.............                                                                                                                                                          WELCOME TO OUR NEWSLETTER N° 487: December 4, 2010 Follow this LINK if you cannot read the newsletter properly Contact the Editor, Advertise on the sites.  Our newsletter reaches 82 000 film profession...

  As someone who appreciates attending documentary-only film festivals, I must admit that after a few days, it can become a bit of a slog. This is not due to the excellence of the films, particularly at a high-end event like IDFA, the acclaimed International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, which ends its 11 day run today. If anything, it is the opposite. The films presented are so visceral, so challenging, so disturbing, so awakening, that it truly is a shock to the system to see th...

  POSITION AMONG THE STARS (Stand van de Sterren) by Dutch/Indonesian filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich was the big winner at the awards ceremony of IDFA: International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film won both the VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (the Festival’s top honor and winner of a cash prize of 12,500 euros) and the Dioraphte IDFA Award for Best Dutch Documentary. The director won the same top prize at the 2004 IDFA for the second film in his trilo...

  The AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL (AFF), the first film event in Eastern Europe solely devoted to the works of contemporary and classic American cinema, announced the two winners of its Audience Awards, chosen by the public as their favorites among the films presented over the past five days in Wroclaw, Poland. The winner of the American Independent Narrative Audience Award is WINTER’S BONE, the celebrated debut by filmmaker Debra Granik that won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Screenpl...

The AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL (AFF), the first film event in Eastern Europe solely devoted to the works of contemporary and classic American cinema, announced the two winners of its Audience Awards, chosen by the public as their favorites among the films presented over the past five days in Wroclaw, Poland. The winner of the American Independent Narrative Audience Award is WINTER’S BONE, the celebrated debut by filmmaker Debra Granik that won the Grand Jury Prize and Best Screenplay awards at the...

For the first time in memory (if my faulting memory serves me well and it increasingly does NOT), the New Directors New Films showcase opened last evening with a documenary feature. This annual rite of the Spring film season, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art, was ushered in by BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK, a fascinating look at the New York Times photographer and his love/hate obsession with the city he calls both his mu...

  After winning the top prize at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the world’s most prestigious showcase for non-fiction  film, the Canadian/UK co-production LAST TRAIN HOME is making a splash at its International Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. Now the clear favorite for awards recognition in the World Cinema Documentary competition here, the film seems poised for a distribution deal.   LAST TRAIN HOME by director Lixin Fan is a beautif...

  In the year-round film festival circuit, a roundelay of more than 2000 individual film events held in almost every corner of the globe, one moves as if part of a gypsy caravan, lingering in one place before taking up stakes for the next location. For me, it is a lateral move across Europe from Amsterdam, where I have been attending the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and the host of the 13th annual POFF, Tallinn Black Nights F...

In the year-round film festival circuit, a roundelay of more than 4 000 (as in this website's festival directory) individual film events held in almost every corner of the globe, one moves as if part of a gypsy caravan, lingering in one place before taking up stakes for the next location. For me, it is a lateral move across Europe from Amsterdam, where I have been attending the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and the host of the 13th ann...

  If you are an industry professional who works in the world of documentaries, it is a pretty sure bet that you are spending this week in Amsterdam at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Aside from the hundreds of completed films on display, the Festival sponsors a co-production market for filmmakers to network with potential financiers and distributors for new projects (that will most probably come to IDFA next year as completed films).  IDFA’s annual c...

 Friday, January 25---------Although the Sundance Film Festival continues through this Sunday, with the culminating Awards Ceremony to be held on Saturday night, many film professionals have already skipped town, mulling the films they have seen (bid or passed on) and, frankly, warming up their external digits after 9 days of frigid weather. What began as a barren landscape for dealmaking has made a rebound, although Festival veterans have described this year's event as very lowkey compared to ...

Although the Sundance Film Festival continues through this Sunday, with the culminating Awards Ceremony to be held on Saturday night, many film professionals have already skipped town, mulling the films they have seen (bid or passed on) and, frankly, warming up their external digits after 9 days of frigid weather. What began as a barren landscape for dealmaking has made a rebound, although Festival veterans have described this year's event as very lowkey compared to earlier years (a result of th...

As International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam puts finishing touches on its 20th edition, set to launch November 22-December 2, festival director Ally Derks takes a moment to muse on this year’s standout themes, the joys of playing with a three-million-euro budget and the merry mischief of hiding a fake film for audiences to smoke out. Filmfestivals.com reached her in Amsterdam during the calm before the storm. FF: Is it a challenge to program a documentary festival that comes a week af...

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam will celebrate its 20th incarnation November 22-December 2 in the Dutch city dubbed the “Venice of the North.” Though relatively unknown in the States, IDFA is a critical stop on the documentary festival circuit. The 10-day fest will screen more than 300 documentaries in 20 sections, starting out with Richard Robbins’ Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience. A collage of letters, essays, poems and diary excerpts by U.S. soldier...

Since its inception nine years ago, the South African International Documentary Festival has gained in popularity and grown significantly. We received a record number of over 500 films from around the world this year, and have chosen 51 which tackle pertinent and quirky issues, tell tales and true stories, introduce audiences to illustrious, forgotten or little known figures, charismatic revolutionaries and leaders, and milestone events in world history. Among the 52 films, from 18 countries, we...

Sunday, January 28-----The Sundance Film Festival roared into its Awards Ceremony last evening with the speed of an on-going train, as the nervous anticipation of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors filled the cavernous Racquet Club for the festivities. Anchored by the unflappable Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore, the choices for Jury and Audience Awards in the US and International Feature and Documentary categories were a bit of a surprise, since many of the films that received nods w...

Sunday, January 28-----The Sundance Film Festival roared into its Awards Ceremony last evening with the speed of an on-going train, as the nervous anticipation of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors filled the cavernous Racquet Club for the festivities. Anchored by the unflappable Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore, the choices for Jury and Audience Awards in the US and International Feature and Documentary categories were a bit of a surprise, since many of the films that received nods w...

The Sundance Film Festival roared into its Awards Ceremony last evening with the speed of an on-going train, as the nervous anticipation of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors filled the cavernous Racquet Club for the festivities. Anchored by the unflappable Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore, the choices for Jury and Audience Awards in the US and International Feature and Documentary categories were a bit of a surprise, since many of the films that received nods were not high on the radar...