Festival Coverage

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL By John Magary

2009-10-14T11:35:00.006-04:00

Whither primary sources? Here’s what I have in front of me, in case you’re interested: on the desktop sits the laptop, the phone, the book, the headphones. On the laptop’s desktop, the news, the blog, the review, the video, the work. On the phone, the music, the number, the same review as on the laptop, a different source of news, and some text. I’ve got headphones in. I’m tuned in to everything. There’s this feeling that something’s being lost, and so I wonder: what’s everyone else thinking? I cross-check my own opinion with reviewers or reviewer-aggregates, I navigate, looking for commentary or interviews, anything to make the experience more “special,” I call, I comment, I search. I do just about everything but sit in the dark and let...

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VENICE FILM FESTIVAL By Belle N. Burke

2009-09-26T22:16:00.008-04:00

While construction of a new Palazzo del Cinema is under way in the center of the film festival venue, causing some dislocation and confusion, Venice's 66th edition (Sept. 2 - Sept. 12) produced a festival it can be proud of, diversified enough to offer something of quality for everyone but catering to no one. Among 75 official selections from 25 countries (the largest number in Venice's history) featuring 71 world premieres, there is a deliberate mix of what Marco Muller, the festival director, calls highbrow and popular art. Films that pleased, offended, or were remakes of previous films engendered debate and emotional reactions, which is what I believe a film festival should do. The official sections included Venezia 66, whose jury,...

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THE DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Scott Macaulay

2009-08-08T14:23:00.004-04:00

Now in its fifth year, the Dubai International Film Festival stands at an uncertain but nonetheless exciting crossroads in the international film scene. In the last several years, the Middle East, particularly the United Arab Emirates, has been a source of financing for both studio and independent organizations ranging from Warner Brothers to Participant to Sundance to National Geographic. As the real estate and finance bubble accelerated in recent years, Dubai, known for both, became also a synonym for outsized opulence, glitz and glamour. However, as the “office space for rent” and stalled construction projects spotted during the car ride from the airport at this year’s fest revealed, Dubai has been hit by the global downturn just like...

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INDIELISBOA FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Sanders

2009-06-09T11:31:00.005-04:00

The Mozambican Portuguese poet Virgilio de Lemos once wrote that the city of Lisbon “sees itself as an unfinished, incomplete city, open to metamorphoses…open to the delirious imagination of its lovers.” Imagine those ideals in a film festival, and one would have as good a way as any to describe the charm of Lisbon’s new IndieLisboa Film Festival (April 23 - May 3). Celebrating just its sixth edition this past April, IndieLisboa may indeed be young and a bit unfinished, but that’s all part of the appeal; compared to the rather bloated excesses of its European brethren like Cannes, Berlin, or Venice, this festival is intimate, quiet, open to metamorphoses, and, above all, open to the delirious imagination of film (and its lovers). Like...

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ASPEN SHORTSFEST By Brandon Harris

2009-06-09T11:30:00.007-04:00

Now in its 18th year, the Aspen ShortsFest (April 1-5) has long had a reputation as one of the premiere North American showcases for short films. The Academy Award-qualifying festival culls together eight short programs each year, two of which unfold daily over four consecutive nights in Aspen’s elegant, reconstruction-era Wheeler Opera House. Spearheaded by the team of Executive Director Laura Thielen and Director of Programming George Eldard, the festival has a penchant for programming a sharp, international selection that showcases work that runs the gamut of budgets, sizes and aesthetic compositions. Fifty-nine films, culled from over 2,500 entries, screened in this year’s international competition. A quiet, stately affair, the...

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TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Guerrasio

2009-05-10T23:05:00.013-04:00

With festivals around the world struggling to keep their doors open and sponsors attached, the Tribeca Film Festival with its big name backers is no different as this year sponsors like Target and Cadillac bowed out and the number of features shown was cut down to 86, but still the fest is better off than most. TFF flexed its muscles leading up to its 8th edition (April 22 – May 3) with the announcement late last year that it's expanding to the Middle East with a sister festival in Qatar and then came the stunning news earlier this year of Geoff Gilmore joining Tribeca Enterprises as its Chief Creative Officer after being Sundance’s director for 19 years (soon after Peter Scarlet left his post as Tribeca’s artistic director). With this...

