Director, Luis Garcia Berlanga of Spain, passed away on Saturday at his home in Madrid, Spain’s film academy announced via the BBC. He was 89 years.
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Ethiopia’s First Contender For Academy Award For Best Foreign Language Film With (Ateltu) “The Athlete’.
Ethiopia has its first contender for Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film with (Ateltu) “The Athlete’. Co-directed by Davey Frankel and Rasselas Lakew, the low budget independent film is about Ethiopian barefoot marathon runner, Abeba Bikila who became the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal. Rasselas Lakew, who also wrote the screenplay, plays Abeba Bikila.
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San Francisco Film Society Announces Finalists For 2010 SFFS/Hearst Screenwriting Grant
The San Francisco Film Society announced today the finalists and honorable mention for the second SFFS/Hearst Screenwriting Grant. The grant of $15,000 will be awarded to a mid-career screenwriter who has been a practicing writer for at least five years and who has previously written a minimum of one feature screenplay. The grant is open to writers residing in the United States whose project expresses both a unique personal perspective and an artistic approach to the subject. Priority is given to writers whose previous short or feature screenplays have been produced as independent films. The finalists were selected from 91 applicants submitted in response to a nationwide call for entries.
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West Virginia International Film Festival This Weekend
JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK, a documentary on the life and career of Joan Rivers, made as the comedienne turns 75 years old, is one of the films screening this weekend as part of the West Virginia International film festival.
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Canberra International Film Festival 2010 Audience Award Winners
Bill Cunningham New York Mexican film, “On Childhood”, from director Carlos Carerra bested “Uninhabited” and “Monsters” to take home the Audience Award for Best International Feature Film at the 2010 Canberra International Film Festival in Canberra, Australia.
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RIP: Film Producer Dino De Laurentiis
Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis died on Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 91.
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2010 Cinema Arts Festival Houston Draws Stellar Guests; Features Selection of World’s Best Films About Art and Artists
Of the hundreds of film festivals held each year in the U.S., Cinema Arts Festival Houston, held November 10-14, 2010, is the only festival specifically programmed to celebrate films by and about visual, performing, and literary artists. With support from city leaders, enthusiastic patrons and a highly developed network of arts organizations, the festival is a truly civic project, conceived to highlight one the most vibrant and diverse arts communities on earth.
Joining for the festival’s sophomore year are silver screen icons Isabella Rossellini, Shirley MacLaine, and John Turturro. Ms. Rossellini will present her own short works produced for the Sundance Channel, Green Porno and Seduce Me at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she will receive Houston-based Levantine Entertainment’s Levantine Cinema Arts Award. At the Rice Media Center, co-founded by her father Roberto Rossellini 40 years ago, Ms. Rossellini will present a special screening of Viaggio in Italia, the 1954 film directed by her father and starring her mother, Ingrid Bergman. Ms. MacLaine will be on hand to accept the Texas Film Award at a screening of the classic Houston, Texas film, Terms of Endearment. Actor and Director John Turturro will kick things off on opening night with a screening of Passione, his new “musical adventure” about Neapolitan music and dance. Alex Gibney, who directed the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, will present My Trip To Al Qaeda (2010), and his current project, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010); he will be joined by collaborators, and award-winning authors Lawrence Wright and Peter Elkind. Bill Plympton, the king of independent animation, will present his masterful new feature, Idiots and Angels, and the winning films he selected for this year’s Independent Exposure 2010.
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Wavescape Surf Film Festival Cape Town, December 1 – 19, 2010
The seventh annual Wavescape Surf Film Festival kickstarts the 2010 summer season in Cape Town with a bumper crop of adrenaline-charged surf movies.
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“The King’s Speech” To Close 2010 Bahamas International Film Festival
“The King’s Speech” stars Academy Award® nominee Colin Firth Festival Founder and Executive Director Leslie Vanderpool today announced the final program details for the 7th edition of the Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF), which takes place December 1-5, 2010 in Nassau. The Weinstein Company’s highly acclaimed period drama “The King’s Speech” has been selected as this year’s closing night film.
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Sony Pictures Classics’ Acclaimed Comedy “Tamara Drewe” To Open 2010 Bahamas International Film Festival
The Bahamas International Film Festival (BIFF), announced that Sony Pictures Classics’ acclaimed comedy “Tamara Drewe” will be the opening film at this year’s festival, which takes place December 1-5 in Nassau. The special event screening will take place on Wednesday, December 1s at the Atlantis Theatre on Paradise Island. The announcement was made by BIFF Founder and Executive Director Leslie Vanderpool.
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Gotham Independent Film Awards Announces The First Ever Festival Genius Audience Award Nominees
Documentary film “Waiting for ‘Superman’” The 20th Anniversary Gotham Independent Film Awards will give a new award called the First Ever Festival Genius Audience Award at this year’s award ceremony on November 29th.
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White Irish Drinkers Set For Spring 2011
White Irish Drinkers, now has a US Spring 2011 theatrical release date, after Screen Media Films acquired North American rights. The film which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Audience Award at the 2010 Woodstock Film Festival, was written and directed by John Gray,and stars Nick Thurston, Geoff Wigdor and Leslie Murphy.