THE 23RD SACILE-PORDENONE SILENT FILM FESTIVAL9-16 October 2004The programme of the 23rd edition of the Giornate del Cinema Muto, from 9-16 October 2004, will be the biggest and most ambitious to date, with both theatres - Teatro Zancanaro and Teatro Ruffo - running to capacity. The opening show will be a performance of Buster Keaton’s The General (1927), accompanied by the US-based Alloy Orchestra. Alloy's Ken Winokur has formed a new band called "Tillie's Nightmare" to accompany the new UCLA...
Detroit Docs International Film Festival Is Celebrating Year 3! from November 11-14, 2004 Highlights include this year: Screening over 100 documentaries from all over the world including the U.S., Canada, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Israel, United Kingdom, Poland, and Japan Introducing three new venues; Wayne State University, Detroit Institute of Arts & the Museum of New Art Welcoming 30+ filmmakers and visitors from out of town to attend the festival with their works Festival kicks off with ...
2O Fingers won Best Film Venezia Cinema Digitale: interview with the author: Mania Akbari 20 Fingers - one of the most controversial films to come out of Iran, and the debut feature from Iranian actress and filmmaker Mania Akbari - has beaten off tough competition to be awarded the top prize in the inaugural Digitale competition at the Venice Film Festival.An international jury composed of English director Mike Figgis (president), Japanese producer Shozo Ichiyama, and French director Claire Simo...
The SWISS AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL (SwissAm) proudly returns to New York for seven days of screenings, seminars and parties bringing together American and Swiss Independent filmmakers with a selection of 30 Swiss and 24 US films.In addition to screenings in three categories (Focus, Panorama, Shorts), SwissAm will present a retrospective of the work of renowned Swiss essay filmmaker Peter Liechti. SIGNERS KOFFER (1995), LUCKY JACK (2003) and NAMIBIA CROSSINGS (2004) will be shown in New York for th...
JAOUI OPENS NEW YORK FILM FESTIVALThe 42nd edition of the New York Film Festival opened this past weekend, with one of its most diverse and anticipated slates in recent years. Featuring an exciting mix of the new works of acknowledged film masters and fresh discoveries, the Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is generally acknowledged as the crown jewel of film events in a city that boasts more than 25 film festivals during the year. “It is the gold standard as far as Ne...
The 42nd edition of the New York Film Festival helmed by Richard Pena opened to raving reviews affirming its unique position as an upscale intellectually oriented festnot compromising its criteria to compete with the new Tribeca film festival. Out of 25 features from 21 countries produced this year and not shown before in the United States eight were made in the U.S. but none of these films corresponded to “Hollywood fare”. Even Sam Fuller’s reconstructed 1980 studio production THE BIG RED...
The National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC), in partnership with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, announces the 2004 New York debut of the Prized Pieces Film Festival commencing October 8th through October 11, 2004. The four-day festival, held for the first time in New York City at Harlem’s famed Schomburg Center, celebrates the 25th Anniversary of the NBPC and its long-standing commitment to the preservation, funding, production and promotion of independent films and ...
12th Raindance Film FestivalLondon, 1-10 October 2004Raindance just kicked off last Thursday September 30 with the London premiere of Shane Meadows hotly anticipated and highly rated new film Dead Man’s Shoes, this year’s Raindance Film Festival which celebrates independent filmmakers and filmmaking, promises ten days of discovery, debate and surprise with probably the richest slate of films in the Festival’s history.French shock-filmmaker Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell, (Friday Oc...
In the following interview Miguel Pereira, Director of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, speaks about his ideological position, his views about the past, the image he wants for the festival and the procedures to reach this aim. Fernando Madedo: First of all. Define Film Festival? Miguel Pereira: Today it`s very difficult to know what a Film Festival is, because there are more than seven thousands festivals around the world. I think that the word had included events that aren...
New York AIDS Film Festival terminated (Sept, 17-13)Advertising the attendance of Hollywood luminaries Jack Valenti, Meryl Streep, and Mike Nichols who was supposed to receive an award for ‘Angels in America’ did not help the second edition of the New York AIDS Film Festival to stay afloat. After limping along for several days since its opening on September 17, the festival died before the final gala event took place. Rubinstein, its public relations agency, blames “logistic reasons...
Port Townsend Film Festival Wraps with Nod to WinnersUnder blue skies that opened up just as the festival began Friday afternoon and remained throughout the weekend, the 5th annual Port Townsend Film Festival wrapped Sunday with the announcement of "best films" at a morning champagne breakfast. Winner of the best feature-length narrative film was Gate to Heaven (Tor zum Himmel), a German film by producer/director Veit Helmer. Ten years in the making, Gate to Heaven is a love story that tak...
THE GAYEST FILM FESTIVAL OF ALL AT THE GAYEST PLACE ON EARTH (September 20, 2004)Pirates of the Caribbean is not the only film to makes its premiere at Disneyland. The resort will become host to the West Coast Premiere of a new Australian film and a new Southern California gay film festival. Presented by Technophiliax and Midway Ford the Pixie Flix Fest will have screenings of their winning films at the Disneyland Hotel on Sunday, October 3rd. Coined "the gayest film festival of all... at the ga...
Today Aspen Filmfest announced the program for its 26th edition which runs September 29 - October 3 in Aspen at the Wheeler Opera House, Carbondale's Crystal Theatre and The Springs Theatre in Glenwood Springs. This annual highly respected festival will host a diverse array of features, documentaries and special presentations including an in-person tribute to Michael Douglas, a panel on the new political documentary, and acclaimed features and documentaries from around the world. Tickets go on s...
