Mickey Reece’s Alien[/caption]
Mickey Reece’s Alien is a part comedy/drama/fantasy feature film that delves into divine existentialism and conveys a unique reimagining of the later years of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s tumultuous marriage.
Mickey Reece’s Alien will be showcased on Friday, June 9 at 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 10 at 6:00 p.m. at the 17th annual deadCenter Film Festival. The film will screen at the Harkins Theatre in Bricktown.
The black-and-white film was written and directed by Mickey Reece and produced by Mickey Reece, Cate Jones, Ron Sutor, James Paulsgrove, Beth Alonso, John Scamehorn, Joe Cappa and Jacob Ryan Snovel in association with Freestyle Creative. “Mickey Reece’s Alien” presents a talented cast, starring Jacob Ryan Snovel (Elvis) and Cate Jones (Priscilla), and featuring Alex Sanchez, John Selvidge and Michaelene Stephenson.
Surrounding discussion of existentialism, Reece capitalized on the idea that Elvis was not of this world and rarely understood, yielding the name “Alien.”
The indie fiction film started as a passion project on Seed&Spark, a crowdfunding website specifically for filmmakers. Reece said he was inspired by John Carpenter’s “Elvis,” Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood,” Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”
“When I view the finished product of any movie I’ve made, I know exactly what past film, whether it be an important one or piece of garbage, influenced a particular choice. I think for any cinema buff it is important to see those influences still making it onto the screen in some fashion today,” Reece said.
“It’s an Elvis film that digs into Elvis but it’s also fantastical and hilarious,” Snovel said. “There’s no mistake in the movie. There’s an artistic integrity to the film; it wasn’t just ‘Let’s make an Elvis movie.'”
The deadCenter Film Festival runs June 8 to 11, 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWR2Dk0iur0-
MICKEY REECE’S ALIEN Tackles Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s Marriage at deadCenter Film Festival
[caption id="attachment_22402" align="aligncenter" width="1080"] Mickey Reece’s Alien[/caption]
Mickey Reece’s Alien is a part comedy/drama/fantasy feature film that delves into divine existentialism and conveys a unique reimagining of the later years of Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s tumultuous marriage.
Mickey Reece’s Alien will be showcased on Friday, June 9 at 8:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 10 at 6:00 p.m. at the 17th annual deadCenter Film Festival. The film will screen at the Harkins Theatre in Bricktown.
The black-and-white film was written and directed by Mickey Reece and produced by Mickey Reece, Cate Jones, Ron Sutor, James Paulsgrove, Beth Alonso, John Scamehorn, Joe Cappa and Jacob Ryan Snovel in association with Freestyle Creative. “Mickey Reece’s Alien” presents a talented cast, starring Jacob Ryan Snovel (Elvis) and Cate Jones (Priscilla), and featuring Alex Sanchez, John Selvidge and Michaelene Stephenson.
Surrounding discussion of existentialism, Reece capitalized on the idea that Elvis was not of this world and rarely understood, yielding the name “Alien.”
The indie fiction film started as a passion project on Seed&Spark, a crowdfunding website specifically for filmmakers. Reece said he was inspired by John Carpenter’s “Elvis,” Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood,” Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising” and Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”
“When I view the finished product of any movie I’ve made, I know exactly what past film, whether it be an important one or piece of garbage, influenced a particular choice. I think for any cinema buff it is important to see those influences still making it onto the screen in some fashion today,” Reece said.
“It’s an Elvis film that digs into Elvis but it’s also fantastical and hilarious,” Snovel said. “There’s no mistake in the movie. There’s an artistic integrity to the film; it wasn’t just ‘Let’s make an Elvis movie.'”
The deadCenter Film Festival runs June 8 to 11, 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWR2Dk0iur0
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Award Winning Comedy FUTURE ’38 to NY Premiere at Art of Brooklyn Film Festival
[caption id="attachment_22399" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
FUTURE ’38[/caption]
FUTURE ’38, which won the Audience Award at this year’s 2017 Slamdance, will have its New York premiere on June 8 at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival.
