Six film projects, selected from this year’s pool of 121 applicants, will receive financial and creative support from the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) Sloan Filmmaker Fund. The projects will be awarded a total of $140,000 and will be recognized at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival (April 20- May 1, 2011).
The 11th Annual New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) which will take place from May 4 to May 8 in Manhattan, announced its complete line-up of 25 feature films.
“The Bad Penny,” a feature-length drama directed by Todd Bellanca, starring Tom Arnold and Bai Ling, received the Golden Palm Award at the 11th Annual International Beverly Hills Film Festival (BHFF) closing Gala Awards ceremony. The Audience Choice Award for Best Feature Film went to “The Chicago 8,” from writer/director Pinchas Perry, starring Danny Masterson, Gary Cole and Orlando Jones. The Jury Award for Best Feature Film went to “Polish Bar” from director Ben Berkowitz. “Polish Bar” star Judd Hirsch also won the prize for Best Actor. “Espera un Milagro,” a documentary from Spanish director Gemma Ventura also won two prizes for Best Director and Best Foreign Film.
Clay Jeter’s JESS + MOSS was announced as the winner of the $25,000 cash prize for the Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature and Anne Buford‘s ELEVATE received the $25,000 cash prize for the Target Filmmaker Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 2011 DALLAS International Film Festival. On receiving her award, Buford declared that the $25,000 would be donated back to the SEEDS ACADEMY, the one-of-a-kind boarding school in Senegal for basketball players.
, director of American film classics such as “12 Angry Men,” “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “The Verdict,” “Network” died Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 86. His stepdaughter, Leslie Gimbel, said the cause was lymphoma.
The 13th Wisconsin Film Festival wrapped five days of screening 211 movies, presenting more than 120 filmmakers and special guests at the nine downtown Madison and campus theaters that opened their doors to 35,858 audience members.
Oscar winning director Oliver Stone will receive the Founder’s Directing Award at the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival scheduled to run April 21 – May 5, 2011. The Founder’s Directing Award is presented each year to a master of world cinema and is given in memory of Irving M. Levin, visionary founder of the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1957.
The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the annual Academy Awards, voted on Thursday to establish a new executive structure for the organization, replacing retiring executive director Bruce Davis with former Film Independent head Dawn Hudson and long-time Academy executive Ric Robertson, who will become the organization’s CEO and COO respectively. Robertson will report to Hudson in the new leadership tandem.
The Kings Of Leon’s Pentecostal background is featured in a new documentary, which will premiere at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The new film “Talihina Sky : The Story of Kings of Leon” shows never-before-seen home video footage of brothers Nathan, Caleb and Jared Followill surprisingly growing up in rural Tennessee and being the sons of a Pentecostal preacher.
The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) today announced the HBO Fellowships of the inaugural TFI Documentary Fund. Three fellowships were awarded today, and will receive a total of $100,000 in fellowships and grants toward their documentary projects.
BLANK CITY opens today, April 6, in New York City. The film documents the No Wave film movement of the 70’s and 80’s in New York City where the likes of Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch and John Waters got their start.
Blank City is at once nostalgic, in its look back towards a time and place that was full of raw energy and desperate creativity; eye-opening, with its fantastic clips of experimental films that few people today have probably seen; and very timely, since it speaks directly to our current culture of artists, hipsters and struggling indie filmmakers scraping by in contemporary New York, a city very different from the one portrayed in this film, but the same city nonetheless. Celine Danhier’s documentary is all of these things, and more. It explores the films and music being made in New York in the late 1970s and early 80s, leading to the art boom of the 80s and 90s, the spread of punk and hip hop, and the rise of independent film. The time and place is portrayed by the use of film clips, musical performance footage, and honest and humorous recollections of the people who experienced it. The people interviewed include familiar celebrities, such as Jim Jarmusch, Debbie Harry, and Steve Buscemi, and lesser known artists like Amos Poe, Vivienne Dick, and Nick Zedd.