TheGarden Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In this week's edition of Indie Roundup, we look back on a busy week for acquisitions, upcoming film awards, and two fests.

Deals. The Garden, nominated this year for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, was picked up by Oscilloscope and will be released to theaters in the spring and on DVD this summer, according to indieWIRE. Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, the film follows a long court battle to save the South Central Farm, a community produce garden that sprang up in the wake of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

With the unfortunate demise of New Yorker Films, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's critically-acclaimed Three Monkeys will now be distributed by Zeitgeist Films. The theatrical release planned for this month will be delayed to April.

Other films receiving deals, per indieWIRE, with distributor and release dates noted: Roger Spottiswoode's Shake Hands with the Devil (Regent Releasing, Summer 2009); Lee Isaac Chung's Munyurangabo (Film Movement, late May 2009); and John Walter's Theater of War (Alive Mind, April 2009)

Awards. What, you thought the Academy Awards had the final word? Still to come are the Cinema Eye Honors on Sunday, March 29. Given in celebration of nonfiction films and filmmakers, the nominees include cinematographers, editors, composers, and graphic designers.

Box Office. In its second week of release at a single theater in New York, Andrzej Wajda's historical drama Katyn increased its take, earning $14,206. That indicates strong word of mouth. "Katyn is the name of the forest where the Soviets secretly murdered 15,000 Polish officers, intellectuals and professionals over a 3-day period in 1940 (Wajda's father among them)," according to publicity materials for the film. Distributor Koch-Lorber Films has more information. The dramatic trailer is embedded below.

After the jump: A tale of two festivals: Tribeca and True/False.

For a lot of movie geeks, it's unnerving when the Oscar nominations are announced and there are films on the list that we haven't seen. (Except for the short-film categories, because no one's seen those.) This happens most regularly with documentaries, which often play only for a week or two at the local art house, if they play there at all.

On Jan. 8-10, Tribeca Cinemas in Manhattan will do its part to help this problem by screening six of the 15 docs that are on the shortlist for the Oscar nomination. The filmmakers, all of whom are alumni of the Tribeca Film Festival, will be on hand to present their work and participate in Q-and-A's. The event is sponsored by the Tribeca Film Institute and Gucci (because when you think of high-quality documentary filmmaking, you think of Gucci).

The films on the schedule are: At the Death House Door (about a prison chaplain who ministers to Death Row inmates), The Garden (about a community garden in South Central L.A.), I.O.U.S.A. (about America's debt problem), Man on Wire (about the crazy French guy who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers in 1974 -- this will probably win the Oscar), Pray the Devil Back to Hell (about Liberian women bringing peace to their country after years of warlords), and They Killed Sister Dorothy (about the murder of a Catholic nun and social activist in Brazil).

Full details on the screenings are here. If you're in the NYC area, this is a great opportunity not just to see the films (Man on Wire is out on DVD anyway), but to meet the filmmakers. Every now and then, the rest of us get envious of you NYC dwellers. Every now and then.

Each June, the American Film Institute convenes the Silverdocs Film Festival (they like to spell it in all caps, SILVERDOCS) in the Washington, DC suburbs. The festival, presented in partnership with the Discovery Channel, is actually a full-blown documentary conference, and it gives out sizable cash prizes to the winners of its awards. Cinematical missed the fest this year (though we did manage to notice their interesting choice to honor Spike Lee), but we figured we'd tell you about the results.

The grand prize for a US feature -- a handsome ten grand plus a lot of expensive film stock from Kodak -- went to Scott Hamilton Kennedy (2002's OT: Our Town) for The Garden. The movie told the story of the South Central Farm -- a 14-acre community garden that sprung up at the site of the 1992 LA Riots. Kennedy chronicles the farmers' battle with landlords, the city of Los Angeles, and the courts.