FIPRESCI Prize: PRIVATE (Saverio Costanzo, Italy, 2004)Jury Statement – Marcelo Janot, Henry Sheehan and Zlatko Vidackovic We found that PRIVATE combined creative ingenuity and passion in ways that would be unusual for a seasoned director, never mind for someone making a debut feature. Saverio Costanzo has created a dramatic situation that could easily have lent itself to sloganeering: A self-confident and educated Palestinian family suddenly finds its house occupied by an Israeli army platoon...
NEW DIRECTORS, NEW FILMS: A GLOBAL VIEWThe 34th edition of New Directors/New Films, one of New York’s film highlights, opened this past weekend, another sign of a long delayed Spring for a city that has suffered through one of its coldest winters in fifty years. Anticipation is high among the city’s intrepid film adventurers, not only for the films themselves, but for their (partial) presentation at the expensively refurbished Museum of Modern Art (which just opened in November after a sixty...
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...
The Cologne MedienForum, June 20-23, 2004Organized by the Media Authority of the state of North Rhine Westphalia and major German public and private media industries, the 16th annual MedienForum was held again in the fair grounds of Cologne, Germany’s dominant television centrum and home of Europe’s largest public television group WDR and Germany’s largest private television stations. Catering to the second largest television market in the world, the MedienForum is of particular relevance ...
BORDERLANDS – TERRE DI CONFINEInternational Film Competition Bolzano 28-29 May 2004The purpose of the Festival is to promote peace and mutual understanding amongst different peoples through works of film that address history, situation, life and problems of peoples or individuals who live in “borderlands”. In this context the concept “borderlands” identifies places in which different languages, civilisations or ethnic groups either meet or clash, in any possible way.Fourteen films part...
AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR 15TH ANNUAL BOSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVALGay-themed Israeli feature and personal/historical documentary by first-time filmmaker are 2003 winnersThe 15th annual Boston Jewish Film Festival ended a great run (November 6-16) on Sunday, November 16.Audience members participated in the Festival¹s second Audience Awardballoting. Winning Best Feature and Best Documentary filmmakers eachreceive $1,200 in film stock, generously donated by Eastman Kodak.Ballots have no...
