Tag Archives: Film Festival

distribution, Documentary

How an award-winning documentary was allegedly blacklisted by Netflix

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Jason Guerrasio

In just four years, Netflix has become by far the most watched destination for documentaries, beaming titles to 190 countries and an astounding 83 million global subscribes.

That has given Netflix a lot of power in a relatively small corner of Hollywood to make or break titles — and for one director, that meant a dramatic setback in his movie’s release.

Netflix’s decision to come in early on documentaries like “The Square,” “Virunga,” “What Happened, Miss Simone?” and “Winter on Fire” led to Oscar nominations, while recent titles like “Making a Murderer” and “Amanda Knox” have fed subscribers’ addiction for true-crime stories.

As Netflix’s chief content officer, Ted Sarandos, boasted in 2015, “People who have never watched a documentary in their life are watching them on Netflix.” And the Netflix Original branding has become an instant stamp of legitimacy for filmmakers.

But what’s less talked about, beyond the mountains of cash Netflix dishes out for premium content, is when a filmmaker inevitably decides he or she doesn’t want to make a deal with Netflix.

It may not happen often, but in one case, turning down a Netflix Original deal seemingly led a filmmaker’s movie to be blacklisted from ever being shown on the streaming giant.

A Netflix deal gone bad

Much of what you hear about Netflix’s nonfiction (as opposed to the TV series division) is that it gives immense freedom to artists. Werner Herzog told Business Insider of making “Into the Inferno” for Netflix: “They saw the film and liked it and that was that. They trusted me in a way that was very, very pleasant.” The “Amanda Knox” codirectors told Business Insider that the leeway Netflix gave them was a “giant luxury.”

So when Craig Atkinson got the attention of Netflix, he thought he had made it to the big time.

Best known for working as a cinematographer with Oscar-nominated filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Atkinson in 2013 decided to embark on his directorial debut, “Do Not Resist,” in which he examines the militarization of the police in the US. Atkinson spent three years shooting around the country, gaining the trust of law enforcement so he could tell a vérité story.

But the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting of Michael Brown by the police changed everything. Atkinson, 34, and his producer Laura Hartrick, 28, visited and captured footage of the tactics used by riot-gear-dressed officers that was more raw and unfiltered than what the evening news had been showing.

“Do Not Resist” was suddenly covering a topical story. And as Atkinson was in postproduction before the movie’s world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, Netflix came calling.

“The Saturday before the premiere I got a call from one of the executives at Netflix,” Atkinson told Business Insider. (He asked that the Netflix executive remain anonymous for this story.) “We spoke at great length about the project, the person said it was an incredibly timely film, and they were interested in it.”

CraigAtkinson_HeadshotDirector Craig Atkinson. Tiffany Frances

The next day, Atkinson got a call from the same executive saying that Netflix wanted to make an offer to buy the film and brand it as a Netflix Original title, but the person asked whether Atkinson would be open to making changes to his film.

“I was still unsure about the film,” Atkinson said. “I didn’t think we made a perfect film, so I was open to collaboration, but the person told me the deal couldn’t be made until I said I was open to this, so I said OK because I wanted to see what the deal was going to be.”

On Monday, Atkinson received the offer from Netflix. He and his team were going to premiere at Tribeca on Thursday, and if they were to accept the deal, the offer stated they would have to agree by noon on the day of the film’s premiere or the offer would be null and void.

The deal for worldwide rights to the film was in the mid-six figures, and the agreement stated that Netflix would retain all creative approvals over the final cut and the film’s title. It also had a budget line of $70,000 for “finishing” (money for additional editing or other changes Netflix saw fit).

These are general terms most first-time filmmakers will encounter at any company looking to buy their film. Numerous filmmakers told Business Insider, however, that there’s often an open dialogue between the filmmaker and the buyer about suggested changes before signing an agreement. Negotiations can, of course, vary from filmmaker to filmmaker, especially based on someone’s experience and profile.

“So I’m reading the deal and it doesn’t specify changes,” Atkinson said. “It says that they have full control and they can change the title. The deal is time-stamped for high noon on the day of our premiere, so now the clock is ticking. In my mind I’m thinking maybe they are catering to a certain audience and they want to change the film. I was so overwhelmed and unprepared to be in this position.”

‘Trust us’

Atkinson was unable to land a sales rep, which at this point in a movie’s life is an essential ingredient (though he was able to get an entertainment lawyer).

Sales reps have an understanding of the marketplace and use their connections within the industry to get the film they’re representing the best deal both domestically and internationally. A rep would have told Atkinson that the figure he was offered was substantially higher than what he would get from any of the independent film distributors that would be tracking his film at the Tribeca Film Festival, or from a documentary-heavy network like HBO or A&E.

Atkinson told Business Insider that colleagues in the industry who have either worked with Netflix or know people who have worked with the company told him that Netflix was giving him a low offer.

Business Insider spoke with documentary insiders and sales agents who agreed that it was a low offer by Netflix standards but respectable for a first-time filmmaker (some filmmakers Business Insider spoke with said they would have taken the deal in a heartbeat).

With the deadline for the deal quickly approaching, Atkinson’s lawyer, Jody Simon, a partner at the firm Fox Rothschild, was able to negotiate the price of the movie up $100,000 more, but the lawyer also relayed to Atkinson a sobering fact about how Netflix negotiates.

“During the course of the conversation our lawyer had with the Netflix lawyer, he got a lecture, as he described it, from the Netflix lawyer about the fee because he was pushing back about how it seemed incredibly low for an all-rights deal,” Atkinson said. “The Netflix lawyer lectured him on how it was their algorithm that determined the price of the film and that there’s really no discussion to be had because this algorithm determined how much the film should be worth and that basically was the end of discussion.”

Simon confirmed the content of the conversation with Netflix’s lawyer to Business Insider, adding that it was the first time he’d encountered a deal figure put together by an algorithm. Still, he said, he’s not surprised by it.

“I find it as a culture clash between the tech people and the creative people,” Simon said. “They really just do things differently — Hulu and Amazon and Netflix. They draft differently. A lot of it is inside baseball and pretty subtle, but it’s a different approach and a different way of thinking.”

When asked for a comment about Atkinson’s recounting of events, a Netflix representative told Business Insider: “Every deal at Netflix is unique — we have no comment about the specifics of our deal negotiations.”

The negotiation with Netflix was a sobering reality for Atkinson, who was getting his first taste of the way the company uses its analytics to make decisions that at traditional distributors often come through gut instinct and decades of trial and error. (Numerous sources in the acquisitions field told Business Insider they did have data they refer to when choosing movies to acquire but did not rely on it heavily.)

It wasn’t just the money that concerned Atkinson, however. He could never get the Netflix executive to give him specifics on what the company wanted to change in his film.

Craig Shot Ferguson Vanish Films finalAtkinson filming “Do Not Resist” in Ferguson, Missouri. Vanish Films

“I have student loans to pay off, so the money would have been great,” Atkinson said. “But the bottom line was if we couldn’t put in some kind of provision where we mutually agree on changes, it’s a deal-breaker.”

Atkinson’s inability to relinquish control of his film had to do greatly with the way he got access to make “Do Not Resist.” Atkinson, the son of a police officer, and Hartrick promised the multiple law-enforcement agencies featured in the movie that the film would be an authentic portrayal of their job and that only the two filmmakers would edit the movie.

“So here we are again looking at this contract where I have to make a decision,” Atkinson said. “If I’m going to compromise myself and say I don’t care what I told these cops, just so I can get the deal. And I thought we were going to have a sympathetic ear because of the severity of the situation and it has to do with people’s safety, and when we asked to just put in the contract specific changes you want so we can go forward, they wouldn’t do that.”

“Their response to that was basically, ‘Trust us,'” Simon said.

