The International Film Festival Rotterdam has appointed Bianca Taal as programmer for its upcoming edition. Bianca will oversee the 2012 selection of feature length films from Greece, Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Arab world. She is also a member of the CineMart Selection Committee. After finishing her Film and Television Studies at the University of Utrecht, Bianca Taal started working with the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2001 as a staff member of the Hubert […]
Reeling 2011: The 30th Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, running November 3-12, kicks off its 10-day festival with the Opening Night Gala presentation of The Wise Kids by Chicago-based filmmaker Stephen Cone, to be held at the Music Box Theatre on Thursday, November 3. The Wise Kids is a coming-of-age drama set in the South, featuring a “brilliant cast of young actors” (Variety). The film has garnered Best Feature awards at Outfest and Newfest (the Los Angeles and New York gay film festivals).
Reeling closes on Saturday, November 12, at the Portage Theater with dual closing night selections: Lorene Machado’s Margaret Cho performance film, Cho Dependent(6:00 pm) and Casper Andreas’ satire on “making it” in Hollywood, Going Down in La-La Land (9:30 pm).
Documentaries take center stage this year with three centerpiece films. On Saturday, November 5, Reeling presents Wish Me Away, about country music sensation Chely Wright’s struggle and fears around publicly coming out. The film has already won best documentary awards at the Los Angeles Film Festival and Frameline (San Francisco’s gay film festival). Fresh from its New York Film Festival world premiere, Vito is about activist and author of The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo. The film screens on Monday, November 7 (on the anniversary of Russo’s death from AIDS). Sundance documentary We Were Here is a moving look back at the onset of the HIV epidemic 30 years ago at its epicenter, San Francisco, screening on Sunday, November 6.
The 25th Leeds International Film Festival runs November 3 – November 20, 2011, today announced that Steve MQueen’s Shame will screen at the Closing Gala on Friday 18th November, and also released it full Official Selection program. Directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender, Shame follows Brendan (Fassbender) who plans his life around relentless sexual encounters until a visit from his wayward sister forces him to reassess his priorities. The festival will kick off […]
The Southwest Premiere of Better Than Something: Jay Reatard is the opening event. Directed by Alex Hammond & Ian Markiewicz, the film is described as Tirelessly devoting his entire life to music, Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr, better known as Jay Reatard, has become a garage rock icon, having created a massive discography spread out over dozens of singles, EPs, and full-length albums. A relentless live performer, Jay toured the world with dozens of bands including The Pixies, Spoon, Beck and many more. A devoted – and oftentimes notorious – fixture in his hometown of Memphis, Jay celebrated and continued the city’s long-standing history of American music. In BETTER THAN SOMETHING, filmmakers Alex Hammond and Ian Markiewicz present an intimate portrait, captured just months before Jay’s untimely passing, which brings us incredibly close to Jay and his complicated punk-rock world.
The festival’s 2011 film lineup include a list of documentary films including Bloodied But Unbowed,Kumaré, Barbershop Punk, Color Me Obsessed: A film about The Replacements, Blood, Sweat + Vinyl: DIY in the 21st Century and The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi. Narrative features include the Southwest Premiere of the indie comedy Pleasant People and the Arizona Premiere of Take Me Home directed by and starring Sam Jaeger of NBC’s Parenthood. Short films, music videos and live music performances are also part of the exciting program slate. {jathumbnail off}
The 55th BFI London Film Festival announced the shortlists and juries for the 2011 Festival Awards, which will take place at LSO St Luke’s on 26 October.
At this year’s ceremony, the BFI will bestow its highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, on Canadian filmmaker David Cronenber and British actor Ralph Fiennes. {jathumbnail off}
The 55th BFI London Film Festival will close on Thursday 27 October with the UK premiere of Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea. Set in post-war Britain, this deeply moving story is an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s classic play. Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz) leads a privileged life in 1950s London as the beautiful wife of high court judge Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale). To the shock of those around her, she walks out of […]
The 55th BFI London Film Festival will open on Wednesday 12 October with the European premiere of 360.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles and with an original screenplay by acclaimed writer Peter Morgan,the film stars Rachel Weisz, Jude Law and Sir Anthony Hopkins.
360 is a modern and stylish kaleidoscope of interconnected love and relationships linking characters from different cities and countries in a vivid, suspenseful and moving tale of contemporary romantic life. Starting in Vienna, the film weaves through Paris, London, Bratislava, Rio, Denver and Phoenix into a single, mesmerising narrative. {jathumbnail off}
The Palo Alto International Film Festival (PAIFF) wrapped up after its inagural four day run, September 29 thru October 2, 2011, with the presentation of the Sallie Gardner awards, including the presentation of the Audience Award to Jennifer Siebel Newson’s documentary “Miss Representation.” The inaugural awards gala featured the presentations of the following awards: Christie Audience Award was presented to Jennifer Siebel Newsom for her documentary “Miss Representation.” Muybridge Award for the Advancement of Art […]
New York’s documentary film festival, DOC NYC, returns for its second year to Greenwich Village, running from November 2-10, 2011. The festival will showcase 107 events, including screenings of 52 feature-length films and 40 shorts as well as 15 doc-related panel discussions. All events will take place at IFC Center, New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts and NYU’s Kimmel Center.
The 3rd Annual Milwaukee Film Festival came to a close on Sunday, October 2nd, and handed out its awards to the top films. The Danish film Nothing’s All Bad took the top prize for fiction films and the documentary Somewhere Between by Linda Goldstein Knowlton took the top prize for documentary films. And the winners are: The Cream City Cinema award for local filmmaking was given to the short film “Don’t Go,” by Michael Hawkins-Burgos. […]
The 2011 Hamptons International Film Festival runs from Thursday, October 13th through Monday, October 17th in East Hampton with additional venues in Southampton, Sag Harbor, Westhampton and Montauk, announce its Southampton opener, Spotlight Films, the World Cinema Section and the films in this year’s Competition.
HIFF will kick-off in Southampton, on Friday, October 14th with The Weinstein Company’s dark comedy Butter starring Jennifer Garner, Olivia Wilde, Ty Burrell, Yara Shahidi, Hugh Jackman and Alicia Silverstone.
The Festival’s Opening Night Film on Thursday, October 13th is the Jason Segel and Susan Sarandon heartwarming comedy Jeff, Who Lives at Home, Closing Night Film is the Cannes Film Festival critics’ darling The Artist and the Centerpiece Film is winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Picture at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Like Crazy.
The full slate for the Festival is listed below.{jathumbnail off}