Excitement is building in London, one of the world's great film cities, as details are being revealed for the upcoming Times BFI London Film Festival, which celebrates its milestone 50th anniversary this year. While the Festival doesn't have its official launch until October 18th, the celebrations have already begun this summer, with an ambitious screening of films from the Festival's first 50 years. The National Film Theater, the cinematheque treasure run by the British Film Institute, wh...

The New York Film Festival has announced that its Retrospective program this year is devoted to a celebration of 50 Years of Janus Films, the pioneering arthouse distribution company, who singlehandedly brought the films of such film titans as Bergman, Kurosawa, Truffaut and Fellini to the attention of American film audiences. The program, which opens on September 30th with the screening of a new 35mm film print of the Jean Renoir humanist classic THE RULES OF THE GAME, will showcase over 30 c...

Brooklyn - Rooftop Films summer festival is in full swing. Now in it’s 10th year, Rooftop Films has become one of the premiere venues, in New York City and beyond, for new, underground and independent short films and underexposed feature films. Running from June 1 through September 23, Rooftop Films is hosting more shows than ever before in 2006. The films come from around the globe, and include both world premieres and festival award-winners. The artists presented include first-time filmmaker...

Monday, June 19---The 4th annual SILVERDOCS:AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival ended its six-day event with the announcements of Jury and Audience prizes in a number of diverse categories. The Festival, which had a significant breakthrough this year, in terms of content, celebrity attendance (Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Al Gore, Thomas L. Friedman, Will Shortz and others) and audience response has more than reinforced its claim as the premiere documentary film festival in North Ameri...

Friday, June 16----In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Soweto Riots, a tipping point in the decades-long struggle of black South Africans to end the abusive system of apartheid, the SILVERDOCS festival is hosting a special program of films by South African documentarians, who have turned their probing camera eyes on their homeland. Seven films (five features and two shorts) are being presented, including the world premiere this evening of SOWETO BLUES, a musical documentary that re...

Thursday, June 15----It doesn't get much better than this....legendary film director Martin Scorsese being honored for his documentary film career, in a rare on-stage dialogue with independent auteur Jim Jarmusch. That was the scenario this evening, as Scorsese was honored at the SILVERDOCS 2006 Guggenheim Symposium, named in honor of four-time Academy Award winning documentarian, and Washington DC resident, Charles Guggenheim. Scorsese is one of the few Hollywood directors who has moved from...

Thursday, June 15----A documentary film festival always has some common threads to it. Many involve hot-button political issues about social inequity, conflict and the abuse of government. SILVERDOCS certainly has its share of those. However, a more personal genre, that can best be described as films that celebrate the triumph of the human spirit, is also in evidence here, in a number of superb films. BLACK SUN by UK director Gary Tan, had its premiere at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival and was ...

Thursday, June 15----One of the tenets of the American system of governing is a strict separation of church and state. It is very clearly written into our Constitution, and was certainly the intention of our "founding fathers", who had experienced the persecutions of state religions in Europe. This seperation between church doctrine and the rule of law has been scrupulously followed but that wall is definitely crumbling. A number of documentaries premiering at the SILVERDOCS festival this week,...

Wednesday, June 14---As the SILVERDOCS festival entered its first full day of programming, today was also the start of the very ambitious International Documentary Conference, which brings together an illustrious group of film and media professionals who will address topics of interest to the dozens of documentary filmmakers and distributors who are attending this year's event. With 30 sessions over 4 days, this is an unprecendented "intensive" for all those interested in where documentary film ...

Tuesday, June 13-----The 4th edition of SILVERDOCS: The AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, the leading documentary film festival in North America, launches this evening with a reflective view of the creative and economic pressures of the Hollywood system. BOFFO! TINSELTOWN’S BOMBS AND BLOCKBUSTERS, directed by veteran documentarian Bill Couturie, is based on the book written by long-time Variety editor-in-chief Peter Bart, in celebration of the film trade’s 100th anniversary. The ...

Monday, June 12---While most US-based film festivals regularly showcase at least a few international documentaries as part of their program, non-fiction from around the world is a definite spotlight of the SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, which launches on tomorrow night at the AFI Silver Center. In a section called World View, which also includes US documentaries, the subject matter and geographical origins of the films bring a broader understanding of political, social ...

Sunday, June 11....At a gala Awards Ceremony at the Forum Luisa Todi last night, the 22nd edition of the Troia International Film Festival came to a conclusion with the announcement of Fetival Awards in a number of competitiom categproes. An analysis of the films and the awards will follow, but here is the list of award winners. FESTROIA – FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL DE CINEMA SPECIAL AWARDS AUDIENCE AWARD To the film THE WEDDING PARTY, by Dominique Deruddere (Belgium/Germany) PRIZE MAN AND HIS...

Saturday, June 10---When screenwriter Barry Stringfellow was pitching his original screenplay of a teenage boy dying of cancer whose final wish is a date with a blonde supermodel, he was repeatedly asked how to much the film more "upbeat". Well cancer is never very upbeat, but, as Virginia Woolf famously said, "a character needs to die so that the other characters can value life". That is the sentiment and the message of Stringfellow's alternately moving and hilarious ONE LAST THING, directed b...

Friday, June 9----Fresh off his tour of the Croisette at the Cannes Film Festival with his film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, former Vice President (and current media darling) Al Gore will delivery the Keynote Address at the SILVERDOCS Documentary Film Conference on Thursday, June 15. Gore's film, directed by Davis Guggenheim, a wake-up call on the effects of global warming, has been a media sensation since its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and reached a fever pitch when Gore walke...

Friday, June 9---One of the most consistently popular sections at the annual Troia International Film Festival is devoted to American Independents. This year, six films, most having their European premieres at the event, will compete for the Dolphin Award. The films are quite diverse in their genres, directorial styles and use of their regional base. In Anthony Ng’s 212, which had its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, a diverse group of twenty-something New Yorkers grasp for...

SILVERDOCS: The AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, which begins next week, has announced the 10 films that will be competing for the Sterling Award Feature Film prize at its event. The Festival, which has become one of the leading showcases of non-fiction film in the world, mixes film screenings with information panels and special events to offer a comprehensive look at the current state of the art of documentary film, and where the art form may go in the future. As one can imagine ...