DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS[/caption]
15 European documentaries have been recommended for a nomination for this year’s 2017 European Film Awards.
Ten documentary festivals have recommended to the committee one film each which has had its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest edition. Based on their recommendations and the films individually submitted, the EFA documentary committee decided on the EFA Documentary Selection.
EFA Members will now vote for five documentary nominations. Based on these nominations, the EFA Members will then elect the ‘European Documentary 2017’ which will be announced during the awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin.
Films
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15 Films in EFA Documentary Selection 2017: ‘SCHOOL LIFE’ ‘THE WAR SHOW’ and More
[caption id="attachment_23844" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS[/caption]
15 European documentaries have been recommended for a nomination for this year’s 2017 European Film Awards.
Ten documentary festivals have recommended to the committee one film each which has had its world premiere at the respective festival’s latest edition. Based on their recommendations and the films individually submitted, the EFA documentary committee decided on the EFA Documentary Selection.
EFA Members will now vote for five documentary nominations. Based on these nominations, the EFA Members will then elect the ‘European Documentary 2017’ which will be announced during the awards ceremony on December 9 in Berlin.
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World Premiere of COUSIN, COUSINE An Unreleased Short by French Filmmaker Jean Rouch Added to Venice Film Festival
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Jean Rouch[/caption]
For the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great French director and ethnographer Jean Rouch, the Venice Film Festival adds to its line-up the world-premiere screening of Cousin, cousine (1985-1987, 31′, color), the only film that Rouch made in Venice, the very unusual and previously unreleased short film, with Damouré Zika and Mariama Hima (Venice Classics).
Cousin, cousine has been fully restored by the French CNC (Centre national du cinéma e de l’image animée) in collaboration with the Fondation Jean Rouch and the Association Centenaire Jean Rouch 2017.
Cousin, cousine is a “caprice” invented in Venice by Jean Rouch and by his two friends and performers, Nigerian actor Damouré Zika and Nigerian filmmaker Mariama Hima, who came to the Venice Film Festival in 1985 to present Mariama Hima’s film Baabu Banza in the “Venezia Genti” section, where it won an award. On that occasion, they decided to make a film fantasy built around a painting by Gentile Bellini and several locations and stories within the city. The plot has Mariama and Damouré, two cousins, meeting in Venice to look for a long-lost relic, like in one of Gentile Bellini’s most famous paintings. Mariama thus introduces Damouré to the city, taking him to a “squero”, a boatyard where he can study how gondolas are made (which is very different from building pirogues).
Cousin, cousine will screen at the 74th Venice Film Festival in the Venice Classics section, following the documentary L’Enigma di Jean Rouch a Torino – Cronaca di un film raté by Marco di Castri, Paolo Favaro and Daniele Pianciola.
Jean Rouch (1917-2004), a French ethnographer and director, made over 180 films (some unfinished), along with a great number of photographs, sound recordings and writings of various kinds. He founded important centres and institutions such as the Comité du film ethnographique and events such as the Cinéma du Réel festival. He taught, defended and promoted ethnographic and documentary filmmaking, and visual anthropology.
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Tribeca Film Festival Award-Winning Documentary BOBBI JENE Dances into Theaters on September 22 | Trailer
The Tribeca Film Festival award-winning documentary Bobbi Jene directed by Elvira Lind, looks at the exhilarating journey of a dancer finding her place in the world. The film swept the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival documentary awards, winning for Best Documentary Feature, Best Cinematography and Best Editing. Bobbi Jene will be released in New York at the Quad Cinema on Friday, September 22, with additional cities to follow.
After a decade of stardom in Israel, American dancer Bobbi Jene Smith decides to leave behind her prominent position at the world-famous Batsheva Dance Company, as well as the love of her life, to return to the US to create her own boundary-breaking art. Tracking the personal and professional challenges that await her, Lind’s film lovingly and intimately documents the dilemmas and inevitable consequences of ambition. Observing the artist in both private and public settings, the film moves between uninhibited scenes of life at home, grueling rehearsals, and Bobbi Jene’s revealing choreography. Baring her body, her new work explores both the physical and emotional complexities of female sexuality. Bobbi Jene delves into what it takes for a woman to gain her own independence in the extremely competitive world of dance and to find self-fulfillment in the process.
Trailer: Bobbi Jene
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Coming-of-Age Indie Drama DAYVEON
Check out the new trailer for Amman Abbasi’s Dayveon, starring newcomer Devin Blackmon, which premiered earlier this year at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. The film will be open in theaters on September 13, 2017 in Los Angeles at Laemmle Monica Film Center, and in New York City at Quad Cinema.
