Festivals

It was a capacity crowd that convened at Sundance Headquarters on Main Street for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Women Breaking Barriers: Where Are We Now? panel. The panel, which built on last year’s event, was moderated by HFPA members Elisabeth Sereda and Silvia Bizio.

PARK CITY  --  It was the same room – the legendary Egyptian theater atop Main Street. The usual time and date: Opening Day Thursday at 1 pm sharp.

This Thursday, January 24, marks the opening of yet another edition of Robert Redford’s film festival in Utah. This year’s film line-up is impressive as are some of the fest’s sideshow attractions.

After a short but intense week, the third edition of the Macao International Film Festival, also known as IFFAMACAO, concluded last Friday with an award ceremony and a screening of Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, submitted this year to the Golden Globes in the Best Foreign category. The fact that the opening film was Green Book, an American production that received five nominations at the Globes, including Best Picture, Musical or Comedy is a perfect example of what this festival’s goals -   a  balance between what the East and the West have to offer, with an equal amount of films from both sides of the world.

How to make the Tokyo International Film Festival more attractive to Japanese audiences -  that was the task Kohei Ando took on four years ago when he became the festival’s programming advisor. “I was teaching cinema at the university and my then student asked how I would make the festival more appealing.

The 32nd Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles opened on the night of the midterm elections, November 6, mirroring the high-strung climate and divisiveness that characterize current politics. When the festival’s honoree Jason Blum, Founder of Blumhouse Productions, took the opportunity to publicly express his anti-Trump sentiment, several audience members began to walk out in protest.

The 4th edition of the Asian World Film Festival opened at the Arclight in Culver City, boasting a collection of new films from over 50 Asian countries. The unique feature of the festival is that all films are official Oscar and/or Golden Globe entries.

There is probably no better place for a classic film festival than Lyon, France. After all, it’s the hometown of brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière who developed the Cinematographe projector and whose Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon, a 46-second documentary first shown in 1895, is considered the first motion picture ever made.

The movie that the New Orleans Film Festival picked for their opening night could not have been better: director Peter Farrelly's Green Book is based on the true story of African American concert pianist Don Shirley, who decides to tour the Deep South. A great idea except it is 1962 and he needs protection, so the record company hires Italian-American New Yorker Tony “Lip” Vallelonga to drive him around and run interference in dicey situations.