Christian Gaines was born in Brussels, Belgium to American parents and educated in British boarding schools until he came to the United States in 1984 to attend Vassar College, where he earned a B.A. in English.In 1988, Christian helped to start The American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, a communication and hospitality center for the American film community attending the Cannes Film Festival. In 1990, he went to work for the Hawaii International Film Festival as Administrator, and then served as Film Coordinator and Film Programmer in Hawaii from 1992 until 1994, dividing his time between Honolulu, Los Angeles…
Browsing: Festivals
Sandra Hebron is the Artistic Director, BFI Film Festivals, responsible for the Times BFI London Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Festival, two of Europe’s leading public film festivals. This is her fourth year as Artistic Director of the Times BFI London Film Festival.She began her working life in academia, researching in the fields of sociology and cultural studies at Sheffield Hallam University, and published books on women’s magazines and women’s leisure. She has worked in independent cinema for over fifteen years, including a time as the Film and Photography Development officer at Yorkshire and Humberside Arts. Her…
Cinema Without Borders: Please tell us about the motivations behind arranging the Vancouver Pan-African Film & Arts Festival and your involvement with it.Ms. U. Ebony Johnson (Founder/Executive Director of Vancouver Pan-African Film Festival): Thank you for the opportunity of sharing some background on the inaugural Vancouver Pan African Film & Arts Festival (VPAFF) 2007. The story is a fascinating one, born from an honest desire to spotlight African/”Black” contributions in society.British Columbia as a colony was established by “Black” people (see Canadian Heritage website) and the founding father of the Province, Sir James Douglas was a bi-racial Caribbean brother but…
Mikel Olaciregui, Director of San Sebastian International Film Festival is Born in Pasaia (Gipuzkoa) in 1956. A film enthusiast by vocation, Mikel Olaciregui has been professionally related to the audio-visual medium since 1986 when he started working as a producer with the Basque ETB channel. While with the ETB he held different positions within the Production Department, until, in 1988, he was appointed Delegate Director at the newly opened Miramón Production Centre. He was the ETB Programme Manager from 1990. During this time he increased his relationship with the film world, joining the Commission for the granting of Basque Government…
This is an interview with Darryl Macdonald, Executive Director of the Palm Springs International Film Society about Palm Springs ShortFest 2007. Darryl produces both the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. Bijan Tehrani: Congratulations for the great ShortFest 2007. How successful festival was for you? Do you think you have achieved the goals you had in mind? Darryl Macdonald: This year’s Festival was hugely gratifying. Attendance took a major jump across the board – audiences, filmmakers and industry came to the Festival in record numbers and the Film Market hit new highs…
<b>Hossein Mahini</b> , a graduate of filmmaking from Iran, worked as a film director in Iranian National Television until 1986 when he went to live in exile in Sweden. Since then, Mahini has worked as an independent photographer and filmmaker and also as a staff member in West Sweden’s Film Center (Film Centrum Vast). Mahini is the Exile Film Festival’s founder and organizer.Cinema Without Borders: Please tell us about the history of the Exile Film Festival and how you got involved with it.Hossien Mahini: The whole thing goes back to 1993, I actually started this and it was my own…
Milan (a co-production of Germany, Serbia, and Montenegro), Directed by Michael Kezele, won Bridging the Borders Award at the Palm Springs ShortFest International Film Festival and Market. Jury members at this year’s event are actor Bill Pullman; Eileen Arandiga, Festival Director of the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto; Dana Harris, editor Variety.com; Sydney Levine of Film Finders; and Dragan Milinkovic, Serbian film academic and producer. Milan is about a day in the life of a family in the countryside near Belgrade during the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. Ognjen, maybe 16, horses around with his younger brother, Milan,…
<b>Moon Molson</b> was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and moved more than 15 times before settling in his current “home town” of New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College where he received a B.A. in English, Film Studies and Philosophy.<br>In fall 2000, Moon entered the M.F.A. program in Film Directing at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. In 2002, he won the prestigious Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Student Internship and was flown to Los Angeles to work in television commercials.His thesis short film “Pop Foul” won the REEL Shorts Jury Prize at the 2007 South By Southwest…
At the end of the 1980’s, as director of the Sarajevo Obala Art Center <b>Mirsad Purivatra</b> oversaw the works of numerous theater productions. Many of them, including Tatoo Theatre and Moonplay, were featured in theatre festivals in Edinburgh, Paris, Toronto, New York, Montreal, and London. During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Center organized a great number of exhibitions by B&H; authors that were shown around the world and in Sarajevo. Obala hosted such international artists as Christian Boltanski, Annie Leibowitz, Sophie Ristelhueber, and Peter Waldegg. In 1995, Obala established the Sarajevo Film Festival, which in 12 years has…
<b>Darryl Macdonald</b> is the Executive Director of the Palm Springs International Film Society, which produces both the Palm Springs International Film Festival and the Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films. He is the co-founder and has been the Executive and Artistic Director of The Seattle International Film Festival since its inception in 1975, where he served in that capacity until assuming the position of Executive Director of the Palm Springs International Film Society in October of 2003. Simultaneously, he served as the Artistic Director of the Palm Springs Film Festival (1989 -1993), the Hamptons Film Festival (1993 -1996) and…