Cannes '12: Cinema and Controversy

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 23:23

Written by Marian Masone

With all the film festivals that populate the yearly calendar (you’ve read about most of them here), the Festival de Cannes is the most well known. Mention the word “Cannes” to anyone in the field, and they know you are not talking about the lovely seaside town on the Rivera.

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YouTube and Ridley Scott Search for World’s Finest Filmmakers

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 15 May 2012 14:46

Written by Renzo Adler

YouTube has cast out a net searching for an aspiring film makers looking to produce something truly great and new in their Your Film Festival contest. Incredibly simple in its design, all one has to do is submit a 15 minute story-driven video. It can be any genre, it can be a tv-pilot, it can be anything as long as it’s 15 minutes, on video, and is story driven. There is no entry fee to submit a film.

After submissions are whittled down to 50 semifinalists, audiences from around the world will cast their votes on YoutTube for the best works from June 1st to July 13th.

Ten finalists will be flown to Italy, where their work will screen at the 69th Venice International Film Festival in August. A grand prize winner will then be named by a special jury, including acclaimed actor Michael Fassbender, and awarded a $500,000 YouTube original production grant to work with Scott Free Productions, ultimately creating a brand new work for the world to see. 

Spokespeople for the festival are Ridley Scott and Michael Fassbender, who are also partners with YouTube in the competition. Scott’s involvement with YouTube is a continuation of YouTube's alliance with Scott Free Productions (formed by brothers Ridley and Tony Scott) and the crowd-sourced documentary Ridley produced in 2010, Life in a Day, which was comprised entirely of user submitted clips from YouTube.

While Google’s privacy practices has led to company being under intense public scrutiny lately, YouTube tries to maintain its own image of egalitarianism, in its approach to wooing aspiring filmmakers and providing open forum for the arts. It will be interesting to see how this competition can help foster the new breed of filmmaker as more and more artists, animators, and story-tellers use the internet as their primary means of reaching the public.

Also, the presence of Fassbender has me wondering if Prometheus will include a scene with his android character talking about how neato YouTube is.

For more information, go to https://sites.google.com/site/yourfilmfestival/ or http://www.youtube.com/yourfilmfestival

2012 New York Indian Film Festival: 100 Years of Indian Cinema

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 11 May 2012 23:55

Written by Laura Blum

Spicy ingredients, vivid colors, complex chemistry -- Indian cinema is known as masala for the mind and, like the turmeric blend, it can be every bit as therapeutic.

The 2012 New York Indian Film Festival has double cause for feasting: this year marks its 12th anniversary, and Indian cinema turns 100. Presented by the Indo-American Arts Council, NYIFF is the longest-running movie showcase of Indian and South Asian film in the U.S.

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