Mill Valley Film Festival

'Orange Is the New Black' Star Taryn Manning's New Indie Says Something Novel About Bipolar Disorder

John Anderson — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 15:29:27 GMT

Distributors are sniffing around "A Light Beneath Their Feet" for very good reason. Not only does director Valerie Weiss’s latest effort straddle several genres simultaneously—among them, the coming-of-age drama and the social critique—it also features a pair of break-out performances: Madison Davenport (Tina Fey’s daughter in the upcoming "Sisters"), who plays high-schooler Beth Gerringson; and Taryn Manning ("Orange Is the New Black"), who plays Beth’s mother, Gloria.

Another mother-daughter drama, you ask (or sigh, or whine, or moan)? Not quite. Beth has problems with her mother, and wants to flee their home in Chicago for UCLA. But it's not because she hates her. Far from it. It’s because, despite her academic achievements, Beth has been a full-time caretaker for her mother—who’s seriously bipolar—ever since her father left. She’s got caregiver burnout. And while she’s wracked by guilt over wanting to go, she’s also wracked by the knowledge of the regret she’ll feel if she doesn’t finally get away.

The wild card is Manning, who was among the "OITNB" cast members who won last year’s SAG award for Best Ensemble (Comedy), and who are up for it again this year. Actors are drawn to mentally challenged/disturbed/disabled characters like bears to honey, because they test the performer's range and also, don’t we know, tend to get noticed. But Manning, under Weiss’s direction, puts a spin on Gloria that distinguishes her from similarly unstable characters.

Playing bipolar presents the opportunity for wildly divergent displays of mood and mania, but even at her most antic, Manning’s Gloria has a sense of humor. She’s likable. She makes you nervous, yes. But you don’t dislike her, or necessarily want to get away from her. And by constructing Gloria this way, Manning enhances Davenport’s performance: The viewer understands better why the daughter wants to get away, and doesn’t: Her mother is fun. She’s just a little crazy. And embarrassing (but what parent isn’t?).

"A Light Beneath Their Feet" has played Mill Valley (where it won the Gold Audience Favorite Award for U.S. Indie) and the Whistler festival (where it won the EDA Award from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists for Best-Directed Feature), and is scheduled for the Chicago International Film Festival, Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, Cucalorous Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, and Heartland Film Festival. One shouldn’t be too concerned. It will be coming your way. The hope here is that Manning’s performance gets the attention it deserves, because it says something new about the bipolar condition.

Sir Ian and the Women

Meredith Brody — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 22:21:29 GMT

When Sir Ian McKellen heard that the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival was giving him a tribute and their Mill Valley Film Festival Award, his first thought, he said, was "Why on earth am I getting the Lifetime Achievement Award?" His second thought, apparently, was how he could share the honor. When he learned that the slogan of the MVFF this year, in honor of the historically low percentage of women directors in film, was Mind the Gap (appropriately British, since it references London subway stations), he asked if the clips in his tribute could feature the women he'd worked with over the years.

Well, no, they said, it's all about you, and the clips have already been selected.

Whereupon McKellen offered to put together his own program of clips and commentary. Although the program had already been printed, Director of Programming Zoe Elton told me, "How could we say no?" The only available slot was on Monday afternoon, the day after the tribute, and somehow they got the word out and the largest room in the Smith Rafael Film Center was entirely filled.

Sir Ian was dapper in a linen jacket, a spotted t-shirt, grey-blue pants, immaculate white sneakers, and a long multi-colored scarf — considerably less formal than he'd been the night before. "Oh dear," he began, "it was a late night last night."

But he wanted "to give a little present back," and told us that he'd never done this before, and to "just relax!"

The slide show started with a brief history lesson -- tributes to Lilian Baylis, whose efforts to bring culture to the masses resulted in the founding of the English National Opera, the Royal Ballet, and the National Theatre ("good on Lilian Baylis, huh?"), and early actresses Nell Gwyn and Fanny Kemble.

The first of the greats that McKellen had actually worked with was Dame Sybil Thorndike -- he had been cast as the Dauphin to her St. Joan in a BBC recording of extracts from the Shaw play, and was so wound up at the prospect that he arrived at the studio half-an-hour late.

READ MORE: Ian McKellen's Performance as 'Mr. Holmes' Delivers Sleeper Indie Hit.

