OFFICIAL PRESENTATION OF THE 54TH SAN SEBASTIAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALThis year’s Festival will pay homage to the career of fabulous creator Ernst Lubitsch, dedicating its thematic retrospective to emigration, a harsh reality of our time repeatedly appearing in other epochs and always energetically reflected by the cinema.At its presentation on 12th May, the Festival unveiled its 54th official poster in addition to the posters representing the different sections. A meeting with friends fr...

Al Milgrom, founding father (along with Mpls. Businessman Tim Grady) of this most eclectic of hinterland festivals, has been waging a relentless battle for nearly two and a half decades to introduce off-beat celluloid Americana and quality foreign film Esotrica into this Land of Sky Blue Waters, Pillsbury flour silos and (ulp) Norveegin farmers. Says Dr. Milgom: "Sometimes it's a hard sell, but we feel it's our cultural duty to cinema-educate these plain(s) folk and show them that there's mor...

PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALUNVEILS 2006 LINE-UP Over 125 Films Headline April 20 - 28 Event The Palm Beach International Film Festival Executive Director Randi Emerman announced today the film line-up for the 11th annual event to be held April 20 – 28. Over a 125 films will screen at this years event, including features, documentaries and shorts. The eight-day Fest will introduce 18 world premieres, 3 U.S. premieres and 59 Florida premieres, including 31 international films.Opening...

14TH PORTLAND JEWISH FILM FESTIVALSAT JAN 14 7 PM WHITSELL AUDITORIUMSUN JAN 15 4 PM GUILD THEATRELIVE AND BECOMEFRANCE/ISRAEL 2005DIRECTOR: RADU MILHAILEANUWinner of (cheering) Audience Awards at the Berlin and Vancouver International Film Festival, LIVE AND BECOME is an epic, emotional story of one boy's chance survival amidst the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s. A mother conspires to place her nine-year-old, non-Jewish son with a group of Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) bound for Israel as par...

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...

A winner of 13 Australian “Oscars,” a French thriller that played in the prestigious closing night slot at the Toronto and New York Film Festivals, and the latest documentary from the woman who took the doc form into the mainstream are among the more than 50 narrative, documentary and short films to be screened at the 2005 HIGH FALLS FILM FESTIVAL, which takes place in Rochester, NY, November 9-13. High Falls is a festival with a difference – its mission. Susan B. Anthony lived in Roches...

GDYNIA -- BLUES ON THE BALTICAlex Deleon, Sept. 15Although there are no international or Hollywood stars prancing around the premises there are enough Polish film celebrities and industry VIPs in attendance, and the 30th Jubilee mood is so high that the local papers have picked up the catch-phrase "Cannes on the Baltic". One reason for the upbeat atmosphere is the announcement by festival artistic director Maceij Karpinski, that after many years of quibbling and struggling the new Polish Cinema...

"Alles auf Zucker" (Go for Zucker: An Unorthodox Comedy), the first Jewish comedy made in Germany since World War II, won "Lola" awards for best film, best director and best actor, as well as top honors for screenwriting, costume and music.The film, which cost just 1.5 million euros has been a surprise box office hit, beat the blockbuster "Der Untergang" (Downfall), about Hitler's final days, which went home empty-handed."I just beat Hitler!...It's just great that a little Communist guy of Jewis...

2ND WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL (MAY 19 -- 25, 2005)A ROUSING SUCCESSBy Alex Deleon-PevnyThe second convening of the new International Jewish Film Festival in Warsaw proved to be an even bigger success than the first edition a year ago. The official Polish designation, directly translated, comes out as "The Warsaw International Film Festival on Jewish Motifs" which seems to leave room for a broad interpretation of just what it is that counts as a "Jewish film". Indeed, as we shall see, some of ...

INDEPENDENT FILM TANGO IN BUENOS AIRESBuenos Aires---Establishing a reputation as the Sundance of South America, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema is now in full swing, with an ambitious program of international discoveries and thoughtful retrospectives. But this is not the Sundance of glamour, glitz and goody bags. The Festival is more like the Sundance of ten years ago....a more intimate, less glossy affair where the film faithful come to uncover new talents and abs...