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AFI FILM FESTIVAL By Justin Lowe

2009-01-05T15:15:00.011-05:00

Always an indication of the imminent onset of awards season, AFI Fest typically gets ahead of the curve with world and local premieres of would-be contenders. For some films, it’s a prestigious Hollywood launching pad to build momentum toward the Golden Globes, guild honors and the Oscars, while for others it’s a brief moment in the spotlight before getting eclipsed by higher-profile titles. This year’s fest (Oct. 30 - Nov. 9) hit a significant snag even before kicking off, when Paramount pulled opener The Soloist, which will now premiere in theaters in March, 2009, from opening night. AFI Fest fortuitously filled the slot with the world premiere of Miramax’s Doubt, writer-director John Patrick Shanley’s dour inquisition of a suspected...

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HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Sanders

2009-01-05T15:01:00.005-05:00

The Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival (Oct. 9-19) prides itself on being a bridge between “East and West,” but this year’s edition found its greatest strength in films even closer to home (or as close to home as Hawaii can get, considering it’s the most geographically isolated populated landmass in the world). Festival programmer Anderson Le and director Chuck Boller brought in the usual dizzying array of films and filmmakers from around the Pacific Rim, with Chinese melodramas, Japanese comedies, and Korean thrillers among the many choices on offer this year, but also spotlighted low-budget works from Hawaii and other Pacific Islands, including the first feature films ever from Guam and the Marshall Islands. No longer...

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TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Nicholas Vroman

2008-11-06T14:13:00.009-05:00

Following on the heels of the Pusan International Film Festival, the Tokyo International Film Festival (Oct. 18-26), ever wanting to position itself as the "go to" festival for new Asian cinema, seems to get sloppy seconds. Even the newcomer, the Bangkok International Film Festival, programmed an edgier Asian section, scooping the new Naomi Kawase film, Nanayo, a few weeks before TIFF. Long the rollout fest for Japanese fall theatrical releases, the Tokyo International Film Festival still carries its weight for Japanese distributors. This year’s opener was John Woo’s Red Cliff and closing was Wall-E. The festival is flush, centered in Roppongi Hills, the high-class mega development in central Tokyo which boasts countless cafes, shopping...

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LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL By Justin Lowe

2008-09-15T19:07:00.003-04:00

The defining moment of the Los Angeles Film Festival (June 19-29), presented by Film Independent, didn’t occur at a gala screening or a high-profile filmmaker panel, but transpired instead at the fest’s annual Finance Conference as Mark Gill, former president of Miramax and currently CEO of The Film Department, delivered the keynote address. As widely reported in the entertainment press, Gill’s speech presented a comprehensive overview of the state of independent film, detailing his premise that “Yes, the Sky Really Is Falling.” He cited a variety of reasons for the poor performance of indie releases this year, including the surfeit of films available for sale and competing against one another for screen space, the flight of capital...

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CINEVEGAS By Jon Korn

2008-07-08T10:54:00.006-04:00

The CineVegas Film Festival (June 12-21) celebrated its tenth year in a manner befitting its Sin City setting: a colossal, ten-day jubilee of film and fun. High and low culture rubbed a lot more than just shoulders — among the many special events were not only a screening by contemporary art darling Takashi Murakami on a waterfall at the Wynn Resort but also a fete at Sapphire’s, the self-billed “World’s Largest Adult Entertainment Complex.” And that was just on Monday and Tuesday. Keeping up with the screenings and numerous parties, all while nobly trying to ignore the siren song of the tables, proved to be utterly - and delightfully - impossible. Not too long ago, holding a film festival in Las Vegas seemed to be a lost cause, but...

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NEWFEST By Conor Fetting-Smith

2008-07-08T10:45:00.006-04:00

Just past Madison Square Garden, if you can weave through its mass of disoriented tourists, beneath the neon moniker of the New Yorker hotel, you’ll find a disproportionate number of same sex couples, groups of men with distinct fashion sense, packs of women and yet nary a high heel – all them congregating outside the Loews 34th Street movie theater. And if you’re keen enough to glance inside to the lobby, you’ll see why: NewFest, New York City’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival (June 5-15) is in residence for just over a week in this, its 20th year. As a gay filmmaker living in New York City, I was eager to take in NewFest’s slate of films. With so much change and progress over the past 20 years, I wondered how...

