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Taking its cue from TV and the web, the AFI Fest will once again offer free entertainment – brought to you by corporate sponsors -- when it opens for “business” November 4 to 11, 2010. The flagship Festival of the American Film Institute partly has Audi to thank for its complimentary screenings and galas (and does so prominently by mentioning the carmaker in its moniker).
Los Angeles’ oldest-running film festival will unfurl in and around a clutch of vintage venues across Hollywood. Festival headquarters are at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with screenings and special events converging on Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the Mann Chinese 6 theatres and the Egyptian Theatre. AFI Fest 2010 will screen 97 films, including 66 features and 31 shorts, chosen from 3,000 submissions across 31 countries. Shorts screened at the Festival are officially eligible for Oscar consideration.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead is rumored to have said, “Always remember that you are absolutely unique…just like everyone else,” and judging by the distinctive stories on offer at the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival (November 11 to 14, 2010), the programmers indeed remembered.
Not that you won’t find shared themes amidst all that diversity.
Marking its 34th year, the Mead will once again spotlight global documentaries under the auspices of Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History. According to Artistic and Festival Director Ariella Ben-Dov, many of this year’s selections show communities coalescing around a critical challenge, even one that threatens their way of life.
The Opening night film is Plug & Pray/Von Computern und anderen Menschen, directed by Judith Malek-Mahdavi and Jens Schanze. The film advances Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneer of artificial intelligence who questions the scientific assumptions that technology can trump biology.
You can find everything in New York City, as the cliché goes, but until now – with the November 3 to 9, 2010 launching of DOC NYC -- it has lacked a major documentary film festival. (The 90s saw DocFest, but it’s been a while.) If Durham, North Carolina can have a Full Frame and if Missoula, Montana can have a Big Sky, surely the greatest city on earth can have a five-day salute to non-fiction cinema.
At least that’s what artistic director Thom Powers and executive director Raphaela Neihausen reasoned when this programming pair decided to expand their weekly IFC Center series, Stranger Than Fiction, into a festival format.