Canada’s Premiere Hairdresser, Jie Matar, Hand Picked his Team of Beauty Artists to Provide Hair, Beauty and Makeup Services To Incoming International Press Junkets, Photo And Television Calls and Film VIP’s in Cannes.Jie Matar, President and Creative Director of Canada’s leading beauty destination, has signed an exclusive agreement with Film Festivals Entertainment Group to provide his signature upscale hair, beauty and makeup services to incoming celebrities at the Cannes Film Festival F...
The Cine Las Americas International Film Festival presented awards to winning films Sunday evening at a ceremony at the Regal Metropolitan Theater in South Austin. The documentary and dramatic film jury panels named the best films in five categories and awarded special jury mentions to three films. Two audience awards were granted in the categories of Best First Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature Film.DOCUMENTARY FILM AWARDSJury Award for Best Documentary Feature: Relatos desde el encie...
The 12th Annual New York African Film Festival April 20th through April 28th, 2005The African Film Festival, Inc. has just opened the Twelfth New York African Film Festival, which will showcase 24 films from 12 countries, including a number of whose national cinema are mostly unknown to US audiences, such as Niger, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Angola and Mozambique. The astonishing variety of themes and styles presented in this year’s program are indicative of the diversity of Africa, reflecting the poet...
INDEPENDENT FILM TANGO IN BUENOS AIRESBuenos Aires---Establishing a reputation as the Sundance of South America, the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema is now in full swing, with an ambitious program of international discoveries and thoughtful retrospectives. But this is not the Sundance of glamour, glitz and goody bags. The Festival is more like the Sundance of ten years ago....a more intimate, less glossy affair where the film faithful come to uncover new talents and abs...
The PALINDROMES Interview by Craig ParishSolondzian Cruelty: No Such ThingLike a Palindrome the world turns in on itself, unchanged and unchanging. Director Todd Solondz still lives alone in the same place he did 10 years before WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE stormed Sundance in 1995.“Free will is an illusion but limitations are liberating” - TSBorn in 1959 in Newark, NJ, Solondz studied at NYU Film School and made severalshort films, one of which turned studio heads at 20th Century Fox. The upsi...
To most, animation conjures an alternate realm of magic. In Oscar© -nominated animation RYAN, this realm of magic is incontestably dark. Rather than tripping through to a world of benign fantasy, we are plunged into the foreboding chamber of a haunted mind. That mind once led the hand of celebrated Canadian animator, Ryan Larkin. In the aptly titled RYAN, director Chris Landreth celebrates the work of this overlooked artist while examining the personal demons that led to his professional and pe...
A FESTIVAL IS REBORN IN MONTREALOne of the more intriguing announcements made here in Berlin is the establishment of a new film festival in Montreal, to be held from October 12 to 23 of this year. Industry watchers have followed the political drama that has been slowly emerging since August with the announcement that the Montreal World Film Festival, a fixture for several decades, had lost its governmental funding from Telefilm Canada and a host of other professional institutions.Criticism had c...
The Fonds Sud Cinema celebrates 20 years in Guadalajara Film FestivalThe XX Guadalajara International Film Festival will show a selection of 5 films financed by the Fonds Sud Cinema, to celebrate the 20 years anniversary of the french fund that help the production of films in countries in developmentThe Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture (Centre National de la Cinématographie) established in 1984 a selective aid to the productionof feature films. In 20 years the Fonds Sud C...
The 26th Banff World Television Festival will take place June 12 to 15, 2005, at The Fairmont Banff Springs amid the breathtaking Canadian Rockies. The Banff Television Festival Foundation announced today a new name for its annual event: The Banff World Television Festival, accompanied by a new theme line: Where great television is born. This revitalization complements new Festival initiatives designed to increase opportunities for broadcasters and producers alike, including a comprehensive foru...
VPRO Tiger Award candidate Ilya Khrzhanovsky gets Golden CactusThe Golden Cactus, the first Theo van Gogh Award for Maverick Film Makers, goes to Ilya Khrzhanovsky. The Russian filmmaker's feature film début 4 is selected in VPRO Tiger Awards Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. 4 is supported by the IFFR's Hubert Bals Fund. The Golden Cactus Award was handed over to the filmmaker, prior to the screen premiere of 06/05 by Theo van Gogh, by 06/05 principal actors Tara Elders...
INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINE RUSHEntertainment industry veteran Christine Rush has been director of the Bangkok Film Market since its inauguration last year. The trade event, in only its second year, has already doubled attendance and is quickly becoming the entertainment industry’s principal forum for deal making in Southeast Asia. Rush is an “entertainment baby” who grew up in the industry – her father, brothers, cousins and a son are all broadcast and film sound engineers. She herself ...
The origins of the Sarajevo International Film Festival are now nearly almost legendary. In October 1993, with Serbs shelling the city, the festival, then directed by Haris Pasovic, screened some 170 films on VHS at locations around the war-torn city, with Sarajevans literally risking life and limb as they dodged sniper bullets and mortars to get to the showings. The festival was started up again in 1995, this time under the stewardship of Mirsad Purivatra, director of the Obala Art Centre. It...
At the recently-concluded 26th edition of Festival des 3 Continents at Nantes (France), Final Solution won two more international awards : Montgolfiere d’Or for Best Documentary adjudged by the Jury Le Prix Fip/Pil’ du Public – the Audience award for the Best Documentary This is the first ever time that an Indian documentary has won an award at the 3 Continents film festival in France. The other films in competition included Zairat by Bahman Kiarostami (Iran), Tierra de Agua by Carlos Klei...
