FilmClick

The Big Apple Film Festival will be held in NYC at the Tribeca Cinemas from November 19-22. This annual festival showcases independent films made by individuals residing and/or working in the metropolitan area of New York.  BAFF, which was named “one of MovieMaker Magazine’s top 25 film festivals worth the entry fee,” will screen 90 films of various genres (narrative, documentary, animation, experimental) and lengths (features and shorts).  Here are a few highlights:

Wednesday, November 19th 7:30 PM: Tribeca Cinemas, Theater 2

The Living Wake

Directed by Sol Tryon (2007)

This bleak comedy follows K. Roth Binew, a self-proclaimed artist and genius, on his final day of existence.  Discovering that he has a fatal disease, K. Roth Binew sets off to uncover life’s baffling mysteries.  Enlisting his best friend, Mills Joquin, an unrecognized poet, as his biographer, K. Roth records his final hours of living.

Thursday, November 20th 6:00 PM: Tribeca Cinemas, Theater 2

The River of Copsa Mica

Directed by Ryan Uzilevsky (2008)

A period piece set in 1916, Transylvania.  A runaway boy steps into the mystifying world of a tribe of Gypsies.

Thursday, November 20th 6:30 PM: Tribeca Cinemas, Theater 1

One Step Behind

Directed by Gregoire Jeudy (2008)

Unsuccessful writer, Josh Person, has once again failed to get his latest novel published.  Desperate for a good story, he observes people in Central Park in hopes of finding interesting material for his next book.

Saturday, November 22nd 8:15 PM: Tribeca Cinemas, Theater 2

The Project

Directed by Ryan Piotrowicz (2008)

The Project is a self-reflexive film focusing on three aspiring filmmakers that set out to document NYC’s inner-city struggles and confrontations.  As the film progresses, the filmmakers are confronted by several events that complicate the project’s original objectives.  No longer detached voyeurs, the filmmakers develop into active participants within this underground world of violence.

For more information on the Big Apple Film Festival, visit: 

http://www.bigapplefilmfestival.com/index.html 

By Nikki Zhang, FilmClick staff

nzhang@filmclick.com

Thank you for submitting your films to the FilmClick Online Film Festival. Our call for entries is now closed. The FilmClick Crew will begin to shortlist the films in the three categories (Comedy, Documentary, and General Films) and will announce the finalists in the coming month. We will then need your assistance in choosing the Top 3 films in each category.

We look forward to having you help us vote on the final films! We will announce when the voting will take place on our website. Please check back for updates.

Thank you!

The FilmClick Crew

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival
6.12.08 – 6.26.08
New York, NY

Some films are made to make artistic statements, many more are made to make millions, and a small few are made to make a difference in the world.  The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival celebrates these latter category films that put a human face on threats to individual freedoms, while also celebrating the power of the human spirit to survive and overcome.  Utilizing the power of cinema to inform and galvanize the public, the HRW International Film Festival has become a leading venue for world-class fiction and documentary films, and strives to initiate global change and make a difference, one film at a time.

The Dictator Hunter

***
“If you kill one person, you go to jail. If you kill 40 people, they put you in an insane asylum. But if you kill 40,000 people, you get a comfortable exile with a bank account in another country, and that’s what we want to change here.” – Reed Brody, Counsel, Human Rights Watch
***

Known as the HRW’s “Dictator Hunter,” Reed Brody works tirelessly as a lawyer and outspoken human rights advocate.  In Klaartje Quirijns’s powerful documentary, The Dictator Hunter, we follow Brody and his team in their groundbreaking and precedent-setting legal case to bring the cruel ex-dictator, Hisséne Habré, to justice.

For most of the 1980’s, Habré lead a reign of terror in Chad that lead to the imprisonment, torture, and ultimate death of countless victims.  Souleymane Guenguenge is one of the fortunate few to have survived Habré’s rule.  After spending two horrifying years in one of Habré’s prisons, Gruenguenge lost his vision but not his fighting spirit and thirst for justice.  Now living in the United States, Gruenguenge works closely with Brody as one of the few remaining survivors spearheading the case against Habré.