After two sleepless nights, Atkinson finally told Simon on Wednesday to tell Netflix he was declining the offer. Atkinson would see what kind of offers the film would get from playing at Tribeca.

‘There’s only one way in’

“Do Not Resist” had five sold-out screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival and was beginning to find interest from distributors. Atkinson still couldn’t find a sales agent to take it on (he later found a sales rep to handle his international sales).

Craig Atkinson Cindy Ord GettyAtkinson accepting the best documentary prize at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Cindy Ord/Getty

During the festival, Atkinson sat down with companies like Magnolia Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Films to discuss potentially acquiring “Do Not Resist.” The possibility of the movie still getting on Netflix wasn’t dead, as any company that acquired the movie would have service deals with Netflix to make it available to stream on the service following its theatrical and home-video release.

On top of that, the movie won the best documentary prize at the festival: a $20,000 cash prize sponsored by … Netflix.

But Atkinson came back down to earth when he learned after the festival that suddenly all the prospective buyers of the movie pulled out. He said he was told that Netflix blocks any service deals for movies on the streaming platform after they have turned down Netflix Original deals. Buyers told Atkinson that in today’s market, in which being on Netflix and other streaming services is so important, his movie was no longer an attractive title because a company could no longer own all revenue streams.

Netflix did not comment when asked by Business Insider about a policy of blacklisting titles that reject an Original deal, or whether requiring creative control over its Original documentaries was standard.

“Around that time I saw the [Netflix] executive at a party and I said, ‘What happened?’ And the person answered, ‘Yep, there’s only one way in,'” Atkinson said.

‘Is this how it goes down?’

Two months after the Tribeca Film Festival, and still trying to forget the bad taste from the Netflix experience, Atkinson moved forward by putting together a self-distribution theatrical release for “Do Not Resist.” He also began a conversation with Amazon to be the film’s home for a streaming release afterward.

Then suddenly Netflix contacted him again.

“I get a text from the Netflix executive,” Atkinson said. “The person wanted to know if I had sold the rights to the film yet because they are still interested. The person felt bad for how everything went down and saw how great the film was doing on the festival circuit.”

Atkinson and the executive came to an understanding, with the executive agreeing to relinquish some of the creative control, according to Atkinson.

But when Atkinson went back to Netflix’s lawyer to hammer out the financial side of the new agreement, the lawyer had no idea of the new conversation.

“He said, ‘We would never give up that control — I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Basically that the deal was still the original deal,” Atkinson said. “He thought that I was coming back to Netflix begging to make a deal.”

When Atkinson tried to get back in touch with the Netflix executive, he said, his texts and calls were never returned. He hasn’t heard from the executive since.

“As a first-time filmmaker I was like, ‘Is this how it goes down?'” Atkinson said. “Netflix can say they respect the artist all they want, but you can tell where their loyalties are, and it’s not with the artists.”

Atkinson moved forward with his own theatrical release. He said the $20,000 cash prize that Netflix sponsored at Tribeca helped greatly. And he signed a streaming deal with Amazon (for about a third of the amount he would have gotten from the Netflix deal). “Do Not Resist” will be available on Amazon on Wednesday.

‘We dodged a bullet not taking the deal’

Atkinson said he wanted to go public with his experience because he wanted filmmakers and fans of Netflix to understand that for as much good as Netflix was providing mass audiences with exceptional content, he believed himself to be living proof of some cracks in its process.

“This will be a concern for filmmakers because Netflix are the titans,” a major figure in the documentary industry who asked to remain anonymous told Business Insider after hearing of Atkinson’s experience. “If the documentary community is to remain vital, it needs a multiplicity of voices and points of view, and by narrowing the pipeline Netflix is privileging a very few voices.”

Prominent documentary filmmaker Robert Greene (“Kate Plays Christine”), however, isn’t surprised at all by Atkinson’s story.

“Netflix helped the video store to go out of business, and they have now replaced it with a fairly absurd business model that seems to only value certain kinds of things, and it’s just depressing,” Greene told Business Insider. “It has always been difficult to get films with a voice seen, and it used to be that Netflix represented something better. Another choice. Another possibility. But that seems to be going away, and I would just tell young filmmakers don’t make decisions based on what’s going to get on Netflix, because art survives and eventually Netflix is going to get boring.”

Atkinson said that looking back, he had no regrets about turning down the more lucrative Netflix offer.

The film has played around the US, often in theaters filled with active police officers, who take part in Q&A sessions and interact with their communities, an experience that would have been lost if the film played only on Netflix.

“It’s fantastic business by Netflix,” Atkinson said. “Tell a filmmaker it’s the most timely film you’ve ever seen, make an offer, and if you can’t get it, do what you can so the film’s not seen by anyone.”

Atkinson pauses for a moment to compose himself.

“We dodged a bullet not taking the deal,” he said. “They would have destroyed three years of work.”

(Source: http://www.businessinsider.com)

#SBIFF, Showcase Series

Note from Roger – On The Map

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Almost any basketball fan from the 1970’s, especially UCLA Bruin fans, is sure to enjoy and appreciate On The Map. – HollywoodGlee

11162014-Roger-Durling_t479Dear Cinephiles,

ON THE MAP is everything you want an underdog story to be: suspenseful, inspirational, heartfelt and, ultimately, uplifting. It will make you stand up and cheer! A slam dunk!

Attached is a rave review from the LA Times. It plays tonight (Tuesday) at 5:00pm and tomorrow at 7:30pm at the Riviera Theatre.

See you at the movies!
Roger Durling

Click Here for Tickets

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‘On the Map’ reveals the basketball contest that gave Israel a sense of sporting and national pride
By Kenneth Turan – Los Angeles Times

Sport, it’s been said, is the toy department of our culture, but even diversions can have their moment of unforeseen socio-political relevance.

That’s what happened in 1980, when a young U.S. Olympic ice hockey team surprised the mighty Soviets and won the gold medal in a contest that’s been described as the Miracle on Ice.

In a different sport three years earlier, and as detailed in the genial documentary “On The Map,” Israel experienced a similar epochal moment that shifted the national culture.

That was when the country’s Maccabi Tel Aviv team, with six Americans led by the charismatic Tal Brody, won the European Cup basketball championship in a tournament that had resonance above and beyond the final victory.

For it was after Maccabi’s miraculous semi-final win over CSKA Moscow, the fearsome Red Army team, that the over-the-moon Brody told a television interviewer, “We are on the map. And we are staying on the map — not only in sports but in everything.”

Israeli director Dani Menkin has been especially thorough in telling this classic against-all-odds sports story. He interviews Brody and his teammates, Israeli sports figures and American basketball luminaries like coach Digger Phelps, former NBA Commissioner David Stern and an enthusiastic Bill Walton, a former teammate of Brody’s on America’s 1970 national team.

Menkin also helps us understand why that casually uttered Brody phrase became a sensation, resonating in Israel for decades in a way that is fascinating from a historical perspective but also leads to some reflections about what is different in the world today.

The key figure in “On the Map” is obviously Brody, a fluid 6-foot-1 point guard from Trenton, N.J., who had the skills to be drafted 12th by the then-Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) in 1965.

But before the NBA season began, Brody went to Israel to compete in the Maccabiah Games, and that experience turned him in a completely different direction. Encouraged by the owners of the Maccabi Tel Aviv team and the celebrated Gen. Moshe Dayan, he decided he wanted to be part of something bigger than the NBA, he wanted to take basketball in Israel to another level.

This idea took firmer shape in the early 1970s, when other American players, some Jewish, some not, were persuaded to join Brody. The last piece of the puzzle, 6-foot-10 center Aulcie Perry, was signed after a competing center ate so much at a team banquet that the coach was afraid he would hog the ball.

No Israeli team had ever gotten past the first round in the European Cup tourney, but “On the Map” focuses in a game-by-game way on why the 1977 event turned out to be different.