FUTURE ’38 from director/writer Jamie Greenberg, is a technicolor valentine to the classic screwball comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s, with a sci-fi twist. It’s a time-travel adventure which presents the exotic future-world of 2018 A.D., as imagined by the film-makers of 1938! Starring Betty Gilpin, Nick Westrate, Robert John Burke, Ethan Phillips and Sean Young.
ART OF BROOKLYN SCREENING INFORMATION:
NY PREMIERE – Thursday, June 8, 9:00pm – St. Francis College, Brooklyn
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LA Film Festival to Host Gala Screening of David F. Sandberg’s ANNABELLE: CREATION
[caption id="attachment_22389" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Annabelle: Creation[/caption]
The LA Film Festival will host the Gala Screening of Annabelle: Creation, directed by David F. Sandberg and starring Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Lulu Wilson with Anthony LaPaglia and Miranda Otto.
Award-winning film company Focus Features will commemorate its 15th anniversary at the LA Film Festival with five movies including revival programming and a newly added advance screening of Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled starring Colin Farrell, Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, with the director in-person for a Q&A.
Additional Festival Special Screenings and Events include a conversation with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, Portlandia: A Look Back and A Look Forward; a conversation with the stars of IFC’s Baroness Von Sketch Show moderated by Lea DeLaria; a day-long screening of every episode of Documentary Now!; and the LA Premiere of Karam Gill’s documentary G-Funk, featuring a post-screening performance with Warren G and special guests.
The festival also unveiled the panels for Diversity Speaks and the Global Media Makers.
“This year’s program is beautifully rich and varied,” said Film Independent President Josh Welsh. “From Sofia Coppola’s new film The Beguiled, to our expanded Diversity Speaks program, to the legendary Warren G performing after Karam Gill’s G-Funk and Festival Alumnus David F. Sandberg’s Annabelle: Creation, we can’t wait to share it all with Los Angeles.”
Gala Screening
Annabelle: Creation, dir. David F. Sandberg, Advance Screening Several years after the tragic death of their little girl, a doll maker and his wife welcome a nun and several girls from a shuttered orphanage into their home. They soon become the target of the doll maker’s possessed creation, Annabelle. Warner Bros. Pictures will release the film in theaters on August 11.Free Event: Global Media Makers Screening & Panel
Thursday, June 15, ArcLight Culver City Global Media Makers is an innovative cultural exchange program that fosters supportive ongoing relationships between leading U.S. and international filmmaking talent. Ali, the Goat and Ibrahim, dir. Sherif El Bendary, Egypt, LA Premiere Ali believes his late girlfriend’s soul has been reincarnated in a goat. Ali, his goat and his friend Ibrahim embark on a journey of friendship and self-discovery across Egypt to reverse the curse. Post screening panel with producer and Global Media Makers’ Fellow Hossam Elouan, and other filmmakers participating in the program, who will explore filmmaking in the region and discuss the importance of telling stories from an inside perspective. Global Media Makers is supported through a partnership between Film Independent and the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.Free Event: Diversity Speaks Panels
Saturday, June 17 and Sunday, June 18, Kirk Douglas Theatre Addressing topical issues relating to diversity and inclusiveness both on and off the screen, Diversity Speaks’ focus is to expand the definition of diversity and act as a call to action for the entertainment industry. Cis in a Trans World: Transgender Visibility: Members of the trans creative community will discuss on-screen cis appropriation in depictions of trans stories, panelists include Candis Cayne (The Magicians), Mari Walker (Swim) and Rachel Crowl (And Then There Was Eve). Whitewashing: Asian and Asian-American Representation in Film/TV: Leonardo Nam (Westworld), Kelly Hu (The Scorpion King), Kelvin Yu (Master of None), Ally Maki (Wrecked), Phil Yu (Angry Asian Man blog), Bruce Thierry Cheung (Don’t Come Back from the Moon) and Gloria Fan (VP of Current Programming, FOX) will discuss packaging of Asian cultural properties. The Other: Documenting Marginalized Stories: Panelists Sydney Freeland (Deidra & Laney Rob a Train), Valerie Red-Horse Mohl (Mankiller), Amy York Rubin (Boxed In), Xan Aranda (Room 104) and Marvin Lemus (Gente-fied) will shine a light on how these filmmakers and