The London Film Festival has ended its 16 day run with more of a whimper than a bang, closing out with a gala screening of the inconsequential comedy, “I Heart Huckabee”, which failed to attract the usual flow of celebrities on a chilly Thursday Night in Leicester Square. An alternate last-night screening, “MA MERE”, a socio-pathological shocker from France, starring one of the best of all Gallic actresses, Isabelle Huppert turned out to be a better festival capstone than “Huckabee”...
The Mill Valley Film Festival wrapped up here this week and as in years past the films themselves were the focus. Outside of New York, the Bay Area is one of the top markets for independent and foreign films, in part because the populace is diverse and highly educated. The Mill Valley festival draws more filmmakers and producers than celebrity-struck fans, which is just fine for the people showing the films -- they'd rather see word of mouth race through the industry, so they can get distributio...
OSCAR NOMINEE SHERIDAN AND TONY NOMINEE MAYER HEAD JURY FOR FIRST-ANNUAL CARIBBEAN FILM FESTIVAL Oscar-nominated screenwriter Naomi Sheridan heads the jury that will honor the best films in competition at the 1st annual Turks & Caicos International Film Festival, which will be held from November 13-20, 2004, in the Caribbean.Naomi Sheridan collaborated with her father, director Jim Sheridan, and her sister, director-writer Kirsten Sheridan, in penning IN AMERICA, the autobiographical film from 2...
Detroit Docs International Film Festival Is Celebrating Year 3! from November 11-14, 2004 Highlights include this year: Screening over 100 documentaries from all over the world including the U.S., Canada, Scotland, Australia, Germany, Israel, United Kingdom, Poland, and Japan Introducing three new venues; Wayne State University, Detroit Institute of Arts & the Museum of New Art Welcoming 30+ filmmakers and visitors from out of town to attend the festival with their works Festival kicks off with ...
JAOUI OPENS NEW YORK FILM FESTIVALThe 42nd edition of the New York Film Festival opened this past weekend, with one of its most diverse and anticipated slates in recent years. Featuring an exciting mix of the new works of acknowledged film masters and fresh discoveries, the Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is generally acknowledged as the crown jewel of film events in a city that boasts more than 25 film festivals during the year. “It is the gold standard as far as Ne...
The Atlantic Film Festival Announces Performers for Scripts Out LoudThe 24th Atlantic Film Festival (September 17-25, 2004) is pleased announce that ACTRA Maritimes member actors Kristin Bell, Krista MacDonald, Dawn McKelvie Cyr, Tara Doyle, Brian Heighton, Njeri Watkins, Jeff Wright and Darrell Yates will perform, in front of a live audience, excerpts from four scripts that were developed through the Script Development Project at the annual Scripts Out Loud. Scripts Out Loud takes place on Sept...
Although it does not have an official Competition or Jury as do fellow festivals in Venice, Cannes, Berlin or Sundance, winners at the Toronto International Film Festival are bellwethers of some of the important films that will come to cinemas and to other film events around the world.After presenting nearly 350 films from sixty countries over the past ten days, the 29th edition of the Festival wrapped yesterday with its annual Awards Brunch, held at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel. Wi...
As the Toronto International Film Festival came to a close yesterday with the announcements of its awards, there continued to be business announcements of new distribution deals that will bring many Toronto highlights into North American cinemas later this year.PALM PICTURES PICKS UP MEXICAN FILMIndie distributor Palm Pictures announced the pick up of North American rights to Cronicas,a Mexico-Ecuador co-production which debuted earlier this year in the Cannes Film Festival'sUn Certain Regard se...
It may not be a record, but 120 European films in the Toronto Film Festival certainly represents the largest contingent of any one film community at this very international event. The films are included in every section of the Festival, from the highly commercial Gala Screenings to the obscure Midnight Madness offerings.The Festival is presenting the latest works from such acknowledged film masters as Jean Luc Godard (with Notre Musique, a poetic meditation on modern life and anxiety), Pedro Alm...
DEALS, DEALS AND MORE DEALSAs the Toronto Film Festival enters its final weekend, distribution deals for the coveted North American market have been secured on a number of key film titles.Focus Features, the specialty distribution division of Universal Pictures, secured North American, Scandinavian and Australian rights for the UK film My Summer of Love, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. The film, which screened in Toronto in the Contemporary World Cinema section, tells the story of a summer encoun...
The 40th Chicago International Film Festival will kick it off with KINSEY,the new film by Bill Condon starring Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker.Thursday, October 7th at the Chicago Theatre The film fresh from its Toronto VIACOM GALAS premiere is quite remarkable: a star-studded, glossy Hollywood film about Alfred Kinsey, a man who was once considered among the most dangerous figures in post-war America...
TORONTO BIZ BUZZ 1SONY PICTURES CLASSICS HAS A RECORD TORONTOThe first few days of the Toronto International Film Festival has seen a spurt of buying for US distributor Sony Pictures Classics. The company already has a record six films screening in Toronto, including Festival opener Being Julia (directed by Istvan Szabo), Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education, Zhang Jimou’s House of Flying Daggers, John Duigan’s Head In The Clouds, and Al Pacino-starrer The Merchant of Venice, has announced som...