Quirijns’s film is as intriguing and suspenseful in its documentation of Brody’s harrowing legal struggles as it is compelling and heart wrenching in its telling of Guenguenge’s own struggles, both within the case and as a survivor attempting to start life anew.  In every aspect, The Dictator Hunter succeeds in depicting the resiliency and determination of the human spirit as it stands toe-to-toe against some of the world’s greatest injustices.

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

In this emotionally-charged and gripping documentary, filmmaker Lisa Jackson turns an unflinchingly eye upon the war torn Democratic Republic of Congo and how sexual violence is used as a weapon of warfare by its clashing factions.  Jackson, herself a survivor of rape, attempts to shatter the silence that has, until now, surrounded this national travesty of widespread rape which is inflicted upon Congolese women, both old and young alike, in epidemic number. 

The staggering power of Jackson’s film resides in the raw emotionality she elicits in her interviews with national activists, local peacekeepers and physicians, several of the women survivors, and even a number of the combatant rapists themselves. 

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo was honored at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival with its Special Jury Prize, and will also be featured on HBO throughout the remainder of 2008.  Be sure to check your listings for this film, as its gripping portrayal of courage and grace by these victimized yet resilient and courageous Congolese women, is one to not be missed!

This year’s New York festival also featured a special photo exhibit held in the Walter Reade Theater’s Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery.  The exhibit featured the work of Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen and focused upon the salient and highly controversial topic of human rights violations in China.

For more information on the work done by the Human Rights Watch and the HWR International Film Festival, visit: http://hrw.org/iff/

For more information on Kadir van Lohuizen’s photographs, visit: http://china.hrw.org/

By Meghan Chandler, FilmClick Staff, mchandler@filmclick.com

NewFest: The NY LGBT Film Festival
6.5.08 – 6.15.08
New York, NY

Harbinger to the full-out Pride festivities that will commence later this month, the 2008 NewFest Film Festival took place June 5-15 and showcased some of this year’s best LGBT film/video offerings from around the global.  NewFest celebrates their 20th Anniversary with this year’s festival, and has much to celebrate indeed!  Over the past 20 years, NewFest has distinguished itself as one of New York’s premiere LGBT film organizations, marked by a proven dedication to not only entertain audiences but, even more importantly, to educate and empower the LGBT community and the metropolitan region at large.  I was privileged enough to catch several screenings at this year’s fest, including: The Storm, Affinity, The Open Diary of R, and OMG/HAHAHA. 

The Storm

Director Paris P. Pickard’s 10 minute short chronicles a dark and stormy night where a woman succumbs to the temptations of alluring and equally ominous sirens.  The Storm presents as an almost experimental/abstract film with a vague narrative, absence of dialogue, and heavy reliance upon mood and suggestion.  The film’s main strength resides in its strong atmospheric overtones that reflect a similar type of unsettling, ominous tenor that Roman Polanski achieved in his 1965 classic film, Repulsion.

Affinity

British author Sarah Waters has cultivated somewhat of a “cult” following around her popular, twisting tales of Victorian-era lesbian love, in both novel and film forms.  This year, Affinity takes its turn at big-screen adaptation, joining the ranks of other adapted Waters works including Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith.  Set in dark and murky Victorian London, Affinity follows the complex and bizarre relationship that forms between a grieving high-society lady (Anna Madeley) and a strangely alluring, imprisoned mystic woman (Zoe Tapper).  While falling a bit short of the brilliance that Tipping the Velvet achieves, Affinity does deliver with absorbing atmospherics, jarring plots twists, and strong performances from both Madeley and Tapper.

The Open Diary of R

This Brazilian short falls victim, perhaps, of being just a bit too short.  It would seem that 16 minutes is just not enough time to fully flesh-out onscreen characters to identify and sympathize with, which is exactly what this type of angst-driven, high school crush story relies upon.