Each contest had its own drama, and we both hear about it through memories and watch chunks of the contests themselves via game footage and home movies shot by rabid fans.

That semi-final game against the U.S.S.R. was problematic for several reasons, starting with the fact that the Soviets did not recognize Israel at the time and initially refused to even play before a neutral court was found in the tiny Belgian town of Virton.

Given that CSKA Moscow had several players from the national team that had beaten the U.S. in the 1972 Olympics, the Tel Aviv team shouldn’t have had a chance, which gave Israel’s victory so much resonance that former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, also interviewed here, says it helped sustain him during nine years in a Siberian prison camp.

While the final game against an Italian team was so watched in Israel that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin postponed the announcement of his resignation until it ended, Brody’s quote became the memory that lasted.

It was, in its exuberance, perfect for a time when Israel was seen and saw itself as a plucky underdog on the world stage. Whether justifiably or not, that perception has changed, and without really meaning to, “On the Map” brings today’s situation into sharper focus.

(Source: sbiff.org)

#Berlinale, Berlin Film Festival

The Berlin International Short Film Jury 2017

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The Berlinale Shorts International Jury consists of three filmmakers and artists with a working relationship to the short form. At home in multiple artistic and cultural fields, they each bring with them their own perspective on the way they view and evaluate the competing films: talented international directors, young artists and actors as well as short film curators and film academy directors award works that tread new cinematographic territory.

Artist and professor at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design Christian Jankowski; curator and social media manager at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Kimberly Drew; and the artistic director of SANFIC (Santiago International Film Festival) Carlos Núñez make up the 2017 International Short Film Jury. They will award the Golden and the Silver Bear, as well as the Audi Short Film Award. In addition, the Jury will nominate one film for Best Short Film at the European Film Awards.

Maike Mia Höhne, curator of Berlinale Shorts, comments on the 2017 Jury:

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Maike Mia Hohne, curator of Berlinale Shorts (Photo via AG Kurzfilm)

“The top-notch biographies of Jankowski, Drew and Núñez give us a jury for 2017 that combines three highly accomplished and very different points of view. I’m very pleased!”

 

Christian Jankowski (Photo credit: Jorg Reichardt)

Christian Jankowski (Germany)
Jankowski works in the area of concept and media arts using film, video, photography and performance, as well as painting, sculpture and installations. His special focus is on the performative interaction between the artist and an audience far removed from the professional art world. His works are exhibited in numerous museums and collections, and have been shown at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and 2013, among other events. In 2016, he curated the European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Zurich, “Manifesta 11”. Christian Jankowski also holds a professorship in sculpture at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design.

 

Kimberly Drew (Photo credit: Naima Green)

Kimberly Drew (USA)
Kimberly Drew is a curator, writer and the social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her blog “Black Contemporary Art”, founded in 2011, and her Instagram channel “museummammy” are among the most influential digital platforms for African and African-American art worldwide. She has been awarded the AIR Gallery Feminist Curator Award and the Gold Rush Award by the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation for her curatorial work. Kimberly Drew studied art history and African-American studies with an emphasis on museum studies at Smith College in Northampton, USA.

 

Carlos Nunez (Photo Credit: Nicolas Tello)

Carlos Núñez (Chile)
Festival programmer and film producer Carlos Núñez is the co-founder and artistic director of SANFIC, the Santiago International Film Festival, an important forum for Chilean and Latin American film. In addition, he is the director and co-founder of the production and distribution company Storyboard Media. Among other films, he has co-produced La Mujer de Barro by Sergio Castro San Martín, which screened in Forum at the 2015 Berlinale. Carlos Núñez is also a university lecturer and a member of Cinema23, a platform for the promotion of film culture in Latin America, Spain and Portugal.

 

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(Source: http://www.berlinale.de)

Palm Springs International Film Festival

ANNETTE BENING TO RECEIVE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD AT 28th ANNUAL PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FILM AWARDS GALA

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Palm Springs, CA (December 13, 2016) – The 28th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will present Annette Bening with the Career Achievement Award at its annual Film Awards Gala.  The Film Awards Gala, hosted by Mary Hart, will be held Monday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 2-16, 2017.

screen-shot-2016-12-13-at-7-27-10-am“Throughout her career, Annette Bening has brought to the screen many memorable performances including the four films for which she was nominated for an Academy Award:  American Beauty, The Grifters, The Kids Are All Right, and Being Julia,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “Bening creates yet another memorable award-winning role portraying Dorothea, a free-spirited single mother raising her teenage son in Mike Mills’ upcoming film 20th Century Women. It is our great honor to present the Career Achievement Award to Annette Bening.”

Past recipients of the Career Achievement Award include Glenn Close, Kevin Costner, Bruce Dern, Robert Duvall, Clint Eastwood, Sally Field, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson and Lynn Redgrave.

 Bening stars in 20th Century Women, from acclaimed filmmaker Mike Mills who delivers a richly multilayered, funny, heart-stirring celebration of the complexities of women, Screen Shot 2016-12-13 at 7.31.08 AM.pngfamily, time and the connections we search for our whole lives. It is a film that keeps redefining itself as it goes along, shifting with its characters as they navigate the pivotal summer of 1979. Set in Santa Barbara, the film follows Dorothea Fields (Bening), a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie (newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann) at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women in Jamie’s upbringing – via Abbie (Greta Gerwig), a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields’ home, and Julie (Elle Fanning), a savvy and provocative teenage neighbor.

For her role in the film, Bening received Best Actress nominations from the Broadcast Film Critics Association, Golden Globes, Gotham Awards and Independent Film Spirit Awards.

Annette Bening is a four-time Academy Award® nominee, two-time Golden Globe winner, and two-time recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Award.  Her film credits include The Kids Are All Right, American Beauty, Being Julia, Danny Collins, The Search, The Face of Love, Girl Most Likely, Ginger & Rosa, Ruby Sparks, Mother and Child, The Women, Running with Scissors, Mrs. Harris, In Dreams, The Siege, The American President, Mars Attacks!, Richard III, Love Affair, Bugsy, Regarding Henry, The Grifters, Guilt By Suspicion, Valmont, Postcards From the Edge and The Great Outdoors.  She can currently be seen in the film Rules Don’t Apply and her upcoming films are The Seagull and Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool.

Previously announced honorees attending the 2017 Film Awards Gala are Amy Adams, Casey Affleck, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Negga, the cast of Hidden Figures including Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, and the cast of La La Land, including Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, and director Damien Chazelle.

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About The Palm Springs International Film Festival

The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, annually welcoming more than 135,000 attendees for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Film Awards Gala, a glamorous, black-tie event attended by 2,500 guests, presented this year by Chopard and sponsored by Mercedes Benz and Entertainment Tonight.  The Film Awards Gala honors the year’s best achievements in cinema in front of and behind the camera.  The celebrated list of talents who have been honored in recent years includes Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Matthew McConaughey, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Roberts, David O. Russell, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.  PSIFF is organized by The Palm Springs International Film Society, a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization with a mission to cultivate and promote the art and science of film through education and cross-cultural awareness.

