XXIV. Black International Cinema Berlin Germany & USA 2009 May 7-10 Rathaus Schöneberg (city hall) John-F.-Kennedy-Platz 10825 Berlin-Schöneberg "A COMPLEXION CHANGE - International & Intercultural Diplomacy" A tribute to: Chancellor Willy Brandt "The future will not be mastered by those who dwell on the past." Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward...

JUST TALKING 15/3 part3envoyé par cecilerittweger JUST TALKING 15/3 part4 envoyé par cecilerittweger Is objectivity what is desired in the making of a documentary film? Must a director keep an emotional distance from his film’s main character? These questions were at the heart of the first “Just Talking”, which took place on Sunday, March 15, as part of the sidebar events of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Centu...

PRESS CONFERENCE LONG DISTANCE LOVE - THE QUEEN AND I - THE HANGING GARDENS OF SANTA EMILIA The 11th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century cycle of press conferences began on Sunday, March 15, at the “Ianos” book store. The first guests were the directors Magnus Gertten, Elin Jonsson (Long Distance Love), Nahid Persson Sarvestani (The Queen and I) and Sibel Bilgin (The Hanging Gardens of Santa Emilia). ...

JUST TALKING 15/3 Is objectivity what is desired in the making of a documentary film? Must a director keep an emotional distance from his film’s main character? These questions were at the heart of the first “Just Talking”, which took place on Sunday, March 15, as part of the sidebar events of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century. Every afternoon, the 11th Documentary Festival invites its guests, dire...

JUST TALKING 15/3 Is objectivity what is desired in the making of a documentary film? Must a director keep an emotional distance from his film’s main character? These questions were at the heart of the first “Just Talking”, which took place on Sunday, March 15, as part of the sidebar events of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century. Every afternoon, the 11th Documentary Festival invites its guests, dire...

PRESS RELEASE 11th THESSALONIKI DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL Images of the 21st Century March 13 – 22, 2009 The 11th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival - Images of the 21st Century, part of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, presents approximately 170 films by directors from all over the world, as well as a full parallel events program, to be announced next Monday, March 9th. OPENING FILM The ...

The 11th Annual Regal Entertainment Group SARASOTA FILM FESTIVAL will get underway on Friday evening March 27, 2009 and run through Sunday, April 5, 2009. The Festival will be presented at Sarasota’s Hollywood 20 Cinemas with Opening Night at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Center, Closing Night Tribute at the Sarasota Opera House, screenings and conversations at the Historic Asolo, and other area venues. This year’s Festival will present over 160 narrative, documentary and short films from t...

Since the first edition the Cape Winelands Film Festival (CWFF) has significantly grown in size and international participation. South African cinephiles will have an opportunity to see a rich diversity of films from more than 35 countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Belgium, Burkina Faso, the USA, Canada, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Palestine, the UK, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, France, India, Thailand, Turkey, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Russia,...

The global financial Crisis, Recession, Depression -- call it what you will - was not overly in evidence at the 59th edition of the Berlin Film Festival which ended its annual ten day run here on Febtuary 14th, Valentine's day. Private VIP and celebrity parties as reported in the gossip tabloids seemed to be as lavish as ever, and public box-office attendance in terms of tickets sold, was the highest ever at 270,000, up a solid 20,000 from 2008. The one festival section that did seem to be aff...

The 39th Forum of the Berlinale will be showing a total of 48 films from 31 countries.The selection will take festival-goers around the world - not so much in terms of the number of countries represented, but rather in the abundant connections to be discovered between the films, their often shared concerns and kindred worldviews, as well as their contradictions and mirror images. Eleven films are debuts, 25 world premieres, and twelve international premieres.This lineup includes a diverse sample...

Fourteen films have been selected for IFFR’s VPRO Tiger Awards Competition 2009. The line up features first or second films from all continents, and includes eight world premieres concurring for three equal top prizes of each 15,000 euro. For the first time, films from Turkey, New Zealand and Indonesia are included in competition. The Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films includes twenty-seven films shorter than 60 minutes; the three Tiger Awards for Short Film each come with 3,000 euro.Sta...