Some highlights of the dense and yet light-hearted afternoon, in which McKellen glanced at a brief page or two of notes, obviously meant just to jog his memory: Lynn Redgrave played opposite him in his first-ever television appearance, and the inside gossip stated: "We were playing sweethearts…she asked me to marry her. I thought she was about to make the same mistake [as her mother]" since her father, Michael Redgrave, was bisexual. McKellen added, wryly, that somehow Alan Bates ended up opposite Redgrave in the part he was supposed to get in the great success, "Georgy Girl."

In "Thank You All Very Much," Sandy Dennis becomes pregnant after a one-night stand with McKellen ("my character was probably gay"), and decides to raise the baby on her own -- "Rather tame these days…she was very nervous, nervous in her acting, too much, I thought." Dennis, he said, was married to jazz musician Gerry Mulligan at the time, and was very proud of her zoo: "endless pictures of her cats -- they all looked the same to me -- and dogs and crocodile."

A sexy picture of a bare-chested McKellen with Vivien Merchant, the wife of Haold Pinter, was from a film maudit, Alfred the Great, written in faux-medieval language. When Pinter read the script, he told Merchant that she was not to speak a word of the appalling dialect. The result, said McKellen, was that she became a dumb character, "I took over all her wretched lines, and she got all the closeups!"

McKellen's first leading part was playing D.H. Lawrence in "Priest of Love," with Janet Suzman, Penelope Keith, and Ava Gardner -- lovely memories of his first travel in first class, his first suite in a hotel -- in Oaxaca, overlooking a swimming pool, where he looked down and saw Ava Gardner in an emerald one-piece, doing the breast-stroke, who looked up and waved and said "Hi, Ian!" "I did feel HIGH!," he laughed.

Another Gardner anecdote: he was appalled that Gardner had a shared trailer, with a bathroom that all the crew had access to. "Call your agent," he told her, "you've got to get a better trailer." "No, I will not call my agent," she said. "I will call Frank."

The next day the biggest trailer in Mexico arrived. "If you've been married to Frank Sinatra, you don't need an agent!"

After coming out, McKellen played the "raging heterosexual" John Profumo, England's Secretary of State for War whose affair with playgirl Christine Keeler -- played by Joanne Whalley Kilmer, "one of the most beautiful" women he worked with -- who was also consorting with a Russian spy, brought down the British government, in the movie "Scandal." When it came to the sex, McKellen said, "I didn't quite know what to do," so he asked his friend, actor Edward Petherbridge "Can you give me some tips?" He drew matchstick men and women, so "I'm now an expert in the missionary position!"

Every slide or clip brought forth a witty reminiscence, usually kind, but not without interesting insight —Stockard Channing in "Six Degrees of Separation" reminded him of Tallulah Bankhead's "wild personality" —and even occasionally a bit of a sting: "Here's a naughty story which you can't repeat:" McKellen was not pleased that Will Smith, playing a gay character in the film, refused to kiss another actor, since he thought his fans wouldn't like it. "It was IN THE SCRIPT!," McKellen said, finding this unprofessional. "I got my own back. At the premiere, I gave him a great big kiss — on the lips!"

He played with two great Dames, Eileen Atkins in "Cold Comfort Farm" and on Broadway in "The Promise," and Judi Dench — "everybody loves Judi, that's her quality, she's lovable" — in "Macbeth" —her Lady Macbeth was "sympathetic!" "Eileen and Judy haven't had facelifts."

Kate Beckinsale, another great beauty and co-star in "Cold Comfort Farm," also proposed marriage, though not, it seems, as seriously as Lynn Redgrave's offer.

Clips of McKellen in his own screenplay of "Richard III" ("I played it at the Curran [in San Francisco] and each night went back to the hotel and wrote the screenplay…") brought up Maggie Smith: "chalk and cheese with Judi Dench, yet they're the two pillars of British acting," and a cute little story about Eddie Redmayne, "who didn't get the part [he auditioned for] of 1 of the 2 boys killed — he's never let me forget it, but it's not really held him back, has it?"

McKellen shared the screen with another great beauty, Rachel Weisz, in "Swept from the Sea," directed by Beban Kidron, who was "heavily pregnant -- it had a good effect on the film." "The week after the film wrapped, she delivered -- he's now a strapping thirty-year-old."

