The Bentonville Film Festival Foundation and The Coca-Cola Foundation announced the “See It, Be It Filmmaker Fellowship,” an annual fellowship designed to offer expansive developmental support for filmmakers from historically underrepresented communities. Eight Bentonville Film Festival Alumni have been selected for the inaugural program, which will include professional support from peers, entertainment industry leaders and major corporate changemakers, in addition to financial backing.
Over its six-day run, the 23rd Annual Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival will screen 317 films including premieres of local films such as Steve Luna’s “To Be Heard,” Bronte Stahl’s “Terril,” Bat-Sheva Guez’s “In This Life,” Nastasya Popov’s “Pickle Man,” Oscar D’Angeac’s “Providence Lost,” Dave Ricci’s “The Craft: Rhode Island,” Ali Migliore’s “Twist,”Natalie Shirinian’s “Interior Motives,” Michael Formanski’s “The Iron Wall,” Rich Allen’s “Home Cookin’ – Over 100 Years in the Making,” Indy Dang’s “Influence,” Salvatore Mancini’s “Divine Providence: The Rebirth of an American City,” and Joseph Lovett’s “Children of the Inquisition”.
Director Harry Mavromichalis’ Olympia will have its Los Angeles premiere at the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival (LAGFF) on June 8, 2019, at 5.45 p.m. at The Rigler Theatre at The Egyptian. The film most recently won the Best Documentary award at Hunter Mountain Film Festival.
The 5th Annual Bentonville Film Festival will open on Wednesday, May 8, with Tom Donahue’s documentary THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING, executive produced by Geena Davis, and featuring her, along with Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman, Zoe Saldana, Rosario Dawson, Cate Blanchett, and many others as it takes an incisive look into the history, empirical evidence, and systemic forces that foster gender discrimination and thus reinforce disparity in our culture.
More than 40 films will compete in the three feature film juried competitions at the 43rd Cleveland International Film Festival for $30,000 in cash prizes. The competitions include George Gund III Memorial Central and Eastern European Competition; Nesnadny + Schwartz Portrait Documentary Competition and New Direction Competition.
Olympia, a documentary feature film on Academy Award®-winning actress Olympia Dukakis from director Harry Mavromichalis will world premiere at 2018 DOC NYC.
Olympia the film takes us on a poetic journey in search of one’s place in the world. We follow Academy Award® winning actress Olympia Dukakis as she takes on the roles of actor, teacher, wife, mother, and social activist. Determined not to be defined solely as a woman in a male dominated society she struggles to find a sense of belonging due to her ethnic roots and the dichotomy she has always felt between her American values and the values of her immigrant parents. After making the decision that she would never take no for an answer and would never let anyone define her, her mantra became: “Always move forward, no matter what.”
This revealing and unfiltered documentary follows the life and career of Academy Award® winning actress, Olympia Dukakis. Starting on the day she turns eighty and continuing for three years, this film deals with the struggles and pains surrounding identity and the roles placed on us by society. Its cinema-verité style allows the audience to constantly move alongside Olympia as she navigates between rehearsals, workshops, family life, and finally the journey to her ancestral home in Greece. Exhibiting both candor and vulnerability, we see her deal with age, grief, and sexuality while opening up about her past struggles with depression, suicide, and drug addiction.
Intricately weaving between visceral impromptu personal moments with Olympia, together with footage of her performances both on and off screen, we experience the presence of an unrelenting female energy. Not only does her story add to the perpetual ‘herstory’ of women withstanding and overcoming their obstacles and oppressors through the passage of time, it also gives us insight into how she overcame the impediments that affected her life as the daughter of immigrants and as a woman in a male-dominated society. We are granted the raw, unfiltered attitude of Olympia without a script to guide her. Her fierceness is seen to persist throughout her daily life beyond the stage or film. Years of oppression, subordination and self-doubt have thickened her skin and sharpened her mind, and her energy is contagious. Despite her age and the innumerable experiences in her life, her determination to continue, to move forward and overcome the hurdles that life places before us all, is an inspiration.
Through her brutal honesty and sincerity, Olympia compels us to confront our own shortcomings and differences by letting go, and moving forward with defiant conviction, which leaves us with a cathartic feeling that we too can be an “octogenarian motherfucker.”
WORLD PREMIERE SCREENING AT DOC NYC
Sunday, November 11 at 6:30 pm
SVA Theatre (School of Visual Arts)
333 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011 (Between 8 and 9 Avenues)
Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists[/caption]
DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary festival, returns for its ninth edition with 135 feature-length documentaries among over 300 films and events overall. The festival takes place November 8 to 15 at in New York at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village and Chelsea’s SVA Theatre and Cinepolis Chelsea.
Special Events include Closing Night Film, the world premiere of HBO’s Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists, about the beloved New York City journalists Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, directed by Jonathan Alter, John Block and Steve McCarthy; and the festival’s Centerpiece presentation, the world premiere of Original Cast Album: Co-op, an episode in the upcoming season of IFC’s Documentary Now! series inspired by D.A. Pennebaker’s Original Cast Album: Company, followed by a conversation with creators Seth Meyers and Rhys Thomas, director Alex Buono, writer and star John Mulaney, and star Renee Elise Goldsberry (Hamilton). The NYC premiere of John Chester’s Telluride and Toronto hit The Biggest Little Farm will open the festival.
World premieres at the festival include Lady Parts Justice in the New World Order, following The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead on a “Vagical Mystery Tour” to fight for reproductive rights; New Homeland, the newest film from two-time Academy Award winner Barbara Kopple, following refugee boys to a summer camp; Cracked Up, a revealing portrait of Saturday Night Live alumnus Darrell Hammond; Olympia, on Academy Award winning actress Olympia Dukakis; Buzz, about Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger; Afterward, a candid exploration of complex tensions between Germans, Jews and Palestinians; Creating a Character: The Moni Yakim Legacy, on the legendary Juilliard drama teacher who trained Meryl Streep and Viola Davis among countless other talents; Beyond the Bolex, a personal history of the iconic camera; and The Show’s the Thing: The Legendary Promoters of Rock, which reveals an untold chapter of rock history.
Among this year’s U.S. premieres are Screwball, a hilarious exposé of Alex Rodriguez’s doping scandal; The Insufferable Groo, on a prolific low-budget filmmaker who recruits Jack Black for his latest opus; Evelyn, Oscar-winner Orlando von Einsiedel’s reckoning with a family tragedy; Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, the fascinating tale about the popularization of Jamaican music worldwide; Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground, on an influential but little-recognized member of the 1960s film and art world; and The Artist & the Pervert, on the controversial relationship between a world renowned composer and a sex educator.
The festival is curated in 21 sections that include five new strands:
Series Showcase, offering world premieres of new episodic programs, including Showtime’s Enemies: The President, Justice & the FBI, exploring the contentious relationship between U.S. presidents and the FBI; and SundanceTV’s Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre.
Photography on Film, which includes the world premiere of Last Stop Coney Island: The Life and Photography of Harold Feinstein, on the seven-decade career of the NYC photographer.
Portraits, which presents the world premieres of The Great Mother, a profile of a woman serving as the legal guardian for 2,000 children of undocumented immigrants; and Welcome to the Beyond, the surprising story of a fashion model and a cult.
In the System, offering an inside look at institutions, including sexism in the restaurant world in The Heat: A Kitchen (R)evolution; and the financial industry on the cusp of the economic recession in Inside Lehman Brothers.
True Love, which presents the world premiere of Dennis and Lois, about a punk rock-loving older couple; and the U.S. premiere of China Love, which explores China’s $80 billion pre-wedding photo industry.
In the festival’s two feature competition sections, nine films appear under the Viewfinders section for distinct directorial visions. They include the world premieres of Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, a radical reframing of natural disasters and their link to poverty; Out of Omaha, a coming-of-age story executive produced by musician J. Cole; The Smartest Kids in the World, an exploration of the shortcomings of the U.S. education system; and The Kleptocrats, an investigation of the Malaysian financial scandal that helped finance The Wolf of Wall Street.
In the Metropolis competition section, seven films are dedicated to stories set in New York City. They include the world premieres of Jay Myself, about acclaimed photographer Jay Maisel; Decade of Fire, on the notorious series of fires that devastated the Bronx in the 1970s; See Know Evil, about a young photographer who left an indelible mark on fashion in the 1990s; and The Candidates, which follows an elaborate mock U.S. presidential election at a Queens high school.
Other returning sections include high-profile Special Events; national and global takes inAmerican Perspectives and International Perspectives; and thematic sections Centerstage (on performance), Jock Docs (on sports), Science Nonfiction (on science and technology), Wild Life (on animals), Modern Family (on unconventional families), Behind the Scenes (on filmmaking), Fight the Power (on activism), Sonic Cinema (on music) and Docs Redux (revisiting classic nonfiction). Short-form content (92 films in total) is represented by the festival’s Shorts Competition and DOC NYC U (showcasing student work), selected by Programmer Opal H. Bennett.
These sections join the Short List: Features titles, highlighting 15 of the year’s award contender documentary features; Short List: Shorts, an inaugural list of 12 of the year’s leading nonfiction shorts; and the eight-day DOC NYC PRO conference, doubled in size from 2017, focusing on panels and masterclasses.
DOC NYC will welcome over 500 filmmakers and special guests in attendance for Q&As after most screenings and for DOC NYC PRO panels. Among the notable guests expected to appear in person are Jakob Dylan for Echo in the Canyon, Darrell Hammond for Cracked Up, Jeffrey Wright for We Are Not Done Yet, Sandra Lee for RX: Early Detection, J.Cole for Out of Omaha, Christo for Walking on Water, Alex Sharp for Creating a Character, Lizz Winstead for Lady Parts Justice in the New World Order and more to be announced in the coming weeks.
For this year’s Short List section of awards season frontrunners, filmmakers presenting their work in person at the festival include Rashida Jones and Alan Hicks (Quincy), Wim Wenders (Pope Francis: A Man of His Word), Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 11/9), Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo), Betsy West and Julie Cohen (RBG), Rudy Valdez (The Sentence), Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (Reversing Roe), Susan Lacy (Jane Fonda in Five Acts), Bing Liu (Minding the Gap), Tim Wardle (Three Identical Strangers), Sandi Tan (Shirkers), Alexandria Bombach (On Her Shoulders), RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening) and Stephen Maing (Crime + Punishment). Filmmakers will also take part in the Short List Day of panel conversations on Nov. 9 at DOC NYC PRO.
Notable documentarians will also be honored at the Visionaries Tribute Awards event on Nov. 8: Wim Wenders and Orlando Bagwell will receiveLifetime Achievement Awards while Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin will receive the Robert and Anne Drew Award for observational filmmaking. Tabitha Jackson, director of the Documentary Film Program at Sundance Institute, will receive theLeading Light Award for distinguished service to documentary in a role outside filmmaking.
The following is a breakdown of programming by section:
Boy Erased[/caption]
The Chicago International Film Festival announced the first 25 films that will be shown at the 54th edition running October 10 to 21, 2018. The Festival will feature more than 150 films from across the globe and bring legendary actors, master filmmakers, and exciting, emerging talents from around the world to Chicago.
Initial lineup includes highly anticipated titles including Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe; Elizabeth Chomko’s Chicago set feature debut What They Had starring Michael Shannon and Hilary Swank; Mike Leigh’s epic drama Peterloo and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.
“We are very excited to be showcasing new films from some of the most impressive directors in the world, whether returning veterans, such as past Gold Hugo-winners Mike Leigh and Hirokazu Kore-eda, or up-and-coming filmmakers with distinctive visions,” said Plauché. “For the last several years, the Festival has been proud to present Best Picture winners The Shape of Water (2017), Moonlight (2016), and Spotlight (2015), and we look forward to sharing this year’s incredible slate of movies with our audiences.”
Birds of Passage
Pájaros de verano
Directors: Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra
Colombia, Mexico, Denmark
A Colombian Mean Streets, this gripping drama chronicles the rise of the drug trade and its cataclysmic impact on the local indigenous community. The Wayuu people had long held tight onto their traditions, living in close-knit tribes. When two friends begin selling marijuana to visiting Americans, however, their actions set in motion a series of events that pit factions against each other, inciting a cycle of avarice-inspired vengeance. Wayuunaiki, Spanish, and English with subtitles.
Border
Gräns
Director: Ali Abbasi
Sweden
Fantastic in every sense of the word, this idiosyncratic thriller centers on a Swedish customs officer with a special talent for detecting contraband who must ultimately choose between good and evil. This exciting, intelligent mix of romance, Nordic noir, social realism, and supernatural horror defies and subverts genre conventions and is destined to be a cult classic. Winner, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival. Swedish with subtitles.
Boy Erased
Director: Joel Edgerton
U.S.
Boy Erased tells the story of Jared (Lucas Hedges), the son of a Baptist pastor in a small American town, who is outed to his parents (Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe) at age 19. Jared is faced with an ultimatum: attend a conversion therapy program—or be permanently exiled and shunned by his family, friends, and faith. Boy Erased is the true story of one young man’s struggle to find himself while being forced to question every aspect of his identity.
Cold War
Zimna wojna
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Poland
A passionate love story between two people of different backgrounds and temperaments, who are fatefully mismatched and yet condemned to each other. Set against the background of the Cold War in the 1950s in Poland, Berlin, Yugoslavia and Paris, the film depicts an impossible love story in impossible times. Polish with subtitles.
Dogman
Director: Matteo Garrone
Italy
In a run-down Italian coastal town, Marcello, a gentle dog groomer, sees his life turned upside down when Simone, a brutish former boxer and ex-con, bullies him into becoming his criminal accomplice. But for how long can the “dogman” be subservient to his master before he bites back? From the acclaimed director of Gomorrah comes another unflinching urban western treading the fine line between civility and savagery. Italian with subtitles.
Friedkin Uncut
Director: Francesco Zippel
Italy
Oscar®-winning, Chicago-born director William Friedkin achieved fame with his 1973 horror blockbuster The Exorcist. But this illuminating documentary shows the director’s unwavering commitment to rawness and realism across his entire career, from The French Connection (1972) to Killer Joe (2011). Featuring interviews with Ellen Burstyn, Willem Dafoe, and Quentin Tarantino, among others, Friedkin Uncut reveals a savvy craftsman who is unapologetic about his no-nonsense approach to moviemaking.
Jumpman
Podbrosy
Director: Ivan I. Tverdovskiy
Russia, Ireland, Lithuania, France
An abandoned infant grows into a likeable lad with a rare disorder—he can feel no physical pain. When he becomes a teen, his feckless mother returns to his life to exploit his condition by enlisting him in an insurance fraud scam. A taut thriller, Jumpman puts an outsider at the center of a harsh indictment of corruption and hypocrisy in contemporary Russia. Russian with subtitles.
Mr. Soul!
Director: Melissa Haizlip
U.S.
The brainchild of pioneering producer Ellis Haizlip, SOUL! was the first ever national TV series made by and for African-Americans. The groundbreaking program aired from 1968 to 1973 and featured a dazzling array of guests from Stevie Wonder to Maya Angelou. Mr. Soul! takes viewers behind the scenes of the show, chronicling its inception and its struggles to stay on the air. It turns out the revolution really was televised.
Olympia
Director: Gregory Dixon
U.S.
Chicago writer-actor McKenzie Chinn stars as a struggling artist, navigating work and romance in the Windy City. When her boyfriend asks her to drop everything and move cross-country, she soon discovers that she might be the biggest obstacle to her own happiness. Featuring quirky animation and a revelatory central performance, Olympia is a sensitive and humorous look at the challenges of embracing adulthood.
The Other Story
Director: Avi Nesher
Israel
Family disputes and conspiracies take center stage in this lively drama, which even-handedly explores the divide between Israel’s secular Jews and the ultra-Orthodox from director Avi Nesher (The Matchmaker). Sasson Gabai (The Band’s Visit) plays a renowned psychologist and rationalist who falls out with his strong-willed granddaughter when she enters a Haredi community and plans to marry a musician previously known for his wild ways. Hebrew with subtitles.
Peterloo
Director: Mike Leigh
U.K.
An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, which saw British forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to protest rising levels of poverty and demand reform. Many were killed and hundreds more injured, sparking a nationwide outcry but also further government suppression. A defining moment in British democracy, the massacre also played a significant role in the founding of The Guardian newspaper.
Piercing
Director: Nicolas Pesce
U.S.
Pesce’s gleefully wicked S&M black comedy centers on Reed (Christopher Abbot), a new fatherlooking to channel his homicidal impulses away from his infant daughter. He heads to a hotel, hires an escort (Mia Wasikowska), then begins to rehearse her murder. But once she arrives, the balance of power shifts. Based on the novel by Ryu Murukami, Piercing’s incredibly dark premise constantly surprises—it might just be taken for a wildly subversive love story.
A Private War
Director: Matthew Heineman
U.S.
In a world where journalism is under attack, Marie Colvin (Academy Award®-nominee Rosamund Pike) is one of the most celebrated war correspondents of our time. Her mission to show the true cost of conflict leads her—along with renowned photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan)—to embark on the most dangerous assignment of their lives in the besieged Syrian city of Homs.
Rafiki
Director: Wanuri Kahiu
Kenya
A tender tale of forbidden first love told in an electric, colorful Afropop style, Rafiki tells the story of the tender but illegal and taboo romance between Kena, a skateboarding tomboy blessed with great grades and soccer skills, and Ziki, the charismatic daughter of a conservative local politician. When rumors begin to swirl about the nature of their relationship, the young lovers find themselves in great jeopardy. Swahili, English with subtitles.
Ruben Brandt, Collector
Ruben Brandt, a gyüjtö
Director: Milorad Krstic
Hungary
“Possess your problems to conquer them,” is the credo that psychotherapist Ruben Brandt preaches to his criminally-inclined clients in this stylish, animated thriller for adults. But when Brandt’s patients help him to apply his own advice, he becomes “Ruben Brandt, Collector,” ringleader of a gang responsible for the theft of 13 of the world’s most famous paintings. This entertaining romp literally puts the “art” into “arthouse.”
Shoplifters
Manbiki kazoku
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japan
The winner of Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or, centers on an eccentric troupe of miscreants who take in a neglected five-year-old. Despite their strained circumstances, the tight-knit unit of petty thieves and social outcasts comes together to raise the girl. But how long can this unconventional family survive against the normalizing forces around them? From the Japanese master of humanism comes another affecting and astute film about people living on the margins. Japanese with subtitles.
Sorry Angel
Plaire, aimer et courir vite
Director: Christophe Honoré
France
It’s 1993. Jacques is a successful, novelist from Paris living with what was still a terminal diagnosis of HIV positive. Arthur is an open-minded student ready to embrace life. They meet in Rennes and fall in love, but navigating an intergenerational romance has its challenges. Honoré (Love Songs) chronicles their lives, together and apart, with nuance and subtlety, allowing their love story to unfold in patient, novelistic fashion. French with subtitles.
Transit
Director: Christian Petzold
Germany
In this Kafkaesque cinematic puzzle, a man is trapped in limbo as he tries to flee fascistoccupied France. Hoping to escape to Mexico, Georg poses as a dead author but becomes stuck in Marseilles. There, he encounters a woman searching for her missing husband—the
man whose identity he has assumed. Petzold’s surreal film merges past, present and future in its trenchant exploration of the plight of refugees. German with subtitles.
United Skates
Directors: Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown
U.S.
A rousing chronicle of roller-skating’s pivotal role in African-American communities, United Skates careens around the country, offering an intimate look at a lively subculture that’s under threat. Facing discriminatory policies and building closures, committed skaters from around the country—including Chicago’s own Buddy Love—fight to preserve a space for people to come together and express themselves in sliding, bouncing, snapping glory.
What They Had
Director: Elizabeth Chomko
U.S.
From first-time writer/director Elizabeth Chomko, What They Had centers on a family in crisis. Bridget (Hilary Swank) returns home to Chicago at her brother’s (Michael Shannon) urging to deal with her ailing mother (Blythe Danner) and her father’s (Robert Forster) reluctance to let go of their life together.
Banana Split[/caption]
The 2018 LA Film Festival taking place September 20 to 28, 2018. unveiled a diverse slate of 40 feature films, 41 short films, and 10 short episodic works in the U.S. Fiction, Documentary, World Fiction, LA Muse and Nightfall sections. Across the competition categories 42% of the films are directed by women and 39% are directed by people of color.
“Our mission of finding fresh new voices from different geographical and cultural axes remains true,” said LA Film Festival Director Jennifer Cochis. “These storytellers are united by their ability to transport, impact and inspire audiences with the power of their craft.”
Venues for the 2018 Festival include the ArcLight Cinemas in Culver City, Hollywood and Santa Monica, as well as the new LMU Playa Vista Campus (opening this fall), the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts and the Writers Guild Theater.