9 -13, and this year spotlights East Asia with films from China, Vietnam, Philippines and Asian Canadian filmmakers. The RPFF presents works in both fiction and documentary, long and short, from here and abroad. The festival will be presenting a whole range of works short and long, fiction and documentary, from here and abroad. This year has a spotlight on East Asia with films from China, Vietn...
The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (NYIIFVF) announces its return to Manhattan for eight days of film screenings, world premieres, musical performances, industry panels and after-parties. The festival, known as the voice of independent film, will showcase 300 film features, shorts and documentaries and host filmmakers from more than 30 countries. The festivities kick off on November 10th with an opening night networking party for filmmakers, musicians and artists at l...
Somehow eight days of compact quality cinema viewing have slipped by, the main problem being how to find some time to write at least some of it down between widely spaced out screenings. Downtown Valladolid is a tricky maze of narrow streets with sixteenth century churches at every turn, but fortunately, with an extremely friendly populace willing to steer you straight every time you get lost -- on average, three times a day -- but what a nice city to get lost in! The festival is centred at the...
The First European Feature Film Award for Best Director went to Radu Mihaileanu At the 11th Film Festival Münster which drew to a close yesterday, the Romanian director Radu Mihaileanu won the first European Feature Film Prize for Best Director for his film ‘Va, vis et deviens / Live and Become’. The award is endowed with a prize money of EUR 10,000. According to the verdict of the five-member European jury the prize went to Mihaileanu’s film because of the ‘outstanding way in which the...
This year’s Salford Film Festival – 11th, 12th and 13th November – is getting more salacious than ever before with its first ever star studded world premiere feature film…plus an epic revolutionary movie that’s been banned from Salford for 75 years…plus a Mike Leigh retrospective…plus the very best of Salford’s community-driven cinematic surge…and events ranging from speed dating with a cinematic difference to the chance to make a mini movie masterpiece…Almost 40 films packed...
The third Zagreb Film Festival, from 17 to 22. October 2005, hosted by the City of Zagreb, presents films by studio or independent filmmakers, is devoted to the exhibition of three-category feature film, short film and documentary film, as well as other aspects of the film and multimedia projects. The premises of this center had a sort of artistic dynamics and beside students, it is primarily intended for other generations as a meeting place for contemplating new creative potentials. Besides the...
WINNER OF THE EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2005 - Prix ArteEuropean Film Academy Documentary 2005 - Prix Arte goes to the filmUN DRAGON DANS LES EAUX PURES DU CAUCASE (The Pipeline Next Door)by Nino Kirtadzé, FranceIn co-operation with the European cultural channel Arte, the European Film Academy annually honours an outstanding achievement in documentary filmmaking. This year's jury was made up of Noemi Schory from Israel (producer/ director/ director of Sam Spiegel Film and Television Sch...
THE WORLD’S ONLY MULTICULTURAL LESBIAN/GAY/BISEXUAL/TRANSGENDERPEOPLE OF COLOR FILM FESTIVALTO TAKE PLACE IN LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER 11-13Outfest, one of the world’s largest gay and lesbian film festivals, will present Fusion, the only multicultural gender-inclusive LGBT People of Color Film Festival for the third consecutive year. To be held in Los Angeles November 11-13, 2005, Fusion is a celebration of extraordinary films, music, spoken-word, workshops and panels. Every program of Fusion is...
image+nation International lgbt film festival Celebrates its 18th anniversary November 3-13IMAGE + NATION, International gay and lesbian film festival is pleased to present its 18th edition November 3-13 at Cinéma Parisien (480 St-Catherine St. W.). Including feature-length fiction, documentaries and short films from first-time filmmakers and established director the spectacular selection of the festival will offer film buffs a panorama of queer cinema from around the world.Opening and Closing ...
The 27th IFP market, the largest convocation of aspiring and actual independent film makers in North America closed September 22 expanding to more participants and more industry speed networking. It reduced the number of works screened from 400 in past markets to 199 from the more than 1400 submitted in 2005. Thus IFP is shifting from a market and or festival to an efficient networking event that arranged this year an estimated 1,500 buyer-driven meetings with film makers. A new component, Th...
After viewing Costa-Gavras' "Couperet" (Arcadia) screened at the opening ceremony as the festival curtain-raiser, (out of competition), I am still holding my breath trying to decide what to think of it. Yes, it did have certain Hitchcockian echoes of "black humor", and yes, it was a thriller of sorts, and yes, there were certain socio-political overtones, and the performances by Jose García (the harried serial killer) and Karin Viard (the harried wife of the harried serial killer) were good an...
UNVEILED awarded the "Hessischer Filmpreis" during the Frankfurt BookfairMedia Luna Entertainment awarded the director Angelina Maccarone whose film UNVEILED won the "Hessischer Filmpreis" during the Frankfurt Bookfair on Friday, October 21st. Among 30 other films in the competition, UNVEILED was awarded as Best Feature Film of the year.The film is a political drama and touching love story between two women, starring Jasmin Tabatabai and Anneke Kim Sarnau. Prosecuted in Iran for her homosexualit...
Mill Valley Film Festival closed its 28th year with screenings of more than 200 films from over 50 countries on Sunday, October 16. Always an exciting Festival component, more than 175 filmmakers and actors from around the globe made the trip to Mill Valley to share their filmmaking experiences with the audiences. “We had an exceptional slate of US and world cinema, tributes, spotlights, music events, parties and receptions for film lovers of all ages,” notes Founder/Director Mark Fishkin. ...
Fox has signed a deal to provide its films for Christie/AIX, the joint venture between Christie and AccessIT.Disney was the first studio to cut a similar deal with Christie.In its first long-term commitment to digital cinema, Twentieth Century Fox (“Fox”) has reached an agreement to supply its feature films to digital cinema projection systems deployed by Christie/AIX, a unit of Access Integrated Technologies (“AccessIT”) (AMEX:AIX). For Fox, this “first-of-a-kind” distribution arran...
Pusan International Film Festival Awards Heralded as the biggest film festival in Asia, PIFF ran Oct. 6 – 15th and celebrated its 10th anniversary this year with some of Asia’s greatest talent including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Abbas Kiarostami, and Jackie Chan on hand at its numerous ceremonies.The festival wrapped last weekend with the top award – the New Currents award for Best New Asian Filmmaker of the Year – going to ZANG Lu of China for directing Grain in the Ear. ZANG uses a restraine...
New Italian Cinema (Nov 13 – 20 at the AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres San Francisco), is an eight-day series dedicated to celebrating the rich cinematic tradition of Italy and bringing the country’s newest directors and films to audiences in San Francisco, New York, Moscow and Amsterdam. This year’s selection runs the gamut from thriller to black comedy, delves into issues affecting young and old and explores issues such as corporate downsizing, illegal immigration and the plight of political priso...
