The Hollywood Foreign Press Association handed out the annual Golden Globes last night in Hollywood, and Ben Affleck’s Argo was the night’s biggest winner, taking home awards for best picture and director in a motion picture. Another winner, Michael Haneke picked up the best foreign film award for Amour, which now seems to be a lock on the same award in the upcoming Academy Awards.
The winners of the 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards for Motion Pictures
The Sapphires (Australia) directed by Wayne Blair, and based on the real-life story of an all-female Aboriginal singing group in 1960’s Australia that went from folk to soul with unexpected success, received the Mercedes-Benz Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 24th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (USA) directed by Ramona Diaz received the Audience Award Best for Documentary Feature. This documentary is about the dilemma the rock band Journey faces to replace their lead singer Steve Perry after he quits the band. They eventually find the perfect solution via YouTube: a street kid who fronted a Filipino cover band.
The FIPRESCI Prize for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year jury selected Fill the Void (Israel), directed by Rama Burshtein, “for portraying a culture usually depicted in stereotypical terms, with subtlety, sympathy and sensuality and employing a style that is intimate, but not intrusive.” In the film, an 18-year-old in Tel Aviv’s Hassidic community must choose between her heart’s desire and familial duty in a drama that make the conventions of the marriage plot feel brand new.
The New Voices/New Visions selected The Cleaner (Peru) directed by Adrian Saba. The film tells the story of a mysterious and deadly epidemic in Lima, Perù, where a depressed and isolated man cleans up after the dying. When he takes in a frightened young boy who has lost his mother, he’s quietly transformed by the experience of caring for another human being.
The Cine Latino Award was presented to Blancanieves(Spain), directed by Pablo Berger, which was the Opening Night film of the Festival. This silent movie is an adaptation of Snow White, where the daughter of a famous bullfighter is mistreated by her wicked stepmother. When she runs away and joins a band of dwarfs, her natural bullfighting talent is discovered, but her stepmother plots to bring her down.
Stolen Seas (Somalia/Kenya/UK/Italy), directed by Thymaya Payne, received The John Schlesinger Award, which is presented to a first-time documentary filmmaker. Stolen Seas presents the inside story of Somali piracy. The filmmakers spent three years in some of the world’s most dangerous places, talking to pirates, hostages, hostages’ relatives, and the shipping company executives caught up in this deadly culture clash.
Jump (Ireland/UK), directed by Kieron J. Walsh, received the HP Bridging the Borders Award presented by Cinema Without Borders and Hewlett Packard, which honors the film that is most successful in exemplifying art that promotes bringing the people of our world closer together. In the film, a fateful New Year’s Eve throws half a dozen characters into cross-purposes in this complex, wildly inventive and occasionally giddy mix of crime caper, romance and moral tale from Northern Ireland.
The Palm Springs International Film Festival, held from January 3-14, 2013, screened 182 films from 68 countries.
The complete list of award winners are:
Film Independent announced the winners of its four Spirit Awards filmmaker grants today at its annual Spirit Awards Nominee Brunch hosted by Salma Hayek and Jeremy Renner.
Winners for the remaining categories will be revealed at the 2013 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, February 23, 2013.
Filmmaker Mary Sweeney (The Straight Story, Baraboo) has been elected as the new sitting Chair of the Board of Directors for Film Independent. She takes over the position from outgoing Chair, filmmaker Bill Condon (The Twilight Saga – Breaking Dawn Part I and II, Gods & Monsters), who has served as Chairman for the last three years. On the Executive Committee, Sweeney joins current Vice Chair, writer/director Rodrigo García (Mother and Child, In Treatment); Secretary, director/producer Alan Poul (The Backup Plan, The Newsroom, Rome) and newly seated Treasurer, Landmark Theatres C.E.O. Ted Mundorff. Condon will remain on Film Independent’s Executive Committee as a member-at-large.
The Perspektive Deutsches Kino program at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival will open with Stephan Lacant’s film Freier Fall. Max Riemelt (Kay), Katharina Schüttler (Bettina) and Hanno Koffler (Marc) are the protagonists in a love triangle, in which Marc and Bettina are expecting a child at the same time as Marc falls in love with his colleague Kay.
Three of the fictional films – Silvi (directed by Nico Sommer), DeAD (directed by Sven Halfar) andEndzeit (directed by Sebastian Fritzsch) – were self-produced by their respective filmmakers. Silvi is unmistakably set in Berlin. In it the 47-year-old title character (Lina Wendel) starts afresh after separating from her partner. DeAD is exquisite pulp fiction from Hamburg: following his mother’s suicide, cool Patrick (Tilman Strauß) shows up at his unknown father’s 60th birthday party and immediately makes it clear that things are about to escalate. And Endzeit depicts survival after a catastrophe, when a young woman (Anne von Keller) turns hunter to still her hunger.
