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LOS ANGELES FILM FEST ANNOUNCES FEATURED FILMS Timur Bekmambetov’s Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, has been selected as the Opening Night Film of the 2008 Los Angeles Film Festival. Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army will close the festival and the Centerpiece Selection is the documentary Anvil. The Festival runs June 19 – 29 in Westwood. For more info, go to: www.lafilmfest.com
ELVIS FILM FEST TICKETS ON SALE JUNE 6 The 5th edition of the Elvis Film Festival, taking place on August 12 in Memphis, will screen King Creole; G.I. Blues; Blue Hawaii; Paradise, Hawaiian Style and Girls! Girls! Girls! For more info, email Karen@malco.com
SILVERDOCS TO HONOR SPIKE LEE SILVERDOCS will honor Spike Lee at the Charles Guggenheim Symposium, during the documentary festival which takes place June 16-23 just outside Washington, DC. The Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated director, producer, writer and actor was selected "for his unyielding commitment to telling stories that challenge America’s consciousness of social injustice, while also celebrating the resilience and power of the human spirit." “Spike Lee is truly a master storyteller; in both his contemporary and historical films, he uncovers the deep truths and unhealed wounds of the American experience while celebrating our resilience and passion,” said AFI President and CEO Bob Gazzale. Lee’s most recent documentary work, the Peabody-winning When the Leves Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006), is considered the documentary of record of the aftermath of Katrina and the courage and tenacity of the people of New Orleans. As part of the Symposium, SILVERDOCS will screen a series of excerpts from Lee’s body of documentary work. Following the screening Lee will be joined on stage by special guests to engage in a discussion of his career. For more info, go to: www.SILVERDOCS.com
BARRY LEVINSON FILM TO CLOSE THE CANNES FILM FESTIVAL Robert De Niro stars as a movie producer in Barry Levinson's What Just Happened?, the Closing Night Film at this year's Festival de Cannes, which runs May 14 – 25 in the south of France. The movie, based on producer Art Linson's memoir of the same name, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The climatic scene in this tale of a hassled producer's woes, takes place at the Festival de Cannes. Among the stars playing themselves in the picture are Bruce Willis and Sean Penn. In other Cannes news, Quentin Tarantino has agreed to be the master class teacher at this year's Festival. (Last year's teacher was Martin Scorsese.) In 1994 Tarantino won the Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or, for Pulp Fiction. In 2004 he chaired the Festival Jury and last year his film Death Proof screened In Competition. As earlier announced, Sean Penn will head this year's jury. For more info, go to: www.festival-Cannes.com
SUNDANCE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES PROJECTS FOR 2008 SUMMER THEATRE LAB Seven projects from emerging and established theatre artists have been selected from nearly 600 submissions to participate in the 2008 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab to be held July 7-27, 2008 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. Under the stewardship of Sundance Institute Theatre Program Artistic Director Philip Himberg, the seven playwrights selected for this year's residency are Annie Baker, Kirsten Greenidge, Lisa Kron, Dan LeFranc, Darci Picoult, Cori Thomas and Sarah Treem. The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab offers writers and directors three full weeks in a creative environment in which to develop new work in a rehearsal setting with actors and support from a staff of dramaturgs. "This Lab, a centerpiece of the Theatre Program’s developmental programming, represents Sundance's commitment to supporting theatre artists by offering them an environment to explore new work," said Himberg. "The genres of writing at this year's Lab range from psychologically based naturalism, to mystery, to a comic romance involving a transgender East Indian and an exploration of the graphic novel onstage. It’s an impressive array of originality and exciting new work surely headed to production.” The writers and directors will work with a respected staff of dramaturgs and creative advisors. For more info, go to: www.sundance.org
HOLLYWOOD FILM FEST ANNOUNCES DATES The Hollywood Film Festival has set October 22 – 27 as the dates for this year's edition. The Festival, now in its 12th year, will take place at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood. For more info, go to: www.hollywoodfilmfestival.com
EDINBURGH FILM FEST MOVES TO JUNE After many years of running in August, this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival will run June 18 – 20. The Edge of Love, John Maybury's film about Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, will be the opening Night Film. Cast members Keira Knightly, Sienna Miller, Matthew Rhys and Cillian Murphy are expected to attend. For more info, go to: www.edfilmfest.org.uk
JACKSON HOLE FILM FEST TO PRESENT GLOBAL INSIGHT SUMMIT The Jackson Hole Film Festival, taking place June 5 – 9, will present the Global Insight Summit in conjunction with the Jackson Hole Film Institute in partnership with the U.N. The program will consist of public panel presentations and opening remarks by the U.N. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. The purpose of the Summit is stated as being, "to explore how the powerful mediums of film and television can be utilized in raising public awareness of global issues and the U.N.'s role in developing solutions and assistance." For more info, go to: www.jacksonholefilmfestival.org
RICHARD GERE AND PAUL VERHOEVEN JOIN JURY OF I'VE SEEN FILMS International Short Film Festival, founded by Rutger Hauer, has announced that the first edition will be held from September 22-26, 2008 in Milan, Italy. The Festival is linked to the online "Tiscali InShort" contest. Richard Gere and Paul Verhoeven will join Ridley Scott, Robert Rodriguez and Maestro Ludovico Einaudi on the jury. For more info, go to: www.icfilms.org or www.rutgerhauer.org/icfilms.
