Abu Dhabi Film Festival 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 04 October 2011 22:20

Written by Adrienne Kehn

Humor to horror, Hollywood to Bollywood, heart-pounding blockbusters to heart-breaking romances –- audiences in the United Arab Emirates (UAE)  have access to a remarkable diversity of film choices.

So what makes the Abu Dhabi Film Festival held October 13-22, special?

Here are several factors that makes this film festival experience so exciting.

ADFF also pays special attention to developments in Arab cinema, fostering the region’s distinctive film culture and celebrating its achievements with a global audience. This year, nearly half of the Festival’s program of short and feature-length films is from the Arab world, providing local audiences the chance to explore and understand what is exciting and distinctive about Arab film culture.

Then there’s the advantage of access: Filmmakers attend nearly every screening during the 10-day Festival and take questions from the audience at special post-screening Q&A sessions. And be on the lookout for movie stars from the Arab world and beyond who attend screenings and participate in the Festival’s special events.

Film festivals are renowned for the excitement percolating around the red carpet, and ADFF is no exception with celebrities, camera-toting press, eager fans and all the glamor you’d expect of an international celebration of cinema.

Celebrating its 5th year, the ADFF will screen more than 200 feature and short films by established and emerging filmmakers representing 43 countries. Among the feature films 8 will have their World Premieres and 6 will celebrate their International Premieres. 5 of the features were co-produced with SANAD, the Festival’s fund that provides development and post-production support for films from the Arab world.

The Festival opens October 13 with the critically acclaimed Monsieur Lazhar, directed by Philippe Falardeau and starring Fellag, Sophie Nélisse, Émilien Néron,
Danielle Proulx, and Brigitte Poupart.

The Festival closes with the Black Pearl Awards ceremony on October 22.

The Abu Dhabi Film Festival (formerly the Middle East International FilmnFestival) was established in 2007, with the aim of helping to create a vibrant film culture throughout the region.

Presented each October by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) under the patronage of H.E. Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, the event is committed to curating exceptional
programs to engage and educate the local community, inspire filmmakers and nurture the growth of the regional film industry.

Executive Director Peter Scarlet remarked, "A film festival like ours -– in fact any film festival worthy of the name -- exists for very different reasons. We are showing the films in our program simply because, at one point or another, one of us here on the programming team fell in love with it.

"We travel the world all year, we explore, we are detectives, we try to find the most wonderful work made everywhere, and we bring it back to Abu Dhabi to help to open windows to what’s happening in the rest of the world for the people here.

One of the first reasons people come to festivals is to ind out what some of the great filmmakers been doing lately.

We are happy to present an especially strong line-up this year.Going almost at random:

• Andrey Zvyagintsev, one of Russia’s great filmmakers
• David Cronenberg, one of Canada’s major filmmakers
• Nanni Moretti from Italy
• Steven Soderbergh,Martin Scorsese and George Clooney from the US
• Michael Winterbottom from the UK
• Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders from Germany
• James Marsh, who won an Oscar is back with his latest doc
• Arturo Ripstein, maybe Mexico’s greatest filmmaker
• Hirokazu Kore-Eda from Japan
• Asghar Farhadi from Iran,
• Chen Kaige from China

These are some of the top names in world cinema and we are proud to have been able to bring their latest films here."

For a complete list of films visit http://www.abudhabifilmfestival.ae/

Abu Dhabi Film Festival
October 13-22, 2011

Fairmont Bab Al Bahr
Marina Mall
Abu Dhabi Theater
Abu Dhabi, AE

Gold Coast Int'l Film Festival Debuts in Long Island

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 04 October 2011 14:01

Written by Laura Blum

Long Island´s Gold Coast, where F. Scott Fitzgerald set his Great American Novel The Great Gatsby, is now home to a movie bash aspiring to be the Great American Film Festival. Can the Gold Coast International Film Festival also beat the lingering blas of the Great Recession?

