Monday, January 8----The Sundance Film Festival will keep alive the bizarre spirit of the “midnight movie” with its series PARK CITY AT MIDNIGHT. The program contains eight films that are likely to shock the bleary-eyed viewer and offer a lively last stop in the nightly film-going circuit. This year’s midnight madness continues a tradition that saw the breakout of such recent landmark films as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, SAW, OLD BOY, and AMERICAN HARDCORE. Cultists, you have found your Su...
Thursday, December 28----With documentary films experiencing a commercial and critical peak, the stakes have never been higher (and the rewards greater) for the sixteen American Independent documentary features competing at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Considering the box office clout of such films as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and THE MARCH OF THE PENGUINS in the past year, one can expect some of the most ferocious bidding wars will be unleashed for distribution rights to many of these fil...
Tuesday, December 26----The Sundance Film Festival will see sixteen World Premieres compete in the Festival's prestigious Independent Dramatic Feature Film Competition. It is further evidence of the Festival's critical role as a festival of discovery that all the films in this sixteen-film competition are world premieres, unseen by all but a few close associates and the Festival's programming committee. The anticipation is high, as are the stakes for film distributors in the weeks leading up to...
On day number three of the Rotterdam film festival the buzz is still going strong regarding the new Japanese film "A Heart Beating In the Dark" (Yami ni utsu Shinzo) by maverick Nippon director Shunichi Nagasaki. Mr. Nagasaki has been around for a long time but his films are so wide of the mainstream that he is barely known outside of Japan and not particularly well known even in his own country. Rotterdam, a festival which specializes in introducing new faces as well as older ones who have no...
As the Sundance Film Festival kicks into high gear, Filmfestivals.com Industry Editor Sandy Mandelberger (SM) has an intimate tete-a-tete with Sundance Festival Director Geoffrey Gilmore about this year’s event. SM: What remains the biggest challenge for you in keeping the Festival fresh and a place for new discoveries?GG: It’s a challenge every year as we continue to rethink the Festival and keep up with trends in filmmaking and the industry. We are always questioning the nature of indepen...
The San Sebastian International Film Festival similarly proposes a yearly rendez vous with the best movies from Latin American countries in its HORIZONTES Selection. This year, twelve films, some of which are being released for the first time ever and others backed by international recognition, will compete for the Horizontes Award, carrying €18,000 by way of a recompense to the director while serving as an incentive to distribution. HORIZONTES SELECTION ALMA MATER, Alvaro Buela, Uruguay-Ca...
Just 15 more days till the 2005 Sundance Film Festival!Sundance Festival has its the Digital Center as every year.A resource center for independent filmmakers to experiment with cutting edge technologies, the Digital Center presents hands-on displays of new equipment, and provides a forum for filmmakers to talk individually with industry leaders about their specific needs. Panel discussions provide expert insights into current technology trends. Thanks to Hewlett-Packard, in this completely wire...
TANKUP DRIVES TO NEWPORTThe mockumentary “TankUp.US” was featured as The Newport Beach Film Festival opened its fifth annual event.The Festival’s selection committee reviewed more than 1,500 films. This year's schedule included more than 120 features and documentaries. In addition, more than 200 short films were showcased, making it one of the largest short film programs within a feature film festival in the entire nation. “TankUp.US” was programmed in the 'Global Eco Shorts' screeni...
More women are working in the indie scene as witnessed by this year's Sundance festival. As proof, a staggering 56% of the documentary competition films this year were made by women. Sundance also scheduled a panel entitled "The Next Wave: Where Does Women's Film Go from Here". One of the festival films, Lesli Klainberg "In the Company of Woman," is a documentary about the contributions of women to independent film. In 1987 3% of the top 100 films were directed by women. Now the figure is at ...
Sundance Film Festival has been known as an innovator within the Film Festival Industry. First organized as a Festival to highlight independent films, Sundance is staying true to its roots with the wide selection of first time Independent feature directors. This past year at Sundance we saw many of the small independent films, with first time feature directors get recognition and were signed right in Park City with multi million dollars deals. Now some have gone out to wide distribution to t...
