The Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alerted the Port Townsend Film Festival today that it was selected as one of 28 U.S. film festivals to receive grants for calendar year 2007, Festival Grants Committee Chair Gale Anne Hurd announced today. The Port Townsend Film Festival, which completed its seventh festival last month, will receive $5,000. The fund will be used to bring filmmakers to the eighth annual festival next year, according to Peter Simpson, execu...

The "fiercely independent" Woodstock Film Festival announced the winners of its Maverick Awards at a special ceremony on Saturday evening at the Colony Cafe. Eleven awards were given out to films in competition, as well as special tribute awards to distinguished honorees.The Maverick Award for Best Feature Film was awarded to director Julia Loktev, for her provocative DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT. The film tells the story of a 19-year old girl, who conspires with three masked men, as they prepare her for...

Best Documentary Winner BEYOND ERUV Sunday, October 15---The "fiercely independent" Woodstock Film Festival announced the winners of its Maverick Awards at a special ceremony on Saturday evening at the Colony Cafe. Eleven awards were given out to films in competition, as well as special tribute awards to distinguished honorees. The Maverick Award for Best Feature Film was awarded to director Julia Loktev, for her provocative DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT. The film tells the story of a 19-year old girl, ...

Saturday, October 14----Aside from all the films, the parties, the music concerts and other special events, the Woodstock Film Festival offers local filmmakers and visiting film talents an intensive education on all aspects of the filmmaking and distribution process through an exhaustive series of professional seminars. Drawing mainly on film executives, film critics and film mavens from Manhattan (only 100 miles to the south), the Festival offers a rare opportunity to get the lowdown on the s...

Saturday, October 14----One of the more unusual and highly anticipated programs of the Woodstock Film Festival will be tonight's special event, THE MITCH SHOW, a retrospective of comedic short films spanning the oeuvre of Hollywood-based filmmaker Mitchell Rose. The program includes several audience-participation segments, humorous performance pieces and short comic gems by this professional wisenheimer. Highlights of the program include MODERN DAYDREAMS, a suite of four Chaplinesque films t...

Jonathan Sehring Wedneday, October 11---Jonathan Sehring, the President of IFC Entertainment and a longtime supporter of the independent film movement, will be honored at the Woodstock Film Festival with this year's Trailblazer Award. Sehring will receive the award from Oscar-nominated actor Matt Dillon, the star of IFC Films' FACTOTUM, at a special Awards Ceremony on Saturday evening. Matt Dillon Sehring has been a prime mover in the contemporary renaissance of American independent film. Via...

Monday, October 9----Veteran documentary director Barbara Kopple will be honored with the Maverick Award at the Woodstock Film Festival, which opens on Thursday. She will be honored at a special Awards Ceremony on Saturday evening, with actress-turned-documentarian Rosie Perez giving Kopple her award honors. Perez co-directed her first documentary film this year, the autobiographical I'M BORICUA, JUST SO YOU KNOW! Rosie Perez Kopple, a double Oscar winner for her films HARLAN COUNTRY USA and...

Saturday, October 7----The Woodstock Film Festival, which opens this coming Thursday, has announced that its Centerpiece Film will be the latest work from acclaimed Danish director Susanne Bier. AFTER THE WEDDING will be screened as a US Premiere on Saturday evening, October 14 at the Tinker Street Cinema. The film will be released later this year by arthouse distributor IFC Films. The film tells the story of Jacob Petersen, a man who has dedicated his life to helping street children in Ind...

Friday, October 6----The Woodstock Film Festival will open next Thursday with the East Coast Premiere of the docudrama INFAMOUS, the highly ancticipated biopic of legendary writer Truman Capote. The film, which stars British actor Toby Jones in a remarkable incarnation of the capricious Capote, was written and directed by UK director Douglas McGrath (NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, EMMA). The film, which also stars Sandra Bullock, Daniel Craig, Peter Bogdanovich, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, Gwyneth Paltrow,...

The Hippie Ethos In Woodstock, New York Thursday, October 5---The town of Woodstock, New York, set in the majestic Catskill Mountain region of New York's Hudson Valley, is often confused with the famous rock concert that defined the 1960s. The actual Woodstock Music and Arts Festival happened 30 miles away in Bethel, NY. However, the modern Woodstock is a place where millionaires, artists, bohemians and left-over hippies rub shoulders in an eclectic atmosphere of individualism, personal express...