The 2019 American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund (AmDocs) in Palm Springs announced a slate of approximately 200 documentary and animated works from around the world. Among the works being exhibited are films focused on indigenous people’s rights, women’s equity in society, environmental trends, celebrity and historical biopics, cutting edge and socially relevant topics.
CAT SHOW[/caption]
The 4th annual edition of The American Documentary Film Festival (AMDocs) called it a wrap on Monday, March 30, 2015, with its signature Closing Night Mystery Screening and Film Festival Awards Presentation. Director Peter Bogdanovich was the recipient of the 2015 Filmmaker Who Makes a Difference Award, Dr. Ronni Sanlo (the subject of the film, LETTER TO ANITA) was the recipient of the 2015 Rozene Supple Humanitarian Award, and the film,SPARTANS, was the recipient of the 2015 Robert Drew Verite Award.
Three film projects were awarded American Documentary Film Fund Grants this year, including POW WOW, PERSONHOOD, and THE TROUBLE WITH RAY. Each year, The American Documentary Film Fund provides up to $50,000 in grants to independent American filmmakers. Applicants must provide detailed story outlines and budgets for their works in progress or new projects. Filmmakers screen a five (5) minute preview of their film projects before an industry panel of judges and take part in a ten minute Q&A about their projects.
This year’s Film Awards were also announced as follows: 2015 Best Foreign Feature Documentary: CAT SHOW (U.K./Australia), 2015 Best Foreign Short Documentary: HONEY ON WOUNDS (Romania),2015 Best Animated Short(s): DEATH & THE MAIDEN (Israel/Germany) and THE LOST MARINER(Netherlands/Canada), 2015 Best American Feature Documentary: AMERICA RECYCLED, and 2015 Best American Short Documentary: SEEING THE FULL SOUNDING.
The American Documentary Film Festival (AmDocs) is launching its 2015 Call for Entries, inviting documentary filmmakers around the world to submit feature-length documentaries, documentary shorts, and animated shorts.
Named “One of the World’s Top 25 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee,” by MovieMaker magazine in 2013, and then “One of the World’s Five Coolest Documentary Film Festivals,” by the same publication later that year, AmDocs takes place in the beautiful resort community of Palm Springs, California. Ideally located 90 minutes east of Hollywood, this film mecca boasts a favorable viewing audience and a proven track record of supporting independent films.
AmDocs 2015 will run March 26, 2015 through March 30, 2015. Early bird submissions will be accepted through July 3, 2014, with a regular deadline of November 15, 2014, and a late deadline of January 2, 2015. All submissions are accepted through Withoutabox.
“Our main objective is to promote a world vision of film as seen through the eyes of the filmmaker in order to educate and entertain the film goer,” said Founder and Festival Director Ted Grouya.
AmDocs also hosts the annual American Documentary Film Fund; an adjunct event that allows documentary filmmakers to compete for financing on either new or in-progress projects. Filmmakers choosing to submit to the Film Fund are not in any way required to submit a film to the festival, and both first-time and established filmmakers are encouraged to submit to the Film Fund competition where upwards of $50,000 may be distributed each year to winning project(s).
For more information about The American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund, visit http://www.
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RUNNING WILD: THE LIFE OF DAYTON O. HYDE will screen at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, California, on March 28, 2014. This cinematic adventure explores the compelling life of a modern day renaissance man and true hero to the earth. Hyde is an old style cowboy and steadfast conservationist who dedicated his life to protecting the wild horses, land, and water of the American West. RUNNING WILD is a captivating story of determination and accomplishment, featuring wild mustangs running free on Hyde’s breathtaking 13,000-acre Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary in South Dakota, and scenes shot at his beautiful Yamsi Ranch in Oregon and boyhood lake house in Michigan. RUNNING WILD is directed by Emmy Award winner Suzanne Mitchell and is executive produced by two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple. The film garnered awards for best documentary at several festivals where it received standing ovations, as audiences were awed and inspired by Hyde’s passion.
