A Simple Life was the big winner of the 2012 Hong Kong Film Awards, winning five major awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress. A Simple Life, also known as Sister Peach, directed by Ann Hui tells about a heartwarming relationship between a young master of a big family, Roger and the servant of the family who raised him, Sister Peach. The film is inspired by a true story of the producer, Roger Lee, and his servant.
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THE ATOMIC STATES OF AMERICA[/caption]
The 14th Maryland Film Festival scheduled to take place May 3-6 in downtown Baltimore, today announced its first round of 2012 titles!
All U.S.-made feature films will be presented by their filmmakers.
The first 12 announced titles are:
THE ATOMIC STATES OF AMERICA (Don Argott, Sheena M. Joyce)
The documentary team who explored museum politics in THE ART OF THE STEAL and hard-rock hard living in LAST DAYS HERE return with this shocking expose of the flawed logic and outdated infrastructure behind the U.S.’s atomic-energy program.
COME BACK, AFRICA (directed by Lionel Rogosin, presented by Milestone Films)
This 1960 feature, shot without permits in Johannesburg, illustrates the challenges and hardships of black migrant workers in the harsh days of apartheid. To be screened from a beautifully restored 35mm print.
COMPLIANCE (Craig Zobel)
Perhaps the most controversial film from Sundance 2012 lands in Baltimore. Craig Zobel’s narrative feature, inspired by true events, looks at the dark happenings that unfold after a figure of authority calls a fast-food restaurant and accuses an employee of theft.
DETROPIA (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady)
From the co-directors of THE BOYS OF BARAKA and JESUS CAMP comes this documentary about the people and places that populate a collapsed metropolis trying to get back up on its feet.
GOD BLESS AMERICA (Bobcat Goldthwait)
MFF favorite Bobcat Goldthwait unleashes this angry, high-octane dark comedy about an unlikely modern-day Bonnie and Clyde who lash out at a vacuous, pop-culture obsessed America.
LOVELY MOLLY (Eduardo Sanchez)
The co-director of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT returns to his roots with this heady blend of horror and psychological thrills about a young woman returning to her childhood home.
SAVE THE DATE (Michael Mohan)
This warm mix of drama, comedy, and romance, co-written by acclaimed graphic-novel author Jeffrey Brown, follows a group of tangled friends and lovers in the music and arts scenes of present-day L.A. Stars include Lizzy Caplan (CLOVERFIELD), Martin Starr (FREAKS AND GEEKS), and Mark Webber.
SUN DON’T SHINE (Amy Seimetz)
A grimy, gritty story of two people pushed to the brink in the sweaty landscape of central Florida. Evocatively shot on Super 16mm, and starring festival favorites Kentucker Audley and Kate Lyn Sheil.
THIS IS NOT A FILM (Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi)
From Iran comes this documentary about, and made in conjunction with, Jafar Panahi (THE CIRCLE, CRIMSON GOLD, OFFSIDE), who was placed under house arrest and banned from filmmaking in December 2010.
THE TURIN HORSE (Béla Tarr)
Hungarian master Béla Tarr’s self-proclaimed final film is a cinematographic tour de force, every bit as stark and provocative as earlier dark epics DAMNATION and SATANTANGO.
VITO (Jeffrey Schwarz)
The inspiring story of gay-rights activist and Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo, as told by the documentarian behind SPINE TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY and the forthcoming I AM DIVINE.
WANDA (directed by Barbara Loden; presented by John Waters)
John Waters, who has presented a favorite film in each Maryland Film Festival since its launch in 1999, selects this renegade slice of ’70s filmmaking by Barbara Loden, to be screened from a beautifully restored 35mm print.
English actor and director Tim Roth will be the president of the Un Certain Regard Jury, part of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection.
He is an English actor who began his career in television before moving on to cinema with The Hit directed by Stephen Frears, Tim Roth made his first appearances at Cannes with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino (Palme d’or, 1994) which earned him international renown. In 1995, he was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Rob Roy directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Roth directed his first film in 1999: The War Zone, which received nominations at Cannes, Sundance and Toronto. He also appeared in The New World directed by Terrence Malick, Don’t Come Knocking directed by Wim Wenders, Planet of the Apes directed by Tim Burton, Funny Games directed by Michael Haneke and Everyone Says I Love You directed by Woody Allen. Since 2009, he has starred in the lead role of successful American TV series Lie to Me.
The 2011 Prix Un Certain Regard was a tie, awarded to Arirang directed by Kim Ki-Duk (Korea) and Halt Auf Freier Strecke (Stopped on Track) by Andreas Dresen (Germany).