For more information, call 760-778-8979 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

# # #

 Media contacts:

Steven Wilson / Lauren Peteroy                                                                         David Lee

B|W|R Public Relations                                                                                        PSIFF

Steven.wilson@bwr-pr.com / Lauren.peteroy@bwr-pr.com                        david@psfilmfest.org

(Source: psiff.org)

Cairo International Film Festival

Cairo International Film Festival – There’s Always Next Year

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Jamie N. Christley

From the window of an airplane, metropolitan Cairo seems to stretch into infinity, a truly ancient city that keeps adding onto itself, year after year. A handful of cities occupy a greater land area, but fewer appear to be as impossibly intricate and dense, its overwhelming breadth a dreamed thing. The next thing you notice is that Cairo wears its history on its sleeve. Very little fails to carry signification of events and people, past and present. Does your town have a bridge named after an historic date? The river island of Zamalek connects with Tahrir Square and points east using the “6th of October Bridge,” named for a successful show of force against Israeli occupiers in 1967. Even the hotel where most guests of the Cairo International Film Festival stayed, the Cairo Marriott, has thick roots in the 19th century, as related by a short documentary preloaded in each room’s television set, explaining the co-location of a sleek, modern hotel within the 150-year-old Gezirah Palace. The Marriott, by the virtue of its dual structure, symbolizes the city’s relentless, incremental layering of the new upon or within the old, the way a very old cathedral might be built over the ruins of an ancient one.

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You can experience the festival from beginning to end without leaving the island of Zamalek, which sits in the Nile River the same way as Roosevelt Island sits lodged between Manhattan and Queens on the East River. A 20-minute walk or—at peak times—a 30-minute drive conveys festival attendees to the Cairo Opera House, where, at each individual screening, you to pass through up to four metal detectors. The cadre of security personnel at each juncture carry out their duties without panic or fuss, occasionally taking a drag off a cigarette or a sip of koshary tea. Breaking up the landscape outside the Opera House is a solitary figure holding an assault rifle and standing at perfect attention for hours on end; in his 100% black outfit, kevlar accoutrements, and totally concealed face, he looks like none other than Kylo Ren from The Force Awakens. One doesn’t talk to him.

Every screening observes assigned seating protocol. When I took my seat for This Life of Mine, the usher led me, with the grave precision of a funeral director, to my exact chosen seat in an auditorium that remained empty but for one other attendee. Dozens of ticket-holders enter any given screening up to half an hour late, the insidious maglights that are now a standard feature on smartphones bathing the room in errant stabs of piercing light, as if they were volunteers combing the woods for a missing child.

Navigating the festival structure was challenging in some ways, simple in others. The tactic employed by festivalgoers in Toronto and elsewhere, of timing a contingency screening in case something goes wrong with your main choice (projection failure, a shutout, a bad film), staggered by a few minutes to allow for travel between venues, has no play in Cairo, where upward of 10 to 12 films start at exactly the same time, four times a day. If, say, the projection for one film fails, which actually happened to me when the correct media files for the 2003 Chinese film Cell Phone went missing, you’re out of luck for anything else playing during the same timeslot, unless you can suppress your inner Alvy Singer and miss the opening 15 or so minutes.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

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The Cairo International Film Festival ran from November 15 —24.

(Source: slantmagazine.com)

 

#Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival

Through You – How A New VR Project Dances with Intimacy

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Posted by Larry Gleeson

By Lily Baldwin

I didn’t do film school. I was a dancer and started making raw stop-motion shorts when touring with David Byrne. After 150 shows, I came to realize that dance enabled people to understand the music. Unsure what the “strange moves” meant, dance gave them permission to feel something they couldn’t necessarily fit into words. Then is when I first felt the compulsion to turn the electricity of a live performance into an object that could transcend borders, language, and endure time. I turned my hard knock dancer-work-ethic into teaching myself how to edit with stills I’d shot (after a year I realized using a mouse made all the difference). ’Twas pure play – I wasn’t even sure what the “it” of it was supposed to be.

I’ve built this manifesto of sorts that guides my work: Everyone speaks body, it’s a universal alphabet. I define this “visceral cinema” with articulate bodies in space in relationship to a lens. Dance isn’t always a virtuosic “pow”; it’s about bodies that are aware of their edges and use their range. Bodies can’t lie. They are the subtext of us – it’s a subterranean language usually too shy to come out. Bodies speak nuance and contradiction that get lost when spoken. The clincher is fitting a body inside a lens – a practice that is significantly more crafted than grabbing footage of a crazy-cool body. I think it’s a balance of these: Proximity to lens, distinct performance focus, a breathing handheld camera, knowing when/not to crop a body and lock frame, editing as a rhythm tool (cutting on action, thank you Maya Deren), and sound/music as sub-protagonist and dialogue. The final convergence shouldn’t be possible in real life. “Gesamtkunstwerk,“ meaning “total work of art,“ is my favorite word, and a wink to The Ballet Russe.

Co-Directing: Where Differences Unite

A couple years ago my friend Saschka Unseld (Oculus Story Studio) asked me to make something with dance. I was trying to turn the “flattie” into a kinetic playground, so the prospect of having 360 degrees to mess around with was enticing. I could use my years of performing in unconventional spaces and get rid of the proscenium box that now seemed stuck on a wall. We’ve both always edited our own work and agree that nothing is ever completed. He’s a renowned director, cinematographer, and tech maven (the latter not being my forte). We embraced our differences, jumped off our respective cliffs, and trusted that our mutual rigor would spit us out somewhere. We applied and were accepted into the Sundance Institute Jaunt VR Residency.

Lily directing Joanna Kotze and Amari Cheatom with Saschka and DP Dagmar Weaver-Madsen. Photo by Cameron Berton.

This collaboration has been striking. It has enabled me to indulge in imagination without needing to know how to practically realize the fantasy. I play with the parameters of performance and narrative expectation. Saschka is a poet with technology and uses it to capture a distinct human tenderness. He moves like a dancer, engaging his tools like I’ve trained my skeleton. We began collaborating by dancing together – him, as his camera, with me. It’s a unique banter, our unique perfectionisms moving through space. We cantilever off our perspectives, pick up where the other drops off, and take different paths to arrive at the same place. It’s an intuitive collision.

Carob is Not Chocolate and VR is Not Film

What’s disarming (and therefore exciting) about VR, is that we’re asking the viewer to silently enter and intimately witness a world they don’t have much control over (yet). This medium’s power is not about titillating the viewer with a rush of endorphins — we all know adapting film to VR is a mistake. The potency of VR is combining the intensity of immersion with all the tech limitations, and then using these as tools to articulate something that couldn’t exist in any other medium — and should absolutely not be possible in real life.

What is Story in VR?

We both wrestle with linearity. Real life happens in simultaneous layers, which is how we experience time and therefore story. Creating in 360 degrees space was a relief, and has left us thinking of story in terms of “slices of life”. Saschka strongly felt we should remove all filmmaking protocol from our process. He slowed down our script into a series of “peak moments of being” that were strung in a bold tableau. I think of it as walking through a museum and stepping inside a series of paintings (each one a complete world) on the wall. VR demands that users feel culpable, feel responsible, feel powerful, feel alone, and feel close. What is a story that uses this alphabet? These tenets dictate our story experience. Time plays differently because there’s so much to see! Because you’re intimate with the environment, little things become epic. Directing in VR is its own muscle, one we’re exploring and training.

Limitations Are Portals For Discovery

My uncle is hard of hearing and he has the most amazing sense of smell. There’s something about having less of one thing, that mandates solving in unexpected ways. I’m a sucker for detail and frustrated by the “fuzzy” picture in VR. After a test shoot, we decided we couldn’t lose the subtle intimacy of our breathing dancers, Joanna Kotze, Amari Cheatom, and Marni Wood, as they moved from the ‘70s through 2046. So we decided dance had to express emotion graphically. Specified fingers in space made all the difference. Colored light would imbue the emotional details lost in their faces. Inside the crafted costume and production design, reflective fabrics with bold patterns would define the character of a body, bold architectural shapes in the room and strong color shifts would best show time passing.

Amari Cheatom and Marni Wood in Through You. Photo by Cameron Berton.