The 24th Atlantic Film Festival (September 17-25) announced today 14 of the 15 2004 Atlantic Film Festival award winners. The winners are as follows:Atlantic Canadian AwardsBest Short Film ($5,000 services)Sponsored by Eyes Post GroupJoDee Samuelson - Mabel’s Saga Outstanding Writer’s AwardSponsored by the Atlantic Film FestivalAdriana Maggs - I Dare Not GoRex Tasker Award for Best Documentary ($1,500 cash)Sponsored by the National Film Board of CanadaGerry Rogers - Pleasant StreetOutstandin...
DEALS, DEALS AND MORE DEALSAs the Toronto Film Festival enters its final weekend, distribution deals for the coveted North American market have been secured on a number of key film titles.Focus Features, the specialty distribution division of Universal Pictures, secured North American, Scandinavian and Australian rights for the UK film My Summer of Love, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. The film, which screened in Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section, tells the story of a summer encoun...
The 40th Chicago International Film Festival will kick it off with KINSEY,the new film by Bill Condon starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker.Thursday, October 7th at the Chicago Theatre The film fresh from its Toronto VIACOM GALAS premiere is quite remarkable: a star-studded, glossy Hollywood film about Alfred Kinsey, a man who was once considered among the most dangerous figures in post-war America...
On the eighth day of the Venice International Film Festival, several very strong contenders for the Golden Lion have screened and are the talk of the Lido. To date Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru nougoku shiro) by award winning Hayao Miyazaki has produced the most enthusiastic response from Italian journalists and public. The film was screened under the utmost care to prevent piracy as the film will not be released in Japan until November 20. It will open in France on December 15. According to Miy...
An Interview with Russian Filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarovby Dominique Arel, filmfestivals.comVeteran Russian helmer Karen Shakhnazarov competed at the Montreal World Film Festival with A Rider Named Death (Vsadnik po imeni smert), a film based on the literary memoirs of socialist revolutionary Boris Savinkov at the turn of the past century, just prior to the 1905 Revolution. In a sad coincidence, the film received its international premiere at the festival the day hundreds of hostages were massacre...
Several films in Venice are turning heads on days 4 and 5. Agnes und seine Brüder(Agnes and His Brothers) by Oskar Roehler (Germany) is a kitchy tale of three brothers who grew up with an alcoholic pedophile. The grown children make messes of their relationships--or lack of them. Hans-Jorg (Herbert Knaupt)is a sex addicted librarian and Werner(Moritz Bleibtreu) - a rageaholic politician that ignores his wife and kids. The most tender of the three - Agnes (Martin Weiss) as had a sex change and i...
THE ACTION/CUT 2004GRAND PRIZE SHORT FILM AWARD“THE 17th MAN” Directed by Yimeng JinWritten by Yimeng Jin & Adam J. KrepsProduced by Brooke Krinsky, Brett Jacobsen, Adam J. KrepsSynopsis: A dark-tale thriller about a best-selling author haunted by his fictitious femme fatalewhen she comes to life after he tries to put an end to her in his final book "The 17th Man”…a psychological mind-game of deception ensues and only one can survive!This film was produced at the Florida State University...
The Rebirth of MemoryAn Interview with Turkish Filmmaker Yesim Ustaogluby Dominique Arel, filmfestivals.comForty-four year old Yesym Ustaoglu created a stir five years with Journey to the Sun, the first contemporary Turkish film dealing with a Kurdish theme and (a good portion of which) actually shot in Turkish Kurdistan. Her new feature film, Waiting for the Clouds (Bulutlari Beklerken), addresses another taboo topic in Turkey's painful past: the fate of Greek minorities during the First World ...
MONTREAL WORLD FILM FESTIVAL : A CITADEL OF FILM CULTUREThe 28th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival is in full swing, with a heady mix of traditional arthouse films and innovative new voices giving this event its well-deserved reputation as the most European in style and substance of all of Canada’s film events.Perhaps it is its Francophone culture or its identity as a city of tradition (in direct contrast with the go-go atmosphere of its neighbor Toronto) but this Festival is definit...
The 8th Annual MadCat Women’s International Film Festival September 14 – October 3 in Oakland!The MadCat Film Festival screens the best cutting-edge experimental and independent films from around the world. Featuring shorts, documentaries, narratives and animated works selected from more than 900 submissions. This year’s lineup includes 12 programs of timely, insightful, humorous and deeply moving experimental and independent films by some of the finest up-and-coming and established women ...
MONTREAL UNVEILS PROMISING WORLD COMPETITIONA new film by the team that brought us the stunning French documentary Microcosmos, Carlos Saura 's return to socially conscious cinema, and the latest from Aussie underrated actor Hugo Weaving are among the premieres that will highlight the competition of the Montreal World Film Festival.Away from the hype to which film festivals are increasingly succumbing, Montreal has developed a reputation for offering a platform to filmmakers whose work has not b...
Black Box 2004 HighlightsThe world of art collides with film and videoBLACK BOX programme, at the 58th Edinburgh International Film Festival, will include a major retrospective of the work of Scottish filmmaker Margaret Tait and the world premiere of Sam Taylor Wood˜s installation art —STRINGS.˜The Black Box programme was developed in order to explore video art and performance within the realm of film. This year˜s programme includes some of the most thought-provoking and pioneering work in ...