In the film, 13-year-old Dayveon (newcomer Devin Blackmon) struggling with his older brother’s death, spends the sweltering summer days roaming around his rural Arkansan town. With no parents and few role models, he soon falls in with the local gang. Though his sister’s boyfriend tries to provide stability and comfort as a reluctant father figure, Dayveon becomes increasingly drawn into the camaraderie and violence of his new world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnjos7t076A
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VIDEO: Watch First Trailer for THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER Starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman
A24 today released the first trailer for psychological horror-thriller film The Killing Of A Sacred Deer from Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (THE LOBSTER, DOGTOOTH), and starring Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman.
The film also starring Barry Keoghan, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic, Bill Camp and Alicia Silverstone will be released in theaters on October 27.
The film’s synopsis: A prominent surgeon adopts a teenager into his family, but as the teen’s actions grow increasingly sinister, the doctor is forced to make a terrible decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQFdGfwChtw
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Documentary SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME World Premiering at Toronto Film Festival
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Sammy Davis, Jr. takes aim in a backstage photo with his dancers in a scene from the documentary SAMMY DAVIS, JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo Credit: The Estate of Altovise Davis[/caption]
The trailer premiered today for the new documentary Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me directed by the legendary documentary filmmaker Sam Pollard, which will have it’s world premiere this September at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.
Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me is the first major film documentary to examine Davis’ vast talent and his journey for identity through the shifting tides of civil rights and racial progress during 20th-century America.
Sammy Davis, Jr. had the kind of career that was indisputably legendary, so vast and multi-faceted that it was dizzying in its scope and scale. And yet, his life was complex, complicated and contradictory. Davis strove to achieve the American Dream in a time of racial prejudice and shifting political territory. He was the veteran of increasingly outdated show business traditions trying to stay relevant; he frequently found himself bracketed by the bigotry of white America and the distaste of black America; he was the most public black figure to embrace Judaism, thereby yoking his identity to another persecuted minority.
Featuring new interviews with such luminaries as Billy Crystal, Norman Lear, Jerry Lewis, Whoopi Goldberg, Quincy Jones and Kim Novak, with never-before-seen photographs from Davis’ vast personal collection and excerpts from his electric performances in television, film and concert, Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me explores the life and art of a uniquely gifted entertainer whose trajectory blazed across the major flashpoints of American society from the Depression through the 1980s.
I want to live, not merely survive
And I won’t give up this dream
Of life that keeps me alive.
I’ve gotta be me, I’ve gotta be me
The dream that I see makes me what I am.
I’m Puerto Rican, Jewish, colored, and married to a white woman.
When I move into a neighborhood, people start running in four ways at the same time.
–Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu8AV81ANTw
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THE WORK, Documentary Set Inside California’s Folsom Prison, Gets Release Date
The Work is a documentary film that follows a group of outsiders into California’s Folsom Prison to join inmates in an intense four-day therapy session intended to help prepare them to succeed back outside prison.
The film was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature at South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival 2017, and Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017. Directed by Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous, The Work will open in New York on Friday, October 20, and in Los Angeles on Friday, October 27, with a national rollout to follow.
Set inside a single room in Folsom Prison, The Work follows three men from outside as they participate in a four-day group therapy retreat with level-four convicts. Over the four days, each man in the room takes his turn at delving deep into his past. The raw and revealing process that the incarcerated men undertake exceeds the expectations of the free men, ripping them out of their comfort zones and forcing them to see themselves and the prisoners in unexpected ways. The Work offers a powerful and rare look past the cinder block walls, steel doors and the dehumanizing tropes in our culture to reveal a movement of change and redemption that transcends what we think of as rehabilitation.
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THE PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMIST on Controversial Anti-Vaccination Dr. Andrew Wakefield Sets Release Date
The Pathological Optimist directed by Miranda Bailey documents Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the man behind one of the most highly controversial, intensely debated topics in modern medicine: the anti-vaccination movement. The film will be released theatrically by The Film Arcade on September 29th followed by a VOD release via Gravitas later this year.
With The Pathological Optimist, director Miranda Bailey brings us a character study of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, one of 13 co-authors of a notorious 1998 paper in the UK medical Journal The Lancet, but who became the very public face of what has come to be known as “The Anti-Vaccination Movement.” An expat from Britain who currently resides in Austin, Texas, Wakefield allowed Bailey and her team to follow him and his family for five years beginning in 2011 as he fought a defamation battle in the courts against the British Medical Journal and journalist Brian Deer. The results of that case – and the self-reflection, pronouncements, and observations of Wakefield, his legal team, wife, and his children – create a complex and incisive look at one of our era’s most fear-provoking and continuingly provocative figures. The Pathological Optimist takes no sides, instead letting Wakefield and the battles he fought speak for themselves.
The Pathological Optimist is the sophomore effort of prolific indie producer Miranda Bailey, whose debut Greenlit premiered to critical acclaim at SXSW in 2010. In a 15-year filmmaking career, Bailey has distinguished herself by producing over 20 films, among them the Oscar-nominated The Squid Whale and the Spirit Award-winning The Diary of a Teenage Girl, as well as James Gunn’s Super and the Sundance Film festival hit Swiss Army Man.