Rigorous Mistakes Are Innovations

Authentic creativity and innovation come from not having rules and not knowing what things are called. Too much identification keeps us confined to knowing what things should be. When I fall onstage and fuck up, it presents a new choice. (First thing is to keep a straight face and never look like you didn’t mean it.) This impromptu problem-solving and rigorous commitment to follow-through is my background, and we’re finding it’s perfect for VR. On set my freshness to the space had me proposing wild “What if?” and “Can we…?!” questions. Saschka adamantly protected our creative discovery saying that anything that “wasn’t supposed to work,” we’d ignore. “There are no rules, anyone who says differently is jumping the gun,” he said. As our previous experiments had proved, we could move the camera and not make the viewer nauseous. It was more complex than tracking a “fixed focal point” — we found the key is creating a physical connection between the camera/viewer and the subject. I danced with Saschka, and there happened to be a camera between us. Fast cuts? Jump cuts? Frantic changes in pace? It’s all possible, it’s just a force that needs to be properly wielded. The conversation is too often between technology and art. We’re talking about technology and body. We want to use technology to move into uncharted areas that make us reckon with our mortality. Our motto: If we fail, if this ends up a disaster, let’s at least fail upwards.

We’ve thrown caution to the wind, and there’s nothing shy about Through You. We dive head on into a never-ending love story that will play cyclically, hitting the peak moments of intimacy, betrayal, loss, aging, the passing of time — only to be engulfed in flames and then reborn again under water. It’s a racy, bold, and undeniably human experience that pushes the power of immersion and dares us to have a body that loves, feels pleasure, and feels loss. We worked intensely with our DP and longtime collaborator Dagmar Weaver-Madsen – a fierce maker in her own right – and she held us to task, grounded our ideas in practicality, and proposed bold DIY ideas to solve curveballs. She pushed us hard and kept the production glued together with the expertise of Brooke Chapman, our camera supervisor who wielded Jaunt’s incredible camera. It was a dream team. None of Through You would exist without our team’s incredibly hard work.

It’s a hot moment, this VR thing. As a dancer first, it’s a space where I thrive and where I don’t have to be an expert – I just get to be rigorously curious. I feel like I’m a detective and we’re all on a wicked-good scavenger hunt.

Final Thoughts

With such polarizing fear shaping our climate, we’ve called our choices into question. It’s a privilege to do what we do. (“Artist” makes us cringe – we think of ourselves as “lookers,” “finders” and “makers.”) What can we do about what’s happening in our world now? We’ve landed here – how can 360 immersive degrees wake up a body? When we literally feel ourselves and all that VR can do (way more than we think), we remember our impact: we are responsible, we make a difference.

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(Source: http://www.sundance.org)

#SBIFF, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Showcase Series

SBIFF The Showcase Film Series – On The Map

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ON THE MAP tells the against-all- odds story of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s 1977 European Championship, which took place at a time when the Middle East was still reeling from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1972 Olympic massacre at Munich, and the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight from Tel Aviv. Through the of lens of sports, ON THE MAP presents a much broader story of how one team captured the heart of a nation amidst domestic turmoil and the global machinations of the Cold War.

on-the-map

ON THE MAP
Written and Directed by Dani Menkin
Starring Tal Brody, David Stern, Bill Walton
Country of Origin: USA
Running Time: 85 min

Screening:
Sunday, December 11 @ 2:00pm
Monday, December 12 @ 7:30pm
Tuesday, December 13 @ 5:00pm
Wednesday, December 14 @ 7:30pm
at the Riviera Theatre – 2044 Alameda Padre Serra

Click here for tickets.

“There’s no surer ingredient for a feel-good documentary than an inspirational sports story, and filmmaker Dani Menkin delivers one in spades with his recounting of the 1979 European Cup victory by the national Israeli basketball team.”
Frank Scheck – Hollywood Reporter

“On the Map, a documentary about Maccabi Tel Aviv’s improbable success in the 1977 edition of the tourney, is a feel-good Cinderella story, the real-life details are at least apropo of this kind of athletic fairy tale.”
Michael Nordine – Village Voice/L.A.Weekly

“Menkin has been especially thorough in telling
this classic against-all-odds sports story.”
Kenneth Turan – LA Times

(Source: sbiff.org)

Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Institute Announces Shorts For 2017 Sundance Film Festival

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Park City, UT — Sixty-eight short films, announced today, will complement the lineup of longer fare at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The short film slate aligns thematically with other Festival categories, including Midnight and The New Climate, the Festival’s new programming strand highlighting climate change and the environment. The Festival hosts screenings in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort January 19-29.

 

The Institute’s support for short films extends internationally and year-round. Select Festival short films are presented as a traveling program at over 50 theaters in the U.S. and Canada each year, and short films and filmmakers take part in regional Master Classes geared towards supporting emerging shorts-makers in several cities. Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and in partnership with The Guardian and The New York Times’ Op-Docs, provides grants to makers of documentary shorts around the world, including new filmmakers in Cuba featured in a Special Event program at this year’s Festival.

Mike Plante, Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, said, “Each year we see more short films from around the country and from more regions around the world, which is exciting as we want to discover new voices to support. This year’s crop captures the full spectrum of what short films can be: emotional, hilarious, horrifying and touching — sometimes all at once.”

Among the shorts the Festival has shown in recent years are World of Tomorrow, Thunder Road, Whiplash, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, Gregory Go Boom and Edmond.

The Short Film program is presented by YouTube.

U.S. NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS

American Paradise / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Joe Talbot) — A desperate man in Trump’s America tries to shift his luck with the perfect crime in this story inspired by true events.

Cecile on the Phone / U.S.A. (Director: Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Screenwriters: Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Ellen Greenberg) — Overwhelmed by doubt and confusion after her ex-boyfriend’s return to New York, Cecile embarks on a series of telephone conversations that serve only to distract her from the one conversation she really needs to have.

Come Swim / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Kristen Stewart) — This is a diptych of one man’s day, half impressionist and half realist portraits.

GOOD CRAZY / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Rosa Salazar) — A complex chick deals with a vanilla beau, a shitty brunch and a dead coyote all in a Los Angeles day. There’s batshit crazy and then there’s good crazy—she fits somewhere in between.

Hardware / U.S.A. (Director: Stephen Jacobson, Screenwriters: Ellen Stringer, Stephen Jacobson) — An amateur electronic-drum enthusiast travels to a housewares trade show looking to strike up the perfect business partnership. When things don’t go as planned, he finds himself at the mercy of the electronic drumbeat playing in his head.

Hold On / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Christine Turner) — Family bonds are tested when a young man is left to care for his grandmother one morning.

Hot Seat / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Anna Kerrigan) — Teenaged Andrea uses a male stripper to gain the respect and admiration of cool girl Daphne in this exploration of coming-of-age sexuality and teen girls’ complex relationships, based on a true story.

I Know You from Somewhere / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Andrew Fitzgerald) — A young woman incurs the wrath of the internet after she inadvertently becomes a viral sensation.

Kaiju Bunraku / U.S.A. (Directors: Lucas Leyva, Jillian Mayer, Screenwriter: Lucas Leyva) — Here’s a day in the life of a husband and wife living in a world of giant monsters.

Laps / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Charlotte Wells) — On a routine morning, a woman on a crowded New York City subway is sexually assaulted in plain sight.

LostFound / U.S.A. (Director: Shakti Bhagchandani, Screenwriters: Shakti Bhagchandani, Emre Gulcan) — This story portrays a day in the life of a woman in the Nation of Islam.

Lucia, Before and After / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Anu Valia) — After traveling 200 miles, a young woman waits out Texas’s state-mandated 24-hour waiting period before her abortion can proceed.

New Neighbors / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: E.G. Bailey) — How far will a mother go to protect her children?

Night Shift / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Marshall Tyler) — Get a glimpse into a day in the life of a bathroom attendant in a Los Angeles nightclub.

Rubber Heart / U.S.A. (Director: Lizzy Sanford, Screenwriters: Lizzy Sanford, Anna Cordell) — After a painful dry spell, a woman attempts to have a one-night stand.

