The festival circuit plays out for festival programmers like a grand chessboard, with a prime spot in the calendar as the key positioning strategy. The AFI Fest, which has seen some changes at the helm in recent years, has had the unenviable spot of the end of the calendar, on the brink of awards season, when the discoveries from the beginning months of the year are lining up for their accolades and kudos at year's end. So, as artistic director Rose Kuo told soon-to-be-former LA Weekly critic Scott Foundas, "When Bob [director of programming Robert Koehler] came on, we just decided we should
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Fifteen delegations of filmmakers and specialists dispatched around the world in 2009.
See pics from the 2009 IDA Documentary Awards before and during the event!
Book Review of 'Documentary Time: Film and Phenomenology'
A festival that promises to "enrich the human spirit through film," the Ojai-Ventura International Film Festival, based 75 miles north of Los Angeles, swung into its 10th year November 5 through 8, opening with a sold-out celebrity golf tournament, hosted by actor Malcolm McDowell. Engaging audiences and 6,000 ticket holders, the festival programmers offered an ambitious slate of 62 films, including three special screenings, 13 feature docs and four documentary shorts, animation and narrative films. Screenings were shown in five different venues ranging from Ojai's downtown theater to
New work from Cynthia Wade, Rory Kennedy among 18 US and international films.
Short Award honors Australian 'Salt.' Get full recap of the night!
When I was 16, I'd drive my parents' Volkswagen Beetle through the shimmering heat of the District of Columbia to M Street and the air-conditioned refuge of the Biograph Theater, where I'd see whatever was on offer: Godard, Bellocchio, Fellini...and Fred Wiseman's documentaries, like Law and Order and High School. But it wasn't until my 40s that I saw Hospital, set in the Metropolitan Hospital, a public facility in Harlem. Up near the front row at New York City's Film Forum, I experienced it as a near-religious work-from the opening shot of the patient, face invisible, arms spread as in a
Docs Abound among Premieres, Spotlight and New Frontier strands.