CALENDRIER DES EVENEMENTS MIPDOC 2005 & MIPTV featuring MILIA 2005MIPDOC 2005 9–10 avrilCONFERENCE MIPDOCLE SHOWCASE DES PROGRAMMATEURSModérateur : Gary Lico, President / CEO, Cable Ready Corporation (USA)Intervenants :. Andy Halper, Senior Producer, Thirteen/WNET (USA). Fabrice Puchault, Programme Adviser, Documentary Unit, France3 (France). Ian Russell, Dept. Controller for News, CA & Documentaries, Five (GB). Janet H. Vissering, Senior Vice President, Strategic Development/CoFinance, Natio...

April is the Cruellest Month, or, Genocide African style, and a Shadowy Russian View of Emperor HirohitoAs the Berlin festival enters the home stretch political films and political biopics continue to score strongly. "The Sun"(‘Solntze’) by Alexander Sukorov provides a very dark Russian view of Japanese Emperor Hirohito during the crucial final days of the war and the immediate postwar days during which the descendant of the Sun God had to come to grips with his essential non-Godhood and wa...

POLITICAL FILMS SETTING PACE IN BERLINWhereas last year it was all Hollywood glamour and glitz with such blockbusters as "Cold Mountain", "Monsters" and many more topping the bill, this year political films and films about famous political figures are gathering most of the attention. The hot ticket so far has been German competition entry "Sophie Scholl - The final Days" which takes up the case of a young lady who protested openly against certain actions of the Nazi regime, was subjected to a s...

The 2005 DIY Convention: Do It Yourself in Film, Music & Books kicks off its six-day festival of national and regional independent music acts and films beginning Monday.The performances are part of the fifth annual festival and convention, which celebrates creating, promoting, protecting and distributing independent film, music and books. The DIY Convention will be capped with two days of panels and workshops on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.Keynoting the conference portion ...

FRITZ LANG’S “SPIONE”, 1929, RESTOREDA major event of the current London Film Festival was a showing of a listening, newly restored print of Fritz Lang’s 1929 “SPIONE” (Spies). Appearing on the cusp of the sound era this was one of the final monuments of the silent cinema. The film is, to some degree, a reworking of Lang’s earlier “Dr. Mabuse", and is an extremely fanciful espionage story, apparently set in a mythological Czechoslovakia, with Japanese, German and British agents f...

In the restored prints section a group of four early Chaplin shorts, all from the year 1914, were shown with live piano accompaniment. These restorations were made with the cooperation of film archives and collections all over the world and, presumably, show the films in a condition as close as it is possible to achieve, to the form in which audiences saw them ninety years ago. Even the printed inter-titles have been reconstructed, presumably, as originally shown. These films were all made at ...

New and old european classics on view in Turkey with the "European Film Festival On Wheels" – Izmir, Turkey. With Turkey now bucking for entry into the EU (European Union) this travelling selection of carefully culled European films -- Features and Shorts, old and new -- is a most significant cinematic and cultural event in this dynamic country of 65 million, stretching west to east, from the Aegean Sea to the Caucasus, north to south, from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Founder...

CLEVELAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL TO PRESENT CULTURAL JOURNEYS WORLD CELEBRATION EVENT Saturday, March 27, 9:00 pm to 1:00 am At Colonial Marketplace, ARTcade (Enter at 503 Prospect Ave.) Founded in 1977, the Cleveland International Film Festival is the premier film event in the region. For eleven days every March, the Film Festival presents a full survey of contemporary filmmaking from around the world. Close to 90 feature films and more than 70 short subjects from over 50 countries are s...

WINNERS FROM OVER 25 COUNTRIES HONORED AT THE HUGOS The Chicago International Television Competition announced the winners of its 40th Annual Hugo Awards at Park West this evening. Ten different countries won awards in this year’s competition, with Silver Hugos being awarded to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Slovakia. “This is truly an international event,” said Founder and Artistic Director Michael Kutza. “With hundreds of excellent entries, the jury decisions were extremely diffic...

SUTHERLAND TROPHY SHORTLIST ANNOUNCEDA shortlist of three titles in competition for the British Film Institute (bfi) Sutherland Trophy was announced today (4 November), selected by a jury representing the film and entertainment worlds.The shortlist, chosen from twelve nominated titles, comprises No Rest for the Brave, a dreamlike coming-of-age odyssey from French director Alain Guiraudie; Osama, the first feature from post-Taliban Afghanistan directed by Siddiq Barmak; and Reconstruction, an exp...