One and a half million dollars say it can. That's the budget of the Festival, which launches June 1-5, 2011, in such North Shore towns as Roslyn, Manhasset and Great Neck (aka East and West Egg). Hatched by Great Neck Arts Center founder Regina Gil, GCIFF is meant to revitalize local business, still bedraggled by the late-2000s financial downturn.

Burnishing the cultural life of the Gold Coast is a twin Festival goal. To trumpet that point,  the organizers threw an artsy evening with Isabella Rossellini at the NYIT Theater in Manhattan on May 9th. The actor-turned-director-writer-and-animal-devotée showed her whimsical My Father is 100 Years Old, selections from Green Porno and Animals Distract Me.

David Schwartz, chief curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, led a post-screening chat with Rossellini. If the event was any indication, festival-goers are in for an engaging, ship-shape affair along the Gold Coast.  

With literally hundreds of film festivals a train hop away -- Tribeca, the New York Film Festival and the Hamptons FF, to name but three -- do the Manhattan suburbs really need another one?

“There are too many film festivals!,” concedes FCIFF senior programmer Sean McPhillips, a former Miramax acquisitions executive who curates the Great Neck Arts Center's Furman Film Series. “But there´s another perspective that says, If there´s no film festival in this place, there should be.”

And the Gold Coast fest boasts a few assets its rivals can only envy. Just imagine the parties to light up its sprawling mansions. Australian director Baz Luhrmann is surely doing just that as he pre-preps his screen adaptation of Gatsby. 

Something of the literary spirit also possesses the Festival. Taking the cue from Nassau County's most celebrated novel, it has selected a program of films adapted from books.

Other categories include:

• comedy
• documentary
• horror
• family
• works from Southeast Asia
• works from Israel -- whose immigrant communities dot the region

The 40,000 expected revelers will have 40 or so films to choose from during the five-day bash, which kicks off the first of June. Highlights include two documentaries:

Chris Paine´s Who Killed the Electric Car?, accompanied by electric car fanfare off-screen, and the New York premiere of Jeff Prosserman´s Chasing Madoff, about the infamous Ponzi schemer (who had a Long Island beach house).

In comedy, there´s Gil Cates Jr.´s Lucky, with Colin Hanks, and The Best and the Brightest, directed by Josh Shelov and featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Amy Sedaris.

As McPhillips knows, snagging buzz-worthy titles for a first-time festival can be quite a challenge. The ultimate gold star for the Gold Coast will be getting new films from the likes of native daughter Natalie Portman -- and a certain Baz Luhrmann production.

Gold Coast International Film Festival
June 1-5, 2011

the GCIFF Information Hub
292 Plandome Road, Manahasset, NY

(across from the LIRR train station)


Hours of the Hub will be posted shortly

Screenings venues include:

Clearview Cinemas
Great Neck – Squire Cinemas

115 Middle Neck Road

Great Neck, NY 11021

New Hyde Park Cinemas – Herricks Cinema
4
3324 Hillside Avenue

New Hyde Park, NY 11040

Manhasset Cinemas

430 Plandome Road

Manhasset, NY 11030

Port Washington Cinemas

116 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050

Roslyn Cinemas

20 Tower Place

Roslyn, NY 11577

Special event venues include:

The Great Neck Arts Center

113 Middle Neck Road

Great Neck, NY 11021


Landmark on Main Street

232 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050
www.landmarkonmainstreet.org
516-767-6444

Nassau County Museum of Art

One Museum Drive

Roslyn Harbor, NY 11576

NYIT DeSeversky Mansion

Northern Boulevard

Old Westbury, NY 11568

Louie’s Oyster Bar and Grille

395 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050

www.louiesoysterbarandgrille.com

Manhasset Public Library

30 Onderdonk Avenue

Manhasset, NY 11030
http://manhassetlibrary.org

North Hempstead Beach Park

175 West Shore Road
Port Washington 11050

Port Washington Public Library

One Library Drive

Port Washington, NY 11050

www.pwpl.org

thyme – restaurant & café bar

8 Tower Place

Roslyn, NY 11576
http://thymenewyork.com

United States Merchant Marine Academy

300 Steamboat Road

Kings Point, NY 11024
http://usmma.edu/

Mansion at The Village Club of Sands Point

Thayer Lane

Sands Point, NY 11050
http://www.villageclub.org

www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(516) 444-FILM

Mill Valley Film Festival 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Saturday, 01 October 2011 05:00