Meryl Streep, in "Plenty," was "terribly attentive to me" — during the rehearsal period, they were working, and her assistant told her the President of the United States was on the line, and Streep asked if she could call him back! She said they'd do a play together "in a few years, after the offers die down" — "Of course, I'm still waiting!"

Halle Berry, his co-star in "X-Men," is "one of the most beautiful women in the world— we've done four, with Rebecca Romijn, Famke Janssen, Jennifer Lawrence — it's an honor to be in the presence of these high-powered, glamorous women."

"Gods and Monsters," with Lynn Redgrave, again, brought up sweet memories of her niece, Natasha Richardson, with whom he co-starred in "Asylum," one of her last films, and whom he obviously adored: "nonstop fun…perfect hostess…wonderful cook…always worried about her career, she was robbed of that and so were we."

"Here's a beautiful actor -- Audrey Tatou," with whom he worked in "The Da Vinci Code." "We fell into each other's arms and laughed a good deal and wondered what we were doing in this film."

His co-star in "The Lord of the Rings" movies, Cate Blanchett, he never actually met or worked with until "The Hobbit." Guillermo del Toro thought "they should be sweet on each other -- a suggestion of Elvish/wizardly romance," which was indeed faintly visible in the clip. "Isn't she gorgeous? -- no other face like that in the world."

"Who better to end with than Laura Linney," Sir Ian said, his co-star in "Mr. Holmes," and a "great friend of Armistead Maupin, your local author and author of 'Tales of the City,' in which she played Marianne." (Maupin, also a great friend of Sir Ian, introduced him at the previous night's Tribute.) Linney had just had a baby before filming the rather dour, older character in "Mr. Holmes," and "the little baby was getting his dinner in between shots -- a lovely reminder that life goes on."

When I met Sir Ian afterwards, I assured him that, with a very little polish, he now had a one-man (and many women) show he could take on the road. "You could call it Dames I Have Known and Loved," I said. He looked cheered, and then stricken: "I forgot Helen Mirren!" Perhaps she will show up in his Los Angeles presentation.

READ MORE: Ian McKellen to Get Mill Valley Tribute

'Room' Declared Audience Award Favorite at 38th Mill Valley Film Festival

Sonya Saepoff — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 16:35:20 GMT

READ MORE: Mill Valley Film Festival Announces Full Lineup, Including 'Suffragette,' 'Carol' and 'Macbeth'

The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) concluded October 18 with the California premiere of "Suffragette," which capped 11 days of screenings with internationally acclaimed filmmakers and special guests.

"This was an amazing 11 days for film lovers, music enthusiasts, and members of the industry," said Mark Fishkin, Founder/Director of the Mill Valley Film Festival. "We are so proud to be a festival that filmmakers—both local and international—return to year after year to present their films to our sophisticated and influential Bay Area audiences, who love to see and nurture these new works."

The MVFF Audience Awards represent the people’s choice favorites at this year’s festival. Here are the winners of the various Audience Award categories.

Overall Audience Favorite 2015
"Room" Dir. Lenny Abrahamson

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 US Cinema
"Spotlight" Dir. Tom McCarthy

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 US Cinema
"Truth" Dir. James Vanderbilt

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 US Cinema Indie
"A Light Beneath Their Feet" Dir. Valerie Weiss

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 US Cinema Indie
"The Automatic Hate" Dir. Justin Lerner

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 World Cinema
"Brooklyn" Dir. John Crowley

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 World Cinema
"Remember" Dir. Atom Egoyan

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 World Cinema Indie
"The Passion of Augustine" Dir. Léa Pool

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 World Cinema Indie
"Under the Same Sun" Dir. Mitra Sen

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 Valley of the Docs
"Surviving Skokie" Dir. Eli Adler, Blair Gershkow

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 Valley of the Docs
"An Act of Love" Dir. Scott Sheppard

Audience Favorite, Special Mention – 2015 Valley of the Docs
"A New Color: The Art of Being Edythe Boone" Dir. Marlene Morris
"Penny" Dir. Elizabeth Sher

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 Children’s FilmFest
"The Amazing Wiplala" Dir. Tim Oliehoek

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 Children’s FilmFest
"Shana: The Wolf's Music" Dir. Nino Jacusso

