The Annual African Diaspora International Film Festival – Chicago (ADIFF- Chicago) will celebrate its 11th anniversary in Chicago from June 13 to June 20, 2013. The festival will kick off with the Chicago Premiere of Opening Night Film African Independence, written, directed and produced by scholar, filmmaker and PBS History Detectives host, Professor Tukufu Zuberi.
Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar and Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano’s The Intouchables are the winners of the 2012 Film Circuit People’s Choice Awards. Monsieur Lazhar was named Best Canadian Film and The Intouchables was selected as the Best International Film.
The indie romantic comedy, NOT ANOTHER HAPPY ENDING starring Karen Gillan and Stanley Weber, has been selected as the Closing Night film of the 67th Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).
Award-winning director-writer Drake Doremus’ new film, BREATHE IN, starring Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Amy Ryan, will be the Opening Night film at the 67th edition of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF).
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) announced today the ten documentaries selected for the 2013 Independent Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual year-long fellowship for first-time feature directors. The key creative teams of the selected films will participate in three week-long sessions over the course of 2013, with the first – the Time Warner Foundation Documentary Completion Lab – taking place May 13-17 in New York City.
The second annual People’s Film Festival (TPFF) runs May 30 –June 2, 2013 in Harlem, New York at The Magic Johnson Theater, and kicks off with the feature film “Toussaint Louverture” a two-part epic film directed by Philippe Niang, depicting the life of the Haitian leader. Louverture (Jimmy Jean-Louis) led the first successful slave revolt in world history, defeating Napoleon Bonaparte and winning independence from France.
After another year of of drawing record attendance and selling out a record 46 events , the annual four-day Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will definitely be back for 2014. The 17th annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival is confirmed for April 3-6, 2014.
Hollywood producer and Oklahoma City native Hunt Lowry will receive the 2013 Oklahoma Film ICON Award at at 2013 deadCENTER Film Festival in Oklahoma. This year’s festival is June 5 to 9, and features a lineup of 115 comedies, dramas, hard-hitting documentaries and short films from Oklahoma and around the world
The Act of Killing, by Joshua Oppenheimer, Chistine Cynn and Anonymous won the top prizes, the Jury First Prize and the Audience Award at the just wrapped Documeta Madrid – International Madrid Documentary Festival. The jury commented,“We award the first prize to a film that raised considerable controversy and succeeded at making us feel extremely uncomfortable through a unique construction of fantasy and horror that elicits a brutal reality that remains in impunity.” The filmmakers received a trophy and 10,000 € Euro.
Complete list of official awards:
Brooklyn Film Festival (BFF) announced the film line-up for its 2013 festival, themed MAGNETIC, scheduled to run from May 31 through June 9 in Brooklyn, New York. The festival will open with Festival alumnus Billy Kent’s HairBrained starring starring Brendan Fraser, Alex Wolff, Julia Garner and Parker Posey. In the film, 14-year old genius/outcast Eli Pettifog (Wolff) is rejected from Harvard, he ends up at Ivy-League wannabe Whittman College. It’s hate at first sight. Eli’s 41-year-old dorm mate Leo (Fraser), a former gambler whose world has imploded, has dropped out of life to enroll in college. This odd duo become unlikely friends.
by Kelsey Straight
The conflicting ideals of science and politics have created misconceptions regarding climate change, as revealed by Craig Scott Rosebraugh’s documentary, Greedy Lying Bastards. Rosebraugh presents a fundamental struggle between scientific fact and political fabrication: where fact requires evidence, fabrication allows anything to masquerade as reality. The presentation of climate change as “the greatest hoax ever” does not come from humanitarianism, unfortunately, but from the oil industry and those politicians with direct ties to the oil industry. Rosebraugh’s documentary presents a world of individuals who need the earth for different reasons, either as a money-making resource, or as a home for our families and an environment for cultures. If we do not take care of the land that allowed our societies to grow, than the land will not take care of who we are in return.
by Kelsey Straight
The quirky English humor and quintessential characters of Ben Wheatley’s The Sightseers both disturb us and make us laugh, often without establishing which was the appropriate response. The story follows Chris and Tina on their caravan holiday to a collection of eclectic sights, including the Crich Tramway Museum, the Ribblehead Viaduct, and the Keswick Pencil Museum. Having left her mother and their small English home, a stifling setting where Tina has lived until the age of thirty-four, Tina falls in love with a red-bearded serial killer, Chris. Their odyssey through the countryside is more geared towards personal identity than touristy locations, however. Tina exchanges her baggy 1980’s blue jeans for acid-wash thrift store leggings, and her codes of morality for codes of murder. All the while, Chris gathers material for the book he never begins writing, and Tina discovers that she is less his muse than he is hers. Their story unravels in the rainy countryside instead of on Chris’s blank pages, and every scene becomes a conflict they create for themselves.