Written by Lynne Shannon

The 34th annual Mill Valley Film Festival 2011 (MVFF) is taking place October 6 - 16, 2011 at 142 Throckmorton Theatre, CinéArts@Sequoia and Mill Valley Community Center in Mill Valley, as well as venues in Corte Madera, Larkspur and San Rafael, California.

The Mill Valley Film Festival was founded in 1978 by California Film Institute director Mark Fishkin, and is well known for the quality of its programming. The Festival has an "impressive track record for launching new films and new filmmakers, and has earned a reputation as a filmmakers' festival by offering a high-profile, prestigious, noncompetitive environment for celebrating the best in independent and world cinema."

This year MVFF pays tribute to Glenn Close, the Academy Award-nominated and multi-award-winning actress. Clips from some of her films will be screened along with an onstage interview. Her new film, Albert Nobbs, is based on a George Moore short story by way of an Off-Broadway play in which Close starred and won an Obie award for her performance as Nobbs.

Other Tributes are:

• Michelle Yeoh, The Lady
• Gaston Kaboré, veteran director from Burkina Faso
• Ezra Miller, We Need to Talk About Kevin
• Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene

The Opening Night film is Jeff Who Lives at Home, directed by Jay and Mark Duplass and starring Susan Sarandon, Ed Helms and Jason Segel as Jeff.

Unemployed Jeff lives with his mother -- a poet-philosopher disguised as a do-nothing 30-year-old slacker. Jeff knows that he has a place in the universe, and today he's ready to go out and find it. "In our achievement-obsessed world, it's all too easy to dismiss a person like Jeff. But what a pity that would be."  

The Centerpiece Film is My Week With Marilyn, directed Simon Curtis, who will be present. Based on the memoir by Colin Clark, the film chronicles the week Clark spent showing Marilyn Monroe the sights of England while she was there to film The Prince and the Showgirl. Michelle Williams portrays Marilyn Monroe, with Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, and Eddie Redmayne as production assistant Clark.

The Special Premiere film is A Few Best Men, directed by Stephan Elliott, starring Xavier Samuel and Olivia Newton-John. When David travels to the Australian outback for his wedding, he is aided and (mostly) abetted by his "best men".

The Closing Night film is The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius. "Cannes Best Actor Jean Dujardin is a silent-film star resisting the transition to sound in this French production co-starring Bérénice Bejo, set in 1927 Hollywood."

The Festival is offering a chance for viewers to see three 2011 Foreign Language Academy Award submissions:

Forgiveness of Blood (Albania)
dir. Joshua Marston
A family in Albania goes about their business, passing daily through land they used to own. But the current owners are finally fed up, a fight ensues and one of the opponents is killed. The family‛s pleasant life is gone as they cope with the repercussions.

Miss Bala (Mexico)
dir. Gerardo Naranjo
A young woman in Mexico clings to her dream of winning a beauty contest despite the pervasive influence of organized crime.

Pina (Germany)
dir. Wim Wenders
Wenders utilizes the magical toolbox that is 3-D technology to show us the brilliant work of choreographer Pina Bausch. "One of the finest uses of 3-D technology to date, Pina brings to life what Bausch has left to us following her sudden death in 2009: "Dance. Dance or otherwise we are lost."

Other documentaries are:

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel 
dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland with Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Frédéric Tcheng
How does one become Diana Vreeland? The late fashion editor and cult figure, then 80 years old, answered: "The first thing to do, my love, is arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything flows quite naturally." The life and times of the "High Priestess of Fashion" is followed through archival footage, family photos and recorded conversations with George Plympton -- but the most prevalent voice is her own.