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 Mind the Gap: Women | Work | Film
"Suffragette" Dir. Sarah Gavron

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 Mind the Gap: Women | Work | Film
"The Dressmaker" Dir. Jocelyn Moorhouse

Audience Favorite, Doc Award – 2015 Mind the Gap: Women | Work | Film
"Mavis!" Dir. Jessica Edwards

Audience Favorite, Gold Award – 2015 Active Cinema
"Code: Debugging the Gender Gap" Dir. Robin Hauser Reynolds

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 Active Cinema
"Dogtown Redemption" Dir. Amir Soltani, Chihiro Wimbush

Audience Favorite, Silver Award – 2015 Animation
"Anomalisa" Dir. Charlie Kaufman

The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival was October 8 – 18, 2015.

READ MORE: 'Spotlight' and 'The Danish Girl' to Open 38th Mill Valley Film Festival

'Spotlight' and 'The Danish Girl' to Open 38th Mill Valley Film Festival

Zack Sharf — Tue, 29 Sep 2015 18:13:46 GMT

READ MORE: Review: How Michael Keaton Saves 'Spotlight'

Returning for its 38th year, the Mill Valley Film Festival has selected a pair of awards contenders to be its Opening Night films for 2015.

Focus Features' "The Danish Girl," which depicts the love story inspired by the lives of Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener, will play at 7pm and 7:15pm on Thursday, October 8 at Century Larkspur Landing. The film stars Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, both of whom have been thrown into the Oscar race following the film's hearty reception at festivals in Venice and Toronto. Director Tom Hooper will be in attendance for the film's Mill Valley screening.

Open Road's acclaimed "Spotlight" will be the second Opening Night film. The drama from Tom McCarthy tells the riveting true story of the Boston Globe's investigative team that uncovered a scandals of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The movie features an ensemble cast, including Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams and more. McCarthy will also be in attendance for the film's screening.

The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival runs October 8-18.

READ MORE: Toronto Review: 'The Danish Girl' Isn't As Groundbreaking As It Thinks

Ian McKellen to Get Mill Valley Tribute

Ryan Lattanzio — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 17:06:02 GMT

Mill Valley Film Festival's tribute to Ian McKellen on October 11 should help embolden awards prospects for his performance as the Arthur Conan Doyle sleuth facing the winter of his life in "Mr. Holmes" (Roadside/Miramax).

An onstage conversation will include clips from his tremendous career, which includes Oscar nominations for "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001) and "Gods and Monsters" (1998), which won "Holmes" director Bill Condon a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. McKellen is also beloved for his stage work, including many incarnations of Shakespeare, and has long been an outspoken champion of gay rights.

Also getting the Mill Valley tribute this year is Sarah Silverman, who will receive a Spotlight appreciation at the fest.

READ MORE: Ian McKellen Will Please Sherlock Fans as 'Mr. Holmes'

38th Mill Valley Film Fest to Close With 'Suffragette,' Feature Female-Focused Events

Inkoo Kang — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 15:02:17 GMT

The gender gap and those attempting to bridge it will enjoy the spotlight this year at the Mill Valley Film Festival in Marin County, California.

The 38th iteration of the festival, which will run October 8-18, will close with Carey Mulligan's "Suffragette" and host a series of events focusing on gender inequity in the film and tech worlds. The "Mind the Gap" events will include discussions with director Catherine Hardwicke, screenwriter Pamela Gray, actress Jena Malone, researcher Stacy L. Smith and "Suffragette" helmer Sarah Gavron, writer Abi Morgan and producer Faye Ward. Women & Hollywood founder and editor Melissa Silverstein will moderate/interview two of the discussions.

Here are the all "Mind the Gap" events:

ROLE MODELS & HEROINES (Installation)

Drawing from her extensive collection of archival film posters and memorabilia, MVFF Director of Programming Zoë Elton explores the importance of role models and the ways that female characters are portrayed in cinema. Whether iconic (think the sword-wielding Uma Thurman in Kill Bill) or laconic (Barbie…as a film director?), a single image can speak volumes: What is sparked in our imagination can last a lifetime. Who was your onscreen role model when you were growing up? Visit this fun installation at the Seager Gray gallery, and let us know!

