Roma and The Favourite took home three Kansas City Film Critics Circle’s James Loutzenhiser Awards each, and for the first time since 1992 and the fourth time in the organization’s 53-year history tied for the top prize of Best Film. Roma also won Best Foreign Film and helmer Alfonso Cuarón collected the Robert Altman Award for Best Director.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced shortlists in consideration for the 91st Oscars® in nine categories: Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Foreign Language Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Music (Original Score), Music (Original Song), Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film and Visual Effects.
If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel won three award honors, including Best Picture of 2018 from the Boston Society of Film Critics.
The Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association voted the musical drama A STAR IS BORN as the best film of 2018. Rounding out the composite list of the top 10 films of the year were ROMA (2), THE FAVOURITE (3), VICE (4), BLACKkKLANSMAN (5), BLACK PANTHER (6), GREEN BOOK (7), IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (8), EIGHTH GRADE (9), and CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (10).
Golden Globe winner Jeff Bridges of such legendary films as Crazy Heart, The Big Lebowski, True Grit and The Fabulous Baker Boys, will be honored with the 2019 Cecil B. deMille Award at the 76th Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, January 6, 2019.
The thirteenth annual Beaufort International Film Festival will host thousands of film lovers from around the world starting February 19 through February 24, 2019, in the historic coastal town of Beaufort, SC.
BIFF 2019 will be expanded by a day. It is now a six day festival with awards being presented in the areas of features, documentaries (feature and short), short films, student films, screenplays, animation, comedy and audience choice. Also, winners will be named for best actor, best actress, and best director.
In addition to the category and individual awards, the Pat Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to legendary actor, author, cook and opera singer Paul Sorvino. “If you look at his body of work in the film and television industries, his work on broadway, his philanthropic efforts over the past six decades, you can see why we’re so very honored to present the Pat Conroy Lifetime Achievement Award to the legendary entertainer Paul Sorvino,” stated Beaufort Film Society President, Ron Tucker. The award is sponsored by Leslie and Landon Thorne.
South Carolina based Hairdresser and Make-up Artist Joyce Gilliard will be presented with the prestigious “Behind-The-Scenes Award for her notable accomplishments over the past 20 years in the film and television industries.
BIFF 2019 will also present the inaugural Susan A.K. Shaffer Humanitarian Award to the filmmaker whose work best exemplifies the need for positive social, cultural and/or environmental change in our time. This award transcends category and genre.
Spain will be the country focus at 2019 Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF), and will see work by new and emerging Spanish filmmakers screen alongside that of the country’s best-known filmmakers with a range of industry and special events complementing the cinema program. The 73rd edition of EIFF runs from June 19 to 30, 2019.
British film and stage actress Charlotte Rampling will receive the Honorary Golden Bear at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival for her lifetime achievement, as well as dedicating the Homage to a selection of her films.
On February 14, 2019, in conjunction with the award ceremony for the Honorary Golden Bear, the festival will be showing Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter, Italy, 1974), directed by Liliana Cavani.
Samuel Goldwyn Films released the new trailer for Mapplethorpe starring Matt Smith as the Robert Mapplethorpe, considered as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. The film directed by Ondi Timoner and also starring Marianne Rendón, John Benjamin Hickey, Mark Moses, Carolyn McCormick, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and Kerry Butler, will be released in theaters on March 1st, 2019.
Robert Mapplethorpe (Matt Smith) is arguably one of the most important artists of the 20th century. Mapplethorpe discovered himself both sexually and artistically in New York City throughout the 70’s and 80’s. The film explores Mapplethorpe’s life from moments before he and Patti Smith moved into the famed Chelsea hotel, home to a world of bohemian chic. Here he begins photographing its inhabitants and his new found circle of friends including artists and musicians, socialites, film stars, and members of the S&M underground
Mapplethorpe’s work displayed eroticism in a way that had never been examined nor displayed before to the public. The film explores the intersection of his art and his sexuality along with his struggle for mainstream recognition. MAPPLETHORPE offers a nuanced portrait of an artist at the height of his craft and of the self-destructive impulses that threaten to undermine it all.
Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, the 28th annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF) will take place January 9 to 22, 2019. Featuring new work as well as restored classics, the festival’s 2019 lineup includes 32 wide-ranging and exciting features and shorts from the iconic to the iconoclastic. Screenings are held at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, NYC.
The NYJFF opens on Wednesday, January 9, with the New York premiere of Eric Barbier’s epic drama Promise at Dawn, starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and Pierre Niney. This riveting memoir chronicles the colorful life of infamous French author Romain Gary, from his childhood conning Polish high society with his mother to his years as a pilot in the Free French Air Forces.
The Closing Night film is the New York premiere of A Fortunate Man, directed by Academy Award–winner Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror). In it, a gifted but self-destructive young man leaves his suffocating Lutheran upbringing for metropolitan 1880s Copenhagen, where he’s welcomed into a wealthy Jewish family and strives to realize his grand ambitions.
