Over 200 of the world’s top short comedies have been selected to screen at this year’s 2019 Hollywood Comedy Shorts Film Festival (HCSFF). The highly anticipated CollegeHumor Originals’ series Downbeat produced by Big Breakfast, will open the 4th year with two exclusive episodes. Laugh Factory will once again be presenting the Opening Panel, “The State of the Business: The Explosion of Short Form Comedy.”
The 2019 New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) announced its showcase films for Opening Night, Centerpiece, and Closing Night. NYIFF will open with Sir directed by Rohena Gera and close with The Last Color directed by Vikas Khanna. The Festival will be run May 7th to 12th at the Village East Cinemas in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (181-189 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003).
Stanley Nelson’s Miles Davis documentary and an eye-popping expose on the world of competitive dog grooming (scored by Baltimore’s own Dan Deacon) are among the first 10 documentaries selected for the 2019 Maryland Film Festival. The Festival will run Wednesday, May 8 through Sunday, May 12 in Baltimore’s Station North Arts and Entertainment District!
More than 30 years after their golden age, some of the legendary voices of Reggae including Ken Boothe, Winston McAnuff, Kiddus I, and Cedric Myton are back on a World Tour all captured in the new documentary Inna De Yard: The Soul of Jamaica. The film directed by Peter Webber will World Premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, April 29. After the Premiere Screening there will be a special performance by reggae legend Ken Boothe.
The Oscar®-qualifying 28th Aspen Shortsfest, announced this year’s Award winners with NEFTA FOOTBALL CLUB, receiving both Audience Award and Jury Award for Comedy, and BROTHERHOOD, honored with The Ellen Award, as well as Jury Award for Drama.
Executive produced by Patagonia founder, Yvon Chouinard and directed/produced by Josh “Bones” Murphy, ‘Artifishal’ tells the story of fish hatcheries and fish farms from California to Norway. It explores wild salmon’s slide toward extinction, threats posed by fish hatcheries and fish farms, and our continued loss of faith in nature. The film will World Premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday, April 25, 2019.
This year, the Tribeca Film Festival will debut the inaugural Tribeca Celebrates Pride, a day-long event on Saturday, May 4th at the Tribeca Festival Hub at Spring Studios concluding with the World Premiere of Wig, directed by Chris Moukarbel. The day will honor the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, including one-on-one interviews with LGBTQ+ luminaries including Neil Patrick Harris, John Cameron Mitchell, Larry Kramer and guest speaker Asia Kate Dillon. The program will reflect on the impact of this seminal moment for the LGBTQ+ community and include conversations with Raul Castillo, Patti Harrison, Angelica Ross, and more.
The documentary 17 Blocks, an intimate chronicle of a DC-based family’s struggles with addiction and gun violence, directed by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Davy Rothbart will premiere on Saturday, April 27 at the Tribeca Film Festival in the Documentary Competition section.
The Ashland Independent Film Festival (AIFF), scheduled for April 11 to 15, 2019, will present two special awards this year – the Pride Award to film critic B. Ruby Rich and the Rogue Award to artists Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra, directors of the Sundance NEXT Jury and Audience award winner, The Infiltrators.
The 72nd Cannes Film Festival will open on Tuesday May 14th with Jim Jarmusch’s new film, The Dead Don’t Die. The independent filmmaker’s newest foray into genre film (after the western with Dead Man, Samurai/crime film with Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and his vampire film,Only Lovers Left Alive ) promises to be “the greatest zombies cast ever disassembled”: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, RZA, Sara Driver, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, Eszter Balint, Carol Kane and Tom Waits. The Dead Don’t Die also reunites Jarmusch with many of his frequent collaborators including Director of Photography Frederick Elmes (Night on Earth, Paterson, Broken Flowers ) and Editor Affonso Gonçalves (Only Lovers Left Alive, Paterson ).The Dead Don’t Die is Jim Jarmusch’s thirteenth feature film and stands as not just a humorous and sometimes scary subversion of the genre (with a nod to George Romero’s seminal film, Night of the Living Dead ) but also a tribute to cinema itself.
After receiving a record number of 2,659 films from 100 countries, Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) has closed submissions for its 2019 edition: THE GATHERING. The festival will select 120 film premieres to be announced in May. The films are divided in six categories: Feature Narrative, Feature Doc, Short Narrative, Short Doc, Experimental and Animation.
John Waters will receive the Pardo d’onore Manor award during the 72nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival followed by one of the new “Crazy Midnight” screenings featuring his film Cecil B. DeMented (2000).