"Film festivals for the LGBT community are not just about cinema”, Lesli Klainberg, NewFest’s Executive Director commented in a phone interview. “They have always functioned as community building events where like-minded audiences can commune in the presence of filmmakers in a shared experience.” This cinematic sharing begins later this week as NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Film  Festival kicks off an ambitious season of films currently playin...

NewFest (www.NewFest.org), the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender film festival is coming to locations across the city, July 21-28. The festival will open and close at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and will be headquartered throughout the week at Chelsea's SVA Theater and Cinema Village. Special satellite screenings will be held at The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side, and Harlem Stage. Pri...

• MEETINGS ON THE BRIDGE START Meetings on the Bridge, the sixth of which will take place this year, aims to create a platform for the cinema industry to meet. It brings together producers, directors, scriptwriters, and industry representatives from both Europe and Turkey, giving filmmakers a chance to do their projects’ first international presentation and creating a common ground for co-productions. The first meeting will take place at 9.30 in the French Palace. The meeting for Tu...

• COMPETITIONS KICK OFF The screening of films that participate in the Festival’s National and International competitions will start. The exciting race for Golden Tulips will begin with the arrival of jury members in Istanbul. • FROM FICTION TO FILM The film adaptation of Orhan Kemal’s 72nd Ward, which takes as its subject the lives of prison inmates in 1940s, full of misery and pain, is part of the National Competition line-up. It will be screened at 13.30 in Atlas. Follo...

• LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871) STARTS! One of the Festival’s most anticipated films, La Commune (Paris, 1871) lasts 345 minutes and reenacts history. The film will be shown in Pera in three installments at 11.00, 13.30, and 16.00. The screening will be attended by the son of the film’s director Peter Watkins, its editor and casting director Patrick Watkins.   • FROM THE KIRGHIZ CINEMA Kirghiz director Aktan Arym Kubat draws a funny and touching portrait of small-town ...

The Hamptons International Film Festival will host its 9th annual Screenwriters’ Lab cosponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation this April 3 – 5 in East Hampton, NY. Over the course of one long weekend, emerging screenwriters will have the opportunity to meet one-on-one each day with established screenwriting mentors who will advise them on how to develop their scripts and move their projects closer to production. Within this supportive environment, the screenwriters are encouraged to tak...