SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (SIFF) ANNOUNCES JOANNE WEIR’S PLATES & PLACES LUNCH MARCH 25 Noted Chef, Television Host, Author, and Culinary Tour Leader Headlines New Epicurean Lunch at SIFF’s 25th Anniversary Festival March 23-27, 2022   Sonoma, CA— Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF), noted for delivering the best in film, food, wine and fun, is including a new culinary headliner event to this year’s festival. Joanne Weir, the James Bea...

                                                            SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (SIFF) ANNOUNCES FIRST RECIPIENT OF THE 2022 SIFF CULINARY EXCELLENCE AWARD   Sonoma, CA—Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF), noted for delivering the best in film, food, wine and fun during its annual festival, will ho...

2022 Sun Valley Film Festival Announces Film Slate and Award Honorees   Woody Harrelson and Amy Poehler to Receive Vision Awards and Participate in Coffee Talks; Selected Films in Line-up Feature Nicole Beharie, Juliette Binoche, John Boyega, Connie Britton, Bruce Dern, Jim Gaffigan, Ron Howard, Maika Monroe, Haley Lu Richardson, Tony Shaloub, Wes Studi, Michael K. Williams and more   Sun Valley, ID— Sun Valley Film Festival, returning as an in-person ...

Incomparable Shachin Dev Burman: HQ Chowdhury’s labour of love, about the man and his music It is not often that one gets to hear about a book and its author first, and gets to spend some enriching time with the author afterwards, before getting an autographed copy of his book, as a gift. And to think this happened 2,500 km away from my city of Mumbai, in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, at Chowdhury’s posh guest house, seems almost unreal. Reading Incomparable Sachin Dev Burman ...

Music Forever: Long performing music duo L-P, alias Laxmikant-Pyarelal Ajay Poundarik is neither a writer nor a journalist. But if he is anything, he is a fanatic admirer of the work of the music composer duo of Hindi films, Laxmikant and Pyarelal, better known as L-P. LP, which, in music parlance, is an acronym for Long Playing Record, is a term that fits them like the proverbial glove. They were indeed a long-playing pair, to be sure. As a tribute to his ‘deities’, Poundarik ...

  SEDONA, Ariz: Delicious, a mouth-watering historical comedy pairing a gifted chef and his unlikely protégé who must find the resolve to free themselves from servitude in 1789 France, was named both Best of Fest and winner of the Director’s Choice Best International Film Festival Award at the 28 th annual Sedona International Film Festival. Awards were presented on Sunday, Feb. 27, the final day of the 10-day Festival that showcased 33 narrative features, 32...

FIILM AND STAGE ACTOR/DIRECTOR KAREN ALLEN SCHEDULED TO SPEAK AT SONOMA VALLEY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT MEDIA ARTS PROGRAM SCREENING AT 25TH ANNIVERSARY FILM FESTIVAL MARCH 23-27, 2022 Sonoma, CA— Film and stage star Karen Allen will be a special industry guest at SIFF’s 25th Anniversary Film Festival. While in town for the festival, she will speak at the first of two screenings with Sonoma Valley High School filmmaking students at this year’s Media Arts Program St...

33rd ANNUAL PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL  ANNOUNCES AWARD WINNERS   Prayers For the Stolen Receives FIPRESCI and Ibero-American Award Prizes;  A Hero Receives FIPRESCI Actor & Screenplay Prizes and MOZAIK Bridging The Borders Award; Titane Receives FIPRESCI Actress Prize; Flee Receives Documentary Award;  Happening Receives New Voices New Visions Award   Palm Springs, CA (January 19, 20...

IFFI 52, 051: Towards better IFFIs What makes a good international film festival? Some criteria. Good international films Good Indian films Good scheduling Good international participation Good fringe events Good ‘festival’/festivities Good venues, with good projection Good budget Good (long-term) independent directors and heads of departments Good and early planning Quality of films selected is a reflection of the ...

