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Documentary filmmaker Joshua Fox was arrested on Wednesday as he reportedly tried to film a House Science Committee hearing without proper media credentials.

According to the NY Times, Josh Fox, whose HBO documentary “Gasland” raised questions about the safety of the natural gas drilling technique known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was handcuffed and charged with unlawful entry.

Mr. Fox is preparing a sequel to “Gasland  and brought a crew to film a hearing of the energy and environment subcommittee that was looking into an Environmental Protection Agency finding that fracking was probably responsible for groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyo.

Mr. Fox was released by the Capitol police shortly after 1 p.m. with a misdemeanor citation. A court date is set for Feb. 15.

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San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Bingham Ray passed away on January 23 after suffering a stroke while attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah’

The San Francisco Film Society regrets to announce that Executive Director Bingham Ray passed away on January 23 while attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

“The board of directors and staff of the Film Society are stunned and deeply saddened by the untimely death of our executive director Bingham Ray. We at the Film Society and the entire film community have lost far too early an energetic and visionary impact player who has helped shape the independent film industry for decades in so many important and valuable ways,” said Pat McBaine, SFFS board president. “He shall be dearly missed. Our deepest sympathies and condolences go out to Bingham’s family and his legions of friends and colleagues all over the world who loved and respected him.”

Ray brought his well-developed creative and business acumen to the running, reimagining and reinvigorating of a major nonprofit arts organization. Since taking the helm on November 7, 2011 he oversaw and crafted a cohesive plan to strengthen the Film Society’s exhibition, education and filmmakers services programs, including its most successful fall season to date; addressed the strenuous financial concerns facing nonprofit arts organizations today; focused particular attention on the operation of SF Film Society Cinema; connected to the local education community; broadened the outreach and impact of the project development and grants programs; and was well into plans for the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival.

He immediately became a part of the SF film world, hosting a reception at Tosca Café to introduce himself to the community; a special screening of California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown, attended by Governor Jerry Brown and his wife Anne Gust; and a preview of Pina with his old friend Wim Wenders, attended by Francis and Eleanor Coppola, Les Blank, Phil Kaufman and Tom Luddy.

“When Bingham took the job, we were ecstatic,” said SFFS board co-vice president and film producer Jen Chaiken. “It was an enormous vote of confidence for the organization that he was compelled to uproot his life to come run the Film Society. Bingham felt this job honored and tapped into the experience he’d garnered over the past 30 years. Bingham was one of those rare few who everyone knew on a first name only basis. He was one of a kind and will be deeply, deeply missed.”

Ray came to the San Francisco Film Society from New York City, where he recently served as the first run programming consultant to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, executive consultant to the digital distribution company SnagFilms and adjunct professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Ray cofounded October Films in 1991 and served as its copresident until its sale to USA Networks in 1999. October was one of the foremost independent film companies of the 1990s, winning two Oscars and garnering 13 Oscar nominations and top prizes at the Cannes Film Festival on three occasions. Some of October Films’ credits include the internationally acclaimed Secrets & Lies, The Apostle, Cookie’s Fortune, The Celebration, Lost Highway, The Last Seduction and Breaking the Waves.

In September 2001, Ray assumed the post of president of United Artists. During his tenure at UA, the company acquired and/or produced many highly acclaimed films such as No Man’s Land, winner of the 2001 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, winner of the 2002 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary and the 2004 Academy Award-nominated Hotel Rwanda. Other United Artists films successfully released during Ray’s tenure include Jeepers Creepers 1 & 2, Nicholas Nickleby, Ghost World, Igby Goes Down and Pieces of April.

In 2007 Ray joined the Los Angeles-based production company Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and held two posts during his three-year tenure, president of Kimmel Distribution and president of creative affairs. In the first post Ray supervised all marketing and distribution plans for the original Death at a Funeral, Talk to Me, Lars and the Real Girl and Synecdoche, N.Y., among others. In the latter he was responsible for the development and production activities of the remake of Death at a Funeral, as well as supervising the development of a seven-film production slate.

Bingham Ray began his career in 1981 as manager/programmer of the Bleecker Street Cinema. He has been on the juries of the Sundance Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival and the Film Independent Spirit Awards. He has lectured on film production and development at the City College of New York’s Graduate Film School, Columbia University and New York University.

Ray is survived by his wife Nancy King, their children Nick, Annabel and Becca, and his sisters Susan Clair and Deb Pope.

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San Francisco Film Society Executive Director Bingham Ray reportedly suffered a stroke while at the Sundance Film Festival and remains hospitalized.

In a press release, the SFFS says The San Francisco Film Society regrets to announce that Executive Director Bingham Ray has been hospitalized while attending the Sundance Film Festival.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Bingham for a speedy and full recovery and our sympathies go out to his family and his many friends and colleagues at Sundance and throughout the independent film world,” said Pat McBaine, SFFS board president.

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[caption id="attachment_2182" align="alignnone"]Jonathan M. Parisen[/caption]

Indie filmmaker Jonathan M. Parisen, 40, of East Orange, NJ, who wrote, produced and directed “Stairwell: Trapped in the World Trade Center” was charged Monday with trespassing and endangerment in New York City.

According to published reports, an intoxicated Parisen jumped onto the Staten Island Railway tracks early Sunday to retrieve a lost shoe. When he struggled to get back up, good Samaritan Steven Santiago jumped on the tracks to help and was struck in the head by a train.

Parisen and Santiago are both being treated at Staten Island University Medical Center.

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[caption id="attachment_2066" align="alignnone"]Christian Bale in The Flowers of War[/caption]

Actor Christian Bale who is in China for the premiere of his latest movie, “The Flowers of War,” was reportedly roughed up by Chinese government-backed guards on Thursday when he tried to visit lawyer, Chen Guangcheng who has been  imprisoned in his home by authorities, along with his wife and child, since his release from prison in September 2010.

