Archive for the 'Film festivals' Category
Russian director Andrei Nekrasov’s recent film, “Rebellion: The Litvinenko Case”, which he completed for the BBC in the spring, was given a special slot at this year’s Cannes film festival. Despite some of its flaws, the film is an interesting insight into Litvinenko’s thinking and its screening was a good PR stunt for the festival. Read an earlier post about this film.
The decision about the film’s Cannes screening was made only three weeks prior to the festival, but before British prosecutors named Andrei Lugovoi as a suspect in Litvinenko’s murder and demanded his extradition from Russia. The film has so far only been seen in the UK (and for a few weeks on Google Video) but it will now be shown internationally. This will not please Russian authorities, even though the documentary only states the obvious about their state of democracy.
Here is Michael Moore’s most recent entry on his new film “Sicko”, which is apparently so controversial it might even be confiscated by the US government before this weekend’s premiere in Cannes.
“Friends! It’s a wrap! My new film, “Sicko,” is all done and will have its world premiere this Saturday night at the Cannes Film Festival. As with “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we are honored to have been chosen by this prestigious festival to screen our work there.
My intention was to keep “Sicko” under wraps and show it to virtually no one before its premiere in Cannes. That is what I have done and, as you may have noticed if you are a recipient of my infrequent Internet letters, I have been very silent about what I’ve been up to. In part, that’s because I was working very hard to complete the film. But my silence was also because I knew that the health care industry — an industry which makes up more than 15 percent of our GDP — was not going to like much of what they were going to see in this movie and I thought it best not to upset them any sooner than need be.
Continue reading ‘Michael Moore’s “Sicko” to premiere at Cannes’
The East Silver Doc Market 2007 will take place at the prestigious 11th Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival between October 23-28. The documentary film market is currently accepting submissions - the deadline is 30 June 2007. Registration is free for all eligible films which were produced in 2006–2007 and are subtitled into English. East Silver, the Jihlava festival and the East European Forum have a joint mission to promote outstanding Eastern and Central European documentaries and to improve the conditions of fllm production.
The New York Times carries an article today about the fate of documentary films made in or on Iraq. Apparently, many Iraq-themed films, including John Laurence’s recent “I am an American Soldier,” which follows members of the elite 101st Airborne Division on a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, have had a difficult time finding a distributor.
“The film has been seen by some people in the distribution business and they all tell us that Iraq war films don’t do well,” Laurence told journalists before his film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this week.
Laurence is an established journalist and war correspondent who covered Vietnam and was embedded with US troops in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. He said he did not intend for his film to take a clear pro- or anti-war stance. “We set out to make a film from the soldiers’ point of view that was not going to be political,” he told the New York Times. Continue reading ‘Iraq films are difficult to sell in US’
A Danish documentary film about the attempt to convert a castle into a Russian Orthodox monastery received top honors on April 15 at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, California. “The Monastery” was directed by Pernille Rose Gronkjær, and was given both the Best Documentary and the Emerging Artist awards. The best short film award went to “Cross Your Eyes Keep Them Wide”, directed and produced by Ben Wu.
Here is the full list of winners:
FULL FRAME GRAND JURY AWARD: The Monastery, Directed by Pernille Rose Gronkjær. Produced by Sigrid Helene Dyekær ($20,000 in lab services for a tape to film transfer, or the option of lab services to be used in a two year period from Alpha Cine Labs, Seattle.) The Grand Jury Award recognized this film as the best feature from the documentary film community this year.
FULL FRAME JURY AWARD FOR BEST SHORT: Cross Your Eyes Keep Them Wide. Directed and produced by Ben Wu. ($10,000 in film stock. Provided by Kodak.) The Jury Award for Best Short is awarded to a film 40 minutes or less in length. Honorable Mention: Zo is dat (The Way It Is) Directed by Elizabeth Salgado. Produced by Frieder Wallis.
Continue reading ‘“The Monastery” wins Best Documentary at Full Frame’
In summer 2007, Europe will continue to be the centre of the universe for those wanting to see some fresh documentaries. All upcoming festivals have lined up an impressive international repetoire of documentary films. Here are the dates and links:
- Munich International Documentary Film Festival (May 3-11) - Click here for the programme
- Madrid Documentary Film Festival (May 4-13) - Click here for the programme
- Cracow Film Festival (May 31- June 5) - Click here for the programme
- “Message to Man” International Documentary Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia (June 15-22) - Click here for the programme
Continue reading ‘Itinerary for documentary festival hoppers’
One of the notable documentary films currently travelling through the festival circuit is “The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez”, a German-made film honouring the life of the first US soldier to be killed in the Iraq war.
Gutierrez was one of the 300,000 soldiers sent by the US Army to war in Iraq. His death within the first few hours of the war prompted his picture to travel all over the world. He was a so-called green-card soldier – one of approximately 32,000 soldiers in the US Army, who have traded military service for US citizenship.
Directed by Heidi Specogna, the film tells the moving and nearly unbelievable story of a one-time street child from Guatemala, who headed north along the Pan-American highway full of hopes and desires for a better future – and ultimately to die an American hero far from home. Searching for the images and stories that made up this life, the director set out to retrace Gutierrez’s path from Guatemala through Mexico and into the USA.
Continue reading ‘The Short Life of José Antonio Gutierrez’
