Vanessa Redgrave was bestowed with the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters
recognition by the French ambassador for her film contributions. The British actress
was honored at the French Institute in London for films including The Bostonians
and Girl,
Interrupted. In addition to maintaining a stage career, she appears in
the upcoming The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn and starring Benicio Del
Toro and Jack Nicholson. ...
Judging from the titles it could have been a gathering for depressives, but
Low
Self Esteem and The Zeros both picked up awards at the South
by Southwest Film Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas. Blaine Thurner's
Esteem Girl took home the jury award for best feature, and The Zeros
won over the audience to pick up the category. On a happier note, the international
film audience award went to Lukas Moodyson's Tillsammans (Together).
Montheith McCollum's Hybrid was ...
Onnenpeli 2001 (Ferry-Go-Round), by Finnish director Aleski Salmenpera,
won the first Jameson Short Film Award at the Tampere Film Festival.
The film about love on a Baltic cruise was considered the most marketable to
a European audience. The award of 6000 euros will be presented eight times a
year at festivals that are part of the European Coordination of Film Festivals.
The next award will be handed out at Filmfest Dresden between April 17 and 22.
Related Articl...
James Ellroy, the master of LA crime novels, will write his first original screenplay,
77. Ellroy says the film will be complimentary to one of his best known
stories, L.A. Confidential. The new urban crime thriller, which will
be produced by Dick Wolf of the reputable "Law and Order," will link
two police events from May 1974. ...
The Independent Feature Project/West Los Angeles Film Project announced that
it has selected the 36 films it will screen at the event, as well as music videos,
high school shorts, a craft series and a seminar on digital filmmaking. Things
Behind the Sun, Allison Anders's film starring Don Cheadle and Eric Stoltz,
will have its West Coast premiere as it closes the fest on April 28. Though
the fest has not yet announced the opening night film or the three centerpiece
premie...
SXSW 2001 Film
Conference & Festival
March 9 - 13 (Austin, TX)
Panels
For the past several days, film panels at the Austin Convention Center included
Conversations with leading figures in independent film, Current Issues in the
industry, Documentary Filmmaking, Digital Filmmaking, Festivals, Filmmaking
101, Hands-on demonstrations with the latest equipment, Indies On-Line, and
mentor sessions where film goers could talk one-on-one with a variety of industry ...
Prisons for Profit?
The notion was as surprising to filmmaker Ashley Hunt as it may be to you. His
documentary Corrections (which screened at the Slamdance Film Festival)
explores the reality of this for-profit phenomena in the US, left over from
the days just after slavery. In this week's editorial, Hunt reflects on his
Slamdance
experience: lessons learned, the PR process, and the perpetual search for coffee.
Could you describe
your film, Corrections?
...
Robin Williams is negotiating to join Al Pacino and Hilary Swank in a remake
of the 1997 Norwegian film Insomnia. Williams would take the role of
the villain opposite Pacino's polic detective in the psychological thriller.
Christopher Nolan, fresh off the thriller Memento,
will helm the film and Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney will produce. The
film will begin shotting in Vancouver on April 9. Williams also has an uncredited
cameo in the upcoming Harry Potter and the...
There will be a
new award given out at this year's Academy Awards -- whoever delivers the shortest
speech (or none at all?) will walk away with a high-definition television set.
Winners are given 45 seconds on stage. Gil Cates, producer of the televised
show every year, is offering another incentive for winners to hurry up. The
Academy will allow winners to thank as many people as they want on the Oscar
website. He offered at the Oscar lunch for winners to leave a list of...
Film critic Roger
Ebert will show his favorite underapreciated films at the third Roger Ebert's
Overlooked Film Festival. Included in the twelve films he'll be showing are
Songs
From the Second Floor by Norwegian Roy Andersson, Alison Maclean's Jesus'
Son, and Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan. Songs From the Second
Floor, one of Ebert's three favorite films from Cannes 2000, still has no
U.S. distribution "perhaps because it is simply too original and daring," he
says. T...
After the Academy snatched Oscar tickets off an internet auction last week,
the Academy may be heading back to court to defend the privacy of the ceremony.
The Academy is considering appealing last year's ruling by the California Court
of Appeal that reversed an earlier decision banning the sale of Oscar tickets.
They must prove that tickets to the highly guarded event are non-transferable
and that the ceremony is private. A ticket complete with a four-night stay at
the R...
There will be a new award given out at this year's Academy Awards -- whoever
delivers the shortest speech (or none at all?) will walk away with a high-definition
television set. Winners are given 45 seconds on stage. Gil Cates, producer of
the televised show every year, is offering another incentive for winners to
hurry up. The Academy will allow winners to thank as many people as they want
on the Oscar website. He offered at the Oscar lunch for winners to leave a list
of...
Tampere Film
Festival
March 7 -11 (Finland)
First time since 1971 a Finnish film has won the Grand Prix prize at the Tampere
Film Festival. This year is also the first time ever that one film won all the
most sought-after awards. Hyppääjä (The Diver) won the Grand Prix, the
main prize in the under-30-minute-long films' category in the Finnish Competition
and the Risto Jarva Prize. The Diver also received the prize of the Junior
Jury of the Finnish Competitio...
