2013 Sommets du cinéma d’animation, Nov 27–Dec 1

ARE YOU READY TO REACH THE 12TH SOMMETS DU CINÉMA D’ANIMATION?

The 12th edition of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation- Festival international de Montréal et de Québec promises to impress!

From November 27th to December 1st, the Montreal component of the Sommets, held at the Cinémathèque québécoise, will present almost 120 animated films from around the world, including world premieres, as well as Canadian and Quebec premieres. This 12th edition, more substantial than ever, confirms the position the Sommets in the international circuit of animation, in addition to being the largest festival of its kind in the province. The Sommets now play a key role in bringing together artisans and professionals of animation cinema, as well the general public.

Producers Guild of America announces documentary nominations

LOS ANGELES (November 26, 2013) – The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced today, the Documentary Motion Picture nominees that will advance in the voting process for the 25th Annual Producers Guild Awards.

The nominated films, listed below in alphabetical order, are:

29th Annual Film Independent Spirit Awards Nominations Announced

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 26, 2013 -- Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Film Independent at LACMA Film Series, announced nominations for the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Awards this morning. Film Independent President Josh Welsh presided over the press conference held at the W Hollywood, with actresses Octavia Spencer and Paula Patton presenting the nominations. Nominees for Best Feature included 12 Years a Slave, All Is Lost, Frances Ha, Inside Llewyn Davis and Nebraska.

Mud was selected to receive the annual Robert Altman Award, which is bestowed upon one film's director, casting director and ensemble cast.

In its commitment to recognizing the importance of below the line contributions to the art of filmmaking, Film Independent has now introduced, for the first year, the Best Editing category in the Spirit Awards.

2013 Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal announces award winners

16th RIDM Awards and Mentions

Montreal, Saturday, November 23, 2013 – The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) will end tomorrow, after presenting 135 films and an array of events and parallel activities. The award winners for the 16^th edition of the RIDM were announced this Saturday night at the closing event held at Cinéma Excentris.

GRAND PRIZE FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

Presented by Porter Airlines, the Grand Prize for Best International Feature was awarded to E agora? Lembra-me, filmed diary both intimate and universal journal by Joaquim Pinto. The jury was particularly moved “by the breadth and depth of the reflections; the beauty of the words and the images that Joaquim and his companion Nuno share with the viewer in their daily lives”.

10 Live Action Shorts Advance in 2013 Oscar Race

BEVERLY HILLS, CA —The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 live action short films will advance in the voting process for the 86th Academy Awards®. One hundred twenty pictures had originally qualified in the category.

The 10 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title, with their production companies:

2013 Planet in Focus Film Festival, Nov 21-24

PLANET IN FOCUS ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL OPENS TOMORROW
John Walker’s visually evocative feature doc, Arctic Defenders opens the Festival

Wednesday, November 20, 2013: Planet in Focus (PIF), Canada’s largest environmentally themed film festival, is proud to announce its robust line-up of features and short films to be screened at the 14th annual Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival taking place in Toronto on November 21-24th, 2013.

John Walker’s Arctic Defenders is the Opening Night Film and provides a startling revelation that the Canadian government secretly moved Inuit communities into the High Arctic, without proper resources, in order to defend our sovereignty. Italian filmmaker Enrico Cerasuolo’s Last Call is the Closing Night Film and revisits the writers and the theories presented in the 1972 book “The Limits to Growth”, dubbed ‘one of the most important documents of our age’ by the New York Times, the book, explored the impact of over population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion.

Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal statement on the passing of Peter Wintonick

Montreal, Monday, November 18, 2013 – The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) has the regret to announce the passing of filmmaker Peter Wintonick. A tribute had just been paid to him as part of the 16th edition of the festival.

Born in 1953 in Trenton, Ontario, but established in Montreal for a long time, documentarian Peter Wintonick passed away this Monday, November 18, at the age of 60, struck by liver cancer. A producer, a director, a critic, an editor and a programmer, Peter Wintonick devoted a large part of his life to independent cinema. His filmography included fiction features, documentaries, educative and sociopolitical films.

Wintonick had notably produced and directed with Mark Achbar Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, which won many international awards. Among his filmography, we also find Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment and Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News. Peter Wintonick regularly collaborated to different film magazines and with several festivals and institutions throughout the world. He also taught cinema in several universities, notably at Concordia University. In 2006, Peter Wintonick received the Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli, Dec 13-Jan 3

SPIRITED AWAY: THE FILMS OF STUDIO GHIBLI
Featuring the rarely-screened Grave of the Fireflies
December 13 to January 3 at TIFF Bell Lightbox

This holiday season, TIFF Cinematheque presents a retrospective devoted to Japan’s Studio Ghibli — one of the most influential film studios in the world. Following its spectacularly popular run in the spring of 2012, Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli returns from December 13 to January 3 to delight TIFF Bell Lightbox audiences with a near-exhaustive 18-film collection that includes a blend of new 35-mm and digital prints. The showcase pays homage to the studio’s legendary Japanese animation team led by Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki, its trademark animation style, powerful storytelling, and deeply felt humanism.

TIFF is honoured to finally feature the rarely-screened masterpiece Grave of the Fireflies, one of Ghibli's supreme accomplishments and regarded by many as the greatest animated film of all time. The lineup also includes From Up On Poppy Hill, a father-son collaboration between studio co-founder Miyazaki and his son Goro; beloved classics such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Kiki’s Delivery Service; rarely seen titles Only Yesterday and The Ocean Waves; and Hayao Miyazaki's Academy Award®-winning Spirited Away.