storytellers work within, and around, the current systems to be seen and heard. Reclaiming Gay for Pay: What It Means to be ‘Out’ in Hollywood: Panelists Lena Waithe (Master of None, Twenties), Keiynan Lonsdale (The Flash), Noah Galvin (The Real O’Neals) and Guy Branum (Talk Show the Game Show) question why it remains difficult to come out in Hollywood and the future of storytelling for the LGBTQ+ creative community. The panel will be moderated by Marc Malkin of E!. State of Emergency: 25 Years After the LA Riots. Panelists Sacha Jenkins (Burn Motherfucker, Burn!), Grace Lee (K-TOWN ‘92), Daniel Lindsay (LA ’92) and T.J. Martin (LA ’92) look back on the LA Riots and the continued impact they have on the city at large and the narratives it produces and inspires.Additional Festival Screenings & Events
Premieres – added titles: World premieres of fiction and documentary films featuring noteworthy talent. Story of a Girl, dir. Kyra Sedgwick, USA, World Premiere You Get Me, dir. Brent Bonacorso, USA, World Premiere Focus 15 Founded 15 years ago this spring, Focus Features will celebrate its anniversary at the LA Film Festival with revival showings from its library of iconic movies and with screenings of highly anticipated new Focus movies, including the Festival’s Opening Night Film The Book of Henry, directed by Colin Trevorrow, screening on Wednesday, June 14, and Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled. The Beguiled, dir. Sofia Coppola, USA, Special Advance Screening Thursday, June 15, LACMA The story unfolds during the Civil War, at a Southern girls’ boarding school. Its sheltered young women take in an injured enemy soldier. As they provide refuge and tend to his wounds, the house is taken over with sexual tension and dangerous rivalries, and taboos are broken in an unexpected turn of events. Focus Features will release The Beguiled in theatres on June 23. Q&A with Sofia Coppola to follow screening of The Beguiled. A screening of Lost in Translation will follow the screening of The Beguiled. Lost in Translation, dir. Sofia Coppola, USA, 2003 Thursday, June 15, LACMA Shot entirely on location in Japan, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation is a valentine to the nature of close friendships and to the city of Tokyo. Moonrise Kingdom, dir. Wes Anderson, USA, 2012 Saturday, June 17, ArcLight Culver City Set on an island off the coast of New England in summer 1965, Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two 12-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. The Kids Are Alright, dir. Lisa Cholodenko, USA, 2010 Wednesday, June 21, ArcLight Culver City Nic and Jules are married with two teenage children. An unexpected new chapter begins for them as family ties are defined, re-defined, and then re-re defined. Portlandia: A Look Back and A Look Forward Thursday, June 15, Kirk Douglas Theatre For the past seven seasons, Portlandia’s observational humor has been one step ahead of the cultural conversation. As the series gears up for its eighth and final installment, we hear from multi-hyphenates Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein about the show’s celebrated history and what’s next in advance of the final season. Baroness Von Sketch Show Friday, June 16, Kirk Douglas Theatre Hailing from north of the border, these Baronesses of the Baroness Von Sketch Show are producing the best comedy you’ve never seen….until now! Catch a sneak peek before the show premieres on IFC. Lea DeLaria (Orange is the New Black) will moderate a conversation with the stars Carolyn Taylor, Meredith MacNeill, Aurora Browne and Jennifer Whalen. Free Event: Documentary Now! Sunday, June 18, ArcLight Culver City Catch every episode back-to-back of IFC’s Documentary Now! on the big screen. Starring Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, the series pays homage to some of the world’s best-known documentaries. G-Funk dir. Karam Gill, USA, LA Premiere Friday, June 16, The Theatre at Ace Hotel This “G-Funkumentary” tells the story of three friends from Long Beach, Warren G, Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg, and their collaboration in creating one of the most essential styles of West Coast hip hop. The screening will be followed by a performance featuring Warren G and special guests. Free Event: Burn Motherfucker, Burn!, dir. Sacha Jenkins, USA Monday, June 19, ArcLight Santa Monica On April 29, 1992, Los Angeles exploded when four police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. But a fire beneath the feet of Angelenos had been melting flesh for years. BURN! chronicles the root causes of disenfranchisement in LA while also examining the role law enforcement has played throughout.