Shinaab / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.) — A young Anishinaabe man struggles with his place in the inner city of Minneapolis.

Toru / U.S.A. (Directors and screenwriters: Jonathan Minard, Scott Rashap) — An infant’s life is transformed by a new technology.

INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE SHORT FILMS

5 Films About Technology / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Peter Huang) — Take a satirical look at the dumber side of technology.

And so we put goldfish in the pool. / Japan (Director and screenwriter: Makoto Nagahisa) — One summer day, 400 goldfish were found in the swimming pool of a secondary school. This is a story about the four 15-year-old girls who put them there.

And The Whole Sky Fit In The Dead Cow’s Eye / Chile, U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Francisca Alegría) — Emeteria is visited by the ghost of her patrón, Teodoro. She believes he has come to take her to the afterlife—but he has more devastating news.

Dadyaa — The Woodpeckers of Rotha / Nepal, France (Directors and screenwriters: Pooja Gurung, Bibhusan Basnet) — Atimaley and Devi’s village is haunted by memories. When a dear friend leaves the village without saying goodbye, the old couple faces a dilemma: keep living with the memories or leave the village for good?

Dawn of the Deaf / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Rob Savage) — When a strange sound wipes out the hearing population, a small group of deaf people must band together to survive.

Dear Mr. Shakespeare / United Kingdom (Director: Shola Amoo, Screenwriter: Phoebe Boswell) — An exploration of Shakespeare’s intentions when writing Othello explores the play’s racial themes in historical and contemporary settings, and draws wider parallels between immigration and blackness in the UK today.

The Geneva Convention / France (Director and screenwriter: Benoit Martin) — As Hakim is waiting for the bus after class, he is caught in a vendetta between teenagers. He’s not exactly keen to be involved, but can he avoid it?

HEAT / Poland (Directors and screenwriters: Agata Trzebuchowska, Mateusz Pacewicz) — A young boy does an unusual favor for a friend, assuming his identity to visit his senile grandmother. The woman takes him for a walk, and tells him about the biggest mystery of her life.

Kao Shi (A Test) / China (Director and screenwriter: Zuxiang Zhao) — In a small-town high school, days before the college entrance exam, teacher Chen Jun finds out that the father of his most promising student has died in a mining accident. Telling him—or not—bears heavy consequences.

MappaMundi / Luxembourg, Austria (Director and screenwriter: Bady Minck) — Through the eyes of cosmic cartographers, the viewer takes a voyage through 950 million years of Earth history and 15,000 years of cartography. This accelerated journey visualizes the change in our world—a change unnoticeable in a single lifetime.

Mare Nostrum / France, Syrian Arab Republic (Directors: Rana Kazkaz, Anas Khalaf, Screenwriter: Rana Kazkaz) — On a Mediterranean shore, a Syrian father makes a decision that puts his daughter’s life at risk.

Pedro / Portugal (Directors and screenwriters: André Santos, Marco Leão) — Pedro gets home at dawn. Before the young boy falls asleep, his lonely mother drags him to the beach.

Slapper / Australia (Director: Luci Schroder, Screenwriters: Luci Schroder, Sam West) — A broke and rebellious teen navigates a suburban wasteland, hustling money for the morning-after pill—before it’s too late.

What Tears Us Apart / France (Director and screenwriter: Wei Hu) — A Chinese couple visits the daughter they gave up for adoption 30 years ago. While meeting the French adoptive parents, language barriers become apparent and the birth mother’s hidden emotions rise to the surface.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILMS

Alone / U.S.A. (Director: Garrett Bradley) — This investigation into the layers of mass incarceration and its shaping of the modern black American family is seen through the eyes of a single mother in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Bayard & Me / U.S.A. (Director: Matt Wolf) — Walter Naegle’s boyfriend, Bayard Rustin, was a famous civil rights activist 30 years Walter’s senior. In the 1980s, Bayard decided to adopt Walter for legal protection. This love story is about a time when gay marriage was inconceivable.

Close Ties / Poland (Director: Zofia Kowalewska) — Barbara and Zdzislaw will soon celebrate their 45th anniversary—despite their constant bickering, and the fact that Zdzislaw spent eight of those years living with another woman. This is a portrait of a relationship that, somewhat inexplicably, perseveres.

Deer Squad: The Movie / U.S.A. (Directors: Pipus Larsen, Kenneth Gug, Scott J. Ross) — Kelvin Peña, a charismatic 17-year-old from rural Pennsylvania, shares his story of going viral after befriending a group of wild deer in his backyard.

The Diver / Mexico (Director: Esteban Arrangoiz) — Julio César Cu Cámara is the chief diver in the Mexico City sewer system. His job is to repair pumps and dislodge garbage that flows into the gutters to maintain the circulation of sewage waters. THE NEW CLIMATE

Fish Story / United Kingdom (Director: Charlie Lyne) — Behind a fishy tale lies this search for the truth.

Hairat / Ethiopia (Director: Jessica Beshir) — One man’s nightly ritual brings solace to the lovelorn of Harar.

Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy / U.S.A. (Director: Lewie Kloster) — Academy Award–nominated documentary filmmaker Christine Choy undergoes an adventure of wild proportions when she accidentally smuggles cigarettes.

My Father’s Tools / Canada (Director: Heather Condo) — Stephen continues producing traditional baskets to honor his father and thus finds peace in his studio as he connects with the man who taught him the craft.

Project X / U.S.A. (Directors: Laura Poitras, Henrik Moltke) — A top secret handbook takes viewers on an undercover journey to the site of a hidden partnership. Based on NSA documents, this film reveals the inner workings of a windowless skyscraper in Manhattan.

The Rabbit Hunt / U.S.A. (Director: Patrick Bresnan) — On the weekends during the harvest season, 17-year-old Chris and his family hunt rabbits in the sugarcane fields of the Florida Everglades.

Ten Meter Tower / Sweden (Directors: Maximilien Van Aertryck, Axel Danielson) — People who have never been up a 10-meter diving tower must choose whether to jump or climb down in this entertaining study of people in a vulnerable position.

Tough / United Kingdom (Director: Jennifer Zheng) — New light is shed on childhood cultural misunderstandings when a Chinese mother and her British-born daughter speak as adults for the first time. Some things can only be understood with maturity.

Visions of an Island / U.S.A. (Director: Sky Hopinka) — Indigenous and foreign presences coexist on an Alaskan island in the center of the Bering Sea. THE NEW CLIMATE

Waiting for Hassana / Nigeria (Director: Ifunanya Maduka) — In 2014, 276 teenage girls came together for exams in Chibok, Nigeria—by dawn, nearly all had disappeared, and their school was burned to the ground. Jessica, an escapee, shares her haunting account of a friendship violently interrupted by Boko Haram.

White Riot: London / United Kingdom (Director: Rubika Shah) — In 1977, immigration divides Britain. What happens when a punk fanzine challenges the status quo?

MIDNIGHT SHORT FILMS

Do No Harm / New Zealand (Director and screenwriter: Roseanne Liang) — 3:00 a.m., 1980s Hongjing: In an aging private hospital, a single-minded surgeon is forced to break her physician’s oath when violent gangsters storm in to stop a crucial operation.

Fucking Bunnies / Finland (Director: Teemu Niukkanen, Screenwriters: Antti Toivonen, Teemu Niukkanen) — Raimo’s comfortable, middle-class bubble is burst when a Satan-worshipping sex cult moves in next door.

Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre / U.S.A. (Director: Jack Henry Robbins, Screenwriters: Jack Henry Robbins, Nunzio Randazzo) — One of the first films in American cinema to address climate change, Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre, was also a hardcore porno. All sex scenes have been removed as to not distract from the conscious message. THE NEW CLIMATE

A Nearly Perfect Blue Sky (Un ciel bleu presque parfait) / France (Director and screenwriter: Quarxx) — You might think that Simon lives a monotonous life, but you would be wrong—contrary to appearances, he doesn’t live alone among the ruins of an old farm. Between kidnapper and guardian angel, he never takes his eyes off his roommate.

Pussy / Poland (Director and screenwriter: Renata Gasiorowska) — Alone at home one evening, a young girl decides to have a solo pleasure session—but not everything goes according to plan.

The Robbery / U.S.A. (Director: Jim Cummings, Screenwriters: Jim Cummings, Dustin Hahn) — Crystal robs a liquor store—it goes pretty OK.

Summer’s Puke Is Winter’s Delight / Japan (Director and screenwriter: Sawako Kabuki) — Painful events become memories over time. Still, we vomit and eat again. Life is eco.

ANIMATED SHORT FILMS

The Bald Future / France (Director and screenwriter: Paul Cabon) — Being a bald man sucks. Knowing you’ll become one is worse.

Black Holes / U.S.A., France (Directors and screenwriters: David Nicolas, Laurent Nicolas) — Dave is about to lead the first mission to Mars when he’s teamed up with a sentient melon, who claims to be the reincarnation of a fashion designer, upstaging his big moment and driving him to the brink of madness.

Broken – The Women’s Prison at Hoheneck / Germany (Directors: Volker Schlecht, Alexander Lahl, Screenwriters: Alexander Lahl, Max Mönch) — This animated documentary about Hoheneck, the main women’s prison in former East Germany, is based on original interviews with former inmates. It’s a film about political imprisonment, forced labor and enormous profits on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Drawn & Recorded: Teen Spirit / U.S.A. (Director: Drew Christie, Screenwriters: Drew Christie, Bill Flanagan) — This is the story behind one of the most iconic songs ever written, animated in the style of a pop-up book.

How’s your prostate? / France (Directors: Jeanne Paturle, Cécile Rousset, Screenwriters: Jeanne Paturle, Cécile Rousset, Cécile Mille) — One friend tells the other about the very strange time when, beside a swimming pool, she learned about her father’s prostate, his erectile function and his nighttime fantasies.

It’s a Date / U.S.A. (Director and screenwriter: Zachary Zezima) — This film explores miscommunication, perceptions and vulnerability in the modern world. Everyone is an alien at first.

Jonas and the Sea / Netherlands (Director: Marlies Van der Wel, Screenwriters: Ruben Picavet, Marlies Van der Wel) — Jonas has dreamed of living in the sea all his life, but it’s impossible. Or is it?

The Laughing Spider / Japan (Director: Keiichi Tanaami) — The early childhood memory of aerial attacks leaves a lasting impression, with strong stimulus and disquiet.

LOVE / France, Hungary (Director and screenwriter: Réka Bucsi)— Abstract haiku-like situations reveal the changing atmosphere on one planet caused by a meteoric impact in a distant solar system. Inhabitants on this pulsing planet become one with each other, in various ways, in this three-chapter exploration of affection.

Nighthawk / Slovenia, Croatia (Director: Špela Čadež, Screenwriters: Gregor Zorc, Špela Čadež) — Attempting to remove an unresponsive badger from a dark road, a police patrol soon realizes that the animal is not dead but rather dead drunk. Things take an even stranger turn when the creature wakes up.

Nutag — Homeland / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Alisi Telengut) — This hand-painted visual poem explores the ideas of diaspora, homeland and the mass deportations of the Kalmyk people during World War II.

Summer Camp Island / U.S.A., South Korea (Director and screenwriter: Julia Pott) — Oscar and his best friend, Hedgehog, just got dropped off at summer camp. Once the parents leave the island, the strangeness lurking beneath the surface is revealed—aliens exist, horses become unicorns and there are monsters under the bed.

Trumpet Man / Hong Kong (Director and screenwriter: Emily Wong) — A turntable springs out a woman named Avocado; her instinct creates a man called Soul. Passion swings both, and an uncertain madness strikes Soul heavily. Seeds of passion breed conflict among five men, eventually leading Soul to a deeper understanding of life.

Victor & Isolina / U.S.A. (Director: William Caballero) — Creatively visualized through 3D printing, two elderly Latinos embark on a resonating he said/she said account of the events that led them to live separately after more than 50 quirky and stressful years together.

One film announced today was funded through a Kickstarter campaign: Black Holes.

The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite. The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2017 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, SundanceTV, Chase Sapphire®, and Canada Goose; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe, AT&T, DIRECTV, and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – American Airlines, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Francis Ford Coppola Winery, GEICO, Google VR, The Hollywood Reporter, IMDb, Jaunt, Kickstarter, Omnicom, Stella Artois® and the University of Utah Health. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year-round programs for independent artists. Look for the Official Sponsor seal at their venues at the Festival. sundance.org/festival

sundance_logoSundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, The Invisible War, The Square, Dirty Wars, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home.

Palm Springs International Film Festival

Amy Adams to Receive the Chairman’s Award at Palm Springs

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Palm Springs, CA (December 9, 2016) – The 28th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will present Amy Adams with the Chairman’s Award for her Amy Adamsperformance in Arrival at its annual Film Awards Gala.  The Film Awards Gala, hosted by Mary Hart, will be held Monday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. The Festival runs January 2-16.

“Throughout her career, Amy Adams has continuously challenged herself with complex roles,” said Festival Chairman Harold Matzner. “This is reaffirmed in her most recent project, Arrival, where she anchors the film with an award-winning performance as a prominent linguist,
Dr. Louise Banks, as she attempts to communicate with creatures in one of a dozen spacecrafts that visit Earth. It is our honor to present the Chairman’s Award to Amy Adams.”

Adams received the Spotlight Award in 2009 for her performance in Doubt, going on to receive an Academy Award® nomination.  She also garnered the Ensemble Performance Award for American Hustle in 2014. Past recipients of the Chairman’s Award include Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Richard Gere, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.

When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team – led by expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) – are brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity. The film is directed by Denis Villenueve and stars Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker and Michael Stuhlbarg.

Arrival received ten Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress for Adams. Adams won Best Actress from the National Board of Review, which also selected Arrival as one of the top ten films of the year.

Amy Adams is a five-time Academy Award®-nominated and two-time Golden Globe®-winning actress.  In addition to Arrival, her other films in 2016 were Nocturnal Animals and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Her previous film credits include American Hustle, Her, The Master, The Fighter, Big Eyes, Julie and Julia, Doubt, Enchanted, Junebug, Trouble with the Curve, The Muppets, Charlie Wilson’s War, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and Catch Me If You Can. Adams recently wrapped production on Justice League Part One and will start production on HBO’s drama series Sharp Objects.

Previously announced honorees attending the 2017 Film Awards Gala are Casey Affleck, Tom Hanks, Nicole Kidman, Ruth Negga, the cast of Hidden Figures including Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kevin Costner and Jim Parsons, and the cast of La La Land, including Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, and director Damien Chazelle.

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About The Palm Springs International Film Festival
The Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) is one of the largest film festivals in North America, welcoming 135,000 attendees last year for its lineup of new and celebrated international features and documentaries. The Festival is also known for its annual Film Awards Gala, an upscale black-tie event attended by 2,500, honoring the best achievements of the filmic year by a celebrated list of talents who, in recent years, have included Ben Affleck, Javier Bardem, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock, Bradley Cooper, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Matthew McConaughey, Julianne Moore, Brad Pitt, Eddie Redmayne, Julia Roberts, David O. Russell, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

For more information, call 760-322-2930 or 800-898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Steven Wilson / Lauren Peteroy
B|W|R Public Relations
212-901-3920
steven.wilson@bwr-pr.com / lauren.peteroy@bwr-pr.com

David Lee
Palm Springs International Film Society
760-322-2930
david@psfilmfest.org

(Source: http://www.psfilmfest.org)

#Sundance, Sundance Film Festival

Followup to An Inconvenient Truth to World Premiere at 2017 Sundance Film Festival as Day One Screening

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Documentary Caps Festival’s First Slate of ‘The New Climate’ Films and Work About Environment and Conservation

The Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed, Social Entrepreneur Jeff Skoll & Others Join ‘Power of Story’ Panel on January 22; Live Streamed at sundance.org

Park City, UT — The followup to watershed environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth will make its world premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival as a Day One screening, part of The New Climate, a program dedicated to conversations and films about environmental change and conservation.

