The 2013 Maryland Film Festival will kick off on Wednesday, May 8th, with an Opening Night Shorts program, described by the festival as “an eclectic mix of work from an extremely talented array of filmmakers.” Featured short films include Francis Bodomo’s Boneshaker, a drama about an African family lost in rural Alabama starring Academy Award nominated Quvenzhané Wallis, last seen in Beasts of the Southern Wild. The 2013 Maryland Film Festival runs May 8-12 in downtown Baltimore.
POV (Point of View) kicks off its 26th season on PBS on Monday, June 24, 2013 with Christine Turner’s Homegoings, and closes Sept. 23, 2013, with Samantha Buck’s Best Kept Secret. Homegoings “takes viewers inside African-American funerals through the heart and soul of a man who has devoted his life to caring for the departed and their loved ones.” Best Kept Secret, is described as a film about a Newark, N.J. teacher fighting the system to get her autistic students the help they desperately need.
The narrative The Lobbyists and the documentary (T)ERROR were tonight announced the winners of the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) 10th Annual Tribeca All Access (TAA) Creative Promise Awards. Each project received $10,000 to help bring their films to completion. The Institute also announced this year’s TAA alumni grants and fellowships during the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival. The grants, all presented at tonight’s event, total over $90,000 in funds.
Newton’s Laws of Emotion was just announced as the winner of the first ever Tribeca Film Institute (TFI)Sloan Filmmaker Prize. The project will receive a $10,000 cash prize that will be used to help bring the film closer to completion.
Director, producer Steven Spielberg will preside this year over ‘jury of his peers’ at the 66th Festival de Cannes aka Cannes Film Festival. Vidya Balan (Indian actress), Naomi Kawase (Japanese director), Nicole Kidman (Australian actress/producer), Lynne Ramsay (British scriptwriter/director/producer), Daniel Auteuil (French actor/director), Ang Lee (Taiwanese director/producer/scriptwriter), Cristian Mungiu (Romanian scriptwriter/director/producer), and Christoph Waltz (Austrian Actor) will help decide the winning films in competition at the festival. The winning films and awards including the biggest award – the Palme d’Or, will be announced during the Closing Ceremony on May 26th, 2013. Images: clockwise from top […]
GREETINGS FROM TIM BUCKLEY, starring Penn Badgley of Gossip Girl, Imogen Poots and an Official Selection of 2012 Toronto Film Festival will open in New York and Los Angeles on May 3, 2013.
Directed by Daniel Algrant and co-starring Ben Rosenfeld, Frank Wood, GREETINGS FROM TIM BUCKLEY follows the journey of Jeff Buckley grappling with the legacy of his late musician father, Tim, leading up to and culminating with his legendary 1991 performance of his father’s songs”
Barbra Streisand attended the 40th Anniversary Chaplin Award Gala at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on April 22, 2013 in New York City where she was honored for her film career with the 40th annual Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Lakeshorts International Short Film Festival, spearheaded by Canadian actress, Michelle Nolden (Saving Hope, Nikita, Republic of Doyle) and film and television producer, Chris Szarka (Rent-A-Goalie, The Rawside of…) will celebrate its third year at the Assembly Hall in Toronto on May 3 and 4, 2013. Films screening at the festival include Hatch (pictured above), described as “A newborn’s destiny hangs in the balance, as grownups come to terms with what they cannot have.”
Cine Las Americas announced the award winners for the 16th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, which took place on April 16 to 21, 2013, in Austin, Texas. The Ecuadorian film MEJOR NO HABLAR DE CIERTAS COSAS (PORCELAIN HORSE) won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature and YOUNG LAKOTA won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature. YOUNG LAKOTA also won the Audience Award for Documentary Feature.
16th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival Award Winners:
by Joseph Williamson
Real, old fashioned adventurers are somewhat scarce in this day and age – there may be scientific expeditions in Antarctica, but the romance of Henry Morton Stanley stomping through the Congo isn’t quite as attainable in 2013. Safaris and treks through the Amazon are all well and good, but truly uncharted and dangerous exploration is getting harder to manage in the decade of Google Maps.
Not so in 1947. Enter Thor Heyerdahl, intrepid ethnographer – a man with a big idea, but no publisher willing to take him on. Desperately seeking conclusive proof of his theory – that Polynesia was first settled by ancient South Americans – he decides to take the four and a half thousand mile voyage across the Pacific Ocean himself. Furthermore, for this demonstration to have any validity at all, it must be done in the exact manner of the original settlers: a balsa wood raft, a large wooden oar as a rudder, and constructed with simple rope in lieu of stronger materials. The only concession to modernity is a two way radio.
And there is still more. Maryland Film Festival added eight more feature films to the 2013 Festival, including filmmaker John Waters’ selection, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Faith (pictured above). Each year Waters selects one favorite film to present to MFF audiences. In addition to Paradise: Faith, MFF 2013 will screen all three films in Seidl’s new Paradise trilogy: Paradise: Faith, Paradise: Hope, and Paradise: Love.
MFF 2013 will take place May 8-12 in downtown Baltimore.
The newly added films to the 2013 Maryland Film Festival are:
Screenwriter Petter Skavlan, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein Company Harvey Weinstein, actor Pal Hagen, directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning and the film subject’s grandson Olav Heyerdahl appear on the “Kon-Tiki” Raft for The Weinstein Company Movie “KON-TIKI” on April 22, 2013 in New York City.
KON-TIKI opens in theaters Friday, April 26th, 2013