Bailey also recently completed production on her narrative feature debut You Can Choose Your Family, starring Jim Gaffigan.
“I’ve always gravitated towards controversial subject matters in the many films I’ve produced. The minefield of strong opinions and disagreements on who Andrew Wakefield is or what Andrew Wakefield has done intrigued me. What I found was a startling portrayal of a modern day sisyphus; punished by the media and the public yet continuing to push his rock up the hill over and over again.” stated Bailey.
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VIDEO: Sean Baker’s THE FLORIDA PROJECT, Starring Willem Dafoe, Releases First Poster and Trailer
Here is the new trailer for The Florida Project, Sean Baker’s follow-up to his critically acclaimed Tangerine, which takes a deeply moving and unforgettably poignant look at childhood. The film starring Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Valeria Cotto and Bria Vinaite will be released in theaters on October 6, 2017.
Set on a stretch of highway just outside the imagined utopia of Disney World, The Florida Project follows six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince in a stunning breakout turn) and her rebellious mother Halley (Bria Vinaite, another major discovery) over the course of a single summer. The two live week to week at “The Magic Castle,” a budget motel managed by Bobby (a career-best Willem Dafoe), whose stern exterior hides a deep reservoir of kindness and compassion.
Despite her harsh surroundings, the precocious and ebullient Moonee has no trouble making each day a celebration of life, her endless afternoons overflowing with mischief and grand adventure as she and her ragtag playmates—including Jancey, a new arrival to the area who quickly becomes Moonee’s best friend—fearlessly explore the utterly unique world into which they’ve been thrown. Unbeknownst to Moonee, however, her delicate fantasy is supported by the toil and sacrifice of Halley, who is forced to explore increasingly dangerous possibilities in order to provide for her daughter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwQ-NH1rRT4
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Documentary RAT FILM, Uses Rats to Explore History of Baltimore, Gets September Release Date | Trailer
Rat Film is a feature-length documentary that uses the rat to explore the history of Baltimore. The film directed by Theo Anthony will open in theaters on September 15, in New York at Film Society at Lincoln Center, and Baltimore at Parkway Theater.
Across walls, fences, and alleys, rats not only expose our boundaries of separation but make homes in them. Rat Film is a feature-length documentary that uses the rat—as well as the humans that love them, live with them, and kill them–to explore the history of Baltimore. “There’s never been a rat problem in Baltimore, it’s always been a people problem.”
Rat Film director Theo Anthony is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker currently based in Baltimore, MD. His work has been featured by the The Atlantic, Vice, Agence-France Presse (AFP), and other international media outlets. His films have received premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and Anthology Film Archives. In 2015, he was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDy3Mtot7IA
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Sundance 2017 Documentary SCHOOL LIFE on Irish Boarding School, Sets Release Date | Trailer
The documentary School Life is a charming portrait of a year in the life of the only primary-age boarding school in Ireland and the two inspirational teachers at its heart. Directed by Irish husband-and-wife filmmakers Neasa Ní Chianáin and David Rane, the documentary was a favorite of the 2017 Sundance Film Festival (where it was known as In Loco Parentis). School Life will open in New York at the IFC Center on Friday, September 8, with additional cities to follow.
Headfort, a school not unlike Hogwarts with its 18th century buildings, secret doors and magical woodlands, has been home to John and Amanda Leyden for 46 years and a backdrop to their extraordinary careers. For John, rock music is just another subject alongside math, English and Latin, all of which are taught in a collaborative and often hilarious fashion. For his wife Amanda, the key to connecting with children is the book, and she uses all means to snare the young minds. The level of attention and the concern the Leydens have for their students lead to some remarkable developmental transformations as the children journey from being homesick and afraid to confident young people, tearful upon realizing that school is over and they must go home. As John and Amanda ponder retirement, the film poses a quietly profound question: Will their intimate and caring cultivation of future generations live on, or will it vanish like so many community-centered practices?
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Watch Trailer + Poster for Sundance Award-Winning Indie Drama CROWN HEIGHTS
The official trailer and poster is here for the 2017 Sundance Film Festival award-winning indie drama Crown Heights, directed by Matt Ruskin and starring Lakeith Stanfield as Colin Warner, a man wrongful convicted in New York in the 1980s. The film also starring Nnamdi Asomugha, Nestor Carbonell, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, and Amari Cheatom, is adapted from the popular “This American Life” podcast. Crown Heights will open in select theaters on August 25th.
In the spring of 1980, a teenager is gunned down in the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn. The police pressure a child witness to identify a suspect. As a result, Colin Warner, an 18-year-old kid from nearby Crown Heights, is wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Colin’s childhood friend Carl ‘KC’ King devotes his life to fighting for Colin’s freedom. He works on appeals, takes loans for lawyer fees and becomes a legal courier to learn the court system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgrFRyMsWiY