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Pick Of The Litter[/caption]
The Special Screenings program for the 24th edition of the Slamdance Film Festival features provocative work from remarkable talent that celebrates the festival’s DIY spirit. The festival will present four features in the Special Screenings Program: Bernard and Huey, directed by Dan Mirvish; Roll With Me, directed by Lisa France; Quest, directed by Santiago Rizzo; and the world premiere of Pick Of The Litter, directed by Don Hardy and Slamdance alumni Dana Nachman.
Pick Of The Litter will screen as the festival’s Opening Night Film presentation. The Special Screenings program will also feature the festival’s closing night film, Bernard and Huey, a narrative feature directed by Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish and written by Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter, Jules Feiffer.
Slamdance will host a filmmaker discussion with Slamdance Alumni, Joe Russo and Anthony Russo. The conversation, moderated by Slamdance Co-Founder and President Peter Baxter, will highlight the filmmaking duo’s history with the fest and impart career insight for the this year’s class of Slamdance filmmakers. During the discussion, Slamdance will also honor the Russo Brothers with the Founders Award, which is presented to a Slamdance alumni who has continued to support the indie spirit of the festival well into their careers. The award was first presented in 2015 to director Christopher Nolan (Inception, Dunkirk).
The 2018 Slamdance Film Festival will run January 19-25.
SPECIAL SCREENING LINEUP
Bernard and Huey
(USA) – Narrative Feature
Director: Dan Mirvish
Screenwriter: Jules Feiffer
Synopsis: From a script by Oscar/Pulitzer-winner Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge), this is the story of two men behaving badly, and the strong women who rein them in.
Cast: Jim Rash, David Koechner, Mae Whitman, Sasha Alexander, Eka Darville, Richard Kind, Nancy Travis, Bellamy Young
Pick Of The Litter
(USA) World Premiere – Documentary Feature
Directors: Dana Nachman, Don Hardy
Screenwriter: Dana Nachman
Synopsis: Pick of the Litter follows a litter of puppies from birth through the day they make it to become a Guide Dog and into the hands of a blind person, or… get cut from the program. The audience comes along on the two-year odyssey as the five dogs train to become guide dogs. Only the best dog will make the cut.
Quest
(USA) Narrative Feature
Director: Santiago Rizzo
Synopsis: Quest is a non-romantic story of love, about a friendship between a 12-year-old graffiti addict who faces constant abuse from his step-father, and a teacher named Tim Moellering who believes there is no such thing as a bad kid — only a bad situation. Based on the stories of their lives, the first draft of Quest was written by director Santiago Rizzo and his teacher Tim Moellering. This is their story.
Screenwriters: Santiago Rizzo, Darren Anderson
Cast: Dash Mihok, Lou Diamond Phillips, Lakeith Stanfield, Betsy Brandt, Greg Kasyan, Marlyne Barrett, Sepideh Moafi, Tobit Raphael
Roll With Me
(USA) Documentary Feature
Director: Lisa France
Screenwriter: Jeff Buccellato, Lisa France
Documentary Subjects: Gabriel Cordell, Christopher Kawas
Synopsis: After hitting rock-bottom, a newly sober paraplegic attempts to save his gang-banger nephew’s life by bringing him along on a 3,100-mile wheelchair trek across the United States. What starts out as a challenge to push an unmodified wheelchair from California to New York, morphs into a transcendent journey.
POLYTECHNIC PROGRAM
The State of Film / Crowdfunding for Career Independence
With Emily Best & Gerry Maravilla
Friday, January 19 – Noon – 1:30pm
Emily Best and Gerry Maravilla from Seed&Spark are here to share how crowdfunding can be an important tool for raising funds, widening your audience, and communicating with current and future fans in order to ensure that this isn’t the only project you make – it’s one of many in your lengthy filmmaking career. You’ll also find out why data, inclusion, and distro all factor into your success on Seed&Spark, the only platform with a 75% success rate for filmmakers. Learn why crowd-building has to occur before crowd-funding, how to set a realistic campaign goal, how to craft an effective pitch video, what the unique Seed&Spark feedback process is like, and how to continue your connection with your community after your campaign ends.
Two Brothers, Twenty Years: The Russo Brothers’ Past and Future
With Joe and Anthony Russo
Saturday, January 20 – Noon – 1:30pm
From their 1997 Slamdance premiere to their establishment of The Russo Brothers Fellowship at Slamdance 2018, Anthony and Joe Russo have seen the film industry change more (and more quickly) than it ever has before.
