Posted by editor@vimooz.com on February 27, 2009 under Black Maria Film Festival, Cannes Film Festival, FESPACO Pan-African Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, Philadelphia Film Festival (Philly Fest), Philadelphia QFest, True/False Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival | 
2009 Harlem International Film Festival, February 26 thru March 1st
The 2009 Harlem International Film Festival kicked off last night, and continues thru Sunday, March 1st. This weekend’s screenings take place at the MILLENNIUM, 66 East 4 Street.
Engine Collision Festival
The first-ever Engine Collision Festival will bring together over 100 artists for daily independent film screenings, live performance, music, art and fashion. Headliners include filmmaker David Lynch, who is set to screen a selection of his un-released short films. Jennifer Lynch will also be on hand, reading from her novel “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer.”
This 11-day event, starting last night and running thru March 8 will also give people a last chance to catch “The Engine” in the Hollywood & Vine area, California. Read more …
TLA Entertainment Group and the Philadelphia Film Society Make up
TLA Entertainment Group and the Philadelphia Film Society, which co-present the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, announced this week that they have reconciled their differences and will again be working together.
The two organizations will collaborate on the Philadelphia Film Festival/CineFest, March 26-April 6, and the newly named LGBT event Philadelphia QFest, July 9-19. Read more …
True/False Film Festival
Thursday marked the opening night of the annual True/False Film Festival. For the first time since True/False started six years ago, there were 10
documentaries to see on Thursday night, regarded as the “soft” opening night
for the four-day festival. Tonight, Friday, is considered the kickoff. Read more …
28th annual Black Maria Film Festival, February 28, in Morris Township, New Jersey
The fate of polar bears and the efforts to save them are the subjects of the film ‘Ice Bears of the Beaufort,’ which is on the roster Feb. 28, when the 28th annual Black Maria Film Festival rolls into the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship in Morris Township, New Jersey. From the Arctic Ocean to New York City’s Little Italy, the Black Maria film selections run the gamut in locations and topics, from the medical to the cultural. Read more … [catch the festival when it comes to your city]
Cannes Film Festival Honors Clint Eastwood
Actor, Clint Eastwood accepted a special award from the Cannes Film Festival. Cannes rarely gives awards outside its festival, and Eastwood was appreciative. “I will treasure it for as long as I’m around,” he said. Eastwood won the Cannes Golden Coach award for Mystic River in 2003.
He will soon go to South Africa to begin filming his next project. The movie will be based on Nelson Mandela and his appearance at the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, seen as a turning point in the country’s post-apartheid history. Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman will star in the film. Read more …
Director Ang Lee to head Venice Film Festival Jury
Director Ang Lee, will head the jury for this year’s Venice Film Festival’s prestigious Golden Lion award. The Taiwanese-born director won the award in 2007 for “Lust, Caution,” and in 2005 for “Brokeback Mountain,” for which he also won a best directing Oscar.
This year’s film festival will be held Sept. 2-12. Read more …
FESPACO Pan-African film festival
The 40th anniversary FESPACO Pan-African film festival, showcasing the continent’s wide-ranging cinematic talent kicks off this weekend, February 28 thru March 7th.
Feature films competing for this year’s Etalon d’Or de Yennenga, the “African Oscar” fashioned after the legendary horsewoman founder of Burkina Faso’s biggest ethnic group, range from a superstitious tale of an albino murdered for his head to incest in a poor Afrikaner family in South Africa. Read more …
Posted by editor@vimooz.com on February 24, 2009 under True/False Film Festival |
The True/False Film Festival returns for its sixth edition Feb. 26-March 1, 2009. For four days, downtown Columbia, Missouri is transformed into a small-town Midwestern utopia. Most films come freshly discovered from Sundance, Toronto and other festivals, others appear mysteriously before their official premieres elsewhere. The main venues are the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, the Blue Note, the two-screen Ragtag Cinema, the Forrest Theater at the Tiger Ballroom, as well as Stephens College’s Macklanburg Playhouse and Windsor Auditorium.