A decade after An Inconvenient Truth brought climate change into the heart of popular culture comes the riveting follow up that shows both the escalation of the crisis and how close we are to a real solution. Directed by Sundance Film Festival alumni Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk.

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he Honorable Al Gore, 45th Vice President of the United States, will also join the Festival’s Power of Story panel, a collaboration between Sundance Institute and The Redford Center, with former President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, producer Heather Rae (Frozen River, RISE), social entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeff Skoll and environmentalist and scientist Dr. David Suzuki. A conversation between these prominent figures, who bring decades of direct experience with climate change and its effects, will be moderated by Democracy Now! journalist and broadcaster Amy Goodman on January 22, 2017, and livestreamed from Park City’s Egyptian Theatre at sundance.org.

The New Climate includes 14 documentaries, short films and virtual reality experiences across the Festival’s categories, and marks the first time that Festival programmers have focused efforts to highlight a specific cause.

Robert Redford, President and Founder of Sundance Institute, said, “I believe that storytelling is the greatest platform for getting people to care and take action on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Amid escalating threats to our environment, independent perspectives are adding the depth and dimension needed for us to find common ground and real solutions.”

John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, said, “This film and the 13 other films and projects that are part of The New Climate slate this year add a new chapter to our legacy of showcasing stories on the environment and climate change. When my team and I first watched this film, we were taken by its complete, sensitive and cinematic presentation of the issues. It was emotional to see the scope of our world’s problems — and heartening to see the potential for progress.”

2017’s other projects for The New Climate appear below. Environmental films and projects showcased at the Festival in recent years include The Cove, Gasland, Chasing Ice, Racing Extinction and Collisions. The New Climate is a partnership of Sundance Institute and The Redford Center.

Chasing Coral / U.S.A. (Director: Jeff Orlowski) — Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

Chasing Coral: The VR Experience / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Jeff Orlowski) — Zackary Rago, a passionate scuba diver and researcher, documented the unprecedented 2016 coral bleaching event at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef with this exclusive underwater VR experience. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

The Diver / Mexico (Director: Esteban Arrangoiz) — Julio César Cu Cámara is the chief diver in the Mexico City sewer system. His job is to repair pumps and dislodge garbage that flows into the gutters to maintain the circulation of sewage waters. (Short Films)

Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre / U.S.A. (Director: Jack Henry Robbins, Screenwriters: Jack Henry Robbins, Nunzio Randazzo) — One of the first films in American cinema to address climate change, Hot Winter: A film by Dick Pierre, was also a hardcore porno. All sex scenes have been removed as to not distract from the conscious message. (Short Films)

Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry / U.S.A. (Directors: Laura Dunn, Jef Sewell) — This cinematic portrait of the changing landscapes and shifting values of rural America in the era of industrial agriculture is seen through the mind’s eye of farmer and writer Wendell Berry. (Spotlight)

Melting Ice / U.S.A. (Lead Artist: Danfung Dennis) — We take viewers on a transcendent exploration into the devastating consequences of climate change on Greenland’s ice sheet. Stand under collapsing glaciers, next to raging rivers of ice melt and witness rising sea levels—all visceral warnings of our planet’s future. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

Plastic China / China (Director: Jiu-liang Wang) — Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture. International Premiere. (World Documentary)

Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman / U.S.A. (Directors: Susan Froemke, John Hoffman, Beth Aala) — From the Montana Rockies to the wheat fields of Kansas and the Gulf of Mexico, families who work the land and sea are crossing political divides to find unexpected ways to protect the natural resources vital to their livelihoods. These are the new heroes of conservation, deep in America’s heartland. World Premiere. (Documentary Premieres)

RISE / Canada (Director and screenwriter: Michelle Latimer) — This vibrant and immersive documentary series explores the front lines of indigenous resistance. Episodes Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power examine factors that threaten indigenous liberation in the 21st century. A series of contrasts, this series is both a condemnation of colonialism and a celebration of indigenous peoples. Continuing Sundance Institute’s ongoing commitment to presenting bold stories from within the Native American and Indigenous communities, we are proud to debut three episodes: Apache Stronghold, Sacred Water and Red Power, followed by an extended Q&A. World Premiere. (Special Events)

Tree / U.S.A. (Lead Artists: Milica Zec, Winslow Porter, Key Collaborators: Aleksandar Protic, Jacob Kudsk Steensen) — This virtual experience transforms you into a rainforest tree. With your arms as the branches and body as the trunk, you experience the tree’s growth from a seedling to its fullest form and witness its fate firsthand. (New Frontier: Virtual Reality)

Trophy / U.S.A. (Director: Shaul Schwarz, Co-Director: Christina Clusiau) — This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the U.S. and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

Visions of an Island / U.S.A. (Director: Sky Hopinka) — Indigenous and foreign presences coexist on an Alaskan island in the center of the Bering Sea. (Short Films)

Water & Power: A California Heist / U.S.A. (Director: Marina Zenovich) — In California’s convoluted water system, notorious water barons find ways to structure a state-engineered system to their own advantage. This examination into their centers of power shows small farmers and everyday citizens facing drought and a new, debilitating groundwater crisis. World Premiere. (U.S. Documentary)

The New Climate is Sundance Institute’s year-round environmental initiative, supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, the Kendeda Fund, Discovery Channel, Vulcan Productions, Code Blue Foundation, FOND Group, EarthX Film, and the Joy Family Foundation.

The Sundance Film Festival®
The Sundance Film Festival has introduced global audiences to some of the most groundbreaking films of the past three decades, including Boyhood, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Whiplash, Brooklyn, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Life Itself, The Cove, The End of the Tour, Blackfish, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Super Size Me, Dope, Little Miss Sunshine, sex, lies, and videotape, Reservoir Dogs, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, An Inconvenient Truth, Precious and Napoleon Dynamite. The Festival is a program of the non-profit Sundance Institute®. 2017 Festival sponsors to date include: Presenting Sponsors – Acura, SundanceTV, Chase Sapphire®, and Canada Goose; Leadership Sponsors – Adobe, AT&T, DIRECTV, and YouTube; Sustaining Sponsors – American Airlines, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Francis Ford Coppola Winery, GEICO, Google VR,The Hollywood Reporter, IMDb, Jaunt, Kickstarter, Omnicom, Stella Artois® and the University of Utah Health. Sundance Institute recognizes critical support from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and the State of Utah as Festival Host State. The support of these organizations helps offset the Festival’s costs and sustain the Institute’s year-round programs for independent artists. Look for the Official Sponsor seal at their venues at the Festival. sundance.org/festival

 

 

Sundance Institute
Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, Sundance Institute is a nonprofit organization that provides and preserves the space for artists in film, theatre, and new media to create and thrive. The Institute’s signature Labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences to artists in igniting new ideas, discovering original voices, and building a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Sundance Institute has supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Fruitvale Station, Sin Nombre, The Invisible War, The Square, Dirty Wars, Spring Awakening, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder and Fun Home. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

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Media Contact:
Spencer Alcorn
310.360.1981
spencer_alcorn@sundance.org

(Source: http://www.sundance.org)