Suzanne Mitchell is thrilled to share her film with an audience from Palm Springs. The soundtrack was composed by Palm Springs native Steve Poltz, an award-winning singer-songwriter known for Jewel’s megahit hit “You Were Meant For Me.” Music critic Jon Kanis reports, “The soundtrack does what a great score is supposed to do: give the images and the words onscreen a deeper resonance. And in that marriage of image and sound, Running Wild is a complete bulls-eye.”
RUNNING WILD is a testament to perseverance and achievement despite challenges, and one’s responsibility to protect nature. At age 13, Hyde headed West and began a life journey to defend a fragile and changing natural world, a path that ultimately led him to South Dakota. Here, he successfully created one of the largest wild horse sanctuaries, giving freedom to thousands of mustangs rescued from the controversial BLM wild horse roundups and simultaneously saved an historic tract of land. Hyde’s storied past experience includes cowboy, WWII veteran, rodeo clown, champion to sandhill cranes, wolves and coyotes, Life Magazine photographer, award-winning author, and environmental educator and activist. RUNNING WILD shares rare footage of a Lakota Naming Ceremony, honoring Hyde as protector of sacred land. Hyde continues his efforts to preserve the environment in his fight against a proposed uranium mining project located near famed Mount Rushmore that has the potential to contaminate the ecosystem and deplete the aquifer that supports all life in the Black Hills, a gamble Hyde and his fellow opponents are not willing to take. At 88, Hyde says, “It’s going to be my last great battle, but I’m going to win this one.”
The American Documentary Film Festival opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st. Running Wild is distributed by Screen Media Films.
When David Sieveking left home to study filmmaking, he left behind parents who were active, intelligent and involved. Several years later, on a visit home for Christmas, he noticed that his once spirited mother, Gretal, had become somewhat hesitant, and overly forgetful. Shortly after that came the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease – a particularly aggressive case that, over the next four years left Gretal unable to remember many things, unable to care for herself, and unable to be left alone.
FORGET ME NOT is Sieveking’s chronicle of his mother’s decline, and the impact of that decline on his father and himself. Director Sieveking’s attempts to help his mother remember things brings his parents’ larger history into focus; their lives in the heady days of 60s radicalism – their open marriage, the activism in which they were both involved, and the resultant investigation of them by the Swiss Secret Service.
FORGET ME NOT is a beautiful, yet emotional film. It will make audiences cry, but not because of the tragedy of Gretal’s struggle with Alzheimer’s. Rather, because of its tribute to the great person that she was, and the pride with which her son, the filmmaker, views her. FORGET ME NOT is a tribute to Gretal, and to every child who believes his or her mother is the greatest person in the world. This film is part of the 2014 German Film Series.
The 2014 Edition of American Documentary Film Festival (AMDOCS) opens on Thursday, March 27th, and runs through Monday, March 31st, 2014.
http://youtu.be/fWj21FiosLY
Although Uganda’s President Museveni claimed he was signing the country’s controversial anti-gay bill into law to fight liberal cultural imperialism by the West, the reality is that he may have actually signed the bill into law as a direct result of just the opposite: conservative cultural imperialism by America’s Christian Right. Possible? Academy Award-Winning Director Roger Ross Williams explores exactly that theory in his documentary GOD LOVES UGANDA at the American Documentary Film Festival which opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st, 2014.
The Academy Award®-short-listed film in the Best Documentary Feature category is one of the year’s most talked-about and critically-acclaimed films. Oscar® winner Roger Ross Williams provides a powerful exploration into the evangelical campaign to change African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting what they consider “sexual immorality,” and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow Biblical law. Director Roger Ross Williams plans to attend the American Documentary Film Festival screening of GOD LOVES UGANDA.
http://youtu.be/UnH5AWqBcLg
The 2014 edition of the American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will screen a number of award-winning international films, including the acclaimed Polish documentary, DEEP LOVE. DEEP LOVE is a story of Dr. Janusz Solarz (Soley), an active economist, researcher and lawyer, and an avid scuba diver. Life for Soley is filled with passion and promise until suddenly, at age 58, he suffers a debilitating stroke that leaves him partially paralyzed and unable to communicate clearly. Rehabilitation and recovery proves difficult, despite the assistance of his partner, Asia, a water therapist who works with disabled children, and is an active diver herself. Over the course of three years, Soley begins to regain some mobility, but not enough to reclaim his passion for diving – especially not his big dream of returning to one of the most dangerous diving locations on earth – the perilous Blue Hole in Dahab, Egypt.
