All eyes are turning to Amsterdam starting today when the the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the largest and most prestigious non-fiction media event in the world, kicks off its 23rd edition. The Festival, which will show nearly 250 films over 11 days, opens with the Dutch documentary POSITION AMONG THE STARS by veteran director Leonard Retel Helmrich. The film, which also competes in the IDFA Competition for Feature Length Documentary, will have its premi...
In anticipation of the Gotham Independent Film Awards, the first significant awards show of the season that has been dubbed the "indie Oscars", the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art will again host public screenings of the five indie nominees in the awards category Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You. As the title suggests, this category is devoted to films that have not yet been seen in theaters and may never find traditional theatrical distribution. The award is part of the i...
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The 25th edition of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival wraps tomorrow night after a record-breaking 28 days of world cinema, special events and tribute evenings. The "official" wrap was on Sunday evening, with the local premiere of CASINO JACK, the final film of director George Hickenlooper, who died last week at the very young age of 47. FLIFF President and CEO Gregory von Hausch dedicated the evening to Hickenlooper, who had been a guest of the Festival sever...
DOC NYC, New York’s first all-documentary festival whose inaugural edition ran from November 3 to 9, announced its award winners on Sunday evening, November 7th, following the Festival's gala screening of TABLOID, the newest film by Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Prizes were awarded by juries in both the “Viewfinders” and “Metropolis” sections, with festival audiences also selecting...
The 25th edition of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival wraps tomorrow night after a record-breaking 28 days of world cinema, special events and tribute evenings. The "official" wrap was on Sunday evening, with the local premiere of CASINO JACK, the final film of director George Hickenlooper, who died last week at the very young age of 47. FLIFF President and CEO Gregory von Hausch dedicated the evening to Hickenlooper, who had been a guest of the Festival several times and was sche...
The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (affectionately known as FLIFF) has become one of the significant regional showcases of world cinema and American indie films. This year, FLIFF is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and despite the economic downturn in south Florida, is pulling out all the stops for a no-holds-barred celluloid celebration. The Festival comes to its nearly four-week climax this coming weekend. The festivities began on October 22 with the premiere of NICE GUY JOH...
Florida has more coastline than it does land mass, so it makes sense that Floridian film audiences love films that accentuate the seas and the creatures that inhabit it. They also have a sense of urgency about the threats to their tropical paradise (as evidenced by the recent Gulf of Mexico oil disaster), so a film like BENEATH THE BLUE appeals to audiences a the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival not only for its underwater photography, its natural beauty but its strong ecolo...
The number of film stars who embodied the golden age of Hollywood who are still here to tell the tale are few and far between. However, this evening the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) will have one such diva in their presence, Miss Jane Russell. The busty, brunette bombshell who set pulses racing in the 1940s and 1950s made only 25 films in a two decade career, but she was one of the iconic figures who defined Hollywood glamour. The discovery of millionaire Howard H...
WOMEN WITHOUT MEN (Shirin Neshat, Iran)
At the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF), which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, bringing international cinema to the attention of local audiences is a major priority. Since most of the films presented will never find traditional theatrical distribution, their showings are FLIFF are (unfortunately) a rare occurrence and maybe the only opportunity for a film to be seen on the big screen. The lack of ...
The 25th edition of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) comes to a climax this weekend. Among the special events is a hommage to English stage and screen actress Claire Bloom, who will receive a Career Achievement Award on Saturday evening for her 60 years in show business. The Festival, centered at the Cinema Paradiso art theater, will screen the actress' film debut, a role for which she won a BAFTA Award as Best Newcomer. She was chosen to play the crippled...
With the British film industry still reeling from proposed massive budget cuts from governmental agencies, there is definitely an atmosphere of uncertainty in the air (which I experienced last week while attending the BFI London Film Festival). However, as far as the British films that will be hitting screens in the coming weeks, it actually appears to be a rather prolific period. This can be interpreted as either a brief celebratory calm before the storm, or just another indicator th...
New York has always had an abundance of film festivals....some grand, some intimate; some broad, some specialized; some populist and some elitist. The city's major film institutions, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Anthology Film Archives, present on-going film series that bring a new mini-festival to film buffs every week of the year. The city's other great film resources, including the Film Forum and the IFC Center,...