FIRST LATIN AMERICAN POETIC SHORT FILM FESTIVAL The 1st Latin American Poetic Short Film Festival, taking place at the acclaimed Nuyorican Poet's Café, will feature “poetic” short films by Latin American filmmakers. The mission of the festival is to support the emerging independent filmmaker by providing them exposure in the downtown cultural center of Manhattan's lower eastside. Scheduled for September 2008, the festival defines “poetic film” as: "a combination of expressive image and sound. It is original and personal. It need not be about poetry and yet, it can be set to poetry. It is lyrical, dreamlike, expresses new ideas, evokes emotion, triggers thought and heightens the spirit." For more info, go to: www.lapsff.com.
27TH INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL FILM FESTIVAL
The 27th Istanbul International Film Festival opened with the premiere of Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's Caramel, telling the intertwining stories of five women of different ages frequenting the same beauty parlor in Beirut. Speaking at the gala night, Labaki referred to hers as "a film about women torn between traditional eastern values and western modernism." Caramel, as its title suggests, elegantly hides the bitter undertone of this troublesome conflict under the cheerful ceremonies of waxing, pampering and gossiping. This results in a colorful and bright portrayal of Labaki's Beirut as opposed to the usual wartime setting. The Turkish audience expressed familiarity with the problematic issues reflected in the film, a comment that suggests Labaki's Beirut might as well be their Istanbul, revealing the close social and cultural ties between the two countries. Starting with the opening film, Middle Eastern feature films enthralled festival audiences, including The Summer of '62 by Mehdi Charef, portraying his childhood when Algeria gained independence, and a lonely janitor’s story set in the Amman Airport, Captain Abu Raed by Amin Matalqa, which won the 2008 Sundance World Cinema Audience Award. Documentaries were equally popular this year, paralleling the latest trends in worldwide film festivals. This appetite was sated by the festival’s special section dedicated to documentaries. Highlights from a number of Middle Eastern documentaries included Ran Tal’s Children of the Sun compromising recordings between 1930 and 1970 that shed light on the history of children brought up in kibbutzim (collective farms in Israel). The director, Ran Tal, who grew up in a kibbutz himself, said that his main aim in bringing up this issue was to reflect upon the eldest conflict of all: the conflict between children and parents. Claiming that the kibbutz movement is closer to Zionist ideology than that of European communists, he commented: “The main purpose of the kibbutz movement was to eliminate the neurotism of the bourgeois family. In addition to its success the new system came with its own problems, obviously.” Last year a feature film was shown in the Istanbul Festival reflecting upon these problems: Dror Shaul’s Sweet Mud revealed the dark side of the kibbutz as seen through the eyes of a child. The opportunity to watch these two films over two consecutive years gave festival-goers a chance to have a more complete understanding of this phenomenon. Another Middle Eastern documentary, Parvez Sharma's A Jihad for Love introduced the audience to a number of Muslim gays and their struggle for existence despite the harsh criticism they receive from their families and oppressive society. A second theme in the documentary section was, inevitably, civil war and its ramifications. The visually captivating War/Dance by Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine is set in a refugee camp in Uganda and follows the individual stories of three school children preparing for a national music and dance competition. War/Dance received the 2007 Sundance Documentary Directing and Woodstock Audience Awards. Estela Bravo’s Who am I? about the children who were “disappeared” during Argentina’s junta, and Santa Fe Street by Carmen Castillo set in the Santiago suburbs in Chile were the other highlights of this section. The festival also featured three special sections devoted to directors Milos Forman, Alexander Petrov and Marc Caro, who also gave a master class in Istanbul. Other sections included “Mined Zone,” introducing extraordinary films with