Together with his friend Arthur, Solely determines that he must return to the Blue Hole, and dive there, despite its danger, and his own physical challenges. They begin planning the trip, despite the concerns of Asia, who fears she may lose her life partner to the Hole. In the end, though, Asia, Arthur and Soley all three decide to make the trip, knowing that Soley’s life, and, more importantly, his joy for life, may never be the same until he makes the attempt.
DEEP LOVE is a story of danger and dreams. Of the human will to survive, and thrive, despite illness and physical limitations. It is a testament to human ingenuity and the desire to succeed despite all odds. It is also one more way the American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund helps us all see the bigger picture, one film at a time.
The American Documentary Film Festival opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st.
When it opens in Palm Springs, California, on March 27th, 2014, the American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will begin a five five day schedule of over 120 documentary films from around the world. That schedule includes a record number of theatrical premieres – fifteen World Premieres, twenty-five North American Premieres and twenty US premieres.
“We are fortunate to have secured a large number of documentaries that will be premiering at our festival this year,” says Ted Grouya, Festival Director and Founder. “We have always been proud of the fact that we were on the cutting edge of screening new documentaries, but this year exceeds all expectations.”
The documentary genre of filmmaking, powered by a whole new generation of filmmakers, continues to grow in popularity. “These story-driven films are becoming the new keepers of culture,” Grouya said. “They have really redefined the tradition of storytelling, and, in many ways, documentary filmmakers have become the storytellers of the new millennium. Documentaries today are preserving culture, exposing corruption, and capturing events – but they are also capturing daily life – the stories of all our lives.”
“Take 57º NORTH, one of this year’s World Premiere documentaries from the United Kingdom,” Grouya continued. “It provides a poignant insight into the traditional lifestyle of John Jo MacDonald, a 67-year-old fisherman from The Outer Hebrides, whose entire way of life is under threat from environmental issues outside of his control. Another film, ALUMBRONES, uses artists to tell the story of the impact Cubans felt when the Soviet Union collapsed, and Cuba lost 90 percent of its trade overnight. RACING HEARTS, a World Premiere short film from the United States, follows the inspiring journey of three heart transplant recipients as they attempt to finish the La Jolla Half Marathon, an arduous race with a daunting hill climb. These films are lasting records of what it was for these people to live their lives, and the things we can learn from them to help us see the bigger picture that exists beyond ourselves. The bonus is that we will be among the first audiences to see them.”
The American Documentary Film Festival opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st. It is presented in conjunction with The Palm Springs Cultural Center.
images: (top left to right) 57º NORTH, ALUMBRONES, RACING HEARTS
via press release
The 2014 American Documentary Film Festival and Film Fund will screen THE LAST ONE – a look at the AIDS quilt and those who wove the panels. In the eighties and nineties, as AIDS ravaged the United States gay community, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was born out of a public battle for treatment and understanding. THE LAST ONE is a feature-length documentary tracing its history as an international art project and the role it continues to play as a response to a disease that still imperils vulnerable communities around the world.
Through the intensely personal stories of its founders, volunteers, and panel-makers, THE LAST ONE examines how stigma and discrimination exacerbated and still fuel a disease that has already claimed the lives of 30 million people and currently infects 65 million men, women and children around the globe–including 50,000 new infections a year in the US alone. Longtime LGBT Activist and Founder of The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, Cleve Jones, will attend the screening of THE LAST ONE, along with the film’s director, Nadine Licostie.
The American Documentary Film Festival opens on Thursday, March 27th and continues through Monday, March 31st, 2014.