OMG/HAHAHA

Easily my favorite film of the festival, OMG/HAHAHA is a clever, self-aware reflection of this generation’s MySpace/YouTube/Facebook-saturated youth.  Constructed as a series of loosely- connected vignettes – with angsty stories ranging from unexpected pregnancy, to homophobia, to dying parents, and existential musings on life – the film touches upon the types of themes you would find on the most “professionally-Emo” kid’s MySpace page, with all the aptly included emoticons and web-jargon to boot.  In the Q&A following the film, director Morgan Jon Fox paid verbal homage to the clear influence of both Lars Von Trier and Gus Van Sant, who’s inspiration is clearly evident in OMG/HAHAHA’s improvisational style, cinemagraphic simplicity, and narrative structure.  Fox, a Memphis-native himself, also utilized local acting and musical talent to form the film, epitomizing the very nature, charm, and power of true grassroots Indie filmmaking.

Missed out on this year’s NewFest Festival?  Live in the New York area?  Well, then you’re in luck!  From August 22-24, you can catch “The Best of NewFest” at the BAM Rose Cinema where a selection of the festival’s top winners and fan favorites will be reprised.

For more information, visit: http://www.newfest.org/

By Meghan Chandler, FilmClick Staff, mchandler@filmclick.com

Frameline32 San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival
6.19.08 – 6.29.08
San Francisco, CA

If by chance you haven’t noticed it has gotten hard to get a good seat at any of the best eateries in the Castro, or any of the suggestive ads popping up all over town this week, as well as the new sea of rainbow that catches your stare as you humbly make your way down any San Francisco street outside of the Castro- then it’s FILMCLICK’S job to alert you that Frameline’s LGBT Film Festival has kicked off it’s long awaited 32nd.

Boasting an impressive historical biography, Frameline is the longest running film festival with programming devoted to the LGBT community, brandishing an impressive 60,000 to 80,000 in annual attendance.

Showcasing new works by film art stars’, Bruce La Bruce and Gus Van Sant, first feature film Mala Noche . Frameline will screen over 230 films to the public at large with feature length and short programming that will focus on family films, world cinema, moving narratives and in depth documentaries from many seminal directors.

Frameline32 runs from June 19 through June 29.

For dates and showtimes, please visit: http://www.frameline.org/festival/

By Kareem Worrell, FilmClick Staff, kworrell@filmclick.com

NewFest: The NY LGBT Film Festival
6.5.08 – 6.15.08
New York, NY

Cruise over to midtown Manhattan and scope the 20th annual NewFest, New York’s LGBT Film Festival. Hundreds of films crowd just a few screens at the AMC Loews on 34th Street, so the block-busting lines this past week have rivaled even those for the testosterone-fueled Iron Man and Indiana Jones spectaculars. Luckily, NewFest’s lines keep out of the way, as they naturally lean to the left. The fest is not without it’s flagship premiers, though. Another Gay Movie: Gays Gone Wild is apparently a laugh riot, although I must confess I missed the first one as well, which premiered at NewFest in 2006. This year’s special events included workshops and seminars on producing independent films, producing independent queer films, and the importance of networking. Included in ticket prices was an access pass to the Festival Lounge, a place to network with other independent filmmakers and enthusiasts.

I caught an experimental program that included shorts by a favorite of mine, Guy Maddin, and an interesting Austrian filmmaker named Ulrich Seidl. Although neither is an exclusively queer film director, both shorts seemed to have a good grip on the fundamentals of the genre (Seidl’s literally). Queer cinema has definitely carved an identity onto the walls of the indie cave, and is even now breaking out into the light of mainstream, thanks to monumental efforts by organizations like NewFest and its devoted members and fans. My experience ended on a touching note, as Don Bachardy, the star of Guido Santi and Tina Mascara’s striking documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story, strode down the aisle after the film was over and held a Q & A. The film recounts the lives of two openly homosexual Los Angeles socialites in a loving relationship that spanned some 30 years. Don survives his (significantly) older partner with pride, courage, and a quirkiness that allows for some truly gorgeous on-screen moments.

