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Previews
South by Southwest 2011 - A Short Intro
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 08 March 2011 14:59
- Written by Eric Lurio
The South By Southwest Festival and Conference is the Texan version of the Sundance Film Festival. Taking place in the state capitol of Austin -- also known as the “Live Music Capitol of the World" -- SxSW is a combination of a street fair, technical conference, film festival, and rock concert and general strangeness, that is intended to show the World that there’s more to the Lone Star State than a bunch of right-wing yahoos, oil fields, and desert.
Packed within a 42 square block area bounded by Cesar Chavez St, Congress Ave, 11th St. and Interstate 35, there’s dozens and dozens of bars and restaurants, and a few movie theaters, which makes for ten solid days of intense partying.
The focus of the event is the Convention Center, where musicians and techno-geeks gather for what the place was built for: Conventions. It’s all about video games and networking , while outside on Sixth Street, there’s a non-stop party going on. That’s not to say that it isn’t that way the rest of the year, (Sixth Street is notorious for that), it’s just not half as intense as during SxSW.
The film festival has three main venues: the Alamo Drafthouse (which is on Sixth Street and serves food and drink), and the Paramount, a lovely old movie palace on Congress Avenue, which has been remarkably preserved. There are also half a dozen other venues, some of which are in walking distance of the convention center and some of which aren’t.
It’s all going to be very intense.
Women + Film VOICES Film Festival
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 08 March 2011 04:19
- Written by L E Shannon
The Women + Film VOICES Film Festival is running March 8 - 13, 2011 at at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax, in 
Denver, Colorado. This brand new festival is being launched, fittingly, on the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day.
The Women + Film VOICES Film Festival showcases thought-provoking, inspirational stories of women from around the world. Each film will have a VOICES host -- a woman personally involved with the film or a Denver community leader -- to introduce the film and lead a post-film Q&A discussion.
Maverick is the Word at Cinequest
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Wednesday, 02 March 2011 03:51
- Written by L E Shannon
The Cinequest Film Festival is running March 1-13, 2011 in San Jose, California - the heart of Silicon Valley.
The Opening Night film is John Turturro's acclaimed Italian music documentary Passione, a spectacular and beautiful love poem to the city of Naples—a city of music, of culture and most of all, its extraordinary people. Passione combines archival footage with musical numbers of all kinds, including such masters as Sergio Bruni, Massimo Ranieri and Renata Carasonni and contemporary artists like the M’Barka Ben Taleb and James Senese.
Turturro is also this year's recipient of Cinequest's coveted Maverick Spirit Award, which "recognizes visionaries who truly capture the essence of the Maverick by entertaining and inspiring audiences through evocative means."
The Closing Night film is Sean McNamara's highly anticipated inspiring true story Soul Surfer, the story of Bethany Hamilton, who fought to return to surfing after losing an arm in a shark attack at age 13. With AnnaSophia Robb, Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt, Carrie Underwood (in her feature film debut).
Rendez-vous with French Cinema 2011
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- Parent Category: Film Festivals
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 01 March 2011 05:00
- Written by James Van Maanen
Rendez-vous with French Cinema runs March 2 - 13, 2011 at four venues: Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, the IFC Center, Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek, and on opening night at Manhattan’s fabled Paris Theater.
Here it comes again: one of cinema’s prime times of the year, when Francophiles gather to partake of some of the best French films of the last twelve-or-so months. This year's roster shapes up certainly as good as those of past years. Which says quite a lot.
As some of these films will be opening commercially in the weeks and months to come (e.g., Nannerl, Mozart's Sister), for now I will simply give you enough information, I hope, to intrigue you into looking further -- or, in a few cases, not.