October 6-18 | Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley
Tues-Sat 11:00am – 5:30pm | Sun 12:00-5:00pm

GIVE US A BREAK! (Panel and Discussion)

How do you find opportunity in the film industry? Is there such a thing as a “lucky break”? These accomplished panelists will share their experiences and discuss the perennial question: How do we make and sustain viable careers in film?

Reception to follow at Tamalpie, Mill Valley

INVITED GUESTS:
Judy Becker, production designer (Carol, American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook)
Jena Malone, actor (Angelica, The Hunger Games, Into the Wild)
Stacy L. Smith, PhD, associate professor, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, director of a research-driven initiative on Media, Diversity, and Social Change
Valerie Weiss, director (A Light Beneath Their Feet, Losing Control, Dance by Design)
Moderator: Melissa Silverstein, writer; speaker; founder, Women and Hollywood

Saturday, October 10, 11:00am–12:30pm | Throckmorton Theatre

OPEN YOUR EYES (Film Screenings and Panel Discussion)

Join us for the world premiere of the short documentary Open Your Eyes, followed by a post-film discussion on what it takes to make films that rock the world. Can documentaries elevate the social agenda? Join a group of game-changers whose commitment to the power of storytelling in film is helping to open hearts and minds and raise awareness on the compelling issues of our time.

INVITED GUESTS:
Sara Bernstein, senior vice president, HBO documentary films
Sandy Herz, director of global partnerships, Skoll Foundation
Irene Taylor-Brodsky, director (Open Your Eyes, The Final Inch)
Moderator: Larry Brilliant, MD, MPH; chairman, Skoll Global Threats Fund; co-founder Seva Foundation; producer (Open Your Eyes)

Saturday, October 10, 5:30–7:15pm | CinéArts Sequoia

A CONVERSATION WITH CATHERINE HARDWICKE (Master Class)

What do Twilight, Thirteen, and Tank Girl have in common? MVFF38 Tributee Catherine Hardwicke. The director with production designer roots has proven over and over that it is possible to sustain a viable creative life in the film industry: inspiring! More than that, her work spans from insightful, independent, original works like Thirteen to the blockbuster adaptation Twilight—the latter making her the most commercially successful woman director. Hear more about her remarkable career in what promises to be a highlight of MVFF38’s MIND THE GAP program.

Catherine Hardwicke, director (Miss You Already, Twilight, Lords of Dogtown, Thirteen), screenwriter (Thirteen), production designer (Laurel Canyon, Three Kings, Vanilla Sky)

Interviewer: Melissa Silverstein, writer; speaker; founder, Women and Hollywood

Sunday, October 11, 12:30–2:00pm | Smith Rafael Film Center

THE HEROINE’S JOURNEY: WRITING AND SELLING THE FEMALE-DRIVEN SCREENPLAY (Master Class)

How do you write authentic female characters? What is the difference between the character arcs of female and male protagonists? Through discussion and film clips, screenwriter Pamela Gray (A Walk on the Moon, Music of the Heart, Conviction) and story consultant Tom Schlesinger (Prom Night in Mississippi, Nowhere in Africa, A Small Act) will guide you through the stages of the Heroine’s Journey as a template for writing screenplays that will attract top actresses. You will also see how your inner journey when writing helps you connect with your audience on a deep, universal level.

Saturday, October 17, 11:00am–12:30pm | Smith Rafael Film Center

THE MAKERS OF SUFFRAGETTE (Variety Contenders Conversation)

The powerhouse trio behind our Closing Night film, Suffragette, discusses its genesis, creation, and journey to the screen. One of the fall season’s most anticipated films, Suffragette is notable as that rare production that is driven by women in key positions, as well as a story driven by female characters. This Variety Contenders’ Conversation is a case study where the director, screenwriter, and producer will offer insights into the collaboration and creative process behind their production.

INVITED GUESTS:
Sarah Gavron, director (Suffragette, Brick Lane, Village at the End of the World)
Abi Morgan, screenwriter (Suffragette, The Hour, The Iron Lady, Shame (with Steve McQueen), Brick Lane)
Faye Ward, producer (Suffragette, Jane Eyre, Toast, The Other Boleyn Girl)
Moderator: Variety representative, to be announced

The celebration of Suffragette continues with a Spotlight on Carey Mulligan and our Closing Night screenings.