The incident was captured by a CNN camera crew who accompanied Christian Bale on the eight-hour drive from Beijing to Dongshigu village, to visit Chen Guangcheng who is blind.

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“What I really wanted to do was to meet the man, shake his hand and say what an inspiration he is,” Mr. Bale said.

According to the NY Times, Mr. Chen, a self-taught lawyer, crossed Chinese authorities after he took on the case of thousands of local women who had been the victims of an aggressive family planning campaign that included forced sterilizations and abortions. In 2006, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years during a trial that his legal defenders described as farcical. The charges included destroying property and organizing a crowd to block traffic, crimes allegedly orchestrated while he was under house arrest.

The whole incident may prove tricky for Chinese authorities as Christian Bale is currently starring in the Chinese film, The Flowers of War, which is also the Chinese official foreign film submission for the Academy Awards. Directed by Zhang Yimo, the film depicts Japanese atrocities during their 1937 occupation of Nanjing; and  Christian Bale plays a Catholic priest who tries to save young Chinese women who have taken refuge in a Catholic boarding school during the Japanese invasion.

The film opens this week in China, and on December 23 in the United States and Europe.

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Legendary Bollywood actor Dev Anand, the ‘Evergreen Romantic Superstar’ of Indian cinema, died after a heart attack in a London hotel on Saturday night. He was 88.

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Haskell Wexler, an 89 year-old Academy Award Winning cinematographer, is turning his camera on the Occupy LA movement for his latest political and social documentation.

The groundbreaking cinematographer and film director has been in the business since the early 1960s, starting out with documentaries, then breaking into Hollywood with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which he won his first Oscar. He went on to shoot such famous and well respected films as In the Heat of the Night and One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest. But healso continued to make documentaries and socially relevant films, such as Medium Cool, which he directed, and stands out as a lesser-known film renowned for its realistic and almost journalistic style in capturing the atmosphere leading up to the The Democratic National Convention in 1968.

Now Wexler has seemed to found a new subject of inspiration and filmmaking with the Occupy movement spreading throughout the country, focusing on LA, where he lives. He has already generated press for his videos (which are being posted online, on various sites) from such publications as The Huffington Post and the LA Times. Vimooz looks forward to what could turn into a full-length documentary. Although Wexler is older and seemingly at the end of a long and great career, it seems he is by no means ready to sit back and stop filming. As he told the LA Times, “You can take that insulation and figure you’re an old guy and you [already] did your thing, and then something inside me gets reminded that my ‘thing’ is what makes me alive — to be able to have a camera and an idea and an urge that gives me pleasure.”

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[caption id="attachment_1798" align="alignnone"]Richard Gordon, left, with actor Bela Lugosi, in 1952. [/caption]

Richard Gordon, producer and executive producer of science fiction and horror films died Tuesday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, reports the LA Times. He was 85.

Gordon’s career included such credits as a “Fiend Without a Face” and “The Haunted Strangler,”; he also ecutive-produced movies such as “Corridors of Blood” with Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, “The Haunted Strangler” with Karloff, “Island of Terror” with Peter Cushing and “Fiend Without a Face” and “First Man Into Space,” both with Marshall Thompson. He later produced films such as “The Cat and the Canary,” “Horror Hospital” and “Inseminoid.”

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Director Roman Polanski attended the 7th Zurich Film Festival to accept the lifetime achievement award that was intended for him two years ago, to honor his outstanding career achievements as a filmmaker. Almost two years to the day, Polanski was arrested on his way to the festival ceremony to receive the award.

The World Premiere of a full-length non fiction film followed the ceremony. In the documentary, Polanski reportedly briefly addressed the sexual assault case, with the bulk of the film dedicated to his childhood in German-occupied Poland, including his escape from the Warsaw ghetto and his early life and career.

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Greek-cypriot film director Michael Cacoyannis died in Athens on Monday aged 89, his cultural foundation said reports AFP.

Cacoyannis shot to fame with the triple-Oscar winning “Zorba the Greek” in 1964, an adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis-penned novel which starred Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates and Irene Pappas among others. He was also know for his film “Electra”, based on the Euripides tragedy, which received two awards at Cannes in 1962.

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[caption id="attachment_1407" align="alignnone" width="560"]Leonard Kastle stands in front of a poster of The Honeymoon Killers[/caption]

One-hit writer and director, Leonard Kastle, of his first and only film, “The Honeymoon Killers,” reportedly died May 18 at his home in Westerlo, N.Y., after a brief illness, said Tina Sisson, a friend. He was 82.

“The Honeymoon Killers,” released in 1970, is described as a “grimly realistic, low-budget, black-and-white crime drama about a lowlife lothario and his overweight nurse lover whose partnership in conning lonely women leads to murder.”

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Actress Jane Seymour reportedly said to CNN at the red carpet premiere of her new IFC movie “Love Marriage Wedding” on May 17 that she believed “there will be lots of information coming people’s way…I heard about two more [out of wedlock kids] somebody else knows about. I even met someone who knows him well.”

Yesterday on “The View” Friday, Seymour regretted her remarks, saying, “I’m so beyond sorry and appalled that I found myself even talking on the subject at all.”

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Love Marriage Wedding is directed by Dermot Mulroney and stars Mandy Moore, Kellan Lutz, James Brolin, Jane Seymour, Jessica Szohr, Michael Weston, Sarah Lieving, Joe Chrest. In the film, Mandy Moore is a marriage counselor whose life as a newly wed married to Kellan Lutz is turned upside down when she discovers her parents’ happy marriage is unexpectedly headed for divorce. Determined to reconcile her parents for their 30th anniversary surprise party she stops at nothing plunging from one compromising situation to another.

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