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TORINO INTERNATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN FILM FESTIVAL By Shari Roman

2008-07-08T10:18:00.004-04:00

Jodie Foster “came out” during a recent Hollywood Awards ceremony, Gus Van Sant’s feature on the assassination of San Francisco’s gay mayor Harvey Milk is now in production, and gay and lesbian liaisons amongst the older [Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi] and younger star sets [Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson?] are now looked upon with almost avuncular support. Yet, way before alternative lifestyles tipped their way into the mainstream, there was the Torino International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (April 17-25). A key showcase, Torino supported the early “taboo” efforts of Van Sant and Derek Jarman and introduced local audiences to Todd Haynes, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Now firmly established within the international film...

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TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Guerrasio

2008-07-07T11:40:00.004-04:00

The 2008 Tribeca Film Festival (April 23 – May 4) could best be described as the year it edged closer to finding its niche in the overcrowded festival schedule. Cutting 40 films off of its slate, lowering ticket prices and (this is the biggie) centralizing the festival in Union Square — the first time TFF has had a home base since its first two years when it was in Lower Manhattan — the seventh edition still had its moments of gaudiness. But, for the most part, cineastes actually had something to smile about. With not much buying happening at Sundance earlier in the year, many were certain that TFF would go by with its usual big-budgeted red carpet premieres (it did: Baby Momma, Speed Racer) and ho-hum indie Sundance rejects. But TFF had...

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GEN ART FILM FESTIVAL By Alicia Van Couvering

2008-04-14T13:42:00.009-04:00

To enter Gen Art, your name must be on a clipboard manned by a shining, feverish lady in black. If it is you feel lucky, chosen, special, because then you are permitted to taste what life should be like EVERY DAY: lo, there is free beer, free wine, free cookies and free popcorn. You eat, you drink, you look around. Are you in a singles bar? No – over there is a character actor whom you admire... there is another.... it's a film festival! Now another feverish black-clad lady is ushering you inside, and you obey her, because she must be obeyed. Gen Art’s Film Festival (April 2-8) is just one part of the larger Gen Art mission to produce events celebrating every artistic enterprise, including art, fashion and music. The goal is to celebrate...

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MIAMI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Rob Nelson

2008-03-19T15:08:00.008-04:00

The Miami International Film Festival’s (Feb. 28 - March 9) lack of public screenings before 4 p.m. makes sense only after you’ve plopped bare feet onto the beach and felt the sun on your face--unusual sensations for movie people, several of whom were seen sporting freshly burned skin in the fest’s first half. On Day 4, Henry Fonda flaunted his own deep, dark tan in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), magnificently restored from the Techniscope negative by veteran Paramount archivist Barry Allen and screened to a small but ecstatic audience at the Gusman, Miami’s gorgeous, ’20s-era movie palace. If the MIFF never again conjured such cinephilic magic as Once Upon a Time, we should blame the rare poetic genius of the late Sergio Leone and...

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DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Guerrasio

2008-01-06T23:01:00.001-05:00

In only four years the Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) has taken on the Herculean task of establishing itself as a platform for Middle Eastern films to the Western world. And when there seems to be no limit to the amount of money the city will put into the fest (and itself: the tallest building in the world will soon be located in Dubai, its mall has the largest indoor amusement park and an indoor ski slope, and there’s the seven-star hotel, Burj Al Arab), it seems DIFF will only grow from here. But will the fest be a side note to the region’s abundance of wealth, exotic locale and gaudy architecture or become a legitimate contributor to the film community? Unlike the Cairo, Marrakech (which ran at the same time this year as...

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ROME FILM FEST By Caveh Zahedi

2007-11-28T15:42:00.000-05:00

Now in its second year, the spectacularly-funded new-kid-on-the-block Rome Film Fest (Oct. 18-27) exhibits the apparently ontologically inescapable teething pains that all toddlers must endure – disorganization, poor communication skills, a certain clumsiness, and a forward-looking sense of “anything’s possible.” Also, a tendency to imitate the mother’s facial expressions – in this case, the Venice Film Festival in particular and every other “big” film festival in general. What this often leads to is the empty husk of spectacle, or spectacle disassociated from its original purpose and adrift in the free-floating play of eternally recombinant signifiers that is contemporary culture. Add to this a way-out-of-the-way location that...

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VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Rob Nelson

2007-11-06T10:28:00.001-05:00

Now in its 20th year under the firm stewardship of festival director and art-film connoisseur Alan Franey, the Vancouver International Film Festival (September 27 to October 12) remains the same as it ever was: committed to an intelligent mix of new movies from Asia and Canada (and new nonfiction from around the world), and admirably resistant to the market pressures that sometimes threaten to make its East Coast Canadian sibling, the Toronto International Film Festival, look like one big studio junket. Hardly a haven for awards strategists and sales agents, Vancouver is chiefly for filmmakers and viewers — a fact reiterated at almost every post screening discussion here, but particularly this year at the now legendary Q&A that followed...