Saturday, October 17, 2:00–3:30pm | Smith Rafael Film Center

CODE: DEBUGGING THE GENDER GAP (Film Screening and Panel)

Debugging the gender and diversity gaps in the tech industry is upfront and center in what promises to be a dynamic panel aimed towards an intergenerational audience, following the October 17 screening of CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (Note: all other screenings will include director Q&A only). Teens and their friends and families are encouraged to come and join in the discussion!

INVITED GUESTS:
Cedric Brown, chief of community engagement, The Kapor Center
Tracy Chou, software engineer, Pinterest
Danielle Feinberg, director of photography for lighting, Pixar
Marc Hedlund, advisor and former VP of Engineering, Stripe; director, Code: 2040
Julie Ann Horvath, founder, Passion Projects
Robin Hauser Reynolds, director (CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap, Running for Jim)
Blake Irving, CEO, GoDaddy
Moderator: Marco R. della Cava, technology and culture writer, USA Today

Saturday, October 17, 2:00–4:00pm | Throckmorton Theatre

Get tickets to events here.

Spotlight on Sarah Silverman at the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival

Sydney Levine — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 17:30:00 GMT

The California Film Institute will present a Spotlight on Sarah Silverman at the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival. The evening will feature a screening of her latest film "I Smile Back," which premiere at Sundance back in January, and will be followed by a live on-stage conversation and presentation of the MVFF Award.

Sarah Silverman is a two-time Emmy winner actress whose repertoire includes everything from film and television, stand-up comedy, to iconic online videos She became an author when she released a book in 2010, the New York Times Bestseller, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee. Silverman debuted an hour-long stand-up special, “We are Miracles,” on HBO in 2013. She was awarded a 2014 Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Writing for a Variety Special category. The special was also nominated for Outstanding Variety Special, and Silverman recently received a WGA nomination as well. An album of the special was recently released through Sub Pop Records, which earned her a 2015 Grammy nomination for Best Comedy Album.

Silverman's latest feature, "I Smile Back," is a film adaption of a novel by Amy Koppelman in which she plays the lead role. She also has wrapped production on Ashby opposite Mickey Rourke and Emma Roberts and recently had a recurring role on season 2 of the Golden Globe nominated series “Masters of Sex.” Silverman grew up in New Hampshire and attended New York University. In 1993 she joined “Saturday Night Live” as a writer and feature performer and has not stopped working since.

"I Smile Back" Synopsis:

Laney is an attractive, intelligent suburban wife and devoted mother of two adorable children. She has the perfect husband who plays basketball with the kids in the driveway, a pristine house, and a shiny SUV for carting the children to their next activity. However, just beneath the façade lie depression and disillusionment that send her careening into a secret world of reckless compulsion. Only very real danger will force her to face the painful root of her destructiveness and its crumbling effect on those she loves.

At the core of I Smile Back’s power is an indelible performance. Sarah Silverman reinvents herself as a dramatic actress in the career-defining, intensely layered, and heartbreaking role of Laney. Deftly directed by Adam Salky (Dare, 2009 Sundance Film Festival), "I Smile Back" is at times darkly humorous but also harrowing and unflinching as an authentic, humanizing portrait that offers no easy resolution for a damaged woman struggling to come to terms with herself.

"I Smile Back" will be release in theaters by Broad Green Pictures on October 23.

Sarah Silverman Goes Dark in 'I Smile Back,' Gets Mill Valley Fest Spotlight

Ryan Lattanzio — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 17:18:22 GMT

Sarah Silverman is set to receive the Mill Valley Film Festival Award after a screening of her film "I Smile Back" at the festival (October 8 through 18, 2015) and an onstage Q&A.

"I Smile Back," scooped by Broad Green out of Sundance and set for October 23 release, marks a serious dramatic turn for Silverman (excellent before as a recovering alcoholic in Sarah Polley's "Take This Waltz"). She plays Laney, a suburban housewife whose facade is slipping away in the face of manic depression, and drug and sex addiction unknown to her long-suffering husband, played by Josh Charles ("The Good Wife"). This upsetting movie, even when careening into melodrama, is a real showcase for Silverman, who embodies a frittered woman willingly complicit in her own downfall, who wants redemption — but not quite yet.

The film is directed by Adam Salky and written by Paige Dylan and co-writer Amy Koppelman, who penned the novel on which it's based.