The North American Premiere of Woody Allen’s To Rome With Love will double as the opening night film for the 2012 Los Angeles Film Festival.
Written and directed by Woody Allen, To Rome With Love is a story about a number of people in Italy – some American, some Italian, some residents, some visitors – and the romances and adventures and predicaments they get into. The film stars Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penelope Cruz, Judy Davis, Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig and Ellen Page, and is produced by Letty Aronson and Stephen Tenenbaum. To Rome With Love is being released by Sony Pictures Classics on June 22, 2012.
“I can’t think of a better way to kick off this year’s festival than with the original independent filmmaker himself, Woody Allen. It’s a true honor for Los Angeles to host the North American premiere of To Rome With Love,” said Festival Director Stephanie Allain.
“I’ve always wanted to make a film in Rome. It’s obviously one of the great cities of the world, and when you make a film in a foreign city you get a chance to spend several months there, so shooting in Rome gave me and my family an opportunity to really enjoy a city I love in a way that I don’t usually get to. I wrote the film especially for Rome because over the years and my many visits there little ideas occurred to me, and I was able to utilize those ideas to comic advantage, romantic advantage, combined with the visual beauty of Rome,” said Woody Allen.
Returning to downtown Los Angeles, with its central hub at L.A. LIVE, the Festival will run from Thursday, June 14 to Sunday, June 24, 2012.
Fifty-one entries from 29 countries, along with 518 entries from students representing 105 U.S. colleges and universities, are in competition for the 2012 Student Academy Awards. The competition – now in its 39th year – will culminate in the awards presentation, on Saturday, June 9, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The presentation will include screenings of the winning films.
The Academy established the Student Academy Awards in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level. Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal awards and corresponding cash prizes may be presented in each of five categories: Alternative, Animation, Documentary, Narrative and Foreign Student Film.
Past Student Academy Award® winners have gone on to receive 46 Oscar® nominations and have won or shared eight awards. At the 84th Academy Awards earlier this year, 2011 Student Academy Award winners Hallvar Witzø and Max Zähle were nominated in the Live Action Short Film category for “Tuba Atlantic” and “Raju,” respectively. James Spione, a Student Academy Award winner in 1987, earned a nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category for “Incident in New Baghdad.”
via press release AMPAS
Three film projects, Unmanned, Computer Chess and Resonance, will receive financial and creative support from the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The film projects will be awarded a total of $150,000 and will be recognized at the annual Tribeca Film Festival, taking place April 18-29, 2012.
The projects, which all emphasize science and technology in their storylines, focus on subjects including a new style of war fought by remote control, tensions between human ingenuity and machines in the computer chess tournaments of the 1980s, and the impact of brain abnormalities on interpersonal relationships.
The winning projects were selected by an Award Committee made up of film and science notables including actor Ryan Phillippe (Flags of Our Fathers, The Lincoln Lawyer); actor Stephen Lang (Avatar, Public Enemies, Terra Nova); producer Michael Shamberg (Pulp Fiction, Erin Brockovich, Django Unchained); neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux; professor of astrophysical sciences J. Richard Gott (Princeton); and molecular endocrinologist Dr. Carter Bancroft.
Selected projects for funding:
Unmanned
A young Air Force drone operator struggles to balance the stresses of going to war for the first time with the challenges of being a good father and husband, as he commutes each day between suburban family life and a new style of war fought by remote control. The short version of this film received an earlier Sloan Foundation production grant and is premiering at this year’s Festival. Casey Cooper Johnson (writer/director), Casey Fenton (producer), Peter W. Singer (story by), Sevdije Kastrati (cinematographer)
Computer Chess
This film focuses on a computer chess tournament in the 80’s, transporting viewers to a nostalgic moment when the battle of technology versus the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs. Andrew Bujalski (writer/director), Houston King (producer), Alex Lipschultz (producer)
Resonance
Two damaged young men trying to reclaim their lives, push each other to the breaking point until they realize that only their friendship will save them. Portraying the crossroads of neurology and psychiatry, the film examines how the brain’s functioning affects the way we interact, and how medical science treats brain abnormalities. Dara Bratt (director/writer), Keiran Dick (writer), Andrew Fierberg (producer), Robert Gerber (executive producer)
The recession has not been kind to film festivals, and VIMOOZ can confirm that the Reno Film Festival has also fallen to the economic downturn and has decided to end.
The press release:
After careful review and consideration, evaluation of past 12 years performance and economic conditions, including grant availability, the Board of Directors of the Reno Film Festival has voted unanimously to cease operation and dissolve the organization effective June 30, 2012.