The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF) has a reputation for showcasing the best new films from the American indie movement. With the difficulties of the theatrical market and the overall economic slump in the industry, film festivals have become a prime outlet for these kinds of films.
This evening, the breezy comedy SEDUCING CHARLIE BARKER by Amy Glazer, will make its Southeast Premiere at the Festival, followed by a swanky after-party. The film tells the tale ...
The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (affectionately known as FLIFF) has become one of the significant regional showcases of world cinema and American indie films. This year, FLIFF is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and despite the economic downturn in south Florida, is pulling out all the stops for a no-holds-barred celluloid celebration. The Festival comes to its nearly four-week climax this coming weekend. The festivities began on October 22 with the premiere of NICE GUY JOHNN...
The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (affectionately known as FLIFF) has become one of the significant regional showcases of world cinema and American indie films. This year, FLIFF is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and despite the economic downturn in south Florida, is pulling out all the stops for a no-holds-barred celluloid celebration. The Festival comes to its nearly four-week climax this coming weekend.
The festivities began on October ...
The BFI London Film Festival held a special awards ceremony on Wednesday evening to honor films and personalities that have made this year’s LFF the most attended in the Festival’s long history. HOW I ENDED THIS SUMMER by Russian director Alexei Popogrebsky, was awarded the Best Film prize in an unexpected shocker (buzz in the air was that the award would go to perennial Mike Leigh for his film ANOTHER YEAR). The film observes the intense relationship between two men who wor...
Inevitably, any major film festival that occurs in the Fall season has a role play in determining eventual Oscar nominees and even winners. It all starts off at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, where Oscar hopefuls get their debuts, and continues into the season, presumably climaxing with nominations that come at the first of the year. With the Academy’s recent expansion of the Best Picture category to include 10 films, it is very likely that several of the films present...
It was a slightly surreal experience being in London on Wednesday evening and watching the new documentary film LENNONNYC , an account of famed musician and activist John Lennon’s final ten years in his adopted city of New York. While the London Film Festival crowd was certainly enthusiastic about a film that brought them closer to one of their icons, the barbs from Lennon and his wife and artistic collaborator Yoko Ono were far from flattering about John’s native country. ...
Inviting the international press to a special preview screening and delectable lunch at the chic The Hospital Club in Covent Garden, the British Film Institute (BFI), the sponsoring organization of the BFI London Film Festival, wanted to emphasize that they provide outstanding film programs throughout the entire year. The BFI has the goal of educating and entertaining the British public by providing a voice for cultural film, from both its homes shores and overseas, via festival...
One can see that the French Revolution never really ended in the 18th century…..it continues into our own, in terms of style, fashion and the arts. French film is continually re-inventing itself and finding new ways of expression in a 100-year-old art form. At this year’s London Film Festival, a section appropriately entitled French Revolutions showcases some of the cinematic trend-setters of the year.
With the obvious exception of the American and the ...
One can see that the French Revolution never really ended in the 18th century…..it continues into our own, in terms of style, fashion and the arts. French film is continually re-inventing itself and finding new ways of expression in a 100-year-old art form. At this year’s London Film Festival, a section appropriately entitled French Revolutions showcases some of the cinematic trend-setters of the year. With the obvious exception of the American and the British, the French have been one of th...
On Sunday morning, the final day of the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, I had the chance to speak with Olivier Lecot, the French filmmaker who shuttles between Paris and New York to develop and shoot his projects. His film A NY THING, with financing from France, although shot in New York and with the feel of an American indie film, was screened at the Festival earlier this weekend to great acclaim. Lecot, an amiable Parisian with a full command of English, is a one-man transat...
The AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL (AFF), the first film event in Eastern Europe solely devoted to the works of contemporary and classic American cinema, announced the two winners of its Audience Awards, chosen by the public as their favorites among the films presented over the past five days in Wroclaw, Poland. The winner of the American Independent Narrative Audience Award is WINTER’S BONE, the celebrated debut by filmmaker Debra Granik that won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Screenpl...
On Saturday, I sat down with three of the narrative features directors represented in this year’s American Film Festival, the first event in Eastern Europe to be solely devoted to contemporary and classic American cinema. Tim Rutilli, a musician-turned-filmmaker whose alternative rock band Califone has played concert and festival dates around the world, is represented at the Festival by ALL MY FRIENDS ARE FUNERAL SINGERS. Bill Morrison is an award-winning avant-garde filmmaker b...