The film lineup:
- Afghan Star
- Modern Afghanistan, where the spectre of the Taliban still looms, finds unusual unity in an American Idol-style TV show. Some details remain the same, but no US contestant ever had to deal with death threats for dancing in public.
- At the Edge of the World
- Great adventure and piratical exploits on the high seas, as the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society attempts to take down illegal whaling ships.
- Big River Man
- The incredible-yet-true story of a “superhero” endurance swimmer from Slovenia. Martin Strel aims to swim the entire Amazon River, ostensibly to raise awareness of the perils facing the rainforest. What ensues is a wine-soaked psychedelic rollercoaster a la Apocalypse Now.
- Blood Trail
- Bosnia, 1993 - Experienced war correspondents Richard Parry and Vaughan Smith meet a wannabe photographer named Robert King. They proceed to film him over the next fifteen years, in war zones around the world, creating this fascinating portrait of life as a frontline journalist. Sneak preview.
- Bronx Princess
- A sassy city girl reunites with her father, the chief of a small African village, in this archetypal fish-out-of-water story. (Plays with Lies and Tommy.)
- Burma VJ: Reporting From a Closed Country
- True Life Fund selection. This spine-tingling thriller tracks a clandestine group of video activists as they use whatever means necessary to spotlight Burma’s brutal military junta.
- Carmen Meets Borat
- When the Borat crew came to Glod, Romania, they used people there to stand in for the fictional Kazakhstan. In this rollicking slice-of-life, we meet the real-life residents of Glod, including the forever-dreaming teenager Carmen. Sneak preview.
- Crude
- A behind-the-scenes, David-and-Goliath legal drama in which Ecuadorian Amazon residents pursue justice against Chevron/Texaco for two decades of oil pollution.
- Earth Days
- The director of Guerilla uses stunning archival footage and vivid testimonies by Stewart Brand and others to capture the lead-up to the first Earth Day in 1970.
- Extremities
- A sensational tour of the world, stopping to hang out with gangsters in Poland, shoppers in a vast Chinese mall, blind people in Brazil and coca farmers in Colombia.
- Food, Inc.
- The future of our food is up for grabs, and leading figures such as writer Michael Pollan and farmer Joel Salatin show us the perils and promise of what lies ahead. Sneak preview.
- Forgetting Dad
- Rick Minnich (Homemade Hillbilly Jam) returns to T/F with a deeply personal doc about his father, who after a car accident became “the new Richard,” a man with no memory of his previous life. Sneak preview.
- Gaea Girls
- A training camp for young Japanese women who want to be pro wrestlers is the setting for this hyper-intense film.
- glastonburykids
- Post-Jackass offspring run amok in a privileged Connecticut suburb.
- I Will Survive
- From displacement to language barriers, these five films illustrate the ways people strive for self-preservation.
- Loot
- One man obsessed with hidden treasure storms the globe seeking lost riches promised by a pair of WWII veterans.
- Love on Delivery
- A Thai marriage pipeline extends from Bangkok to a remote fishing village in Denmark, where hundreds of Thai women have changed the fortunes of previously lonely men. Sneak preview.
- The Mosque in Morgantown
- One woman battles to bring gender equality to her mosque - but some skeptics believe that she’s only interested in the publicity. Sneak preview.
- Necrobusiness
- This richly entertaining true-crime story reveals something’s rotten in Lodz, Poland, as a ghoulish conspiracy is uncovered involving funeral directors and ambulance drivers. Sneak preview.
- No Impact Man, the documentary
- Two city dwellers go cold turkey from civilization, weaning themselves off the power grid, agribusiness and other modern conveniences, while attracting a whirlwind of publicity and an army of naysayers.
