FilmFestival Week NYC

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 11 November 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

Film Festival Week - NYC screens November 17 - 24, 2011 at the Quad Theatre in Manhattan, New York City.

Film Festival Week showcases a catchall of independent works, including features, shorts, documentaries, webisodes, TV content, music videos and animations from all over the world.

Some 25 countries will be represented, including:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• India
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Kosovo
• Malta
• Mexico
• Mongolia
• Nepal
• Russia
• South Africa
• Sweden
• Switzerland 
• Turkey
• UK

Some of the documentaries screening are:

Wild Horses & Renegades
dir. James Anaquand Kleinert
The old expression "wild horses can‛t drag me..." is turned on its head as the wild horses themselves are now being dragged away to removal and slaughter from public lands of Disappointment Valley, Colorado and the American West. Interviews abound as a wide range of advocates weigh in, from scientific experts, wild horse owners and animal rights activists to celebrities, such as Viggo Mortensen, Daryl Hannah, Sheryl Crow and Willie Nelson.

Child of Giants: My Journey with Maynard Dixon and Dorothea Lange
dir. Tom Ropelewski
A profile of Daniel Rhodes Dixon, the son of two icons of the American art world: photographer Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and painter of the Southwest landscape, Maynard Dixon (1875-1946).

Finding Shangri-La
dir. Ted Vaill
James Hilton‛s 1933 novel Lost Horizon. Frank Capra's 1937 film. Is there a real Shangri-La? This film proves there is, and it is as beautiful as Hilton described it.

Grace Paley: Collected Shorts
dir. Lilly Rivlin
This is an intimate portrait of the iconic New York writer/activist "whose frank and brilliant stories celebrating the daily lives of women are classics of American literature."

Some narrative films are:

Five Minarets in New York
dir. Mahsun Kirmizigül (USA/Turkey)
starring Haluk Bilginer, Danny Glover, Gina Gershon, Robert Patrick
This film examines the conditions of present day Turkey, as two Turkish agents are assigned to bring back a terrorist leader from New York City.

The Stalker
dir. Martin Kemp
starring Jane March, Colin Salmon, Bill Murray
A writer struggling with her second novel is terrorized by a homicidal personal assistant.

Dogs Lie
dir. Richard Atkinson
starring Arnie Mazer, Frank Boyd, Gita Reddy, Ken Anderson, Roya Shanks, Samrat Chackrabarti
Patients and clinicians in "a night of monitoring and observation at a luxury New York sleep clinic."

Deep Blue Breath
dir. Patricia Cardoso
starring Clayton Beabout, Sean Astin, Miguel Sandoval, Natasha Gregson Wagner, Ernie Hudson
A live action/animated story about a boy who travels within his own body into an animated world while under anesthesia.

For more information, go to www.ticketweb.com and type in "Quad".

Film Festival Week - NYC
November 17 - 24, 2011

Quad Cinema
34 West 13th Street
New York City

Margaret Mead's Festival in the Digital Age

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Saturday, 05 November 2011 05:00

Written by Lynne Shannon

The 35th Annual Margaret Mead Film Festival is being held November 10 - 13, 2011 at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York City.

Originally known as the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, this is the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States.

The festival was intended not only to give a voice to those who had not had the attention of the world, but also for filmmakers who wanted to make a difference by telling their stories and exposing their own experiences.

Says Ariella Ben-Dov, the Festival‛s creative director, "Every year the Mead Festival introduces audiences to cultures and communities that might otherwise be inaccessible. With filmmakers present at the screenings, the films spotlight the struggle to preserve traditions and cultures against great odds."

One of the highlights is the 35th Anniversary Retrospective, a "celebration of the festival’s most influential features over the past three decades".

Over the years, the topics have ranged from the endangerment of micro-cultures by the onset of progress to overlooked historic footnotes as the experience of European Gypsies during the Holocaust (Porraimos), and to current matters such as a stark look at our food supply (The Future of Food).

The Retrospective presents the following films:

• Trance and Dance in Bali by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead (1952)
• Les Maitres Fous / The Mad Masters by Jean Rouch (1955)
• N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman by John Marshall, Adrienne Miesmer and Sue Cabezas (1980)
• Jero on Jero: A Balinese Trance Séance Observed by Linda Connor, Patsy Asch, Timothy Asch (1980)
• A Wife Among Wives, from David and Judith MacDougall‛s Turkana Conversations Trilogy (1982)
• Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance by Alanis Obomsawin (1993)

The Opening Night film is the New York premiere of Grande Hotel, directed by Lotte Stoops. Located in the West African seaside town of Beira, Mozambique, the once-luxurious hotel is now the haven of thousands of squatters.