The complete schedule for the 38th Mill Valley Film Festival, including the date for the Silverman spotlight, will be announced on Tuesday, September 15, 2015.

Mill Valley Reveals First Wave of Lineup, From 'Carol' to 'Dheepan'

Ryan Lattanzio — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 17:19:41 GMT

Returning for its 38th year, the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) runs Thursday, October 8 – Sunday, October 18, 2015, and here's the early word on what's to come: 11 days of films, panels and performances in Marin County.

This year's lineup already boasts plenty of Oscar contenders, Cannes winners and Bay Area premieres. The full slate will be revealed on September 15, 2015. Here are the early titles announced thus far, many from Cannes (language courtesy of the festival):

READ MORE: Catching Up on Fall's Best at Mill Valley Film Festival

Award-winning Italian Director Nanni Moretti’s MY MOTHER (Mia Madre), a semi-autobiographical family drama starring Moretti’s frequent muse Margherita Buy as a film director beset by personal trials, most notably her mother’s failing health and a lead actor (John Turturro) who can’t act or remember his lines. MY MOTHER teases with perception as the narrative moves between memory, dream, movie, and life.

Winner of the Grand Prix, SON OF SAUL is a debut film from Hungarian director László Nemes. A prisoner of Auschwitz in 1944 is forced to burn the corpses at the concentration camp, and finds among them the body of a boy he takes for his son.

Murder interrupts an intensely private man’s ordered world in director Radu Muntean’s (The Paper Will Be Blue, MVFF 2007) gripping drama ONE FLOOR BELOW. A central figure of Romanian New Wave cinema, Muntean builds the film’s tension masterfully in this deftly acted drama about a middle-class Romanian family.

Crafted from events in his mother’s life, master filmmaker Barbet Schroeder (Barfly, Reversal of Fortune, Single White Female) revisits his decades-long cinematic examination of moral culpability and the complexities of human nature in AMNESIA, a profound cross-generational exploration of historical memory and morality, set against the stark and spectacular Ibizan landscape.

READ MORE: Cannes Winner: Jacques Audiard's 'Dheepan' Review and Roundup

Five beautiful sisters chafe under social and cultural strictures in the beautifully directed debut MUSTANG from Deniz Gamze Erguven. In a Turkish village situated along the Black Sea, Lale and her older siblings celebrate school’s end by frolicking in the sea with some male classmates. At home, their grandmother and uncle find nothing playful in this harmless activity and set about finding eligible bachelors to marry them. Though MUSTANG’s focus is delicate and intimate, its themes and ramifications are nothing short of revolutionary.

Winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard competition, RAMS is a touching and wry Scandinavian comedy that wittily portrays the connection between man and beast. Grimur Hakonarson’s second film, with breathtaking photography, sly humor and pathos, evinces a documentarian’s eye for the hardships and heartaches of rural farm life. From the put-upon sheepdog who serves as the protagonists’ only mode of communication to the desperate acts each man takes to save his sheep, RAMS offers an indelibly artful depiction of animal husbandry.

In 1952, Ousmene Sembene, a dockworker and fifth-grade dropout from Senegal, began dreaming an impossible dream; to become the storyteller for a new Africa. SEMBENE! tells the unbelievable true story of the ‘father of African cinema’, the self-taught novelist and filmmaker who fought, against enormous odds, a monumental, 50-year-long battle to give African stories to Africans.

Todd Haynes’ (Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) British-American romantic drama CAROL stars Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara (tied for Best Actress at Cannes) and Kyle Chandler. This captivating, sensuous and richly observed film tells the story of a young shopgirl in the early 1950’s who falls for an older, married woman.

Screened in the Director’s Fortnight section, A PERFECT DAY from Spanish director Fernando León de Aranoa (Mondays in the Sun, Princesas), stars Benicio del Toro, Tim Robbins and Olga Kurylenko. This Balkan war comedy focuses on a group of aid workers call upon to resolve a crisis in an armed conflict zone.

Winner of the Palme d’Or, DHEEPAN is the latest film from celebrated director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone). Featuring novelist, and former Tamil Tiger child soldier Antonythasan Jesuthasan in a leading role, the story focuses on three Tamil refuges that have fled war-ravaged Sri Lanka in the hope of reconstructing their lives in France.