While working on myriad projects over two decades, the Russos have seen old-fashioned theater-going give way to pocket computers, streaming services, and endless OnDemand options. Amidst these changes, the brothers rose to studio heights while retaining the authenticity and artist-driven focus of independent filmmakers.
As mentors and partners, Anthony and Joe spend lunchtime with us, deconstructing the mythology of their own “indie success story,” and openly sharing the challenges they’ve faced and wisdom they’ve gained.
(De)escalation Room by Columbia DSL
With Lance Weiler and Nick Fortugno
Sunday, January 21 – Noon – 2pm
What if we built an environment inspired by negative conversations and behaviors found on social media platforms and in the real world? Inside of this environment, situations quickly escalate. But this time, we would be able to do something about it.
The goal of the (De)escalation Room project is to design a creative framework that allows people to take the lead in creating their own immersive, collaborative experiences. Within these experiences, they’ll be able to teach each other how to identify escalating situations and safely de-escalate them; change norms around escalation; and leave room for self and group reflection on the process.
At Slamdance this January, Columbia DSL will present the next iteration of the (De)escalation Room. This workshop-style experience will transform audience members into participants, working together to collaboratively explore de-escalation.
When I Was You I Wish I Knew: The Ins and Outs of Distribution
With John Charles Meyer & Cullen Hoback
Monday, January 22 – Noon – 1:30pm
Slamdance alums John Charles Meyer (Dave Made a Maze) and Cullen Hoback (What Lies Upstream) remember how exhausting, overwhelming, and scary a time like this can be, no matter what sort of distribution possibilities you’re considering.
Social Media Charm School
With Julie Keck and guest “influencer”
Tuesday, January 23 – Noon – 1:30pm
In this time of BRB and OMG, charm and relationship building can seem like a lost art. However, a little charm can go a long way, especially if you’re trying to gather a following for your amazing cinematic endeavors. In this session, find out how to put your best face forward on social media to make real connections with your audience, potential collaborators, influencers, ambassadors, and friends.
Based on years for filmmaking, film marketing, and social media experience, Julie Keck from Seed&Spark will walk you through the platforms you should be on, how much time you should spend on them, how to strike the right tone, how to use social media during a crowdfunding or other campaign, and how to do all of this and still have time left over to, you know, make movies.
Bonus: Everyone who attends will get a free digital copy of Julie’s book Social Media Charm School. Happy early birthday.
Art Of The Pitch
With Julie Keck & Emily Best
Wednesday, January 24 – Noon – 1:30pm
Your dream project is often rattling around in your head (and then on your laptop) for years before you share it with anyone else. And when it’s time to share it with potential collaborators, investors, or audience members, it can be hard to sum up all of your hard work into a quick 5-minute pitch. Don’t worry – you’ll get there. It just takes practice.
This workshop-style program is for filmmakers ready to start putting their work into the world, as effectively as possible. Emily Best and Julie Keck of Seed&Spark will share tips about how to present your idea to different audience, how to prepare for meetings, and why practice is your friend. Be prepared to practice your 5-minute pitch in a safe and secure space, with others in your shoes. And if we’re lucky, we might ask you to pitch to the whole group. No time like the present to build your audience, right?
You do not have to have a practices, readied pitch to attend this session, only an idea for your next project and a willingness to both share your idea and listen to others. Ready? Let’s do this.
Life As a Truly Independent Filmmaker: A Survival Guide
With Noel Lawrence, Robert Koehler, Titanic Sinclair, Jennifer Goodridge, and Alissa Torvinen
Thursday, January 25 – Noon – 1:30pm
While the fine arts emphasize the aesthetic and imaginative freedom of creators, the ‘entertainment’ industry is based upon commercial success. However, a small but vocal minority of auteurs practice cinema as an art form. Some of them work in avant-garde film. Others spend years constructing a couple minutes of animation. A precious few become renowned ‘cult’ directors. All of them feel compelled to pursue personal visions. But in order to produce work that goes against the grain, these filmmakers must take roads less traveled in their career path. How is that possible?
This discussion explores how career artists survive in a system that does not favor the bold. If you are wondering how to pay your rent without selling out to the man, this panel may be for you.
Daily Legal Clinics
With Pierce Law Group
Friday, January 19 – Monday, January 22 – 10am-11am
Pierce Law Group will be providing an all-encompassing look at the process of funding, producing, and distributing films, television, and new media. Our team will offer in-depth looks at the many factors in getting an independent project off the ground, from script clearance and E & O insurance, to actor and writer agreements, to on-set safety, to finding distribution, as well as a look at the litigation side of the entertainment industry. We examine current legal trends from the perspective of the independent filmmaker, and create an open forum during which filmmakers can engage in a discussion about the perpetually changing legal landscape.
