VIMooZ

The American Documentary Film Festival (AmDocs) is launching its 2015 Call for Entries, inviting documentary filmmakers around the world to submit feature-length documentaries, documentary shorts, and animated shorts. 

Named “One of the World’s Top 25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee,” by MovieMaker magazine in 2013, and then “One of the World’s Five Coolest Documentary Film Festivals,” by the same publication later that year, AmDocs takes place in the beautiful resort community of Palm Springs, California. Ideally located 90 minutes east of Hollywood, this film mecca boasts a favorable viewing audience and a proven track record of supporting independent films. 

RUNNING WILD: THE LIFE OF DAYTON O. HYDE will screen at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, California,  on March 28, 2014.  This cinematic adventure explores the compelling life of a modern day renaissance man and true hero to the earth. Hyde is an old style cowboy and steadfast conservationist who dedicated his life to protecting the wild horses, land, and water of the American West.  RUNNING WILD is a captivating story of determination and accomplishment, featuring wild mustangs running free on Hyde’s breathtaking 13,000-acre Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota, and scenes shot at his beautiful Yamsi Ranch in Oregon and boyhood lake house in Michigan. RUNNING WILD is directed by Emmy Award winner Suzanne Mitchell and is executive produced by two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. The film garnered awards for best documentary at several festivals where it received standing ovations, as audiences were awed and inspired by Hyde’s passion. 

When David Sieveking left home to study filmmaking, he left behind parents who were active, intelligent and involved. Several years later, on a visit home for Christmas, he noticed that his once spirited mother, Gretal, had become somewhat hesitant, and overly forgetful. Shortly after that came the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease – a particularly aggressive case that, over the next four years left Gretal unable to remember many things, unable to care for herself, and unable to be left alone. 

Although Uganda’s President Museveni claimed he was signing the country’s controversial anti-gay bill into law to fight liberal cultural imperialism by the West, the reality is that he may have actually signed the bill into law as a direct result of just the opposite: conservative cultural imperialism by America’s Christian Right. Possible? Academy Award-Winning Director Roger Ross Williams explores exactly that theory in his documentary GOD LOVES UGANDA at the American Documentary Film Festival which opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st, 2014.

The 2014 edition of the American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will screen a number of award-winning international films, including the acclaimed Polish documentary, DEEP LOVE. DEEP LOVE is a story of Dr. Janusz Solarz (Soley), an active economist, researcher and lawyer, and an avid scuba diver. Life for Soley is filled with passion and promise until suddenly, at age 58, he suffers a debilitating stroke that leaves him partially paralyzed and unable to communicate clearly. Rehabilitation and recovery proves difficult, despite the assistance of his partner, Asia, a water therapist who works with disabled children, and is an active diver herself. Over the course of three years, Soley begins to regain some mobility, but not enough to reclaim his passion for diving – especially not his big dream of returning to one of the most dangerous diving locations on earth – the perilous Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt.

When it opens in Palm Springs, California, on March 27th, 2014, the American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will begin a five five day schedule of over 120 documentary films from around the world. That schedule includes a record number of theatrical premieres – fifteen World Premieres, twenty-five North American Premieres and twenty US premieres. 

The 2014 American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will screen THE LAST ONE – a look at the AIDS quilt and those who wove the panels. In the eighties and nineties, as AIDS ravaged the United States gay community, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was born out of a public battle for treatment and understanding. THE LAST ONE is a feature-length documentary tracing its history as an international art project and the role it continues to play as a response to a disease that still imperils vulnerable communities around the world.

Oliver Stone

The American Documentary Film Festival taking place March 27 to 31, 2014 in Coachella Valley, California, announced an impressive number of award-winning filmmakers planning on attending this year’s festival, including several Oscar-winning Directors. Oliver Stone, 3 time Oscar-winner and 2012 AmDocs career achievement award recipient, leads an impressive array of filmmakers planning to attend, including John Avildsen (Best Director Oscar: Rocky), Oscar-winner Roger Ross Williams, 2 time Oscar winner, Canadian filmmaker, Malcolm Clarke, as well as Canadian filmmaker Chris Landreth (Oscar winner for animation). Other award-winning international filmmakers include Robert Kirchhoff (Slovakia),  Iben Haahr Andersen (Denmark), Alex Breuer (Austria),  Laurent Haase (France), and Jan P. MatuszyŸski (Poland).

Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing

GLORIA VICTORIA, the 2014 Academy Award® finalist in the Best Animated Short category, and Emmy® Award- winning director Julie Cohen’s new film, I LIVE TO SING will open the the American Documentary Film Festival scheduled to take place March 27, 2014 and run through March 31, 2014 in Palm Springs, CA.