Lakeshorts International Short Film Festival, spearheaded by Canadian actress, Michelle Nolden (Saving Hope, Nikita, Republic of Doyle) and film and television producer, Chris Szarka (Rent-A-Goalie, The Rawside of…) will celebrate its third year at the Assembly Hall in Toronto on May 3 and 4, 2013. Films screening at the festival include Hatch (pictured above), described as “A newborn’s destiny hangs in the balance, as grownups come to terms with what they cannot have.”
Cine Las Americas announced the award winners for the 16th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival, which took place on April 16 to 21, 2013, in Austin, Texas. The Ecuadorian film MEJOR NO HABLAR DE CIERTAS COSAS (PORCELAIN HORSE) won the Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature and YOUNG LAKOTA won the Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature. YOUNG LAKOTA also won the Audience Award for Documentary Feature.
16th Cine Las Americas International Film Festival Award Winners:
by Joseph Williamson
Real, old fashioned adventurers are somewhat scarce in this day and age – there may be scientific expeditions in Antarctica, but the romance of Henry Morton Stanley stomping through the Congo isn’t quite as attainable in 2013. Safaris and treks through the Amazon are all well and good, but truly uncharted and dangerous exploration is getting harder to manage in the decade of Google Maps.
Not so in 1947. Enter Thor Heyerdahl, intrepid ethnographer – a man with a big idea, but no publisher willing to take him on. Desperately seeking conclusive proof of his theory – that Polynesia was first settled by ancient South Americans – he decides to take the four and a half thousand mile voyage across the Pacific Ocean himself. Furthermore, for this demonstration to have any validity at all, it must be done in the exact manner of the original settlers: a balsa wood raft, a large wooden oar as a rudder, and constructed with simple rope in lieu of stronger materials. The only concession to modernity is a two way radio.
And there is still more. Maryland Film Festival added eight more feature films to the 2013 Festival, including filmmaker John Waters’ selection, Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Faith (pictured above). Each year Waters selects one favorite film to present to MFF audiences. In addition to Paradise: Faith, MFF 2013 will screen all three films in Seidl’s new Paradise trilogy: Paradise: Faith, Paradise: Hope, and Paradise: Love.
MFF 2013 will take place May 8-12 in downtown Baltimore.
The newly added films to the 2013 Maryland Film Festival are:
Screenwriter Petter Skavlan, Co-Chairman of The Weinstein Company Harvey Weinstein, actor Pal Hagen, directors Espen Sandberg and Joachim Roenning and the film subject’s grandson Olav Heyerdahl appear on the “Kon-Tiki” Raft for The Weinstein Company Movie “KON-TIKI” on April 22, 2013 in New York City.
KON-TIKI opens in theaters Friday, April 26th, 2013
Film critic and arts journalist, Peter Machen, has been appointed the Durban International Film Festival Manager. The 34th Durban International Film Festival, South Africa’s largest and longest running film festival hosted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Centre for Creative Arts (CCA), will take place from July 18 to 28, 2013.
Six films have been selected by the Museum of Modern Art for their 35th annual exhibition, Kino!, MoMA’s long-running survey of young German filmmakers.
The films include the award winning tragicomedy OH BOY by Jan Ole Gerster, which had its US-premiere at AFI Fest in November and was shown at Miami International Film Festival in March. OH BOY is nominated in eight categories for the German Film Prize, whose winners are announced on April 26.
The documentary FORGET ME NOT (VERGISS MEIN NICHT by David Sieveking won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize following its world premiere in Locarno, one of Europe’s leading film festivals. FORGET ME NOT is currently nominated for the German Film Prize for Best Feature-length Documentary.
The 2013 Florida Film Festival announced the Jury and Audience Awards, and the film THIS IS MARTIN BONNER, directed by Chad Hartigan took the top prize, the Grand Jury Award for Best Narrative Feature. The film about fifty-something Martin Bonner (Paul Eenhoorn), a divorced father of two grown kids who’s just declared bankruptcy, and starting a new chapter in his life in Reno, Nevada, was the winner of the audience award for Best of NEXT at 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Accredited by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences®, the Grand Jury Award for Best Live Action and Animated Short films automatically qualifies the winners for entry into the Live Action and Animated Short Film categories of the Academy Awards®.
The complete list of jury and audience award winners of the 2013 Florida Film Festival in the American Independent and International Feature Film, Documentary, and Short Film categories are as follows:
by Morgan Davies
Flex is Kings, a feature documentary by Deirdre Schoo and Michael Beach Nichols, is a charmer of a movie: slick, funny, compelling and awe-inspiring, it’s that rare documentary that manages to be interesting and thought-provoking without leaving its audience depressed.
The German biopic film HANNAH ARENDT, directed by Margarethe von Trotta will open at Film Forum in NYC on May 29 and at The Royal in West LA, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena and Town Center in Encino on June 7, with a national release to follow.
The documentary RELEASED will have its world premiere on Friday, May 10th, 2013 at New York’s QUAD Cinema. Directed by Philip Messina, RELEASED introduces three men and one woman, Vilma Ortiz Donovan, Kenneth Harrigan, Casimiro Torres and Angel Ramos, each a convicted felon, who, attempt to overcome a past and defy the grim statistic that two out of every three prisoners released in the United States today will be back in prison within three years.
The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) announced the award winners for the TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund, Heineken VOCES and TFI/WorldView Partnership grants at a celebration for Latin American filmmakers during the Tribeca Film Festival. The funds, totaling $130,000, support innovative Latin American film and video artists to help them explore stories reflecting diverse cultures and gain exposure in the film industry.