“Naturally we’re very sorry to make this announcement,” said Festival President Scott Birmingham, “But the current board—and speaking for past volunteer boards through the years—is very proud of the films, competitions, seminars and programs we’ve brought to our area for more than a decade. Looking back, we’ve hosted a ‘who’s who’ of those involved in the film industry to interact with local and visiting film fans,” he added.
Screenings of the finalists in the Lumiere All School Film Fest, the Reno Film Festival’s competition for elementary to some college level students, will take place as scheduled May 16-18. The location for these evening screenings will be announced on the Festival’s website, www.renofilmfestival.com and all three screenings will be free, courtesy of a grant from the DP Foundation.
Reno Film Festival sponsors this year are KTVN-Channel 2, Reno News & Review, Reno Media Group, Bea-Design for Marketing, KUNR Public Radio – FM 88.7 and Red Machine Multimedia. Grant support has been received from the City of Reno Arts & Culture Commission, DP/Dermody Properties and the E.L. Cord foundations. All eight City of Reno Advisory Boards also support the festival: Ward 1, Southwest Reno. Wards 2, Central and South Reno; Ward 3, East Reno; Wards 4, Northeast and North Valleys; Wards 5, Old Northwest and Northwest.
There is a new film festival in Memphis, TN, called the Unreal Film Festival. This is the first year of the festival which is designed as a genre film festival inside a comic convention. The festival is currently open to entries and will be until June 15th. The winners will be announced on July 15th and the winning films will be screened at the festival on November 9-11, 2012 at the Hilton Hotel in Memphis, TN.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival has set Thursday, January 24 through Sunday, February 3, 2013 as the dates for the 28th edition of the festival, it was announced today by SBIFF Executive Director, Roger Durling.
Comments SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling, “The 27th edition was an exciting one for us – full of changes and growth with our first ever acquisitions program. Now in the midst of preparations for the 28th edition – we guarantee you that the best is yet to come.”
The newly created Film Festival Week – LA will be held April 11-19,2012 in Hollywood, CA, at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Ave, Hollywood (Chaplin Building).
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Babygirl[/caption]
The 2012 Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) today unveiled the lineup and programming for the third edition of Tribeca Online Film Festival. Audiences across the country will get front row access to the exclusive Festival content and hear filmmakers and industry leaders talking about the future of the industry as TFF’s 11th edition runs concurrently in lower Manhattan from April 18 to 29.
Four world premiere feature selections from the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival, and five short films, three of which are world premieres, will be available during the online Festival.
Online viewers will be able to vote for the Best Tribeca Online Feature Film, a prize of $10,000, and the Best Tribeca Online Short Film, a prize of $5,000. Winners will be announced at the Tribeca Film Festival Awards on April 26. There will also be a social voting competition, based solely on popularity: the number of “likes” that film accrues on the Tribeca Online Film Festival film detail page. The feature film and the short film that drive the most Facebook likes on the page will each receive a separate $500 prize. Winners will be announced on April 30.
The complete list of feature films streamed on the Tribeca Online Film Festival is as follows:
Babygirl, directed and written by Macdara Vallely. (Ireland, USA) – World Premiere, Viewpoints. For as long as she can remember, Bronx teenager Lena has watched her mom Lucy squander her life on a series of deadbeat men. When Victor, her mom’s latest boy toy, starts hitting on Lena, she sets up a trap to expose Victor for the creep he is… but the plan backfires. Macdara Vallely crafts a heartfelt drama about the emotional highs and lows in the moment between childhood and adulthood.
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On The Mat[/caption]
On The Mat, directed and written by Fredric Golding. (USA) – World Premiere, Viewpoints and Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival. Achieving greatness in high school wrestling requires a level of devotion unmatched perhaps by any other sport. That greatness has become a yearly expectation at Lake Stevens High, winner of seven Washington state championships in the past 10 years. Narrated by Lake Stevens wrestling alum Chris Pratt (Moneyball), this riveting documentary follows the team over the course of a season as they fight through injuries and academic issues to maintain their school’s legacy.
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The Russian Winter[/caption]
The Russian Winter, directed by Petter Ringbom. (Russia) – World Premiere, Spotlight. Brooklyn-born John Forté was a Grammy-nominated musician in The Fugees at 21 and a federal prison inmate at 26. When his prison sentence was remarkably commuted in 2008, Forté was given a second chance to share his talents with the world. Chronicling his concert tour across Russia, this inspirational documentary takes us on Forté’s personal journey—one that’s as much about having his voice heard as having his music heard. In English, Russian with subtitles.
