Laggies
Seattle International Film Festival‘s annual Women in Cinema, returns, on Wednesday September 18 to 21, 2014, showcasing exceptional films made by women from around the world. The four-day event will feature 12 exciting features and documentaries. Opening Night takes place at the soon-to-be-opened SIFF Cinema Egyptian, and features Seattle favorite Lynn Shelton’s new film Laggies, starring Keira Knightly.
The World Premiere of Laura Poitras’s CITIZENFOUR has been added to the 2014 New York Film Festival’s Main Slate as a Special Presentation on Friday, October 10 at 6PM in Alice Tully Hall. Poitras will also participate in a FREE HBO Directors Dialogues the following day, October 11 at 4PM, at the Walter Reade Theater. CITIZENFOUR will open theatrically on October 24.
New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones said, “Seeing CITIZENFOUR for the first time is an experience I’ll never forget. The film operates on multiple levels at the same time: a character study (of Edward Snowden)… a real-life suspense story… and a chilling exposé. When the lights came up, everyone in the room was alternately stunned, excited, and deeply troubled. A brave documentary, but also a powerful work from a master storyteller.”
Rooftop Films awarded fourteen cash and service grants to alumni filmmakers, including The Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant, which was awarded to director Ana Lily Amirpour. Amirpour was feted at a Piper-Heidsieck champagne reception at the spectacular garden rooftop of John Jay College on Monday in New York City and will receive a monetary grant of $10,000 to help finish her new film, The Bad Batch, the follow up to her critically acclaimed feature film debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.
Black and White
Rome Film Festival announced the titles of the first five English-language films on the lineup of the ninth edition taking place October, 16 to 25, 2014. The program section Cinema d’Oggi (Cinema Today) will present the European Premiere of Time Out of Mind by Oren Moverman (starring Richard Gere and Jena Malone). The Gala section will present the International Premiere of Trash by Stephen Daldry (starring Rooney Mara and Martin Sheen); the International Premiere of Love, Rosie by Christian Ditter (starring Lily Collins and Sam Claflin) and the European Premiere of Black and White by Mike Binder (starring Kevin Costner, Gillian Jacobs, Jennifer Ehle and Octavia Spencer), presented in collaboration with the independent sidebar Alice nella Città. Finally, the European Premiere of Stonehearst Asylum by Brad Anderson (starring Kate Beckinsale, Jim Sturgess, Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine, Brendan Gleeson, and David Thewlis) will be presented in the Mondo Genere (Genre World) section.
The 15th annual deadCENTER Film Festival will take place Wednesday, June 10 through Sunday, June 14, 2015 in downtown Oklahoma City. Filmmakers may submit their films for review now. Films will be selected in the following categories: narrative feature, documentary feature, narrative short, documentary short, animations, student film and Oklahoma film.
Finding Fela
The music documentary program, Sound Vision. returns for the third year, to the 2014 Milwaukee Film Festival, and will feature a lineup of eight outstanding and wide-ranging music documentaries complimented by Soundtrack, a live music series that takes place throughout the Festival at The Hotel Foster.
Blyth Meier, Marketing Director for Milwaukee Film and programmer for Sound Vision is ecstatic about this year’s riveting lineup: “20,000 Days on Earth–about the enigmatic musician, writer and poet Nick Cave–is one I’m incredibly excited to bring to Milwaukee. The timing on this is fantastic as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recently performed here and left us all in awe. What makes it even more special to me on a personal level is that the first time I watched 20,000 Days was at Sundance, sitting across from Cave himself. It was surreal,” shares Blyth. On why she programmed The Talking Heads documentary for the second year in a row, Blyth explains, “Last year’s screening of Stop Making Sensebecame a gigantic dance party–how could we not show it again this year for its 30th anniversary?”
