Today the sixth Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA) (www.indianfilmfestival.org) announced the winners of last weeks 2008 program. “Amal”, a film by director Richie Mehta, was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature. Mehta’s film tells the story of Amal, an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi whose life changes drastically after he unexpectedly inherits a great deal of wealth. Shivajee Chandrabhushan’s “Frozen” received a Special Mention in the Best Narrative Feature category. Yunus Vally’s “The Glow of White Women” was named as the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary with Liz…
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The struggles of the Karen people, an ethnic minority that has for years faced severe repression in Burma, is explored in a new documentary being released by Choices Video, “Prayer of Peace: Relief and Resistance in Burma’s War Zones”. The Karen people have been forcibly and systematically removed from their homes since 1962, when they opposed a coup by the Burmese Army that saw the end of democratic rule. Many have accused the Burmese Army of ethnic cleansing. The conflict between carried out by the Burmese Army against the Karen continues, leaving thousands of Karen refugees in its wake. “Prayer…
Gearing up for next month’s festival, today the Bosnian-Herzogovinian film festival (BHFF) (http://www.bhffnyc.org/) announced the films included as official selections for the 2008 program. When it kicks off next month in New York City, the 2008 BHFF will include ten short, feature and documentary films that showcase work from the best in contemporary Bosnian-Herzegovinian cinema. In its fifth year, the BHFF has become one of the most important platforms for emerging cinema from the region, giving the largely unknown Bosnian-Herzegovinian cinema exposure to American audiences. The BHFF will take place on May 9th and 10th at the Tribeca Cinemas, where…
The Tribeca Film Festival today announced the winners of the fifth annual Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards. Tribeca All Access (TAA), is a program designed to help foster relationships between film industry executives and filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities.The winners were selected from 31 eligible projects on the strength of their vision and filmmaking promise. The TAA Creative Promise Award comes with a prize of $12,000 for narrative, documentary, and emerging narrative and $8,500 for screenwriting. All of the filmmakers participating in the program have scripts or documentary proposals for which they are seeking funding and/or representation. The Four…
Women Make Movies (WMM) (www.wmm.com), the independent production and Distribution Company focusing on films about women, has announced this week the release of “My Daughter The Terrorist”, a documentary that tackles the subject of female members of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Directed by Norwegian filmmaker Beate Arnestad, “My Daugher The Terrorist”was released in Norway in 2007. Since then the film has gone on to compete in a number of prominent international film festivals, including the South by Southwest Film Festival and the Ukranian International Film Festival. The film has garnered international praise, and was named Best Feature Length…
Today at a press conference in Paris, Giles Jacob, the Cannes Film Festival president, and general manager Thierry Fremaux announced the slate of films that will be included in the official selection when the 61st annual festival begins next month. In the lineup are a number of excellent foreign filmmakers, and a few big name Hollywood directors, including Clint Eastwood with “Changeling”, a period mystery staring Angelina Jolie, and Steven Soderbergh, whose biopic, “Che”, stars Benicio Del Toro as the iconic Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The official lineup as follows:CompetitionNuri Bilge Ceylan – Three Monkeys (Turkey-France-Italy) Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne -…
Starting next Wednesday, April 30th, Los Angeles will be the site for the annual Southeast European Film Festival. Challenging clichés about Southeast Europe, the festival intends to promote understanding about the various cultures and societies that comprise the territory also known as the Balkans. On April 30th the Festival will kick things off at the Goethe Institute in LA with two films focusing on a theme of legacies of the past. On that night a Romanian film, “Cold Waves”, will simultaneously get its United States premier and open the festival. Directed by Alexandru Solomon, the film provides a snapshot of…
The rights to Nina Gilden Seavey’s Award winning documentary, “The Matador” were this week acquired by the independent studio, City Lights Pictures. Nina Gilden Seavey’s film, which had its world premier at this years South by SouthWest Film Festival, documents photographer David Fandila’s journey throughout Spain and Latin America over the course of three years to become the world’s top-ranked bullfighter. Fandila struggles to secure his place in the pantheon of Spain’s greatest bullfighters. He is determined to succeed and reveals why bullfighting is called “the most dramatic profession on earth.” “City Lights is honored to be releasing such a…
Film Movement (www.filmmovement.com), a distributor of independent and foreign films, announced today that Mexican filmmaker Francisco Vargas’ acclaimed 2005 film, “The Violin”, will be released on Home Video and DVD on May 27th. “The Violin” has been a favorite of the international festival circuit since it was first released in 2005. Mr. Vargas’ film has won numerous awards at the top international festivals, including the Best Actor Un Certain Regard at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival for Angel Tavira, who stars in the film. In telling the tale of Don Plutarco (Angel Tavira), his son Genaro (Gerardo Taracena) and his…
Today the Sundance Institute announced that filmmakers John Morgan and Meg LeFauve have received the Maryland Filmmakers Fellowship to help make their feature film, “The Cavanaughs”. The annual fellowship will provide the filmmakers with a $10,000 grant for advanced development and pre-production of their film. Created in 1993 by the independent producer Jed Dietz, the Maryland Filmmakers Fellowship was initiated as a way to promote the state as an ideal location for filmmaking. “The generous support of the Maryland Filmmakers Fellowship will have a real impact in providing Meg and John, the filmmakers, with the resources they need to move…