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Laura Poitras Named AFI DOCS 2017 Charles Guggenheim Symposium Honoree
AFI DOCS will pay tribute to Laura Poitras — the groundbreaking director of RISK (2016) and the Academy Award®-winning Edward Snowden portrait CITIZENFOUR (2014) — as the festival’s 2017 Charles Guggenheim Symposium honoree.
Each year, the AFI DOCS Charles Guggenheim Symposium honors a master of the nonfiction art form. Taking place at the Newseum on June 16, the Symposium will include an in-depth conversation with Poitras along with clips from her acclaimed works. Poitras’ latest film RISK, a six-year project following WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, was released by Neon on May 5 and will air on Showtime this summer. Poitras’ impressive documentary catalog also includes THE OATH (2010), MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY (2006) and FLAG WARS (2003).
“Poitras has the extraordinary instinct and ability to put her camera in the heart of history as it unfolds, regardless of the risk,” said Michael Lumpkin, Director, AFI DOCS. “Using her keen eye, Poitras reveals worlds just beyond what we can see. We are honored to celebrate her remarkable career and dedication to the documentary form.”
Poitras’ first feature-length documentary, FLAG WARS, was nominated for an Emmy® and won a Peabody Award, cementing her stature as a top-notch documentarian from the outset. Next, she was nominated for a Best Documentary Feature Academy Award® for MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, the first installment in her post-9/11 trilogy. In 2015, Poitras won the Academy Award® for CITIZENFOUR. That same year, Poitras co-founded Field of Vision, an entity that commissions and creates original short-form nonfiction films about global events.
Poitras joins a renowned list of Guggenheim Symposium honorees: Charles Guggenheim (2003), Barbara Kopple (2004), Martin Scorsese (2006), Jonathan Demme (2007), Spike Lee (2008), Albert Maysles (2009), Frederick Wiseman (2010), Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker (2011), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (2012), Errol Morris (2013), Alex Gibney (2014), Stanley Nelson (2015) and Werner Herzog (2016).
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RIP: James Bond Actor Sir Roger Moore Dead at 89
James Bond actor Sir Roger George Moore died today in Switzerland after a battle with cancer. He was 89.
Roger Moore played the British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films between 1973 and 1985.
His family issued a statement, “With the heaviest of hearts, we must share the awful news that our father, Sir Roger Moore, passed away today. We are all devastated.”
With the heaviest of hearts, we must share the awful news that our father, Sir Roger Moore, passed away today. We are all devastated. pic.twitter.com/6dhiA6dnVg
— Sir Roger Moore (@sirrogermoore) May 23, 2017
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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Drops First Official Trailer for CANT’T STOP WON’T STOP: A BAD BOY STORY
Last night Sean “Diddy” Combs took the stage at the Billboard Music Awards to drop the first official trailer for the highly anticipated documentary Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story, that world premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story, produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Heather Parry, alongside executive producers Michael Rapino, Andre Harrell and Alex Avant, explores the passion and personalities of Bad Boy and will be available on Apple Music on June 25.
Directed by Daniel Kaufman, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy Story is an exclusive look behind the scenes at the history of Bad Boy through a complex portrait of the label’s mastermind, Sean “Diddy” Combs, as he tries to reunite his Bad Boy Family in the course of a frantic three week rehearsal period. As they prepare to celebrate the label’s 20th anniversary, the film traces Bad Boy’s emergence in Harlem and Brooklyn, follows it’s meteoric rise, explores the tragic killing of Biggie Smalls, and celebrates Bad Boy’s influence in reshaping music, fashion, marketing and culture.