Oliver Stone
The American Documentary Film Festival taking place March 27 to 31, 2014 in Coachella Valley, California, announced an impressive number of award-winning filmmakers planning on attending this year’s festival, including several Oscar-winning Directors. Oliver Stone, 3 time Oscar-winner and 2012 AmDocs career achievement award recipient, leads an impressive array of filmmakers planning to attend, including John Avildsen (Best Director Oscar: Rocky), Oscar-winner Roger Ross Williams, 2 time Oscar winner, Canadian filmmaker, Malcolm Clarke, as well as Canadian filmmaker Chris Landreth (Oscar winner for animation). Other award-winning international filmmakers include Robert Kirchhoff (Slovakia), Iben Haahr Andersen (Denmark), Alex Breuer (Austria), Laurent Haase (France), and Jan P. MatuszyŸski (Poland).
The festival will screen over 100 films over its five day run at three Coachella Valley venues including the Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs, The Helene Galen Theatre in Rancho Mirage, and the The Indian Wells Theater and Oliphant Auditorium, which is located on the Palm Desert campus of California State University, San Bernardino in the city of Palm Desert. Previously-announced opening night films include the west coast premiere of documentary feature I Live To Sing, directed by New York Emmy®-winner Julie Cohen, and the Academy Award®-shortlisted animated short Gloria Victoria, directed by Theodore Ushev.
Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing
GLORIA VICTORIA, the 2014 Academy Award® finalist in the Best Animated Short category, and Emmy® Award- winning director Julie Cohen’s new film, I LIVE TO SING will open the the American Documentary Film Festival scheduled to take place March 27, 2014 and run through March 31, 2014 in Palm Springs, CA.
Decades after the end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela’s election as South Africa’s first black president, the nation struggles to fulfill the promise of a transformed society. At the University of Cape Town’s once all-white opera school, both the struggle and the promise are embodied in an enormously talented group of classical singers from the black townships.
When the opera school opened its doors to black students after apartheid, faculty members were awed by the wave of gifted singers that poured in. Many learned opera in competitive community choirs in the townships, while others heard it only on TV. Today, the school is two-thirds black and mixed race, and is achieving greater success than ever in propelling graduates to the world opera stage. Recent alumni are now achieving great acclaim at venues such as The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, and La Scala in Milan, Italy.
NDIPHILELA UKUCULA: I LIVE TO SING (half of the title is in Xhosa, the native language of many of the students) is a documentary and performance film following three of the opera school’s top students through a year in the program. Cohen & her team travel with the students from their townships, where they’ve faced financial hardship (and, in some cases, health struggles) to Cape Town, where they perform in the city’s Opera Hall (once a flash point in the anti-apartheid movement), and to New York, where they sing at the prestigious Glimmerglass Festival. Along the way, they confront many obstacles — from racial politics to tuberculosis and illness, to family fears that opera is not a suitable career.
Following the screening of I LIVE TO SING, director Julie Cohen will introduce the three stars of the film – Linda Nteleza, Thesele Kemane, and Makudupanyane Senaoana, who will give a live musical performance on the grand stage of the 539-seat Camelot Theatres.
Palm Springs, CA – BEAUTY FACTORY, which will have its world premiere at this year’s American Documentary Film Festival, follows five Venezuelan contestants over the course of four months as they compete for the coveted Miss Venezuela Crown; offering an intimate look into the world of beauty, and the sometimes-ugly things people do to be part of it.
Venezuela has won more international beauty pageants than any other country. With 6 Miss International Crowns, 6 Miss World Crowns, and 6 Miss Universe Crowns, what is it that makes Venezuelan beauty queens so special? This film takes viewers behind the scenes as the girls are told how much weight to lose, how big their breasts need to be, what diet they need to follow, how long their hair should be and what color it should be, what gym routine they should follow, and even what plastic surgeries they should have prior to competing. For many of the contestants, the ultimate goal isn’t the Miss Venezuela crown, or even the Miss Universe crown. These are smart, savvy women who are using their beauty as the launching pad for something greater. BEAUTY FACTORY is a film about Female empowerment, with some positive twists.
For Tickets and/or More Information,
visit http://americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/
The American Documentary Film Festival
April 4-8, 2013
Camelot Theatres
2300 E Baristo Road
Palm Springs, CA 92262
760-325-6565
Cinemark Century Theatres at The River
71800 Hwy 111Suite A-137
Rancho Mirage, CA 92270
760-836-1940