Over 50 Films at The New York Asian Film Festival 2016

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 20 June 2016 18:33

Written by Brad Balfour & Renzo Adler

Tetsuo the Iron Man

The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Subway Cinema has brought back their cavalcade of Asian cinematic delights with the 2016 New York Asian Film Festival.  Running June 22 -  July 5 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (70 Lincoln Center Plaza) and July 6 - 9 at the SVA Theatre (333 West 23rd Street), the NYAFF showcases 51 feature films, and in-person appearances by more than 30 international filmmakers and celebrity guests from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. The fest features a staggering amount of variety, including new hits, animated adventures, cult classics, from gun toting gangsters to high school drama, NYAFF has a little something for everybody.

The Opening Night Gala will be the World Premiere of Kazuya Shiraishi’s wild crime epic Twisted Justice, based on Yoshiaki Inaba’s autobiography and starring Go Ayano as a corrupt police detective. The Centerpiece Gala is the North American Premiere of Ralston Jover's Hamog (Haze), an empowering, thrilling and impassioned tale of a gang of street kids, headlined by Teri Malvar. Closing Night is the International Premiere of Adam Tsuei’s The Tenants Downstairs a blackly comic, sexually explicit thriller featuring Simon Yam as a landlord spying on and manipulating the lives of his tenants.

The Hong Kong portion of the fest features Lazy Hazy Crazy(a coming-of-age drama about high-school girls who become involved in the sex trade), Weeds on Fire (a feel-good baseball movie set within Hong Kong’s public-housing system), and Triviṣa (a hard-boiled gangster omnibu).

The South Korean Cinema lineup includes a vibrant mix of thrillers (both supernatural and surreal) from first- and second-time directors that are daring twists on genre films (Alone, The Boys Who Cried Wolf, and The Priests), and insightful art-house dramas focusing on social issues from established directors (Jung Ji-woo’s Fourth Place about how much we demand from the next generation, and E J-yong’s The Bacchus Lady about the plight of the country’s abandoned elderly). In co-presentation with the Korean Movie Night New York Master Series, NYAFF will feature the two latest films by Lee Joon-ik, who will attend screenings of Dongju: The Portrait of a Poet (with producer and screenwriter Shin Yeon-shick) and The Throne.

Special screenings include a full day of films celebrating the indie spirit of Hong Kong cinema, a screening of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo The Iron Man (think Eraserhead by way of Tokyo) and the lavishly animated Tekkonkinkreet from Michael Arias.

 NYAFF is one of the most jam packed festivals in NYC with a selection of films that can't be beat.

To learn more, go to:  http://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-asian-film-festival/

New York Asian Film Festival

June 22 - July 9

Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023

SVA Theatre
333 W 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011

Films on the Green Festival Brings French Classics to NYC Parks

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 06 June 2016 18:13

Written by Renzo Adler

Ah, summer. When the grass grows, the AC’s go on full blast, and the parks come alive with the sound of the French New Wave. At Central Park, Washington Square Park, Transmitter Park (Brooklyn), Riverside Park, Tompkins Square Park and Columbia University, the Films on the Green Film Festival will be showing free(!) French cinema on Fridays from June to September.

The festival is courtesy of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the FACE Foundation and features films from the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Luc Besson, François Truffaut, and Céline Sciamma, blending classic French New Wave with contemporary cinema.

Films featured as part of the festival include:

• Breathless
  By Jean-Luc Godard, 1960, 1h30
  Preceded by The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse, 1956, 36min
  Tuesday, June 7, 8:30 pm, Central Park, Cedar Hill

• The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe
  By Yves Robert, 1972, PG, 1h30
  Friday, June 10, 8:30 pm, Washington Square Park

• Air of Paris
  By Marcel Carné, 1954, 1h50
  Friday, June 17, 8:30 pm, Washington Square Park

• Subway
  By Luc Besson, 1985, R, 1h44
  Friday, June 24, 8:30 pm, Transmitter Park

• The 400 Blows
  By François Truffaut, 1959, 1h39
  Friday, July 1, 8:30 pm, Transmitter Park

• April and the Extraordinary World
  By Christian Desmares & Franck Ekinci, 2015, 1h43
  Friday, July 8, 8:30 pm, Riverside Park, Pier I

• Un Flic
  By Jean-Pierre Melville, 1972, PG, 1h38
  Friday, July 15, 8:30 pm, Riverside Park, Pier I
  
  
• Cleo From 5 To 7
  By Agnès Varda, 1962, 1h30
  Friday, July 22, 8:30 pm, Tompkins Square Park
  
  
• Boyfriends and Girlfriends
  By Eric Rohmer, 1987, PG, 1h42
  Friday, July 29, 8:30 pm, Tompkins Square Park
  
  
• Girlhood
  By Céline Sciamma, 2014,1h52
  Thursday, Sept. 8, 7:30 pm, Columbia University

To learn more, go to: http://frenchculture.org/film-tv-and-new-media/festivals/films-green-2016

Films on the Green 2016
June 17 - September 8, 2016

Various Locations
New York, NY

The 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival Heralds Diversity

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Sunday, 29 May 2016 16:50

Written by Casey Hernandez

Taking place from June 1 to 9, 2016, The Los Angeles Film Festival, produced by Film Independent — the non-profit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards —  celebrates the power of the storyteller starting with the opening night film Lowriders, directed by Ricardo de Montreuil. It stars Eva Longoria and details a culturally vibrant film that explores familial relationships within a second-generation Mexican family in East LA. 

Closing the festival will be the intense suspense thriller Desierto. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, it is directed by son Jonás Cuarón, and produced by father Alfonso Caurón. 

Being held at ArcLight Cinemas (9500 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232) and The Culver Studios (9336 Washington Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232), the Festival showcases diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision in independent American and international cinema. This year’s fest features Ryan Coogler, Ava DuVernay, Nate Parker and the new crop of African and African-American storytellers.

Highlighting the contributions of such diverse storytellers, Creed director Coogler is the 2016 Guest Director; he will attend the 15th annual Filmmaker Retreat, a signature program that brings together the feature directors in this year’s Festival along with seasoned filmmakers and Film Independent board members who attend as honored artists.

Selma director DuVernay and her distribution company, Array Releasing, will receive the Festival’s annual Spirit of Independence Award on June 4th, which honors those who advance the cause of independent film and champion creative freedom.

Auteur actor-turned-director Parker shares on June 2nd what it took to bring The Birth of a Nation, the story of Nat Turner, the African-American preacher turned insurgent to the big screen in “Nate Parker's Labor of Love: The Birth of a Nation Conversation.” Parker will be joined by cast members Aja Naomi King (How to Get Away with Murder) and Gabrielle Union (Being Mary Jane).

Also part of the fest is The Global Media Makers Presents: Storytelling From The Inside Out is a U.S. Department of State and Film Independent international mentoring initiative which connects visual storytellers from around the world with leading U.S. entertainment professionals through specially tailored mentorships, workshops and master classes.

Shining the light on the need for inclusion, the Diversity Speaks panels bring together content creators of underrepresented communities who embody innovation to discuss how they manage to combine their passions for storytelling, entrepreneurship and their cultural identities into success stories. One of the many highlights include a disucssion with Issa Rae (Awkward Black Girl) who will join Film Independent curator Elvis Mitchell in conversation for an intimate off-the-record talk. 

For a full schedule, tickets and general festival info go to: http://www.filmindependent.org/la-film-festival/

The Los Angeles Film Festival
June 1 - 9 2016

ArcLight Cinemas 
9500 Culver Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

The Culver Studios
9336 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

& Various Locations