2023 New York International Children’s Film Festival: Tales of Joy, Bravery & Growth

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 09 February 2023 18:06

Written by Brad Balfour

Totem

New York’s premiere fest for children of all ages, the New York International Children’s Film Festival, is back again, running March 3 to the 19th. Held at theaters across NYC (SVA Theatre, Film Forum, DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema, Scandinavia House, Sag Harbor Cinema, and Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn), the festival has been bringing quality and thought provoking films for younger movie goers since 1997. This year’s festival includes films from the US, Japan, Colombia, South Korea, France, Canada, Netherlands and more.

The festival features an extensive slate of animated films, including shorts such as Fur, directed by Madeleine Homan, in which a girl attempts to understand and comfort her sister after gray fur covers her body, making her feel miles away even as they sit right next to each other. For fans of vintage animation there’s 1972’s Panda! Go Panda!, directed by the legendary Isao Takahata (Only Yesterday, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya).

Also included are live action films and shorts such as Okthanksbye, directed by Nicole van Kilsdonk, a coming of age story in which two girls —one with a cochlear implant and one without—, make a trek by themselves across the French countryside to visit a hospitalized grandmother. In Totem, directed by Sander Burger, eleven-year-old Ama loves the water, and not only because she’s surrounded by the Rotterdam waterfront. She’s also a passionate swimmer, spending every spare minute in the pool training for the upcoming championships with her best friend, Thijs. Though she’s the daughter of Senegalese asylum-seekers, Ama feels Dutch, through and through. So it’s all the more unthinkable when her family members are unexpectedly detained, leaving Ama to find a solution. Harnessing the focus she learned in swim training and armed with the wisdom of her mother’s tales of their homeland, she must forge a path of her own. Fortunately, a gigantic spirit animal rooted in Senegalese tradition might just be of service.

The festival continues its annual Industry Forum “Toward an Inclusive Future,” which brings together creators at all stages of their careers to discuss children’s media on all sides of the camera. New this year is “NYICFF in Your Neighborhood,” free presentations of a NYICFF short film program for ages 3-8 taking place at venues citywide.

To learn more, go to: https://nyicff.org/

New York International Children’s Film Festival
March 3 - 19, 2023

Various venues in NYC

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023: Cinema Around the World in the Netherlands

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 13 January 2023 16:24

Written by Brad Balfour

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) returns to The Netherlands, running January 25 to February 5, 2023. The festival is replete with features, shorts, documentaries, workshops, and more. IFFR opens with Munch, a biopic of painter Edvard Munch from  Norwegian maverick auteur Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken. In this film the painter of The Scream is played by different actors, in order to portray the many sides of Munch: that of a deliberate outsider, sexual adventurer, freethinker, genius and more. The festival closes with All India Rank from director Varun Grover, which looks at oppression, everyday corruption and the middle class’ chronic inability to communicate. This film is also part of the Bright Future program, which looks at bold new directors and debut films. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, based on the novel by Haruki Murakami, and directed by Pierre Földes, sketches the lives of three Tokyo residents thrown into a whirlpool of anxiety and introspection following the 2011 earthquake in eastern Japan. The film is preluded by a lecture by one of the best lecturers of Erasmus University Prof. Sanneke de Haan

The Short Film Marathon challenges you to a six hour block of short films, while those of you who are single and/or ready to mingle can go to IFFR Blind Date, where the festival will set you up with a mystery partner. This year the IFFR introduces Art Directions: a multi-disciplinary section that expands the realm of cinema to installations, Immersive Media and live audio-visual performances. Alongside the IFFR-commissioned Steve McQueen artwork Sunshine State presented in collaboration with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Art Directions programme presents installations, its sound//vision programme of audio-visual performances at WORM, and a lineup of Immersive Media.

To learn more, go to: https://iffr.com/en

January 25 - February 5, 2023

Various Venues
Rotterdam, The Netherlands

MoMI's Curators’ Choice Series Looks at the Year in Cinema & TV

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Thursday, 08 December 2022 11:02

Written by Brad Balfour

Irma Vep

The Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35th Ave, Queens, NY) is back with its annual survey of some of the best films and television of the year with its Curators’ Choice series.  Organized by Curator of Film Eric Hynes and Associate Curator of Film Edo Choi, Curators’ Choice focuses on shows and films that either debuted for broadcast or premiered theatrically during the calendar year 2022. The series encompasses narrative film, documentaries, and series from around the world that reflect the strange and changing attitudes of 2022.

Works being screened include We Met In Virtual Reality, which was shot entirely within VR games and explores long distance relationships formed within these virtual spaces.

The series Irma Vep  from director Olivier Assayas is a continuation of his 1996 film of the same name. Now starring Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander as a Hollywood star cast as the lead of the same inexplicable but heartfelt project, and Vincent Macaigne taking over for the original film’s Jean-Pierre Léaud as the director, who slowly loses it over the course of shooting. 

The Croatian film Murina, directed by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, which won the Camera d’Or (Best First Feature) at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, is a serrated-edge, sexually charged coming-of-age tale set in scenic coastal Croatia. Amidst clashes with her oppressive father and impassive mother, restless Julija seeks liberation from their isolated existence when a visit from an old family friend creates overlapping waves of greed, jealousy, desire, and rage. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, the film features gorgeous camerawork by Hélène Louvart (The Lost Daughter, Happy as Lazzaro). 

The series closing includes a screening of Steven Spielberg’s coming of age journey through cinema, The Fablemans, with an in person appearance by actor Paul Dano.

To learn more, go to: https://movingimage.us/series/curators-choice-2022/

Curators’ Choice 2022
December 9, 2022 -  January 21, 2023

Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Ave.
Queens, NY 11106