The most brilliant, though, was a video piece by photo/video artist Todd Herman called Forbidden Acts, which features disabled, black, and sexually ambiguous poet Leroy Moore reading several of his heart-stopping poems. Out of his wheelchair, he drags his impaired and misshapen body across the floor, while Mr. Herman fixes him in a distorted world of media, and yet he is able to still give us a bit of his marvelous and optimistic textual imagery.

For more information about the film festival, please visit: http://www.newfest.org/

by Michael Prall, FilmClick Staff, mprall@filmclick.com

Brooklyn International Film Festival
5.30.08 – 6.08.08
Brooklyn, NY

The heat wave here in New York is ushering in a host of new film fests. A juggernaut of under-the-radar indie jewels make the Brooklyn International Film Festival’s 10th year extra special, gracing several viewing screens this side of the bridge at venues including: Brooklyn Lyceum, Brooklyn Heights Cinema, the super cool Greenpoint’s Studio B, and East Coast Aliens neighborhood theater and green screen studio.

I caught a free showing of experimental and animated shorts there on June 5th, including Carolyn and Andy London’s heroically hand-rotoscoped short, Letter to Colleen. The first time I caught this little gem was at BE Film Underground a couple months back, and this time I fell in love with its stripped-down, punky aesthetic, Ralph Bakshi-esque musical taste, and sly sense of humor. Also snuck into the program was another epic Signe Baumane toon snippet, The Very First Desire Now and Forever. Check her out.

The festival’s big winner was the fast fan favorite, Fix, a madhouse story from Italian-American-by-way-of-Bangkok Tao Ruspoli, about a race across Los Angeles to make an important rehab appointment. Another shining star was Crawford, a salient portrait of George Bush’s descent upon a small Texas town by David Modigliani, a favorite at SXSW last year, and winner of an audience award this year at BIFF. Also, Alison Murray’s Carny was BIFF’s best documentary feature. Ms. Murray depicts the trials and tribulations of carnival workers struggling amid today’s down-turning economy and cultural melting pot.

At the Brooklyn Heights Cinema I was able to catch a Spanish short, Killing Time, that combined bloodlust and existentialism with ease and an Estonian narrative called The Class, a clever story about a pair of middle-school kids who have had just about enough peer abuse and decided to do something about it. The thematic Cinergy (this year’s festival’s subtitle) was definitely in effect for this program, but violence fueling violence makes the whole world blind, or something like that, and by the end of the screening I must admit I felt a bit Cinergized out.

For more information about the film festival, please visit: http://www.wbff.org/ 

by Michael Prall, FilmClick Staff, mprall@filmclick.com

Philadelphia Independent Film Festival
6.26.08 – 6.29.08
Philadelphia, PA

Come and attend the inaugural Philadelphia Independent Film Festival taking place on June 26th - 29th 2008. The festival will screen 151 independent films from 20 international filmmaking communities. This festival has been noted as “one of those Philadelphia summer events that makes the wonderful state of Pennsylvania a fun place to visit and vacation.” 

The festival will showcase films throughout the historically-radical and artistically-flourishing neighborhood of Northern Liberties.  All screening locations are a short walking distance of one another: North Bowl, Liberty Lands Park, Arbol Café, Liberties Walk, Tower Gallery, Media Bureau, & Woodshop Film Studios. Screenings will be accompanied by round table and filmmaker discussions, panels, demonstrations, film critiques, and a live casting call for a current project. 

With the US Metropolitan City of Philadelphia as its backdrop, the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival was conceived to become a yearly meeting of artistic and business community interests that enable and enhance the innovative, creative, collaborative, and revolutionary potential of successful filmmaking. 

Come out and support the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival during its opening night celebration featuring special guests and performances.

