film festivals Tagged Articles at Cinematical

It all started in Venice in 1932 – the world's first film festival. Then other festivals began popping up for a variety of reasons, some political, given the growingly fascist government in Italy: Cannes in 1946, Edinburgh in 1947, Berlin in 1951, and so on, until the present day, when a journalist can spend a decent portion of the year (and salary) covering Sundance, the Toronto Film Festival, Telluride, South by Southwest, Fantastic Fest, New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, CineVegas, and, more recently, San Diego Comic-Con, just to name as a few, as well as the aforementioned international festivals if they're really lucky.

As time has passed, the fests have become more than venues for movie buyers and sellers to haggle over movies or arbiters of taste in the finest of arthouse flicks. Along the way, critics and journalists have gotten into the festival circuit, which is a win-win for the movies and the writers; small films get the buzz that's sometimes a good push for them to get picked up by distributors, and the writers get access to films before they get hot, making them tastemakers and generally ahead of the curve when it comes to Oscar season, film trends, and insider-y scoops that can only occur when you find yourself sharing an elevator with a Weinstein. Festivals can be great litmus tests for movies that take forever to get picked up – you can pretty much guarantee they're gonna be a stinker by the time they arrive in theaters for a weekend and disappear after that.

I haven't even finished all of my Fantastic Fest work yet (expect a semi-large wrap-up real soon), but my inbox has been flooded with new reports from three other genre festivals. And since I love this stuff, I figured I'd throw 'em all into one handy section. Let's begin reverse-chronologically, shall we?

Beginning on October 17 is the small-but-powerful Toronto After Dark festival (October 17 - 24), which aims to fill a post-TIFF void while Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes and his staff take a well-earned vacation. I shan't be able to attend this fine-looking event, but the final slate just came in -- and I can definitely vouch for titles like the brilliant Let the Right On, the amusingly bizarre South of Heaven, the splatterific Tokyo Gore Police, and the stylishly nasty Donkey Punch. Among those "ooh, I wanna see that" titles we have Kevin Tenney's Brain Dead, the comedy horror Netherbeast Incorporated, and I Sell the Dead, which stars Ron Perlman, Dominic Monaghan, Larry Fessenden AND Angus Scrimm. Cool. For more info on Toronto After Dark, click right here.

After the jump: More geeky droolings on L.A. Screamfest and the biggie: SITGES!

A couple hours north of New York City is a small town you may have heard of before: Woodstock. Its place in music history is secure, and it's home to a rather impressive film festival, too, running Oct. 10-14 this year. The opening and closing films were announced a few weeks ago -- Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to kick things off, Todd Haynes' I'm Not There to wrap things up -- and now the full schedule shows that there's a lot of great stuff in between as well.

Considering the fest only runs four days (Oct. 10 is just a kick-off party), they've filled it with a surprising number of films: 23 narrative features, 28 documentaries, and 58 shorts. Some of the notable entries:

Narrative: Mary Stuart Masterson's directorial debut, The Cake Eaters; the rotoscoped Chicago 10, about the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which was Sundance's opening night film this year; Grace Is Gone, already earning Oscar buzz for John Cusack's performance as an Iraq War widower; and Terry George's Reservation Road.

Documentary: Festival-circuit favorite Billy the Kid, about an emotionally troubled teenager; Chasin' Gus' Ghost, about the history of jug band music; "Peanuts" profile Good Ol' Charles Schulz; rock doc Joe Strummer: The Future Is Written; the touching Holocaust love story Steal a Pencil for Me; and Super High Me, in which comedian Doug Benson stays sober for 30 days and then spends another month smoking pot every day.

Looks like a great fest, and it's in a beautiful part of the country. For all the details on the Woodstock Film Festival, visit their website.

One of my dreams for when I'm a millionaire is to spend a year crisscrossing the globe, just traveling from one film festival after another. I've already got the major ones lined up: Sundance in January, South By Southwest in March, Tribeca in April, Cannes in May, Toronto in September; the rest of the slots are still to be determined. I bet if you had unlimited resources, you could literally spend every day of the year at some film festival somewhere.

Well, the helpful folks at Variety have got my back. In Monday's issue, they have an article called 50 Unmissable Film Festivals, and it reads like a wish list for avid film lovers. They list the "Big Five" -- Berlin, Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, and Venice -- right off, then list the rest alphabetically, from Adelaide to Warsaw.

Some of the ones you'd expect to see are on the list. South By Southwest, Telluride, AFI, CineVegas. And then there are others, mostly foreign fests, that I'd never heard of. And I am intrigued!

Camerimage, held in Lodz, Poland, is where "cinematographers are given the rock-star treatment"! What about Courmayeur Noir, at the foot of the Italian Alps, where the focus is mysteries, horror, and suspense films? I've never been to Iran, and can't imagine ever going -- so perhaps my future millionaire self, flanked by dozens of bodyguards, will visit some February for the Fajr Film Fest.

From Guadalajara to Eastern Europe to Seoul to Nantucket (I once knew a man from there!), there's a cool-looking film festival in just about every corner of the world. If you love movies and traveling, check out Variety's list and feel jealous about what you're missing.