DIG LINEUP
(De)escalation Room Columbia University’s School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab and School of Social Work’s SAFElab, and is led by storyteller, entrepreneur and Slamdance Alumnus Lance Weiler and Nick Fortugno.
The goal of the (De)escalation Room project is to design a creative framework that will allow people to take the lead in creating their own experience. Within these experiences, they’ll be able to teach each other how to identify escalating situations and safely de-escalate them; change norms around escalation; and leave room for self and group reflection on the process
BVOVB: Bruising Vengeance of the Vintage Boxer by Michal Rostocki
Your glory days as a boxer are long gone. Once a champ, now a bum. All you care about is beer and your dog – Max the Rottweiler. Unfortunately your faithful dog has been stolen and you must get him back and punish the ones responsible.
The game is inspired by classic arcade brawlers (Double Dragon, Final Fight) with many enemies, some boss fights and a simple storyline. All in the style of old silent movies with a ragtime themed soundtrack. Both characters and backgrounds are based on original black-and-white photos from the ‘20s and ‘30s.
The Game: The Game by Angela Washko
The Game: The Game is a video game presenting the practices of several prominent seduction coaches (aka pick-up artists) through the format of a dating simulator. In the game these pick-up gurus attempt to seduce the player using their signature techniques taken verbatim from their instructional books and video materials. The game sets up the opportunity for players to explore the complexity of the construction of social behaviors around dating as well as the experience of being a femme-presenting individual navigating this complicated terrain.
Washko hopes to add levels of complexity to public conversations around both pick-up and feminism which have both found themselves most often presented in highly polarized, dichotomous positions in mainstream media.
Read more
On Saturday, the 18th Woodstock Film Festival Maverick Awards Ceremony took place at Backstage Studio Productions in Kingston, NY, with INFINITY BABY winning award for Best Narrative Feature, and Best Documentary Feature for SHINGAL, WHERE ARE YOU?
Celebrated producer, talent manager, and film agent Shep Gordon was presented with the Trailblazer Award for his visionary approach to the arts.
Actor Bill Pullman received the Excellence in Acting Award. Earlier in the day, following the East Coast premiere of THE BALLAD OF LEFTY BROWN, the actor discussed his role as the title character.
The Lears[/caption]
The 2017 Virginia Film Festival has added more films and special guests including actor Anthony Michael Hall, who will come in for a screening of his film The Lears. Other highlighted guests include director Trudie Styler, who will discuss her film Freak Show; actor Noel Fisher, who will take part in a panel discussion about the acclaimed new National Geographic Channel Iraq War series The Long Road Home; and actor Nick Robinson, who joins writer/director/actor William H. Macy for a screening of Macy’s new film Krystal. The Festival’s Closing Night Film will be Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age love story Call Me by Your Name.
The Lears is a quirky black comedy that stars Bruce Dern as Davenport Lear, a world-renowned architect who summons his dysfunctional children to a weekend family retreat to test their love in a modern-day derivative of Shakespeare’s classic King Lear. Actor, producer, and director Anthony Michael Hall, who plays Davenport’s son Glenn Lear in the film, first burst on the film scene in the 1980s with a string of unforgettable turns in the John Hughes classics including Sixteen Candles, National Lampoon’s Vacation, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science. His other film credits include Out of Bounds, Edward Scissorhands, and Six Degrees of Separation. Hall also played the lead role in the popular USA Network series The Dead Zone from 2002-2007.
Noted actor and producer Trudie Styler makes her directorial debut with Freak Show, based on the 2007 New York Times bestselling Young Adult novel by James St. James about a gay and eccentric teenage boy who reacts to an incident of insidious bullying by deciding to run for homecoming queen. The campaign draws wide attention to Billy’s advocacy for all teenagers letting their freak flag fly. The film, which features a stellar cast including Abigail Breslin, Alex Lawther, and Bette Midler, recently had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Trudie Styler has a long and successful track record as a producer, including Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch from director Guy Ritchie; Girl Most Likely, which stars Kristen Wiig; Filth, starring James McAvoy; Ten Thousand Saints, starring Ethan Hawke; and American Honey, which stars Shia LaBeouf and won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. Styler will be joined by the film’s producer Celine Rattray for a post-screening discussion.