San Francisco
International Film Festival
April 19 - May 3
Acclaimed director
and actor Clint Eastwood will receive the Akira Kurosawa Award for lifetime
achievement in film directing at this year¹s San Francisco International Film
Festival. The Award will be presented to Eastwood on April 25, 2001 at the Film
Society Awards Night at San Francisco's Argent Hotel. A public presentation,
including a compilation of clips from Clint Eastwood's directing career, an
...
Paris Film Festival
March 27 - April 3 (France)
Tribute to the
Italians
Claudia Cardinale
will be one of 20 Italian guests of honor at this year's Paris International
Film Festival, set for March 27 through April 3. Cardinale will kick off the
event, which features a special focus on Italian cinema and its Golden Age,
which gave the world Rossellini, Visconti, Risi, Comencini, and Ferreri.
Official Competition
The jury for the
Official competition will be composed...
SXSW 2001 Film
Conference & Festival
March 9 - 13 (Austin, TX)
Nine days, five
theater venues, 150 + films. The 2001 SXSW (South by Southwest) Film and Music
Festival set in the laid back, eclectic atmosphere of downtown Austin, Texas
(as Quentin Tarantino calls it, "the hometown of hometowns") has in recent years
been compared to and called "the next Sundance." A "true independent filmmaker's
festival," SXSW was historically created to promote the growing alte...
The Rennes
Traveling Festival ended March 12, awarding their top prize to Oskar Rohler's
No
Place to Go, the latest festival in a series of unrelated ones this
month to do so. (The film won the Best Film Prize at Cinequest and the Critics'
Prize at the Miami International Film Festival last week.) The film had its
debut last year in the Directors Fortnight Section at Cannes. Another film that
debuted at Cannes won a Special mention: Requiem
for a Dream by Darren A...
Clint Eastwood
will produce and direct the screen adaptation of thriller novel Mystic River
by Dennis Lahane. Eastwood, who last produced, directed and starred in Space
Cowboys, (which opened last year's Venice Film Festival) is looking
for a writer to adapt the novel. The best seller is about three childhood friends
who lose touch after a tragic accident but are reunited 25 years later when
they are all linked to a murder investigation.
Related Articles
Venice
...
Ark Trust, an association for the defense of animals, heralded Chicken
Run's original perspective of the life of farm animals while honoring
it with the film of the year award. The animated movie, created by Nick Park
and Peter Lord received no Oscar
or BAFTA
nods, even in technical categories....
China's official newspaper, People's Daily, says the Chinese film industry
is under assault from two directions and is suffering. The newspaper called
the influx of US movies, now around 20 a year, a cultural invasion. Bootlegged
videos are also damaging the industry since videos of movies are often for sale
in the streets before the movies even are released in the cinemas....
A judge in Louisiana tossed out the lawsuit that held Oliver Stone and Warner
Brothers Pictures responsible for a couple's crime spree that mimicked Natural
Born Killers. In 1995 a convenience store clerk was shot and crippled by
a couple that claimed to have seen the movie more than twenty times and imitated
the film's characters Mallory and Mickey. Stone directed the 1994 satire starring
Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis about a couple on a murderous rampage. ...
Santa Barbara
International Film Festival
March 1 - 11 (CA)
In 15 previous years, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival had never
seen one of its movies sign a distribution deal during the 10 days of the festival.
In fact, no film had ever even garnered a deal directly after being shown exclusively
in Santa Barbara. So how has SBIFF managed to stay on the map, and, in some
circles, rise to near the top of a heap of hundreds of similar fests throughout
th...
Santa Barbara
International Film Festival
March 1 - 11 (CA)
The Closing
Night Ceremonies finished the 11-day festival with the presentation of the
awards, hosted by George Lopez, one of the stars from the closing-night film,
Bread
and Roses, which received the Phoenix Prize, saluting films embodying
the spirit of 'the outsider'. Artistic Director Renée Missel (recuperating
from a broken ankle) thanked the community of Santa Barbara, who...
Memphis International
Film Festival
March 29 - April 1 (Tennessee)
This year's Memphis
MIFF 2 will be a mix of the local and global with independent features, shorts,
documentaries, animated, and foreign films including the Memphis premiere of
Cybill Shepherd's latest film Marine Life, the return of animator Don
Hertzfeldt with his Oscar nominated film Rejected, and the documentary
Immaculate Funk based on Jerry Wexler of Stax Records and Atlantic Records
fame.
...
The African
American Women In Cinema Film Festival and Conference
March 15
- 18 (NYC)
THe AAWIC film festival kicks off on March 15th at Long Island University and
runs for 4 days. The program will feature screenings, seminars and workshops
geared towards African American women filmmakers at various locations throughout
the city.
Festival highlights
include the New York Premiere of Odessa starring Yolanda King. Also,
Lisa Gay Hamilton, actress in "The ...
Chatelin Bruno 