The Closing Night film is Flames of God, directed by Meshakai Wolf. The film follows Romani songwriter and poet Muzafer Bislim on his journey from Macedonia to France for the International Biennial of Poets in Paris.

This year, the Mead Festival also presents Dreams of Outer Space, a film series about the human quest to conquer space.

A fitting addition, as this is Native American Heritage Month, is a screening of Skydancer, directed by Katja Esson. The film tells the story behind the iconic Charles C. Ebbets photograph "Lunch atop a Skyscraper," as told by descendants of some of the ironworkers, Native Americans of the Mohawk tribe from Akwesasne Reservation.

Following the screening there will be a live performance by Mohawk musicians Bear Fox and Katsitsionni Fox, along with the film's composer, Robby Baier.

Some of the other films are:

To the Light
directed by Yuanchen Liu
For many families in China, "coal mining has become a principal source of income and the only alternative to factory jobs in distant cities" despite serious, even fatally dangerous conditions.

Memoirs of a Plague
directed by Robert Nugent
The film follows entomologists and sage locals as they track locust invasions in Ethiopia, Egypt and Australia.

Jaguar
directed by Jean Rouch (1967)
The film chronicles the journey of three Nigerian men to Ghana‛s Gold Coast in 1953 in search of a better life. Since the film predates portable sound-sync, Rouch reassembled the film 10 years later and asked the three travelers to add their own narration.

A few films over the years have gone on to receive Academy Award nominations, but that is not the real focus here. This Festival is more hopeful of taking viewers from how-interesting to "What can I do?"

And nowadays, that question has a lot of answers.

For more information, visit www.amnh.org/programs/mead/2011.

Margaret Mead Film Festival
November 10 - 13, 2011

American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 77th Street
New York City
212-769-5100

HDFEST New York Saw the Future - It's Now

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Friday, 04 November 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

The 2011 edition of HDFEST New York is taking place November 9 - 10, 2011 at Sony Wonder Technology Lab in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.

Back in 2000, HDFEST foresaw the future of film and entertainment as going high-definition and digital to a degree few others believed at the time.

"HDFEST is digital democracy in action. High-Def has the potential to level the playing field between the big budgets and the indies more than any other technological breakthrough since digital video, and perhaps, ultimately even much more."

And we see this proliferating today.

The Opening Night film is the documentary feature from Australia, Last Stand at Nymboida, directed by Jeff Bird who co-wrote with Paddy Gorman. The film recounts the rebellion of a band of tough coal miners in Australia‛s most dangerous coal mine when they were faced wtih losing their jobs in 1975. The director is expected to attend.

Also screening:

Beatboxing-The Fifth Element of Hip-Hop
dir. Klaus Schneyder
In the late 1970s a youth culture emerged from disadvantaged neighborhoods of New York. It combined graffiti writing, DJing, break dancing and rapping, with the musical side flavored by "Beatboxing". The result of poverty and lack of instruments was one pioneering artist‛s idea to imitate drum rhythms with his mouth, coining the term "Human Beatbox". (A prime example of this ability is the actor Michael Winslow.)

Two series of short films include:

• Quirk of Fate
• Purple Flowers
• A Russian Elephant in the Room
• Missing Elizabeth
• Duet
• Dust Machine
• Perhaps Tomorrow
• Cookie
• Departures
• Passing Through
• A Musing
• Helen's Ducks

Also included are animation, experimental and music videos:

• Ivan – music video with vocalist Leika Mochan as vegetables in her kitchen take on lives of their own
• Rosewell – the rock band‛s music video, the first in Chile to use a 3D motion capture technique
• Chapel Song – music video for lovers
• Guovssahasa Nieida / Dancing Virgin – experimental dance film
• Ad Infinitum – an experimental film as "sculptural continuum" as it shifts between 3D and 2D designs
• Triboluminescence – an experimental "impression of constant movement and a seamless unfolding of glowing abstract forms"
• Hot Velcro Action – short film about the wonders of Velcro
• Place Stamp Here – animated short film about a girl and a black dog
• 8 Second Dance – a short film made by 12 students of Digital Animation Center

For more information, go to hdfest.com/hdfestnewyork2011.htm

HDFEST New York
November 9 - 10, 2011

Sony Wonder Technology Lab
Sony Plaza Public Arcade
56th Street & Madison Avenue
New York City