Author: CWB News Department

The 4th Annual Portland Film Festival announced today the feature film and short film recipients of this year’s awards in theAudience, Grand Jury, Director’s Choice, and Screenplay categories.As in previous years, juries of leading industry experts and esteemed filmmakers determined Jury Awards for Feature Narrative, Feature Documentary, and Short Film categories. “What a great way to end this year’s Portland Film Festival – by celebrating the films our esteemed jurors and incredible audiences have awarded these talented filmmakers, who represent the best of truly independent filmmaking,” said Josh Leake, Founder and Executive Director of the Portland Film Festival. The fourth annual Portland Film…

Pretty soon your clothes, furniture, and basic plastic tchotchkes won’t be the only things bearing the ‘Made In China’ brand. Dalian Wanda’s chairman Wang Jianlin (China’s wealthiest man) has been making big statements about his desires to own a studio. Wang says, “My goal is to buy Hollywood companies and bring their technology and capability to China.” This isn’t just one studio either, by Wang’s own account, he’s interested in having a slice from each of the big six in Hollywood. The beginning of 2016 started with Wanda group acquiring Legendary Entertainment in January. A reported $3.5 Billion deal paired…

The 73rd Venice International Film Festival will award its prestigious Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award to Iranian director Amir Naderi for outstanding and original contribution to innovation in contemporary cinema, it was announced Thursday.Naderi is one of the most well-known figures of contemporary Iranian cinema with classics including Tangsir (1974), Entezar (1974), The Runner (1985) and Ab, Bad, Khak (1989). His Vegas: Based on a True Story premiered in competition in Venice in 2008 and Cut opened the Venice Horizons section in 2011. Naderi’s career has been influenced by Italian neorealist cinema as he often makes use of nonprofessional…

The Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, announced the sixteenth edition will be held April 19– April 30, 2017 in New York City. The Festival will expand its areas of submissions from feature films, short films, and experiential storytelling (Storyscapes) program, to include submissions across all of the programming areas of the Festival. Creators can submit work to debut at the Festival’s industry leading Virtual Arcade (virtual reality, 360 films, and augmented reality), the highly successful television section (episodic storytelling, anticipated premieres, and independent pilots), and N.O.W. program (new online work, stories created specifically for the online space). The…

The 2016 PORTLAND FILM FESTIVAL will screen 54 narrative and documentary feature films and 89 short films selected from over 3,800 submissions. The fourth annual Portland Film Festival will take place August 29 – September 5, 2016, at Portland’s iconic Laurelhurst Theater, and will include over 20 educational panels & forums, 12 archival presentations, and many parties, events, and industry networking opportunities throughout the week. The festival will present two opening and closing night films (a documentary and a narrative film on each night) and feature films in the following sections: Narrative Competition Feature, Documentary Competition Feature, Narrative Spotlight, Stranger…

LOS ANGELES (August 15, 2016) – The 38th edition of The Reel Thing, a three-day symposium addressing audio/visual restoration and archiving, will explore the constantly evolving ecosystem of film and digital restoration and preservation. This year’s program will examine legacy film restorations and showcase modern technologies being used to futureproof collections and keep them viable for future display and distribution formats. The event will take place August 18-20 at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.In addition to discussions with industry leaders, premiere screenings of several restored films are scheduled, including the original, uncensored version of John Huston’s BEAT THE DEVIL;…

Irvine, Calif. (Aug. 12, 2016)— RED Digital Cinema®, in partnership with Outside Television, has announced Isaac Sokol’s Into Dust as the winning short film in this year’s edition of the REDirect Explore competition. Second place went to Jesse Hoffman for The Process, and Joey Schusler’s Pedal to Peaks won the Fan Favorite category. “On the heels of REDirect Skate and Surf, the Explore series certainly did not disappoint,” said RED Digital Cinema President Jarred Land. “Into Dust really captured the essence of REDirect—combining beautiful cinematography with powerful storytelling. Congratulations to him and every one of the contestants for their submissions.” The third annual REDirect contest celebrated the exploration of the…

Led by Wang Jianlin, Asia’s richest man, the Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group continues to expand their global film empire through a recent agreement to acquire Mtime, a Beijing-based film and media company, for $350 million. Mtime’s business also comprises film marketing and a rapidly growing e-commerce platform with an ability to target China’s growing movie merchandising sector This agreement follows a series of momentous moves being made by Wanda over the past year. In January, Wanda group purchased Legendary Entertainment for $3.5 billion, then also bought Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group, a European movie chain, for $1.2 billion in…

The competition for the Golden Shell at the latest edition of the San Sebastian Festival, running from September 16th to 24th, will have as its protagonists some of the most eye-catching moviemakers on the international panorama. Bertrand Bonello (‘Nocturama’), Fernando Guzzoni (‘Jesus’), Johannes Nyholm (‘Jätten’ ), William Oldroyd (‘Lady Macbeth’), Arnaud des Pallières (‘Orpheline’), Miles Joris-Peyrafitte (‘As You Are’) and Hong Sang-soo (‘Dangsinjasingwa dangsinui geot’ ) join the list of filmmakers whose works will compete in the Official Selection. Bonello will present ‘Nocturama’, a film which has generated great interest in both its director and its subject matter. The filmmaker from Nice won the…

Out of the 11 titles in competition representing 20 nationalities and including seven female directors, 10 of these films will be world premieres and seven of them will be first works. Long time independent sidebar to the Venice International Film Festival, Venice Days will run from August 31 to September 10. Spanning a great number of genres, the competition includes thrillers, ‘Hounds of Love’ from Ben Young, melodramas, ‘Indivisible’ by Edoardo De Angelis and ‘Pamilya Ordinaryo’ by Eduardo Roy, Jr.; a movie about immigration, ‘The Road to Mandalay’ helmed by Midi Z; a bio pic, ‘Sami Blood’ by Amanda Kernell; a western, ‘Guilty Men’…