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NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL By Erica Abeel

2007-10-17T17:48:00.000-04:00

It's been noted that with Tribeca nipping at its heels and film fests sprouting like kudzu, the New York Film Festival might be losing its relevance and lustre. Well, to judge by the 45th edition, such concerns are premature. From Sept. 28 to Oct. 14 the NYFF — the 20th with Richard Peña at the helm — rolled out a wide-ranging lineup of mostly exhilarating films. If they reflect, in Pena's words, "the state of cinema," one piece of the cultural landscape is in rude good health. The selection struck a happy balance between marquee names, art house auteurs, and lesser known talents. Included, too, were folks, such as Brian De Palma and John Landis, whom you might not expect to encounter in this venue. Absent but not missed was such trendy...

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LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL By Justin Lowe

2007-07-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

Blithely defying industry norms, Film Independent’s Los Angeles Film Festival (June 21-July 1) managed the unlikely achievement of figuratively conferring independent filmmaker status on blockbuster director Michael Bay by presenting the L.A. premiere of DreamWorks’ Transformers to an audience of 4,000 in four theaters simultaneously during the height of the festival. By now Film Independent’s affinity for mini-major product and studio specialty fare featuring high-profile talent, as evidenced by both the annual Independent Spirit Awards and Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF) programming, is so well established that even the Transformers premiere drew little more than shrugs from filmmakers and festivalgoers. Elsewhere in the fest...

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SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Justin Lowe

2007-07-10T11:15:00.000-04:00

As the oldest film festival in North America, the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF) celebrated its 50th anniversary April 26-May 10 with a variety of special screenings, events and awards. Following a period of inapt leadership under previous management, the second fest helmed by executive director Graham Leggat saw SFIFF beginning to regain its stride while facing increasing competition from a variety of high-profile festivals with rising influence on the U.S. circuit. When the San Francisco Film Society launched the SFIFF in 1957, the domestic festival scene was wide-open. By contrast, this year’s calendar saw SFIFF running almost concurrently with the Tribeca Film Festival and closely followed by both CineVegas and the...

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SARASOTA FILM FESTIVAL By Mark Rabinowitz

2007-05-13T19:15:00.000-04:00

The Sarasota Film Festival's (April 13-22) director of programming Tom Hall, programmer Holly Herrick, executive director Jody Kielbasa and the rest of the staff and attending filmmakers are getting a reputation... for making the SFF quite possibly the most enjoyable regional film festival experience in the United States. Of course 10 days of sun, sand and sea doesn't hurt, but the real pleasure here is the feeling of artistic collaboration and celebration. One gets the feeling that the staff like working with each other and the attending filmmakers really like seeing each other's films and boy howdy do the local audiences love watching the films! In fact, on the ninth day of the fest, I overheard as an elderly couple (Sarasota's...

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2007 NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS By Erica Abeel

2007-04-23T13:36:00.000-04:00

The tone of the 36th edition of New Directors/New Films (March 21-April 1) might be encapsulated in the words of a character from The Great World of Sound, a first feature by Craig Zobel: "Fuck 'fair.' Life ain't fair." In fact, if the miserabilist flavor of the festival is any indication, the world (hedge fund managers excepted) is not a happy place. Many of the 26 films in the fest (a joint venture of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center), featured the proverbial little guy ground down by poverty, war, incarceration, or just old age. This parade of misfortune threatened to become a downer. But a couple of standouts — Day Night Day Night [pictured above] by Julia Loktev and Red Road by...

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PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Howard Feinstein

2007-02-13T14:23:00.000-05:00

The Palm Springs International Film Festival (January 4-15), with a budget around $2.8 million, advertises itself as the fest “where star power and the cinema come together.” The order is significant. On opening weekend, this 18th edition and the fourth under director Darryl Macdonald hosted a meretricious gala at the Convention Center — replete with a video-clip homage to emcee Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight — saluting the canonized talents of the past year. These shining lights feasted with, and courted from the stage, 1,800 high-rollers — good PR for the studios as awards season commenced. Among the honorees were Kate Winslet, Jessica Biel, and the entire cast of Babel (Brad, too), including Cate...

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