Two fictional film-academy works explore the boundaries between fictional and documentary film. Anne Zohra Berrached’s Zwei Mütter portrays in an almost documentary style a couple’s wish for a child (Sabine Wolf and Karina Plachetka) and their discovery that most sperm banks do not provide services to same-sex couples. In his 60-minute film Die Wiedergänger, director Andreas Bolm avoids presenting the world in documentary form, but instead seeks the point where fiction begins. The outcome is an artistically austere film about loss and eternal return.
Perspektive Deutsches Kino film lineup
Another nine films have been selected for the Competition Programme of the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Among the nine films is the International Premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Channing Tatum and the World Premiere of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s Parde (Closed Curtain).
5 Broken Cameras, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi’s documentary about Israeli settlements encroaching upon Burnat’s Palestinian village, was named Outstanding Feature at the 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens last night.
A slate of Oscar shortlisted films won in the other categories. Dimitri Doganis received Outstanding Production for The Imposter, T. Woody Richman and Tyler H. Walk won for Outstanding Editing for How to Survive a Plague, Jeff Orlowski took Outstanding Cinematography for Chasing Ice and Oskar Gullstrand and Arvid Steen won the award for Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design or Animation for Searching for Sugar Man.
Lee Hirsch’s Bully received the Cinema Eye Audience Choice Prize.
Cinema Eye presented honors for Nonfiction Short Filmmaking to Robert-Jan Lacombe’sGood-bye Mandima (Kwa Heri Mandima), the Spotlight Award was presented to Wojciech Staron for Argentinian Lesson and the Heterodox Award for Narrative Filmmaking, went to Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, that recognizes a narrative film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production.
This year’s Legacy Award was presented to the 1993 verite classic The War Room, which took viewers behind the scenes of the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign.
The following is a complete list of Cinema Eye Honors winners for 2012:
Beasts of the Southern Wild surprised everyone when the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards® were announced today by this year’s Oscar host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone. The little film received four nominations including Best Picture, Best Director for Behn Zeitlin, Best Adapted Screenplay, Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin and Best Actress, Quvenzhané Wallis. At the age of 9, Wallis is the youngest ever nominee of the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2012 will be presented on Sunday, February 24, 2013.
Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards
Film Independent announced the nominees of the 2013 Jameson® FIND Your Audience Award, which is one of the four Film Independent Spirit Award filmmaker grants to be handed out at the January 12 nominee brunch. Funded by Jameson® Irish Whiskey, a Premier Sponsor of the awards, the $50,000 crash grant is designed to assist a feature narrative or documentary filmmaker in building the audience for his or her film. The winner will be highlighted at the Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday, February 23, 2013.
The nominees for the 2013 Jameson FIND Your Audience Award are:
Slamdance announced today the Jury for the 19th Annual Slamdance Film Festival, which includes many of the minds behind SXSW, Woodstock, etc. The Slamdance Awards will be presented on January 24th during the awards ceremony.
“We are thrilled to have such independent filmmaking revolutionaries judging this years diverse slate of films,” stated Peter Baxter, Slamdance President & Co-Founder.
The 2013 Slamdance Film Festival will take place January 18 — 24, 2013 in Park City, Utah, at the Treasure Mountain Inn: 255 Main Street, Park City, UT 84060.
The 2013 Slamdance Competition Jurors:
Mary Bacarella, a long-time Space Needle executive, has been named Seattle International Film Festival Managing Director effective February 1, 2013. Ms. Bacarella will lead the organization in tandem with Artistic Director Carl Spence and succeed Deborah Person, who has served as SIFF’s managing director since 2005. “Mary is the perfect choice to build on SIFF’s significant accomplishments and lead the organization going forward,” said Michelle Quisenberry, SIFF board president. “Mary has been involved with SIFF for 15 years […]
The International Film Festival Rotterdam announced the sixteen nominees and the jury of the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition. The three winners of the Hivos Tiger Awards will be chosen by a jury of five, among them artist Ai Weiwei.
The winning films will be selected by Iranian actress Fatemeh Motamedarya – who has been banned from acting in film, theatre and television for the past two years, by Russian screenwriter and filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa (The Revue, My Joy), Dutch director Kees Hin (Shadowland) and artistic director of the Seville European Film Festival José Luis Cienfuegos. Chinese visual artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei (Fairytale, One Recluse) will not be able to attend the festival and will join the jury from his home in Beijing.
The nominees