Earlier this year, Jette Kernion and I covered the inaugural year of the AFI Dallas Film Festival. I was quite impressed with the job the AFI Dallas team did in pulling the fest together; they had a pretty solid lineup, especially for their first year. It takes a while to shake out all those kinks, but the staff was knowledgable and enthusiastic, the press office was organized and helpful, and overall they did a solid job. But, the work of a film fest staff is never done, and so, just a few months after the first fest ended, AFI Dallas is already making plans for 2008, and I'm pretty pumped to see what they do with it -- especially now that I'm living in Oklahoma City, just a three-hour drive from Dallas.

Says the fest's senior programmer James Faust (a super-nice guy who, I swear, must have had a cloning machine hidden in the fest office somewhere, because I saw him introduce countless screenings at both main venues), "After a stellar first year, we hope to expand our programming to include more film education, more music, increase our international film content, stretch the imagination with new and amazing animation, and continue to showcase that great Texas hospitality to all of our filmmakers and festival goers."

The expanded programming will be featured in categories including World Cinema, Dallas Premiere Series, Deep Ellum Sounds (that one will focus on music and honors the culture of Dallas' artsy Deep Ellum neighborhood), Mavericks (aka, those films that make you go, "hmm ...."), Family Friendly (self-explanatory), American Visions, and Midnight Specials (those are always a nice break from the more serious fest fare).

Last year's fest had 194 films; this year they're aiming for 225, so all you filmmakers out there itching to get your film into a fest, it's time to shake a leg and submit your film to AFI Dallas. The early deadline (with reduced fees!) is October 26, final deadline is December 7, with decisions announced no later than February 27, 2008. More info is available at the official AFI Dallas website.

The event I'm most anticipating in 2007 is, sadly, not the opening of Spider-Man 3. No, what I'm most looking forward to is the 57th Berlin International Film Festival -- mainly, because I'll be traveling to Germany in order to cover the fest for Cinematical. Not only am I stoked to return to Berlin -- a city I absolutely adore -- but I'll also have a chance to bring a big taste of the fest back to you, the reader, while you lounge about your living room in that adorable pair of pajamas grandma bought you for Christmas.

One of the ultra cool aspects of Berlinale is its Talent Campus, a program which invites young aspiring filmmakers from all over the world to take part in a series of workshops, lectures and screenings dedicated to their particular craft, be it directing, screenwriting, composing, etc ... This year, however, the Campus is introducing a new Garage Flick project, as part of The Garage Studio, where Campus participants will get the chance to produce one digital short film per day, only to watch it be instantaneously uploaded online and available to watch via the Campus website, as well as on iTunes (Apple is an official sponsor of the project).

The Garage Flick project will take place over the course of five days, beginning February 10 and concluding on February 15, the final day of the Berlinale Talent Campus. And, on that final day, all of the Garage Flicks will be showcased on the big screen for the public. Fear not Cinematical fanatics, yours truly will try his best to get in there and attempt to cover some of the behind-the-scenes action, bringing you that much closer to this unique and spirited program.

A trio of insanely great series recently started in New York City, once again displaying the cultural embarrassment of riches with which those of us lucky enough to live here grapple on a daily basis (I'm not complaining, trust me).

Friday saw the opening of Summer Swashbucklers at Manhattan's Film Forum, a series of 30 pirate and adventure films -- most made between 1920 and 1950 -- that will unspool over the next three weeks, many of them in double features. Among the films in the series are such Errol Flynn classics as Captain Blood (his first starring role, in which he displays a surprising knack for screwball humor) and The Adventures of Robin Hood, the elder Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro and The Three Musketeers, and Gunga Din, starring the junior Fairbanks and Cary Grant.

Meanwhile, over in Brooklyn, the BAM Cinematek has put together two truly magnificent series that will run concurrently though the month of August. The first half of each week features the work of controversial American master Sam Peckinpah, from the shocking Straw Dogs (that one's showing Tuesday the 15th -- go see it, if you haven't) to the Steve McQueen starrers The Getaway and Junior Bonner. Then, from Thursday to Sunday each week, the theater is given over to a series called Leading Men of French Cinema. As you might expect, the films showcase the work of a wide range of French stars, in films that are equally diverse. Highlights of the series include Purple Noon, Rene Clement's 1960 version of The Talented Mr. Ripley (starring Alain Delon at his most impossibly beautiful), Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (starring the wonderful Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Les tontons flingueurs, which stars Lino Ventura, a wrestler who transformed himself during the 1960s into an unexpectedly appealing screen presence.

While September is sure to bring good series of its own, these are all well worth sweating on a subway platform to see.

During Sundance we reviewed Forgiving the Franklins and brought you an interview with the full cast. Now, just in time for South by Southwest (SXSW), we bring you at long last this video interview with director Jay Floyd and producer Rob Houk.  Jay talks about his motivations for making the film and how he feels about it being labeled "controversial". You can catch Forgiving the Franklins at SXSW this Friday, March 10 and Tuesday, March 14.

Watch the video.