The Imitation Game
The Toronto International Film Festival announced award winners from the 39th Festival which wrapped on Sunday evening. This year marked the 37th year that Toronto audiences were able to cast a ballot for their favorite Festival film, with the Grolsch People’s Choice Award. This year’s award went to Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Alan Turing, the genius British mathematician, logician, cryptologist and computer scientist who led the charge to crack the German Enigma Code that helped the Allies win WWII. Turing went on to assist with the development of computers at the University of Manchester after the war, but was prosecuted by the UK government in 1952 for homosexual acts which the country deemed illegal. The award offers a $15,000 cash prize and custom award, sponsored by Grolsch. The first runner up is Isabel Coixet’s Learning to Drive. The second runner up is Theodore Melfi’s St. Vincent.
GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM
The Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF) announced more of its extensive lineup of signature programs for the 22nd annual festival. Since the festival’s inception, “A Conversation With…” has been an integral part of HIFF, and this year Hilary Swank and Joel Schumacher will participate in individual talks as part of the annual program. In another signature program, 20 films have been selected for this year’s Golden Starfish competition, including the US premieres of Melanie Laurent’s BREATHE, Gabriel Mascaro’s AUGUST WINDS, and Tamara Erde’s THIS IS MY LAND, and the East Coast premieres of Peter Strickland’s THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY and Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz’s GETT: THE TRIAL OF VIVIANE AMSALEM. HIFF will take place on Columbus Day Weekend, from October 9-13.
Award-winning indie filmmaker Sharon Greytak’s ARCHAEOLOGY OF A WOMAN, starring Oscar nominated/Golden Globe winner Sally Kirkland is playing at Village East Cinema Sept. 12-18. ARCHAEOLOGY OF A WOMAN, is described as a gripping drama of a woman’s fierce determination to save her mind from spiraling into delusion as she attempts to keep a chilling secret from her past buried.
We recently sat down with director Sharon Greytak, one of the only disabled filmmakers directing, writing and producing from a motorized wheelchair, and Sally Kirkland, sporting a bandaged knee, the result of knee surgery. Earlier this year Sally fell, breaking her leg in two places while attending the Studio City Film Festival to receive an award for Best Actress.
THE IMITATION GAME
The 58th BFI London Film Festival unveiled a lineup of 245 fiction and documentary features, including 16 World Premieres, 9 International Premieres, 38 European Premieres and 19 Archive films including 2 Restoration World Premiere’s.1 There will also be screenings of 148 live action and animated shorts. The 58th BFI London Film Festival will run Wednesday 8 – Sunday 19 October 2014.
The Festival opens with the European Premiere of THE IMITATION GAME, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. Director Morten Tyldum returns to the Festival with a film about Alan Turing, one of the world’s greatest innovators and pioneer of modern-day computing, who is credited with cracking the German Enigma code.
THE HOMESMAN starring Hilary Swank will be the Centerpiece film of the 22nd Annual Hamptons International Film Festival held over Columbus Day Weekend, October 9-13, 2014. Hilary Swank will attend the film’s premiere and will participate in the festival’s signature program “A Conversation With…” The festival revealed its “Views from Long Island” section, which focuses on local filmmakers and films with geographic ties to the Hamptons, along with one of its most famous local filmmakers, Bob Balaban, who is this year’s Honorary Chairman.
Beyond the Lights
The 18th Annual Urbanworld Film Festival, will take place this weekend September 17-21, 2014, at Manhattan’s AMC Loews 34th Street 14, and various other locations in New York. The festival will screen over 70 films, including 12 world premieres.
Relativity’s Beyond the Lights, a drama written and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love and Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees) and produced by Relativity, Relativity Sports, Undisputed Cinema and Homegrown Pictures in association with BET Films, will serve as the opening film at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 18 at the SVA Theater at 333 W. 23rd Street. The story of a talented young musician on the brink of super stardom struggling with the pressure of her new-found success stars Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Belle, Larry Crowne), Nate Parker (Red Tails, The Great Debaters), Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting) and Emmy Award® nominee Danny Glover (The Color Purple, Lethal Weapon). The film opens nationwide on November 14, 2014. Prince-Bythewood, a longtime supporter of the festival and Independent Spirit Award® winner, is the ambassador for this year’s festivities.