More than 70 international guests at the 16th Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal

Montreal, Thursday, November 14, 2013 – The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) is launching its 16th edition today. More than 70 international guests are expected.

The guest of honour of the RIDM, Marcel Ophuls will be present at the festival. At 85 years old, the director of The Sorrow and the Pity is a veritable legend of documentary cinema. His body of work reveals not only a patient and stubborn witness of History, but also an inventive filmmaker who breaks the conventions of historical documentaries. The RIDM devotes an important retrospective to the work of Ophuls, who will also take part in a public discussion. On the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of Hotel Terminus, the film for which Ophuls won the Best Documentary Oscar, the RIDM invites festivalgoers to attend the historic reunion between the filmmaker and the American producer of Hotel Terminus, John Friedman. The new film by Marcel Ophuls, Ain’t Misbehavin’, which was shown in Cannes this year, will also screen. With this filmed memoir, Ophuls takes us on a bittersweet journey during which he introduces us to his father Max Ophuls, Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Lubitsch, François Truffaut and Jeanne Moreau.

Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal 2013, Nov 13-24

Jehane Noujaim’s The Square will open the 16th RIDM this Wednesday

Montreal, Tuesday, November 12, 2013 – The Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) will launch its 16th edition this Wednesday, November 13 with a screening of the new film by Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim: The Square (Al Midan). This epic documentary is a chronicle of recent events in Egypt.

From January 2011 to July 2013 – from the first anti-Mubarak protests to the fall of Morsi – Egyptian filmmaker Jehane Noujaim’s (Control Room) crew stayed on the front lines of events as they unfolded in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Guided by Ahmed, a charismatic incarnation of valiant Egyptian youth; his friend and enemy, Magdy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Khalid Abdalla, an actor known for The Kite Runner, the film makes the square itself its central subject: it is the beating heart of a people who have been fighting for their rights for more than two years. Updated since the early cut shown at Sundance (where it won the Audience Award), this epic documentary is both spectacular and deeply moving; it is one of the year’s absolute must-see films. After winning a second Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the film started a dazzling run that already places it among the most popular titles of 2013.

British Independent Film Awards 2013 announce nominations

The British Independent Film Awards have announced their full nominations for the 16th edition of the awards. Leading the way with eight mentions was David Mackenzie's prison drama Starred Up starring Jack O'Connell. It was nominated for Best British Independent Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay for Jonathan Asser, Best Actor for Jack O'Connell and two Best Supporting Actor nominations for Rupert Friend and Ben Mendelsohn.

Clio Barnard's Oscar Wilde adaptation The Selfish Giant followed close behind with seven mentions including Best British Independent Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay for Barnard.

The winners for the 16th annual British Independent Film Awards will be announced on Sunday December 8th at Old Billingsgate in London.

10 Animated Shorts Advance in 2013 Oscar Race

BEVERLY HILLS, CA —The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that 10 animated short films will advance in the voting process for the 86th Academy Awards®. Fifty-six pictures had originally qualified in the category.

The 10 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title, with their production companies:

Cinema Eye Honors announces nominees for 2013 Nonfiction Film Awards

Forty feature films and six shorts will vie for this year’s Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking as nominees were announced this evening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center in New York City at an event hosted by the Tribeca Film Institute.

Five films are in the running for Cinema Eye’s top award, Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking: Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, Martha Shane and Lana Wilson’s After Tiller, Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Leviathan and Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell. Nominees for Outstanding Feature were determined by votes from both the 23-person nominations committee as well as more than 80 directors of this year’s eligible films.

Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer led all films with six nominations, while The Act of Killing received five. Heinzerling and the directing duos from two films nominated for Outstanding Feature – Leviathan‘s Castaing-Taylor & Paravel and After Tiller‘s Shane and Wilson – all led individual nominees with four nominations apiece. Making Cinema Eye history with his nomination in the feature film category, Lucien Castaing-Taylor becomes the first person to be nominated for Outstanding Feature after having been previously nominated for Outstanding Debut (he was nominated in 2011 for Sweetgrass).

19 Animated Features Submitted For 2013 Oscar Race

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Nineteen features have been submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film category for the 86th Academy Awards®.

Among the eligible submissions is the first 3D Canadian animated feature, The Legend of Sarila by Nancy Florence Savard. The story is based on Inuit culture and stars Christopher Plummer, Rachelle Lefevre, Genevieve Bujold, Dustin Milligan, Timothy Rozon, Natar Ungalaaq, and Elisapie Isaac.

Also nominated for the Animated Feature Oscar is revered Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's final film The Wind Rises. He has announced his retirement due to his age and failing eyesight.

The 19 submitted features, listed in alphabetical order, are:

Canadian Screen Awards reveal Academy Special Award winners

Semi Chellas, David Cronenberg, Alanis Obomsawin, Alan Sawyer & W5 honoured
 
TORONTO, November 5, 2013 – The Academy Special Award winners for the 2014 CANADIAN SCREEN AWARDS were announced today by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
 
“The Academy is proud to celebrate these exceptionally talented Canadians, and to recognize their successes at home and on the world stage,” says Academy Chair Martin Katz. “We are especially pleased to champion Canada’s most creative filmmakers and writers as well as our hardnosed journalists, uncompromising humanitarians and world-class digital innovators.”