Julian Schnabel strides two different worlds like a modern-day colossus. As a painter, sculptor and photographer, he has been in the A list of fine arts culture for more than 30 years. For the past decade, he has added "filmmaker extraordinaire" to his resume, becoming one of the most talked-about and lauded film artists of his generation. Painters making films is not completely new  (Leger, Kandinsky, Dali and other early modernists did make film expressions, but they wer...

  LYMELIFE (Derek Martini, USA) by Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor Eight celebrated American and Canadian feature films by emerging filmmakers that were first showcased at such prestigious film events as Sundance, Tribeca, Rotterdam and Toronto, will compete in the North American Independents Competition of the 25th edition of FESTROIA: The Troia International Film Festival. The Festival, the oldest and largest in Portugal, runs from September 4 to 13 in the coas...

Okay, so music videos are out, and concert films like "U2, 3-D", "Shine a Light", and "Lou Reed's Berlin", are in. There are actually a lot of pro's and con's to live concerts, the pro's being, 1. The cost. It is definitely a lot cheaper than paying "Ticketmaster" prices, 2. if it is shot in a documentary style, you may see and learn from new and old, never seen before footage and interviews, and 3. you don't have to worry about a tall person standing in front of you. :) The only con I could thi...

The Film Independent Spirit Awards, held in a tent on the beach at Santa Monica on Saturday, are kind of the “indie Oscars”. Some of the nominees and winners are also up for Oscar gold, but there are refreshingly new names and talents on the roster, from films that have received little or no distribution. The Awards Ceremony, which is broadcast live on cable networks AMC and IFC, gives these newcomers a chance to get some name recognition, and in the case of many, an open door to agents and ...

Sunday, February 24-----The Film Independent Spirit Awards, held in a tent on the beach at Santa Monica on Saturday, are kind of the “indie Oscars”. Some of the nominees and winners are also up for Oscar gold, but there are refreshingly new names and talents on the roster, from films that have received little or no distribution. The Awards Ceremony, which is broadcast live on cable networks AMC and IFC, gives these newcomers a chance to get some name recognition, and in the case of many, an...

Juno, The Savages, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly shared top category honors at the 2008 Film Independent’s SpiritAwards, making the highly anticipated annual event into a celebration of the diverse films that captured the public’s attention this year.  Once, Crazy Love, Talk to Me, The Lookout, August Evening, and I’m Not There also received awards at the event. The 2008 Film Independent’s Spirit Awards were held Saturday, February 23, in a tent on the beach in Santa Monica. T...

 Friday, February 22--------European films and talents are poised for Oscar wins, when the golden statuettes are handed out at the Kodak Theater this coming Sunday in Los Angeles. For the past three months, there has been a lingering cloud of doubt about whether the ceremony was going to happen at all. A strike by the Writers Guild of America, that effectively shut down film and television production and forced the cancellation of the Golden Globe Awards, was only recently settled, in part beca...

 Monday, November 12--------The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival ended last evening with a gala premiere screening of the Festival Closing Night Film, MIDNIGHT CLEAR, with director Dallas Jenkins and actor Stephen Baldwin in attendance. Prior to the screening, Gregory von Hausch, erstwhile Festival Director and the charismatic on-stage presence for the event, announced the major winners in a variety of categories.Winning Best Film honors was the French film THE DIVING BELL AND THE BU...

The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival ended last evening with a gala premiere screening of the Festival Closing Night Film, MIDNIGHT CLEAR, with director Dallas Jenkins and actor Stephen Baldwin in attendance. Prior to the screening, Gregory von Hausch, erstwhile Festival Director and the charismatic on-stage presence for the event, announced the major winners in a variety of categories.Winning Best Film honors was the French film THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, by painter-turned-di...

 Monday, November 12--------The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival ended last evening with a gala premiere screening of the Festival Closing Night Film, MIDNIGHT CLEAR, with director Dallas Jenkins and actor Stephen Baldwin in attendance. Prior to the screening, Gregory von Hausch, erstwhile Festival Director and the charismatic on-stage presence for the event, announced the major winners in a variety of categories.Winning Best Film honors was the French film THE DIVING BELL AND THE BU...

The director Julian Schnabel talks about films that inspired him and the challenges he faced in adapting the script for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.Let's start from your new new film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I've read somewhere that it took about 200,000 of Bauby's blinks to write the whole book and writing down each word took approximately 2 minutes. What were your first thoughts when you decided to adapt the script? Well, I didn’t know all those facts, but I know that once...

 Thursday, October 18-------THE DIVIING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, the latest film from painter-turned-director Julian Schnabel has won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Feature Film Prize, which will be presented at the Hamptons International Film Festival this weekend. For the 8th consecutive year, the $25,000 cash prize is being awarded to a feature-length film that explores science and technology themes in fresh, innovative ways and depicts scientists and engineers in a realistic and compelling...

 Friday, September 28-------The 45th edition of the New York Film Festival, one of New York's most coveted cultural events, opens tonight with the US Premiere of THE DARJEELING LIMITED, directed by Wes Anderson. The film, which stars Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson, traces the fractured journey of three American brothers on a spiritual quest in India. The trio, who have not spoken to each other in a year, set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and ...

 Friday, September 28-------The 45th edition of the New York Film Festival, one of New York's most coveted cultural events, opens tonight with the US Premiere of THE DARJEELING LIMITED, directed by Wes Anderson. The film, which stars Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson, traces the fractured journey of three American brothers on a spiritual quest in India. The trio, who have not spoken to each other in a year, set off on a train voyage across India with a plan to find themselves and ...

In yet another sign of Brooklyn's growing cache as a cultural destination, the Gotham Awards, one of the stellar events on the New York film industry calendar, is moving from its current site in Manhattan to Brooklyn's Steiner Studios, the largest studio facility in the city, located on the Brooklyn waterfront. The 17th Annual Gotham Awards, produced and presented by the Independent Feature Project (IFP), a national producers organization, will be presented at the new venue on Tuesday, November ...

The exhibition Summer by the artist and film director Julian Schnabel (Brooklyn, New York, 1951) will open in the Tabacalera International Centre of Contemporary Culture in Donostia - San Sebastian on July 27th. The exhibition includes over sixty paintings and sculptures, with works from the 1980s to the present, and will occupy most of the ground floor of the building. The artist has prepared the exhibition in dialogue with the building itself which remains more or less intact from its original...

Friday, July 20------In yet another sign of Brooklyn's growing cache as a cultural destination, the Gotham Awards, one of the stellar events on the New York film industry calendar, is moving from its current site in Manhattan to Brooklyn's Steiner Studios, the largest studio facility in the city, located on the Brooklyn waterfront. The 17th Annual Gotham Awards, produced and presented by the Independent Feature Project (IFP), a national producers organization, will be presented at the ne...

Thursday, July 19------In yet another sign of Brooklyn's growing cache as a cultural destination, the Gotham Awards, one of the stellar events on the New York film industry calendar, is moving from its current site in Manhattan to Brooklyn's Steiner Studios, the largest studio facility in the city, located on the Brooklyn waterfront. The 17th Annual Gotham Awards, produced and presented by the Independent Feature Project (IFP), a national producers organization, will be presented at the ...

Presented in Competition at this 60th Cannes Festival, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is Julian Schnabel's third feature-length film, following Basquiat (1996) and Before Night Falls (2000). The film is an adaptation of the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, whose life changed completely in 1995 when he had a massive stroke. The 43-year-old journalist, father of two children, spent twenty days in a deep coma. When he woke up, he found the damage to his brain stem had resulted in a rare form of...