Ever seen a film from Greenland? INUK, a film by Mike Magidson, Greenland’s Oscar submission last year and winner of multiple international film festival awards, will open at the Quad Cinema in New York on October 11; and at The Royal Los Angeles on October 4 and in San Francisco on October 2. A national release will follow.
OASS directed by Abhinav Shiv Tiwari
The Chicago South Asian Film Festival revealed the film lineup for its fourth annual event to be held between September 20 and 22nd. The festival, to be hosted at the Showplace Icon Theaters and Film Row Cinema at Columbia College will present over 24 films. The festival will open with the US premiere of OASS, a portrayal of the injustices faced by the many victims of child trafficking. Directed by Abhinav Shiv Tiwari, the film follows Kiku, a girl of great determination, as she endeavors to return home from the dingy brothels of Delhi.
A CAUTIONARY TAIL starring Cate Blanchett
The 2013 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival, now it its 17th year, will showcase 280 short films. The films are arranged into 44 programs, which will screen September 5-12, at the Laemmle Theatre in North Hollywood, California.
A new trailer has been released for the upcoming documentary INFORMANT, winner of the DOC NYC 2012 Grand Jury Prize, and described as a fascinating portrait of Brandon Darby, a radical left-wing activist who famously became an FBI informant and is now a darling of the tea-party. Directed by Jamie Meltzer and starring Brandon Darby and Scott Crow , INFORMANT will be released in select theaters and VOD on September 13, 2013.
Djerassi Resident Artists Program
The San Francisco Film Society, in partnership with the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, announced the finalists for the 2014 Djerassi Residency Award / San Francisco Film Society Screenwriting Fellowship, given annually to encourage the career of an emerging or established screenwriter. The fellowship is one of a number of screenwriting initiatives offered by Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s innovative and dynamic filmmaker services program.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s REAL has been added to the lineup for the previously announced Main Slate Official Selections for the 51st New York Film Festival taking place September 27 – October 13, 2013.
Southern Baptist Sissies
Cinema Diverse: The Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which opens on Thursday, September 19th and runs through Sunday, September 22nd, announced the complete 2013 Schedule for its Sixth Anniversary Edition. “We are screening a total of twenty four feature films and more than 30 shorts this year,” Michael C. Green, Managing Director of The Palm Springs Cultural Center, said. “This has been a banner year for LGBT filmmaking, which made the selection process even more difficult, but in the end, I think we’ve put together a schedule that may be our best ever.”
All screen adaptations of classic novels face the same inevitable obstacle: though they need not best their source material, they must work twice as hard as an original film to justify their existence. Why watch an adaptation of Jane Eyre, of Pride and Prejudice, or of Madame Bovary when those original texts are so celebrated and so readily available?
There are a number of excellent indie releases coming out this weekend, and if you can’t get to your local art house theater (or, even worse, you don’t HAVE a local art house theater), most of them will be available soon either on VOD or on DVD/Blu-ray. Good news for all of us indie and foreign film fans, right?
Appearances are often deceiving. Two people who might appear to be perfect for each other on the surface by the way they interact might be incompatible once things get deeper. In DRINKING BUDDIES, a romantic comedy from writer/director Joe Swanberg (V/H/S), pretty and playful Kate (Olivia Wilde) works as a marketer at a Chicago-area brewery. Though she is in a relationship with the pedantic Chris (Ron Livingston), she clearly has better chemistry with one of the brewers she works with, Luke (Jake Johnson). However, the outgoing Luke is engaged to Jill (Anna Kendrick), a somewhat shy special education teacher.
Strand Releasing announced earlier this week that the James Franco and Travis Mathews’ erotic drama “INTERIOR. LEATHER BAR,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and went on to screen at the Berlin Film Festival, will be released either later this year or in early 2014.
Sundance Selects will release acclaimed filmmaker Claire Denis’ BASTARDS in the US on October 25, 2013. The film, which made its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, will make its U.S. premiere next month at the 2013 New York Film Festival, following a North American Premiere at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.