Thumbs
dir. Bill Couturié
A portrait of six teens in their quest for the US National Texting Championship. That‛s right, Texting -- the newest bee where, with two thumbs and a cell phone, the contestants compete in New York City for a $50,000 prize.

Voices from the Shadows
dir. Natalie Boulton, Josh Biggs (UK)
Psychiatric prejudice and medical ignorance hamper the solution to one of the most prevalent illnesses of the 21st century: myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), aka chronic fatigue syndrome. "A call to action for anyone who cares about the health and well-being of their community, this powerful film is equally a tribute to those whose voices must be heard."

Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
dir. Donald Goldmacher, Frances Causey
"Everything in this country is about money. Everything." Thus begins yet another outrage-stirring documentary about our financial disaster. "There's no denying the American economy has gone from bad to worse to apocalyptic.... Fortunately, the film offers strategies for the non-billionaires among us, including voting crook-enabling politicians out of office. Getting mad as hell can't hurt, either."

What Happened Here
dir. Rob Nilsson
Inspired by the autobiography of Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, Nilsson launched a quest to find the roots of Trotsky's hidden Jewish ancestry. The quest led him to Ukraine, and to the making of this cinematic essay, including WW II footage with Trotsky's personal reflections, accounts of Stalin’s enforced famines, the Nazi invasion and genocide.

A few new narrative features are also screening, including:

The Butcher's Wife / Wangliang's Ideal
dir. Gao Xiongjie (China)
A butcher and his wife have not yet consummated their marriage, pending the wife‛s passing her college entrance exams (her fourth try). "This domestic tragedy asks if a principled man and woman have a right to the life of their choice, or does marriage spell the end of all dreams?"

The Soul of Flies / El alma de las moscas
dir. Jonathan Cenzual Burley (Spain)
The journey through the Spanish countryside with two long-lost half-brothers -- the uptight and unimpressionable Miguel and the affectionate and sentimental Nero -- as they make their way to their estranged father's funeral. When Miguel agrees to meet Nero "at a remote Spanish train station, it's for one reason: to find closure. But after the two realize the train station is abandoned, their personal lives inconveniently open up and intertwine as they hitchhike, steal a motorbike and argue the entire way to paying final respects to the father they've never met. Soon they realize they have more in common than they thought."

ELIMINATE: Archie Cookson
dir. Rob Holder (UK)
British agent Archie Cookson is no James Bond -- hell, he‛s not even George Smiley. So why is he, a mere drone whose task is translating Russian recordings, suddenly targeted by the higher-ups in MI6 for elimination? Gradually, Archie begins to remember what it means to be a man of action. This first feature by Holder is a "darkly comic indie homage to the classic British spy movies of the '60s."

The Prize / El premio
dir. Paula Markovitch (Mexico/Germany/France/Poland)
Ceci, a seven year old girl, has to keep a huge secret, but she doesn't completely understand what is the secret about. The life of her family depends on her silence, as Ceci and her mom must stay hidden from the military in 1970's Argentina.

Other events include:

• Children's Filmfest
• 5@5 Short Films
• Active Cinema – films that explore the world and its issues, engage audiences and transform society
• Educational Screenings

For more information, go to www.mvff.com.

Mill Valley Film Festival 2011
October 6 - 16, 2011

142 Throckmorton Theatre
142 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, CA

Century Cinema
41 Tamal Vista Blvd.
Corte Madera, CA

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center
1118 Fourth Street
San Rafael, CA

CinéArts@Sequoia
25 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, CA

Cinemark Larkspur Landing
500 Larkspur Landing Circle
Larskpur, CA

Mill Valley Community Center
180 Camino Alto
Mill Valley, CA

Albert Park/San Rafael Community Center
618 B Street
San Rafael, CA