“I knew this was a story that should be shared with the world. Heather Parry and Live Nation Productions, and Director Daniel Kaufman, helped create this very special documentary,” says Sean Combs on the making of the film. “Now I’m blessed to also be working with Apple Music to showcase the film and share Bad Boy’s history and impact with fans. The support Live Nation, Apple Music and everyone on the team has given to this project is a true testament to the Bad Boy legacy.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtqIL4L8HmE
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THIRST STREET, Nathan Silver’s Psychosexual Drama from Tribeca 2017 Set for a Late 2017 Release
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Lindsay Burdge as Gina in THIRST STREET. Photo by Sean Price Williams.[/caption]
Thirst Street, the darkly comic Paris-set tale of romantic obsession directed by Nathan Silver that World Premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival will be released later this year by Samuel Goldwyn Films. The film stars Lindsay Burdge (“A Teacher”), Damien Bonnard (“Staying Vertical”) and is narrated by Academy Award-winner Anjelica Huston.
Thirst Street follows grief-stricken American flight attendant Gina (Burdge) on a layover in Paris, where she hooks up with nightclub bartender Jerome (Bonnard). As Gina falls deeper into lust and opts to stay in France, Jerome’s ex (Esther Garrel) reenters the picture, sending Gina on a downward spiral of miscommunication, masochism and madness.
“We are immensely excited to work with Samuel Goldwyn on the release of Thirst Street. We feel like it’s the ideal home for this French/American labor of love,” says director Nathan Silver.
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ON A KNIFE EDGE Coming of Age and Activism Doc on American Indian Young Man to World Premiere at SF DocFest
On A Knife Edge, from director Jeremy Williams, a documentary film five years in the making, follows Guy Dull Knife and his son, George, as George comes of age on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. The film will world premiere June 10 and June 15 at the 16th annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival.
“On a Knife Edge” is a father-son story about Guy and George Dull Knife that unfolds over the course of George’s coming-of-age journey. Under his father’s guidance, George becomes an activist and organizer, and begins identifying with the role of traditional Lakota warrior, which he views as his family legacy. He commits himself to the fight for social justice, but struggles with adapting the old ways and his father’s expectations to the modern-day realities of growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Told largely through George’s eyes, the film offers a privileged glimpse into the youngest generation of the American Indian Movement, as well as George’s own evolving notions of Native identity, manhood, and duty.
His story is interwoven with animated sequences that depict five generations of family history, narrated by his father and based on paintings he has created to explore the continuum of their fight through the generations.
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First Round of Films Announced for 2017 Damn These Heels Film Festival
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Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall[/caption]
The 2017 Damn These Heels Film Festival taking place July 14 to 16, 2017 in Utah at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, revealed the first round of films selected for the festival. The festival features independent, documentary, and foreign films from around the world that explore LGBTQ issues, ideas, and art.
The Festival will open with Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall by director Katherine Fairfax Wright. The film follows Todrick Hall as he launches his most ambitious project yet: the full-scale original musical, Straight Outta Oz.
Patrick Hubley, Director of Programming for the Utah Film Center said, “Through Damn These Heels screenings and events we hope to continue to foster the spirit of inclusion, unity, and tenacity in the Utah community. These films from all over the world show that now more than ever we need to celebrate our shared humanity no matter our race or sexual orientation. These stories need to be told and we cannot wait to kick off our 14th year with such a thought-provoking program.”
The first round of films selected to screen in the 2017 Damn These Heels Festival are:
Behind the Curtain: Todrick Hall / USA (Director: Katherine Fairfax Wright)
Todrick Hall launches his most ambitious project yet: the full-scale original musical, Straight Outta Oz. From a small town in Texas to big-time show business, comes an inspiring documentary of grit, perseverance and the redemptive power of art. We watch him struggle to write songs about growing up gay and black in small-town Texas, his difficult relationship with his mom, and the harsh realities of trying to make it in show business. With limited time and budget the odds are against him, but Todrick’s passion and his team of talented performers overcome all obstacles to bring this story to the world. Utah Premiere
Official Selection: 2017 SXSW Film Festival, 2017 Outfest
*Opening Night Film
**Director Katherine Fairfax Wright will attend the festival for a guided discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7geWHf1x8
Free Cece / USA (Director: Jacqueline Gares) – CeCe McDonald survived a brutal attack, only to be incarcerated for defending her life. After an international movement to free her, CeCe emerged as a leader to interrogate the prison industrial complex and inspire women to fight back when attacked. Utah Premiere
Cast: CeCe McDonald, Laverne Cox
Audience Award Winner: Feature Documentary – 2016 Blackstar Film Festival
I Dream In Another Language / Mexico/Netherlands (Director: Ernesto Contreras) – A young linguist travels to the jungle of Mexico to research a language on the verge of disappearing. Once there, he discoverers its last two speakers clashed 50 years ago, and have refused to speak to each other since. Attempting to reunite them, the researcher discovers a secret past—and a forbidden gay love story.