For dates and showtimes, please visit:                         http://www.philadelphiaindependentfilmfestival.com/

By FilmClick Staff

Asbury Shorts New York
5.17.08
New York

Melvin van Peebles, this year’s New York host of the touring festival, said of the first half, “That was the most fun I’ve had with my clothes on in years.” Perhaps a bit off-color, but the comment was fitting for the giddy mood and in fact wasn’t too far off the mark. Manhattan’s Director’s Guild Theatre is a classy venue with a touch of unhinged humor, as characterized by the photos on the wall of historic DGA members. The images represent artists both serious and silly at the same time, including John Landis, Sydney Pollack, and Billy Wilder. So it’s no surprise that Mr. van Peebles was able to lighten us up with his sardonic quips and our laughter continued throughout the entire night, prompting the fest director to call us “the best audience the New York screening has ever had.”

For the last 28 years, Asbury Shorts has screened on the road and in New York a handpicked selection of recent award winning shorts from festivals around the world. Their mission was to present those amazing and funny short films at a cinematic venue (many of them even projected on film) that are too often only seen on YouTube or as DVD Extras.

This year’s selections were astounding, entertaining, and straight from the heart. Indie darling Jason Reitman had a funny piece called Consent, with lawyers duking it out over a couple’s sexual agreement. There were clever animations by Kimberly Miner and Signe Baumane. The YouTube favorite, Spider by Nash Edgerton, built us up slowly until its spine-tingling ending. Australian Rob Carlton’s piece about favoritism toward his twin sons was hilarious, and renowned independent giant Bill Morrison’s tender mixed media piece about the loss of archived film reels nearly made me cry my eyes out.

The standouts were definitely last year’s Tribeca Short Films competition winner, The Super Powers, about a couple who saves their marriage and a local shop owner at the same time, and a Belgian film called Tanghi Argentini by Guy Thys, about re-lighting the fire of passion. This film was absolutely beautiful, and with an Oscar nomination and several wins worldwide, obviously Asbury Shorts isn’t the only film showcase that thinks so.

For more information about the film festival, please visit: http://www.asburyshortsnyc.com/

by Michael Prall, FilmClick Staff, mprall@filmclick.com

Brooklyn Arts Council International Film Festival
4.29.08 - 5.9.08
New York

May’s festival scene isn’t complete without a trip across the bridge to New York City’s more eclectic and, arguably, more exciting borough. The Brooklyn Arts Council’s annual film festival is a mainstay for local film lovers, especially the ones interested in work by unknown artists and neighbors. I was pleased to attend the “Brooklyn Filmmakers” section of the fest, which screened on a Friday night at the prestigious (yet still undiscovered) Brooklyn Museum. This museum is perpetually host to a rich variety of exhibits, currently featuring the trippy and ultra-hip pop art of Takashi Murakami. The screening itself, in the Cantor Auditorium, featured a few gems of its own.

Locals Tamara Yadao and Sara Sun showed experimental videos showcasing rich and personal documentary colored by the Asian American experience. It was a fitting prelude to the feature doc, a heartfelt journey by Doan Hoang who returns to Vietnam in search of a pre-war family history. Many films missed the mark, typical of a local filmmakers exhibition, but nonetheless, that admirable independent spirit was in the air.

A gorgeous and smart film by Daniel Garcia and Rania Attieh,  Almost, Brooklyn, gives us an old man doing just what audiences did, crossing the bridge. “I’ve lived in Manhattan all my life, and I’ve never been to Brooklyn. Take me there,” says the old man, armed with an 8mm camera, to the South Asian cabbie. The film, a pet project of the living legend and Iranian new-waver Abbas Kiarostami, ushers the audience through a surreal and very telling sojourn in the magical borough.

Another shining star was the world premier of Jasper Goldman and Loren Talbot’s documentary, City of Water, which reminded New Yorkers that although they are surrounded by waterfront, it’s sadly very hard to actually make physical contact with it. It was inspiring and said much about how effective community initiatives can be. Cheers to this magical borough, and the Brooklyn Arts Council that keeps its creative spirit alive.

For more information about the film festival, please visit: http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org/documents/771

by Michael Prall, FilmClick Staff, mprall@filmclick.com