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Town of Runners[/caption]
Town of Runners, directed by Jerry Rothwell. (UK) – World Premiere, Viewpoints. Over the past two decades the small, rural Ethiopian town of Bekoji has been the unlikely home to numerous Olympic champion long-distance runners, whose athletic success has paved the way for a generation of young Ethiopians searching for a better future. With a keen artistic eye, TFF award winner Jerry Rothwell (Donor Unknown) follows two teenage track hopefuls who face the challenge of growing up and striving for greatness in a developing nation. In Amharic, Oromo with subtitles.
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Opening Night Gala film ‘The Oranges’[/caption]
Tickets are now on sale for the 2012 Montclair Film Festival running May 1 – May 6, 2012 in Montclair New Jersey. The festival will present over 45 films with live participation by over 50 special guests including Kathleen Turner, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Moore, Patrick Wilson, and Oliver Platt.
The Opening Night Gala (May 1) will present the New Jersey comedy, The Oranges. Set in suburban New Jersey, Hugh Laurie (House M.D.) and Catherine Keener (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) play a couple whose best friends and neighbors are Oliver Platt (Love and Other Drugs) and Allison Janney (The West Wing). Their comfortable existence goes awry when a prodigal daughter played by Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) returns and sparks an affair. The ramifications affect all of the family members in unexpected and hilarious ways.
Other highlights of the festival include the drama Tiger Eyes, based on the novel by New Jersey native Judy Blume directed by her son Lawrence Blume, and An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, the debut of African-American director Terence Nance.
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Tiger Eyes[/caption]
Born and raised in New Jersey, Judy Blume belongs to the pantheon of American storytellers, yet none of her books have been adapted for the big screen – until now. Her son Lawrence Blume directs this touching story of a 17 year-old girl played by Willa Holland (Gossip Girl; The O.C.) who suffers a family loss. She’s uprooted from her home in Atlantic City and transplanted to New Mexico where she meets a young man who helps her find new strength.
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An Oversimplification of Her Beauty[/caption]
In An Oversimplification of Her Beauty which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, Terence Nance in his directing debut chronicles his relationship with a lovely young woman (Namik Minter), teetering between platonic and romantic. Utilizing a tapestry of live action and animated styles, Nance explores his fantasies, emotions, and memories for a vibrant expression of young love.
Documentaries at the festival include the world Premiere of The Prep School Negro and a screening of About Face.
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The Prep School Negro[/caption]
In The Prep School Negro, André Robert Lee revisits the life-changing events of his adolescence when he gained a way out of Philadelphia’s ghettos with a scholarship to an elite prep school. As he moved into a different world, he grew distant from his sister and mother. In this poignant film, he explores thorny questions of race, education, opportunity and family. He also spends time with current day prep school students of color to see if anything has changed inside the ivory tower.
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About Face[/caption]
About Face features esteemed portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders interviewing fashion’s top supermodels on their lives, careers, and lifelong relationship with beauty. From youth to cosmetic surgery, addiction to self-esteem, overnight stardom to reinvention, this HBO documentary reveals the extraordinary women behind the famous faces. The memorable testimonies include Paulina Porizkova on her insecurities; Pat Cleveland on breaking boundaries for African-American women; and Carol Alt on posing for Playboy in her late 40s. Not to mention Christie Brinkley, Beverly Johnson, Jerry Hall, Isabella Rossellini and more. Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films.
The festival will host the world premiere of David Bromberg: Unsung Treasures and Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Story.
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David Bromberg: Unsung Treasures[/caption]
In David Bromberg: Unsung Treasures, David Bromberg is a musician’s musician who collaborated with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia and other greats. But Bromberg stopped performing publicly in the 1980’s and turned to violin making. New Jersey director Beth Toni Kruvant, who won acclaim for Heart of Stone about Newark’s Weequahic High School, follows Bromberg as he helps to revitalize an urban community and makes a musical comeback with esteemed friends such as Dr. John and Levon Helm.
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Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Story[/caption]
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Story, looks at Morton Downey Jr., dubbed the “Father of Trash Television,” who pushed the boundaries of controversy and confrontation from his New Jersey studio and became a media sensation in the late 1980s. Évocateur gains access to never-before-seen footage and takes us behind Downey’s cult of personality while charting his rise and fall. Interviewees include Pat Buchanan, Sally Jessy Raphael, Alan Dershowitz, as well as Downey’s former colleagues, critics and fans. Their testimony brings new insight to a bizarre chapter of TV history.
Visit the festival website to see the full film lineup and to purchase tickets
credit: Film description from the festival’s website.