The Maumee Film Festival, a chance for Toledo area filmmakers to show their skills behind the camera, is hosted at the Maumee Indoor Theater, Saturday, Sept. 23. This year’s panel of judges, who personally watch and rank the submitted films, includes Katie Holmes, her sister Tamera Fretti and Maumee native and actor Robert Knepper, best known for his role on the FOX series Prison Break. The third annual festival includes a short film challenge, an open genre competition where films of 12 minutes or less compete for cash prizes, as well as the Project-4 Challenge, where filmmakers get four days…
Author: World Cinema Reports' Editors
Film festivals usually feel like little oases, places to check out of real life for a bit and soak in the glories of cinema. But it feels like the news kicked into hyperdrive about a year ago, and no matter which festival you went to this year — from Sundance to Cannes — the real-life activities of politicians and their massive repercussions were inescapable, both outside the theater and on the big screen. The Toronto International Film Festival is not immune to this trend, though its location in the relatively calm Canadian city (relative to France and the US, anyhow)…
Times, they are a-changing. That hopefully appears to be the case when it comes to the products of the South African film industry. For many years, most local films hitting cinemas would be either slapstick comedies, cheesy rom-coms or dusty period dramas set in small platteland dorpies. Then came Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi and Neill Blomkamp and suddenly SA was on the radar of international cinephiles. However, the local industry hasn’t really delivered on that trailblazing promise though – at least not in a major recognisable way. But things are starting to happen. Even when newer local movies are not wholly…
ProductionNext, a cloud-based project management system specifically designed for feature, short, music video, and corporate video productions, announced the immediate availability of its state-of-the-art tools and services under a public beta program. “Film and video producers have, for far too long, struggled with the complexities of making a movie, and have been poorly served by tools that are not designed to address the real issues at the heart of the production process,” said Jim Miller, ProductionNext’s founder and CEO. “The experiences and successes of our early-stage members have allowed us to refine ProductionNext’s design to properly address those issues, and we’re pleased…
This month we speak with Piotr Olak, the CEO, director and programmer of Kino Luna from Warsaw, Poland. Luna means moon in Latin, but the true inspiration for the cinema’s name was the Russian outer-space programme, since this art house cinema is promoting culture since 1962. Kino Luna is located in the city centre, near the Zbawiciela Square, a very popular and trendy area with plenty of small cafes and restaurants. The cinema has two screening rooms with 647 seats. Except from its regular activity, Luna also organises or hosts diverse activities including film festivals, concerts, shows, meetings with artists, educational programmes,…
As a teenager in the early 1970s, Tony Villecco saw a photo of Polish actress Pola Negri in a book of silent-film stars, and he instantly felt drawn to her. Maybe it was her exotic and beautiful appearance, or maybe it was the hint of smoldering romance in her eyes. Before long, he’d tracked down her autobiography (which he later learned was ghostwritten and full of, shall we say, elaborations) and even figured out where she lived in San Antonio, Texas. He’d write letters to her and get back an occasional photo or Christmas card from her assistant. But Negri, whom…
TEHRAN, Sep. 13 (MNA) – The best of Iranian cinema this year were awarded during a special ceremony of the 19th Iran Cinema Celebration on Tue., with Asghar Farhadi’s ‘The Salesman’ scooping the most awards. The 19th Iran Cinema Celebration, organized by the Iranian House of Cinema annually to observe Iran’s National Day of Cinema, awarded the best cinematic efforts this year during a special ceremony on Tuesday night. Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning film ‘The Salesman’ and Narges Abyar’s anti-war drama ‘Breath’ led the nominations each with ten nods, but the latter did not receive any awards while Farhadi’s film snatched…
Moviegoers attend the Duhok International Film Festival over the weekend in the Kurdistan Region. Photos: By author DUHOK, Kurdistan Region — Inspired by hope for a safer future, the fifth Duhok International Film Festival (IFF) is starting to gain international recognition, while aiming to improve the cinema community locally and worldwide. “At the beginning, especially, it was difficult to convince foreign film makers that this area is a safe area, not just a place for political conflicts, war and the things that the mainstream media usually talk about,” said Program Manager Bina Qeredaxi of the week-long event that stretches from…
Making its way to this year’s TIFF following an award-winning debut at the Venice Film Festival, French director Xavier Legrand’s Custody is a powerful domestic drama of a toxic father who continues to terrorize his family following an unsavory marital separation. The minute we meet Antoine (Denis Ménochet), there’s a sense of menace. He sits beside his lawyer as he and his soon to be ex-wife Miriam (Léa Drucker) seek arbitration on the custody of their youngest son following their split-up. The judge twice has to tell him to be quiet as he mutters to his lawyer. A statement is…
The habitual calm and gentleness of Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s film-making here has a sharp edge and an overtly political point – as well as a flourish of violent destruction and despair that blindsided me. This Chadian director, who lives in France, brings the African experience to Europe in a deeply felt, compassionate film about refugees who find that one of their bitterest abasements is the loss of dignity and status. These are proud people, who left behind prestigious jobs in their homeland, now forced to take on low-paid work or ask for handouts while their various appeals and applications grind…