By Liza Foreman Now entering its sixth year,TPG (Tokyo Project Gathering), an international co-production market organizedby METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) and UNIJAPAN, is presenting28 films this year up from 25 in 2009, during TIFFCOM, the market arm of theTokyo International Film Festival.“More and more inspiringprojects were submitted this year, and thus we selected in total of 28projects, which was increased from 25 projects from last year,” the festivalsaid in a statem...

The 26th International Short Film Festival Berlin will be held from the 16th to the 21st of November 2010. Boasting 6.00 entries from 110 countries, 450 shortfilms, 50 programs and an expected audience of 13,000, the International Short Film Festival is the greatest of its kind in Berlin and a significant cultural institution. ‘For one whole film-filled week, interfilm offers a cinematic kaleidoscope comprising six competition categories, two foreign focuses, numerous special programs and plen...

 By Liza Foreman By the end of day one, the Tokyo International Film Festival (23-31 October, 2010) was in full swing.Throngs of fans gathered to witness arrivals at the green carpet for openingnight. But by the next day it was down to business with TIFF head Tom Yoda holding a discussion with journalists about the work Japan has to do to catchup with the American content business which Yoda estimated to be five times its size. Still, business and culturego hand in hand at he festival. Cultura...

If you always wanted to explore the Himalayas, you now need to be in New York City's Greenwich Village, the cultural heart of Manhattan. The Quad Cinema is running the Himalaya Film Festival from Friday, October 22 till 28. The festival is a celebration of films featuring the Himalayan region and its captivating people, culture, nature and politics: a virtual opportunity to experience what inspires the people living on top of the world. The Himalaya Film Festival offers a fascinating selection o...

The SIGNIS-WACC Human Rights Award 2010 has been given to the documentary The Garden at the End of the World, directed by Australian film-maker Gary Caganoff.The film explores the legacy of devastation and trauma in Afghanistan and illustrates the tragic consequences of war and the widespread hunger, homelessness and lawlessness that it causes. In particular, it shows the impact on the lives of widows and orphans, who now number tens of thousands.The Garden at the End of the World follows the wo...

Enriching the American vision of Israeli life and culture through the powerful medium of film, the Israel Film Festival has definitively become the largest showcase of Israeli films in the United States. 2010 marks the 25th anniversary of this much acclaimed Israeli showcase that celebrates a quarter-century of Israeli cinema in the United States, and today the film festival announced its most dynamic program since its founding. Encompassing over 30 titles, including award winning features, do...

  During this closing weekend of the International Reykjavik Film Festival, the most talked about film at the festival will be shown in sold out theaters, the documentary When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun (2010) by director Dirk Simon. When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun is the new controversial film about China's ongoing occupation of Tibet. Over the past seven years, Dirk Simon shot 800 hours of film between India, Beijing and Tibet depicting the seemingly never ending content...

13TH ARPA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN L.A."AGHET, a German View of a Turkish Genocide"by Alex Deleon, for ARPA is the name of the river that flows through Yerevan, the capital of the free Armenian Republic, which until 1991 was part of the former Soviet Union. Consequently, it is not surprising that an international film festival so-named is primarily (although not entirely) concerned with the presentation of films from Armenia, films dealing with Armenian topics, and/or films made by Armen...

    SEE INTERVIEW WITH DIRK SIMON HERE: http://www.fest21.com/en/blog/vanessa_mcmahon/when_the_dragon_swallowed_the_sun     REYKJAVIK RIFF PRESS RELEASE BELOW: DRAGON SWALLOWS MOVIE: CHINA PUSHES ICELAND TO SUPPRESS TIBET FILM China puts pressure on Iceland to suppress the documentary “When the Dragon Swallowed the Sun” at the International Reykjavik Film Festival, which opened this Thursday.   The f...

Selection Committee Announcement Kamran Shirdel (Head of Film Selection Committee)DocumentarianConsidered a pioneer of Iran's NEW cinema. Born in born 1939 in Tehran, he studied architecture, urbanism, and design at the University of Rome and film direction at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia of Rome. After graduating in 1964, he worked as an assistant director with John Huston on The Bible before making his diploma film, Gli Specchi (The Mirrors), in Rome. He returned to Iran and star...

  Premiering here at the Montreal World Film Festival in the same week that saw U.S. President Barack Obama deliver a television address announcing the end of combat operations by the U.S. military in Iraq, the timing could not be better for the new American documentary film CAMP UNITY.   After more than seven years of bloody combat, the American role in Iraq has shifted to one of helping build a solid democracy from the ruins of a devastated nation. What role the 50,000 U....

Mohamed Al-Daradji's SON OF BABYLON (NPP Project 2008) has been chosen as the official closing film of the 30th Netherlands Film Festival. The Dutch/English/Iraqi coproduction tells the story of a boy who, together with his grandmother, goes to search for his father who has never returned from the war. The presentation on 30 September within Utrecht's Cinema Rembrandt will mark the film's Dutch Premiere. SON OF BABYLONMohamed Al-Daradji's SON OF BABYLON (NPP Project 2008) has been chosen as ...

One of my favorite films this year that I couldn't wait to see since first learning about it at the 2010 Taormina Film Festival was The Circle (2009) by the young and up and coming director Nawaf Al-Janahi from Abu Dhabi. Born on the same year and only four days after me, I have to admit my pride to be a '77 aquarian when seeing such greatness. The Circle left me in deep contemplation about life and indeed as soon as it ended, I found myself watching it immediately a second time. Here to speak w...

Banned by the Cambodian authorities, the documentary “Who Killed Chea Vichea?” investigates the 2004 assassination of labor leader Chea Vichea. As president of the Free Trade Union, Cambodia’s largest labor organization, Vichea was widely admired for his tireless fight to increase wages and improve working conditions for his members. It was a dangerous job which often brought him into conflict with powerful people and institutions, but despite numerous beatings, ...

The awards for the 2010 Open Doors Factory, the Festival’s co-production lab that is organised with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), were announced on Tuesday August 10. The 2010 session was devoted to cinema from Central Asia. 12 projects, selected out of 114 applications from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, participated in the Open Doors Factory, organised with the collab...

New York: 2010 Asian American International Film Festival: New Films from TaiwanVirtually all Southeast Asian film making countries were represented at the 33rd edition of the festival organized by the non-profit New York based Asian CineVision. Held from July 15-24 in four central Manhattan locations the selections focused on independent films and ranged from a presentation of a collection of short films by emerging film directors from Malaysia to a special program on the New Taiwanese Cinema....

CAMERADO (www.camerado.com), an innovative production and media group working in Asia, has just wrapped the 1st edition of the BANGKOK INDIEFEST (www.bangkokfest.com), the first international film event to take place in Bangkok since the end of the 'Red Shirt' Protests. An excerpt from a message to participating filmmakers reveals the incredible challenges involved in producing this year's event: "Just a little over two months ago, the 'Red Shirt' protest situation here in Bangkok...

  Moving into its final 5 days, the Locarno Film Festival, set in the beautiful mountain city in southern Switzerland, has announced its first set of awards for its 65th edition. The awards for the 2010 Open Doors Factory, the Festival’s co-production lab that is organised with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), were announced on Tuesday, August 10. The 2010 session was devoted to cinema from...