- O’er the Land
- Deborah Stratman’s freshly minted experimental classic takes us on a visually stunning tour of men and their toys, from a shooting range to a rural firehouse.
- October Country
- A lush, atmospheric and intimate look at a tender but dysfunctional Upstate New York family. Sneak preview.
- Oscar-Nominated Shorts
- The shadowy figures of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have ordained these four films as the best shorts of the year. We go to India to eradicate polio and cleft lips, meet a dispassionate photographer of doomed men, and relive Martin Luther King’s final days.
- Over the Hills And Far Away
- Rupert and Kristin try to heal their autistic son by making a pilgrimage to Mongolia, where shamanism and horse-back riding combine.
- The Posters Came From the Walls
- Fandom as cult, religion, and force field. Fierce followers of electronic group Depeche Mode - from St. Petersburg to Iran - tell stories of the band as comfort and salvation.
- Pressure Cooker
- A charismatic firecracker of a teacher heats up some of the year’s most entertaining scenes in this warm and thoroughly enjoyable film about a Philadelphia high school culinary arts class.
- Prodigal Sons
- Director Reed returns to her hometown of Missoula, Montana to confront her own past and that of her adopted brother, who could be the grandson of Orson Welles.
- Profiling
- Intimate portraits of a wide range of characters, from a man who’s decided to make his epidermis into a living canvas to a woman who lives in her car.
- Rise Up
- Three ambitious musicians - the a capella R&B singer Kemoy, the privileged Ice, and the ghetto-hardened Turbulence - try to distinguish themselves on the music-mad island of Jamaica. Sneak preview.
- Reporter
- Longtime T/F favorite Eric Daniel Metzgar accompanies the crusading N.Y. Times super-journalist Nicholas Kristof to the Congo, where Kristoff negotiates warlords and treacherous zones to locate the story that will change hearts and minds in the West.
- Rough Aunties
- A gutsy group of South African women help rescue abused children in this intimate masterpiece by 2009’s True Vision Award recipient.
- Secret Screening Gold
- A legal team fights to save a Mexican man, jailed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Secret Screening Green
- The daily travails of two poor Brazilian boys are captured in this gorgeously constructed profile.
- Secret Screening Red
- An intimate, tragic portrait of an Afghani who acted as interpreter, driver and scout for visiting journalists.
- Secret Screening Silver
- The challenges of aging and patriotism mix in this sensitive portrait of three senior citizens, who have met every arriving and departing flight since the beginning of the Iraq War.
- Secret Screening Blue
- At an Oklahoma prison, inmates put pride on the line as they compete in the nation’s most famous prison rodeo.
- Sergio
- This harrowing thriller traces the valiant rescue efforts to save Sergio Vieira De Mello, the brilliant UN commissioner for human rights, victim of a truck bombing in Iraq.
- Sounds Like Teen Spirit
- Fifty years after Europe warred on the battlefield, its competitive spirit is now satisfied by singing contests. With a knack for funny and moving in equal measure, the film tells the story of the 2007 Junior Eurovision competition in which pint-sized talents from Cyprus to the Ukraine sing their hearts out. Sneak preview.
- Waltz With Bashir
- This animated, mind-blowing doc - one of the year’s most celebrated films - is a former Israeli soldier’s attempt to make sense of a massacre of Palestinian civilians, 25 years later.
- War Against the Weak
- This visually stunning history of the American eugenics movement offers stunning revelations about the links between American geneticists and Nazis.
- We Live in Public
- Ondi Timoner’s splashy portrait of Josh Harris, an artist with a flair for social engineering experiments. In 1999, he spearheaded an Orwellian commune in which 100 specimens lived in a New York City basement where their lives were surveilled 24-7.
- The Yes Men Fix The World
- The Yes Men are the culture-jamming dynamic duo of our age. Their latest adventures includes deflating Dow Chemical’s stock price a few billion dollars in a matter of minutes with a well-timed apology to the people of Bhopal, India.