The Centerpiece selection represents the first time an Israeli television series has been presented at the NYJFF with the three-and-a-half-hour miniseries Autonomies, to be presented all at once, binge-style, with a 20-minute intermission. Directed by Yehonatan Indursky, the dystopian drama is set in an alternate reality of present-day Israel, a nation divided by a wall into the secular “State of Israel,” with Tel Aviv as its capital, and the “Haredi Autonomy” in Jerusalem, run by an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group. A globally relevant tale of identity, religion, politics, personal freedom, and love, this gripping story follows a custody battle that upends the fragile peace of the country, pushing it to the brink of civil war. Indursky will present a master class in conjunction with the screening of Autonomies.
New to the NYJFF this year is an annual initiative that highlights a film made by a woman filmmaker that deserves broader American recognition. Maria Victoria Menis’s Camera Obscura (2008) tells the story of an immigrant woman whose encounter with an itinerant photographer reveals a sense of self she never knew. The film was shot in the lush forests and lagoons of Buenos Aires province in a mélange of visual styles, including elements of hand-drawn animation, World War I archival footage, and early surrealist black-and-white films.
Filmmaker Amos Gitai returns to the 2019 NYJFF with the U.S. premiere of his thought-provoking new drama, A Tramway in Jerusalem. Gitai uses the tramway that runs through Jerusalem to connect a series of short vignettes, forming a mosaic of Jewish and Arab stories embodying life in the city.
The NYJFF will also present the U.S. premiere of Fig Tree by first-time director Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian. Set in Addis Ababa during the Ethiopian Civil War, the film concerns a young woman who plans to flee to Israel with her brother to reunite with their mother. But she is unwilling to leave her Christian boyfriend behind and hatches a scheme to save him from being drafted.
11 films competed for nine awards in the Competition section as well as six film in the “New Chinese Cinema” for the Best New Chinese-language Film of the Year at the 3rd International Film Festival & Awards Macao (“IFFAM” or the “Film Festival”). The Film Festival screened 54 spectacular films this year and winners were revealed at the Awards Ceremony on Friday night.
The Competition section once again spotlighted first and second-time feature film directors this year, pitting 11 films against each other for nine accolades attributed by the jury and the Macao Audience Choice Award, of which the winner was voted by local audiences. The 11 films include “School’s Out”, “The Guilty”, “Clean up”, “The Good Girls”, “Ága”, “Scarborough”, “Suburban Birds”, “White Blood”, “All Good”, “Jesus” and “The Man Who Feels No Pain” with Best Film awarded to “Clean up.”
The new competition section “New Chinese Cinema” pitted six films against each other including “Dear Ex”, “Baby”, “Xiao Mei”, “Up the Mountain”, “Fly by Night” and “The Pluto Moment”. “Up the Mountain” took home the Best New Chinese-language Film of the Year.
Besides the above awards, an array of other accolades was presented at the Awards Ceremony to commend outstanding films and filmmakers for their achievements. Internationally-acclaimed film director and Jury President of the 3rd IFFAM, Chen Kaige, directed his first film “Yellow Earth” in 1984, which garnered a number of awards and ushered in the new era for Chinese cinema. Recognized as one of the Chinese film classics, his acclaimed masterpiece “Farewell My Concubine” (1993) won the Palme d’Or at the 46th Cannes Film Festival in the same year, making Chen the only Chinese director who has received this top accolade to this day. At the Awards Ceremony, Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture of the Macao SAR Government, Alexis Tam, presented the “Spirit of Cinema” Achievement Award to film director Chen Kaige.
In addition, the NETPAC Award went to “Suburban Birds” (presented by Mimi Plauché, Sunny Joseph and Marco Martins, jury members from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC)). The Asian Blockbuster Film 2018 went to the film “Crazy Rich Asians”, whereas the Variety Asian Star: Up Next Award went to five actors and actresses as follows: Anne Curtis, Iqbaal Ramadhan, Zaira Wasim, Xana Tang and Ryan Zheng Kai.
The 22nd Annual Cine Las Americas International Film Festival (CLAIFF) is scheduled for May 1 – 5, 2019 with events taking place at venues around the Austin, Texas during the five-day festival. As a new program for May’s festival, CLAIFF will present a VR 360º showcase, hosted and sponsored by Originator Studios.
Cine Las Americas is committed to offering a diverse program of national and international feature and short films as well as music videos, experimental, animation selections, and this year a VR 360º video program. The festival showcases films and videos from all the Americas (US, Canada, North Central, South America, and the Caribbean) and the Iberian Peninsula. Selected works screen in competitive and non-competitive sections. There are eleven award categories, including the annual Hecho en Tejas Awards. This year, the coordinating committee is pleased to offer cash awards to prize categories, including for Audience Awards for Best First or Second Dramatic Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best Hecho en Tejas Film, and Best Music Video.
As an extension of its mission to support Latinx and Indigenous artists across media arts, Cine Las Americas announced the expansion of our VR 360º video program for the 22nd festival. In 2017 CLAIFF presented Tracy Rector’s 360º video Eagle Bone (Ch’aak’ S’aagi), one of the first VR pieces ever by a Native American filmmaker, hosted by Originator Studios. In 2018, also thanks to Originator Studios’ sponsorship, youth from the Austin-based Latinitas’ organization shared their 360º Latinx Culture in East Austin documentary experience with attendees.
In 2019, Originator Studios will team up with CLAIFF to present an official selection of VR 360º videos at their facilities. Filmmakers are invited to submit their VR 360º videos as part of the festival’s annual call for entries.