The "Titanic" international film festival, Budapest's new "tough guy on the block" and the only real rival to the annual Hungarian Film Week for the attention of the large film buff community here, closed shop on April 13 with the screening of a spellbinding new Irish thriller "In Bruges", and a closing gala party that lasted far into the night.Now into its third year as a legitimate prize awarding international film festival, the "Titanic" festival in Budapest, while still modest in size, appea...

Thirteen films have already been selected to participate in the Generation section of the Berlinale 2009 - seven in Kplus and six in 14plus. A record number of more than 1000 films have been submitted this year.For the first time, Generation will screen a documentary for its younger audiences in the Kplus competition. In Los herederos, Mexican director Eugenio Polgovsky sensitively but persistently observes how hard work defines the lives and existence of children and their families. “We canno...

The Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) is a rich source of the best in international film, and fans of Iran’s ceaselessly productive and always interesting cinema industry can count on finding Persian film gems at DIFF 2008—including a film with a Dubai connection. Morality and family life concern director Majid Majidi, whose award-winning The Song of Sparrows is Iran’s entry for the 2009 Academy Awards. Innocent Karim works at an ostrich farm outside of Tehran, leading a simple a...

With the screening of Iranian film ‘The Song of the Sparrows’, directed by Majid Majidi, curtains came down on the 39th International Film Festival of India on December 2nd 2008. Director Sergei Dvortsevoy bagged the best film award with the Golden Peacock and a cash award of 40 lakh for the Kazakhstan film ‘Tulpan’. The Director also got the Most Promising Director Award for the film. The award comprises the Silver Peacock and a cash award of Rs. 15 lakh. Tulpan is a cinematic triumph...

Director “Sergei Dvortsevoy” bagged the best film award with the Golden Peacock in IFFI-Goa 2008, The Special Jury Award has gone to Sri Lankan actress “Malini Fonseka”With the screening of Iranian film ‘The Song of the Sparrows’, directed by Majid Majidi, curtains came down on the 39th International Film Festival of India on December 2nd 2008. Director Sergei Dvortsevoy bagged the best film award with the Golden Peacock and a cash award of 40 lakh for the Kazakhstan film ‘Tulpan�...

Two War Films, "Cold Tears", 2004, and "Night Bus", 2007. The war between Sadam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran lasted nearly a decade, from 1980 to 1988, and was treated as a kind of side-show in the western press, but it was the main event in that part of the world and has provided fodder for countless Iranian films ever since. Two of these were presented in the current survey. Dated 2004 and 2007 these films show that nearly 20 years down the line this war is still far from a ...

  Saturday, November 29--------The main competition program at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, which began last night, is EurAsia, new films from the European and Asian continents. Estonia sits at a great divide between East and West, and has stood as a way-station between those two nexuses for the past thousand years. The Festival encourages a mutually supportive point of view that sees both the differences and connections between European and middle Asian culture. The Fes...

The Iranian Film Week in Budapest opening film, "Kheili Dour, Kheili Nazdik", (Very far, very near), 2OO5, directed by Sayyed Reza Mir-Karimi, was one of the best of the lot and also the longest with a running time of 12O minutes. A middle-aged neurosurgeon (played by the charismatic actor Masoud Rayegany) comes back to Teheran on the eve of the Persian New Year after a long stay in the west to spend the holidays with his teenage son, an avid student of astronomy. You can see that he feels a l...

In conjunction with the Iranian embassy the Örökmogó Filmmuseum, which is the outlet for the Hungarian Film Archive and presents a selection of international films all year round, is presenting a ten film survey here of recent Iranian film productions in what amounts to a mini Iranian film festival. The survey includes two slightly older films from the years 1992 and 1999, but the remainder are all films made after the turn of the millenium, primarily those released since 2004. Ever since t...