Cast: Fernando Álvarez Rebeil, Eligio Meléndez, Manuel Poncelis, Fátima Molina, Juan Pablo De Santiago, Hoze Meléndez
Winner: Audience Award World Cinema (Dramatic) – 2017 Sundance Film Festival
Political Animals / USA (Director: John Markowitz, Tracy Wares) – A rousing documentary charting the unstoppable force of four lesbian legislators in California who’ve been fighting for LGBT rights and recognition for decades. Utah Premiere
Cast: Carole Migden, Sheila Kuehl, Jackie Goldberg, Christine Kehoe
Winner: Audience Award – 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival, Provincetown International Film Festival and 8 other awards.
Pushing Dead / USA (Director: Tom E. Brown) – When a struggling writer, HIV-positive for 20+ years, accidentally deposits a $100 birthday check, he is dropped from his health plan for earning too much. In this new era of sort-of universal care, can he take on a helpless bureaucracy or come up with $3000 a month to buy his meds on his own? Utah Premiere
Cast: James Roday, Robin Weigert, Danny Glover, Khandi Alexander, Tom Riley
Winner: Audience Award – Frameline 40; 2016 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival; 2017 Ashland Independent Film Festival; 2016 Fresno Reel Pride Film Festival
Signature Move / USA (Director: Jennifer Reeder ) – A hilarious and heartfelt look at modern families and the complexities of love in its many forms. Utah Premiere
Cast: Fawzia Mirza, Shabana Azmi, Sari Sanchez, Audrey Francis, Charin Alvarez
Official Selection: 2017 SXSW Film Festival
The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin / USA (Director: Jennifer M. Kroot) – Celebrates one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to reclaim their lives.
Utah Premiere
Audience Award Winner: Documentary Spotlight – 2017 SXSW Film Festival; Jury Award: Best Documentary – 2017 OUTSHINE Film Festival
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Margaret Byrne’s Award-Winning Documentary RAISING BERTIE Opens June 9
RAISING BERTIE is a six-year portrait of three young African American men coming-of-age in North Carolina’s rural Bertie County. Like MOONLIGHT and BOYHOOD before it, the intimate portrayal of these young men interconnects narratives of family, youthful innocence, and isolation with the will to succeed in the face of formidable odds.
The feature-length documentary RAISING BERTIE, winner of Best Documentary Feature at Atlanta Docufest, is produced by Kartemquin Films and executive produced by Jermaine Cole aka rapper J. Cole.
This powerful vérité film delivers an authentic and tender portrait of the lives of three young boys – Reginald “Junior” Askew, David “Bud” Perry, and Davonte “Dada” Harrell – as they face a precarious coming of age in Bertie County, North Carolina.
Director Margaret Byrne brings audiences deep into the emotional lives of these young men as they try to find room for themselves in a place where life is dictated by a slow pace, opportunities are limited and tenuous family ties simultaneously offer comfort and heartache. Shot over the course of six years, RAISING BERTIE is an experience that asks us to see this world through their eyes: boys navigating between finishing high school and an elusive first job, as millions of young Americans similarly take their next step into an inherited idea of adulthood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1iNY7Fh3PA
Set in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina, Raising Bertie offers viewers an authentic and tender portrait of the lives of three young boys – Reginald “Junior” Askew, David “Bud” Perry, and Davonte “Dada” Harrell – as they face a precarious coming of age.