    The fourth annual French Riviera Film Festival (FRFF) that celebrates short film and short-form content will once again be held live and in person on the Riviera, during the time period of the Festival de Cannes, the announcement was made today by FRFF founders Nicole Muj and Gotham Chandna.  FRFF 2022 will be held at the Eden Hotel and Resort in Cannes, France on May 20 and 21, 2022. Filmfestivals.com returning as media partner. ...

Merger with NFDC: Are the media units fighting a losing battle? While the proposal to bring four media units of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under the umbrella of the NFDC is being debated in the media, among the stake-holders and the concerned public in general, we need to look at a decision of the High Court, dated 07 October 2021, in a Petition filed by the Films Division Staff Association against the Union of India. This decision underscores that any attempt to prevent th...

IFFI 52, 050: Post IFFI, FIPRESCI organises seminar on the closure of 4 media units, including DFF FIPRESCI-India, the India Chapter of the International Federation of Film Critics, usually holds its Annual General Meeting during IFFI, in Panaji, Goa. But in view of the Covid 19 Coronavirus pandemic, very few of its members, who are scattered all over India, attended IFFI 52, in November 2021. The meeting was, consequently held online. Soon afterwards, the media was agog with reports that th...

IFFI 52, 049: Will IFFI be the same ever again? In 2004, the Government of India decided to shift the travelling International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to Goa, and soon confirmed that this will be the permanent venue. That it has been, for 17 years now. What prompted the decision to choose the capital city of Goa, Panaji, as the permanent venue remains open to question. Goa has negligible film production and even more negligible film culture. It is already a prime tourist attraction, and...

IFFI 52, 048: A look at NFDC, its Board and Management Now that National Film Development Corporation is all set to absorb Directorate of Film Festivals, Films Division, Children’s Film Society of India and National Film Archive of India, it’s time to take a good look at NFDC itself. There is no mention at all of this merger on its website yet, but we do know about the re-structuring, especially at the top. They have a new Managing Director, and he is called Ravinder Bhakar. Ra...

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  ...An adaptation of a good book (series like frank Herbert's)... ? there is more of course   If ever there was a subjective question, then it would be this one. To analyse what exactly makes a good film arguably takes away from the magic of films themselves. Everyone will agree that films are one of the most loved things on Earth and one only must look at how much money the industry rakes in to see this in numbers. The allure of films was almost instantaneous following the bir...

A gentle but gorgeously photographed short documentary, QUIETLY seems to offer some correctives to current tales of social or humanitarian injustices within the vast lands of China. A handful of artlessly handled interviews with hard-working women from the distant province of Xinjiang  reveal a country  where the traditional and contemporary ways of life seem to blend smoothly, even successfully. A dutiful daughter is packing cotton for despatch, picked in the enormous fiel...

Prague, Czech Republic-On October 22, 2021, the Prague Film Festival Awards Ceremony was held online. The film RIPPLES won "Best  Documentary Short  Film" and the  "Audience Award", it was screened on the online platform of the Festival, attracting a large audience, one of the comments described it as  "a magnifying glass to see the real life in Xinjiang, China". A few days later the film won Grand Jury Prize at the Amsterdam International Fil...

Benoit Lelievre: director Huaqing Jin:  co-director   Ripples is a documentary short that focuses on how trade restrictions on cotton from Xinjiang since 2020 has affected four women who have lived in Yiwu, China for the past several years. They were born in Xinjiang and moved to Yiwu and with members of their families run their own business. In their stories they express a longing for Xinjiang and its natural resources, an autonomous region in China where 80% of the country&...

RIPPLES  by Benoit Lelievre offers a cogent interpretation of their lifes by some women who have spent several years in  Yiwu City in the Zhejiang Province of China settling there coming from the  landlocked  Xinjiang autonomous Uyghur province where Uyghurs and Han Chinese live together. Also popular as a foreign tourist destination  it has lately drawn international  media attention to its  cotton industry boycott  by some Western  countries.&nbs...