This year marks the 13th annual Filmmakers Alliance VisionFest event, celebrating the best of Los Angeles's independent film community on August 27th, 2010.

The highly anticipated and popular evening-long gala begins at 8PM with the presentation of the Nilsson Award, honoring "bold, direct, honest and aesthetically challenging filmmaking that is often unrecognized by the mainstream independent film community" to Armenian filmmaker Harutyun Khachatryan.

Following will be the presentation of this year's Vision Award, celebrating an established filmmaker "whose artistic ambition and consistent filmmaking excellence provides artistic inspiration to emerging filmmakers all around the world."

Past recipients of the Vision Award include Mike Figgis, Terry Gilliam, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog, and Kevin Smith. This year's recipient, Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, has been making films for 15 years and is best known for the Pusher trilogy.

Also presented at the VisionFest each year is The Los Angeles Short Filmmaking Grant, which provides the winning short screenplay with film, cameras, and processing support. The evening will also be punctuated with screenings of recent short films and previews.

Tickets are $25 and available at Eventbrite. For more information, visit filmmakersalliance.org

VisionFest 2010
August 27th at 8PM
Downtown Independent Theater
251 S. Main St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Mexico is no stranger to violence. And sadly, "feminocidio" in border town Juárez has serialized images of marred women on national news. But it remains to be seen how Mexican filmgoers will stomach the fiendish sex play lensed with auteurist naturalism in Leap Year/Año bisiesto when the film opens in domestic theaters September 24.

Here at the 2nd Chihuahua City International Film Festival -- in the capital city of the same state as Juarez -- Michael Rowe's first go at directing a feature has ignited fiery debates. Exploring the carnal abyss during February of a leap year, the Australian-born filmmaker eyes his adoptive culture with the distance needed to vault taboos.  

Some hail Leap Year as the nerviest entry in Mexico's New Wave of sacrificial eroticism let loose by Carlos Reygadas (Battle in Heaven, Japón). Others dismiss it as a frontal assault on morality and the senses; some 15 of the latter fled Festival venue Cinépolis half-way through the August 20 screening.