Rural minorities like the youth in Bertie represent some of the nation’s most vulnerable and least visible. Like many rural areas, Bertie County struggles with a dwindling economy, a declining population and a high school graduation rate below the state average. The Perdue chicken processing plant is Bertie’s last major employer, and the 27 prisons that lay within a 100 miles of Bertie cast a long shadow. Bertie County is predominately African American – its challenges compounded by generations of economic and educational discrimination and exclusion.
Bertie also is the home of Junior, Bud, and Dada, three engaging young men with difficult pasts attending high school at The Hive, an alternative school for at-risk boys. There, we meet Vivian Saunders, a passionate community activist from Bertie County. At The Hive a combination of respect, socio-emotional learning, and mentorship helps to put these young men’s lives on track. The Hive is a beautiful model of effective, supportive, and innovative interventions that help to improve opportunities and the quality of life for African-American boys and young men in Bertie.
But, when budget shorgalls lead the Board of Education to close The Hive, Junior, Bud, and Dada must return to Bertie High School and a system that once failed them.
This raw and starkly poetic Kartemquin vérité documentary weaves the young men’s stories together as they navigate school, unemployment, violence, first love, fatherhood, and estrangement from family members and mentors, all while trying to define their identities.
Intimate access depicts an honest portrayal of the boys’ perspectives and the caring adults in the community who understand what it means to take care of their own. The film is an in-depth look at issues facing many of rural America’s youth of color and what happens in the everyday lives of young people caught in the complex interplay of generational poverty, economic isolation, and educational inequity. Raising Bertie is an experience that asks us to see this world through their eyes and incites recognition and understanding of lives and communities too often ignored.
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ELLE Producer Michel Merkt to Receive Locarno’s 2017 Best Independent Producer Award
Swiss producer Michel Merkt will receive the 2017 The Best Independent Producer Award “Raimondo Rezzonico” at the Locarno Film Festival.
Proof of Michel Merkt’s instincts was offered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, which screened no less than 8 feature films in which he was involved, including: Elle by Paul Verhoeven, twofold César winner in 2017 for Best Film and for Isabelle Huppert as Best Female Lead, as well as an Academy Awards 2017 nomination for Best Actress; the Franco-Swiss cartoon Ma vie de Courgette by Claude Barras from Sion (Canton Valais), co-produced with Pauline Gygax’s and Max Karli’s production company Rita, another recent Oscar nominee and winner of a César for Best Animated Film; and Juste la fin du monde, directed by Xavier Dolan, winner of the Jury Grand Prix and Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes 2016, with an impressive line-up of stars such as Nathalie Baye, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard and Léa Seydoux. He also collaborated with director Walter Hill, to produce The Assignment, starring Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Rodriguez.
The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2 to 12, 2017.
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Nastassja Kinski to be Guest of Honor at Locarno Film Festival
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Nastassja Kinski[/caption]
Nastassja Kinski will be guest of honor at the 70th Locarno Film Festival. She will be presenting Cat People, Paul Schrader’s remake of the horror classic by French director Jacques Tourneur, dedicatee of this year’s Retrospective at Locarno.
From the outset of her career, Nastassja Kinski has appeared in films that have become part of cinema history. She was a muse for directors such as Wim Wenders, in Falsche Bewegung (1975) and Paris, Texas (1982), or for Roman Polanski in Tess (1979), and played opposite great actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Gérard Depardieu, Harvey Keitel, Robert Mitchum and Al Pacino.
In Paul Schrader’s take on Cat People (1982), adapted from the 1942 masterpiece by Jacques Tourneur, Kinski’s remarkable performance captures the ambiguous, mutant nature of the character originally played by Simone Simon.
The venue for the Locarno Retrospective on French iconic filmmaker Jacques Tourneur (1904 – 1977) will be the city’s historic Rex theater, now fully refurbished and ready to re-open for the 70th Festival under its new name, GranRex.
The 70th Locarno Festival will be held from August 2nd to 12th, 2017.