The winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Laurent Cantet’s “The Class”, will be screened as the opening night film at the New York Film Festival on September 26th. “The Class”, the first French film to win the Palme d’Or in over twenty years, follows the relationship between a teacher and his students in a difficult school in Paris. The 46th New York Film Festival will run from September 26th to October 12th, and features 28 films from 17 different countries. Other films being highlighted as this year’s festival include Clint Eastwood’s new film, “The Challenging”,…
Author: Christopher P. Duffy
The Toronto International Film Festival today announced that “Stone of Destiny”, a comedy directed by Charles Martin Smith, will close out the festival on September 13th in a gala presentation. This will also be the film’s North American premiere. Staring Robert Carlyle (“28 Weeks Later”), Billy Boyd (“The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy), Brenda Fricker (“My Left Foot”), Charlie Cox (“The Merchant of Venice”) and Kate Mara (“Shooter”), “Stone of Destiny” is based on the true story of four Glasgow students who, in 1950, tried to retrieve the Stone of Destiny, an ancient stone belonging to the Scots. In attempt…
More than 140 international feature and documentary films are celebrating their German, European or world premiere in altogether eight sections at the 16th Filmfest Hamburg. The many facets of the program range from cinematically highbrow arthouse films to innovative mainstream cinema, from road movies to melodrama, from comedies and westerns to thrillers and children’s films. Filmfest Hamburg presents the debut films of young German and international filmmakers alongside films by famous and infamous directing giants of international cinema.Academy Award winners such as Clint Eastwood, Jodie Foster and Michael Moore, arthouse filmmakers such as Aki Kaurismäki, Jim Jarmusch, Peter Greenaway and…
Elliot Gould will narrate the debut feature documentary from director Adam Matalon, “Seasons In The Valley”, which will premiere at The Rhode Island International Film Festival on August 9th , 2008. Hollywood veteran Elliott Gould lends his distinct voice to this gentle documentary exploring the symbiotic relationships between the apple farmers of NY’s Hudson Valley and their Jamaican labor. They are a microcosm of the thousands who come to the US and Canada each year under the auspices of the U.S. government’s H2-A temporary agricultural labor programs. The film is an intimate look at the workers lives, charting their experiences…
One of the Arab worlds most celebrated filmmakers, the Egyptian born Youssef Chahine, has died today after having spent several weeks in a coma after suffering a brain hemorrhage. Mr. Chahine was pronounced dead at 3:30 this morning in Cairo. He was 82 years of age. A funeral service for the late filmmaker will be held Monday in Cairo, and Mr. Chahine’s body will be buried in Alexandria, the city of his birth. Youssef Chahine was an active member of the Egyptian film community since 1950, and is widely regarded as one of the most important filmmakers in the Arab…
The veteran British filmmaker Richard Leacock, a prominent member of the cinema vérité movement of the sixties, will be the guest of honor at the second annual Iranian International Documentary Festival to be held later this year. Organized by Iran’s Documentary & Experimental Film Center, the festival is organized around the program, titled “Cinema Vérité, and will focus on the prominent films and filmmakers that propelled the sixties vérité movement in America. Based on the principle of capturing truth on film, the cinema vérité movement that materialized in America and Britain in the 1960’s held to the ideology of leaving…
The South Dakota Film Festival announced it would officially begin selling tickets online effective Thursday for this year’s festival, which will be held September 19-21 in Aberdeen. The 2nd Annual South Dakota Film Festival will take place in downtown Aberdeen’s historic Capitol Theatre and is expected to be a sold out event. Last year over 36 feature and short films from around the world were presented to a crowd of over 450. This year more than 55 national and international films have already been submitted and are being adjudicated for showing. “We hope to have a lot of filmmakers on…
It was announced today that the Australian actor Heath ledger will be honored posthumously next month at the Brisbane International Film Festival. Ledger, who died in January of this year from an accidental overdose of various and anxiety and sleep medications, will be remembered with the 2008 Chauvel Award, which is given in recognition of his contribution to Australian cinema. This is the first time in sixteen years that the award will be given posthumously. Only twenty-eight years of age at his death, Ledger was the star of many films, including the 2005 “Brokback Mountain” and the newly released “The…
Today in the Czech Republic “Terrible Happy”, a Danish film by Henrik Ruben Genz, was awarded with the Crystal Globe at the closing ceremony of the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. “Terrible Happy” tells the story of a police officer from Copenhagen who is sent to a small Danish town as punishment for professional misconduct. Along with the prestige of being awarded the festival’s top honor, the filmmakers were awarded with $30,000. The Special Jury award was given to “The Photograph”, a film by Nan Triveni Achnas, an Indonesian filmmaker. The best Director as selected by the Grand Jury…
Acclaimed British actor Christopher Lee will be honored this month at the 43rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. The Festival President’s Award is given to actors, directors, and producers who have contributed in a fundamental way to the development of film, not merely in their own countries but around the world. Along with Mr. Lee, other notable veteran actors will be recognized for their contributions to cinema. The iconic actor Robert De Niro will receive the festival’s Crystal Globe in honor of his outstanding career, and Danny Glover will be presented with an award honoring his fundamental contribution to cinema.…