
The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the HBO Fellowships of the inaugural TFI Documentary Fund. Three fellowships were awarded today, and will receive a total of $100,000 in fellowships and grants toward their documentary projects.
All the News.
All the News.

The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the HBO Fellowships of the inaugural TFI Documentary Fund. Three fellowships were awarded today, and will receive a total of $100,000 in fellowships and grants toward their documentary projects.

Blank City is at once nostalgic, in its look back towards a time and place that was full of raw energy and desperate creativity; eye-opening, with its fantastic clips of experimental films that few people today have probably seen; and very timely, since it speaks directly to our current culture of artists, hipsters and struggling indie filmmakers scraping by in contemporary New York, a city very different from the one portrayed in this film, but the same city nonetheless. Celine Danhier’s documentary is all of these things, and more. It explores the films and music being made in New York in the late 1970s and early 80s, leading to the art boom of the 80s and 90s, the spread of punk and hip hop, and the rise of independent film. The time and place is portrayed by the use of film clips, musical performance footage, and honest and humorous recollections of the people who experienced it. The people interviewed include familiar celebrities, such as Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, and Steve Buscemi, and lesser known artists like Amos Poe, Vivienne Dick, and Nick Zedd.

The 2011 Micromax IIFA Awards, officially the 12th International Indian Film Academy Awards aka the Bollywood Oscars announced the films nominations. Milan Luthria’s mafia gangster film, Once Upon A Time In Mumbai, leads the field with 12 nomination, followed by Dabangg, an action film starring Salman Khan, with 11 nominations.

The recipients of the prestigious 70th Annual Peabody Awards were announced by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and two American Masters documentaries won Peabodys. LennoNYC, a poignant, revelatory documentary about John Lennon’s life and work in his adopted home city, and Elia Kazan: A Letter to Elia, an homage to the theatrical and film director by Martin Scorsese. Peabodys also went to William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible, an Art21 film that provided an intimate look at the creative process of a multifaceted artist whose work includes sculpture, animation, theater and tapestries, and Macbeth, a Great Performances production that sets Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy in a modern, militaristic society.

Whole Foods Market is really serious about its foray into film. The leading retailer of natural and organic foods and AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Festival, the nation’s leading documentary festival, announce the launch of a $50,000 grant program for filmmakers working in the green film genre.

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker, Alan Arkin, will be honored at the Florida Film Festival’s 20th anniversary event, “An Evening with Alan Arkin,” on April 15. The Oscar® winning, three-time Academy Award® nominated filmmaker will receive the John M. Tiedtke Lifetime Achievement Award and the evening’s event will also include the 45th anniversary screening of The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!, the film that earned Arkin his first Oscar® nomination in 1966.

Film Independent Spirit Award-winner Patty Jenkins (Monster) along with Jennifer Aniston, Alicia Keys, and Demi Moore have been signed to direct the Lifetime Original Movie Project Five, an anthology of five short films exploring the impact of breast cancer on people’s lives. The film’s fifth director will be announced in the coming weeks.

Joe Wizan, a former head of 20th Century Fox‘s motion picture division and an independent producer of films such as “Jeremiah Johnson” and “… And Justice for All,” has died. He was 76.
Four 2011 Tribeca Film Festival official selections THE BANG BANG CLUB, THE BLEEDING HOUSE, LAST NIGHT and NEDS, will be released nationwide via video-on-demand under the “Tribeca Film” banner simultaneously with the start of the Festival on April 20. The “Tribeca Film” VOD category will also offer other festival circuit titles, including Dax Shepard’s BROTHER’S JUSTICE and THE HIGH COST OF LIVING, starring Zach Braff. Tribeca Film is the comprehensive distribution label from Tribeca Enterprises.

The independent film “The Frontier Boys” which won 2011 Best Feature Drama at the Sabaoth International Film Festival in Milan, Italy, opens in its hometown Michigan this weekend.

Patricia Richardson’s directorial debut, “Detour” will make its West Coast premiere this weekend at the “The Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival.” The Women’s International Film Festival runs March 25 – March 31 and showcases narratives, documentaries, animation and student short films created by women filmmakers featuring diverse roles for women.

Vanessa Hudgen has signed on to join the cast of the independent film, A Virgin Mary, reports HollywoodLife.com. The film is described as a coming of age story about a teenage girl named Mary (played by Lily Collins) who makes a vow to have sex with her best guy friend (Carter Jenkins) if they’re still virgins by the time they are 18 years old. Vanessa will play Mary’s “slutty best friend” and Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids) is the fourth lead.