Nick Robinson, known to many for his role as Zach in Jurassic World, most recently starred in the Warner Bros. and MGM drama Everything, Everything. He also just wrapped production on Strange But True, where he leads an all-star cast including Amy Ryan, Brian Cox, and Greg Kinnear. Other credits include Kings of Summer and an unforgettable guest spot on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. He will attend the Festival for a post-screening discussion for his role in William H. Macy’s Krystal.
The Virginia Film Festival also announced Call Me by Your Name as its Closing Night Film. Based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman, this transcendent story of first love, set against the backdrop of northern Italy in the summer of 1983, follows Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a highly-cultured teenager whose sophistication about music and literature is juxtaposed with his naivety about love. Upon meeting American scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer), his father’s charming intern, the two form an undeniable bond that grows vulnerably and passionately toward young, new love. The film by director Luca Guadagnino displays a raw portrait of a kind of love and sexual awakening that blossoms without fear or consequences.
’63 Boycott – The latest from famed documentarian Gordon Quinn about the 1963 boycott of Chicago schools by more than 200,000 students in protest of racial segregation.
Beetlejuice – Award-winning cinematographer Tom Ackerman will discuss his work on this groundbreaking Tim Burton film.
The Last Stop – Director Todd Nilssen’s exposé on the troubled teen reform industry.
Mood and Memory – In a series of eleven photo films, young authors, media artists, and media specialists from Austria and Germany approach a variety of stories and themes ranging from a young girl in Aleppo, a Somali farmer, and more.
My Art – Artist Laurie Simmons’ makes her feature film debut, also starring alongside daughters Lena and Grace Dunham in the story of an artist with a stable job and life, but an endless yearning for respectability in the art world. Simmons will participate in a post-screening discussion.
Roll With Me – A paraplegic former drug addict sets out to become the first person to push an ordinary wheelchair from California to New York.
Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me – The first major documentary about one of the most fascinating careers in the history of entertainment, this film follows the legendary singer, dancer, and actor’s rise to stardom, and a life lived across flashpoints of American society from the Depression through the 1980s.
The Science of Pixar – Masterclass senior scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios Tony DeRose will work in tandem with Sara Maloni (Department of Mathematics), Earl Mark (School of Architecture), and Light House Studio to offer a free masterclass for their students and the general public. The workshop will focus on physical simulation and the mathematics of surface modeling that DeRose developed at Pixar, as well as a discussion of his career path.
Short Films – More than 50 short films screened before feature screenings and in different packages based on similar themes and genres, including narrative, documentary, experimental, and animated.
Thelma (from Norway) – Rounding out the list of now ten spotlight films recently submitted by their countries for consideration in the “Best Foreign Language Film” category at the 2018 Academy Awards, Thelma is about a college student who starts to experience seizures as a result of supernatural abilities.
Tonsler Park – Internationally renowned artist and UVA cinematography professor Kevin Everson uses 16mm black-and-white film to observe the democratic process at Charlottesville voting precincts on November 8th, 2016, providing a portrait of the working-class African-American public officials who ran the polls, while enabling citizens to vote in a democracy that has systematically abused them.
Voices Beyond the Wall: Twelve Love Poems From the Murder Capital of the World – Rescued from the streets of Pedro Sula, Honduras, seventy girls at Our Little Roses orphanage find their voices in poetry about love, family, and betrayal as they heal from the traumas of their past, while transitioning into an uncertain future.
Wild Honey – An offbeat, romantic comedy about an unsuccessful phone-sex operator who is unhappy, aimless, and living at home with her mother until she hits it off with a mysterious caller and impulsively flies across the country to meet him.
Stuck[/caption]
The 18th Woodstock Film Festival, will open with the East Coast premiere of Stuck, a musical narrative about a group of six strangers trapped together on a stalled New York City subway car. The characters confront their assumptions of one another under the scrutinizing eye of a mysterious homeless man played by Giancarlo Esposito. This kickoff event will begin at 7PM October 11 at the Woodstock Playhouse.
The Festival will present an outstanding lineup of films to be shown in Woodstock, Rhinebeck, Rosendale, Saugerties, and Kingston.
“This year’s lineup is one that challenges our creative and intellectual boundaries and brings important social issues into focus, both locally and globally” said Woodstock Film Festival’s co-founder and executive director Meira Blaustein. “In today’s political climate it is particularly important to celebrate our differences and find our commonalities. This year’s participating filmmakers have gone above and beyond in capturing diverse moments of humanity that personify fierce independence.”