groundbreaking techniques or challenging narratives, “Young Masters” featured debut or second films by directors who received international critical acclaim, “’68 and Its Heritage” commemorated revolutionary events and films that changed world history, and “American Independents” were those US films that stood in contrast to Hollywood and the mainstream. The jury and audience award-winners of the 27th International Istanbul Film Festival were announced at the festival's closing Awards Ceremony. The films receiving the Golden Tulip and Special Jury Awards were selected by distinguished jury members Michael Ballhaus, Joan Dupont, Selim Eyübo?lu; Bent Hamer, Pawel Pawlikowski, and Kirsi Tykkilainen from films screening in the International Competition. Yumurta – Egg by the Turkish director Semih Kaplanoglu, which made its world premiere at Cannes this year, was awarded the Golden Tulip Best International Film Award. Egg follows the homecoming of a melancholic poet on his journey from Istanbul to the small village he grew up in for his mother’s funeral. Egg is the first part in a trilogy, which aspires to create a subtle and poetic narrative in portraying the rural life at its intrinsically serene pace. This film can be classified in the new school of Turkish cinema dealing with the estrangement of the individual in a sincere and unaffected way, pioneered by Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Uzak - Distant. The Jury Special Award for the Best International Film went to German Director Dennis Gansel’s Die Welle - The Wave. French director Alain Corneau, presenting the trophy, expressed that The Wave received the Special Jury Prize "for the powerful and gripping way in which it shows how our need for purpose and community can be manipulated to disastrous effect." The National Awards jury decided to give the Best Turkish Film Award to Seyfi Teoman’s Tatil Kitabi – Summer Book, which portrayed the minor tensions developing over the summer holiday between the members of a provincial family from the south coast of Turkey. According to jury members, Teoman’s debut film “conveys hope, tackling the theme of innocence with a cinematographic narrative and a humane approach.” Summer Book was also featured at the forum section of Berlinale this year, receiving great critical acclaim. This year’s Best Turkish Director Award was given to Dervis Zaim for his minimalist feature Nokta - Dot. Dot recounts the tale of a calligraphy apprentice who is tormented by the guilt of stealing a rare 13th century copy of the Quran and accidentally getting involved in murder. The traditional Turkish art of exquisite writing determines both the cinematic language and the plot of the film, structured as a single, fluid shot. Now in its second year, The European Council Film Award (FACE) was given to a film in the “Human Rights in Cinema” section of the festival. This year’s FACE was awarded to Chinese director Li Yang’s Blind Mountain “for its powerful message against all violence, no matter its form, against women all over the world.” This year’s FIBRESCI (The International Federation of Film Critics) award was given to Belgian Nic Balthazar’s debut film Ben X inspired by a true story. Ben X tells of an autistic teenager bullied at school who takes refuge in an imaginary second life inside a computerized role playing game.
CALL FOR ENTRIES Ongoing Deadlines Chicago City Limits Comedy Film Fest D.Film Digital Film Festival Hip Hop Film Fest Hollywood Shorts PEC Independent Film Championship May 15 ATA Film and Video Festival Rome International Film Festival May 16 HollyShorts Film Festival May 31 One Minute Film & Video Festival Aarau Poppy Jasper Film Festival June 2 San Diego Film Festival June 5 Austin Film Festival June 6 Raindance Film Festival June 9 Anonimul International Independent Film Festival June 10 Ourense International Film Festival June 13 SXSWclick June 14 Document 6: International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival June 15 Heartland Film Festival June 30 Canadian International Annual Film Festival (CIAFF) Zurich Film Festival July 1 Downbeach Film Festival July 15 Haydenfilms4.0 Film Festival Screamfest Horror Film Festival Starz Denver Film Festival July 18 BendFilm Festival August 11 Films From the South Festival September 26 Funchal International Film Festival - Madeira
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