Mika Kaurismaki’s THE GIRL KING paints a portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.

Mill Valley Film Fest's 2015 Lineup Boasts Cannes Alums 'Carol,' 'Mustang,' 'My Mother,' 'Girl King'

Inkoo Kang — Tue, 18 Aug 2015 16:15:00 GMT

The 38th Mill Valley Film Festival in Marin County, California, will include Cannes picks and local works in its 2015 lineup.

Among the Cannes alum to screen at MVFF 2015 (October 8-18) are Todd Haynes' '50s lesbian romance "Carol," Deniz Gamze Erguven's Turkish festival favorite "Mustang" and Nanni Moretti's meta-biopic "My Mother."

The documentary section looks particularly strong as well, with Robin Hauser Reynolds exploring women in the computer-science industry in "Code: Debugging the Gender Gap" and Marlene "Mo" Morris" chronicling an African-American artist while grieving the death of her nephew, Eric Garner, in "A New Color: The Very Public Art of Edythe Boone."

Here are the female-centric and women-directed works among MVFF's early-confirmed films, descriptions courtesy of the festival:

Early confirmed films from the Cannes Film Festival at MVFF38 include:

Award-winning Italian Director Nanni Moretti’s MY MOTHER (Mia Madre), a semi-autobiographical family drama starring Moretti’s frequent muse Margherita Buy as a film director beset by personal trials, most notably her mother’s failing health and a lead actor (John Turturro) who can’t act or remember his lines. MY MOTHER teases with perception as the narrative moves between memory, dream, movie, and life.

Five beautiful sisters chafe under social and cultural strictures in the beautifully directed debut MUSTANG from Deniz Gamze Erguven. In a Turkish village situated along the Black Sea, Lale and her older siblings celebrate school’s end by frolicking in the sea with some male classmates. At home, their grandmother and uncle find nothing playful in this harmless activity and set about finding eligible bachelors to marry them. Though MUSTANG’s focus is delicate and intimate, its themes and ramifications are nothing short of revolutionary.

Todd Haynes’ (Poison, Safe, Velvet Goldmine, Far From Heaven) British-American romantic drama CAROL stars Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara (tied for Best Actress at Cannes) and Kyle Chandler. This captivating, sensuous and richly observed film tells the story of a young shopgirl in the early 1950’s who falls for an older, married woman.

Mika Kaurismaki’s THE GIRL KING paints a portrait of the brilliant, extravagant Kristina of Sweden, queen from age six, who fights the conservative forces that are against her ideas to modernize Sweden and who have no tolerance for her awakening sexuality.

Early confirmed San Francisco Bay Area Documentaries for MVFF38 include:

In her compelling and timely documentary, Robin Hauser Reynolds examines the history and current state of the technology and computer science industry in CODE: DEBUGGING THE GENDER GAP (California Premiere). Reynolds points her camera at the women and people of color within the industry (many local to the Bay Area) who are working to motivate diverse populations to understand what tech jobs have to offer them creatively as well as financially, while actively unpacking the cultural stereotypes, educational obstacles and rampant sexism which prevent so many young women and minorities from entering the computer science workforce.

For students, parents, educators, and anyone who cares about the future of the American education system, BEYOND MEASURE (World Premiere) is a call to action that demonstrates how innovation can break the stifling status quo. Bay Area director-producer Vicki Abeles has crafted a smart companion piece to her award-winning Race to Nowhere(MVFF 2009) that challenges the current education model of cookie-cutter teaching methods and narrow, test-driven culture that leave little room for creativity.

In 1994, Edythe Boone was one of the seven women artists commissioned to cover San Francisco’s historic Women’s Building with a massive, iconic mural entitled MaestraPeace. Now in her 70s, the African-American artist supervises a restoration of the mural to its original brilliant colors and teaches public art to everyone from West Oakland middle schoolers to Richmond seniors. Marlene “Mo” Morris follows the veteran muralist whose art can be found all over the Bay Area commemorating the great events of her time. Those events keep coming, as we see when the death of Edy’s nephew, Eric Garner, becomes a national symbol for racist policing in A NEW COLOR: THE VERY PUBLIC ART OF EDYTHE BOONE (World Premiere).

Early confirmed San Francisco Bay Area Narrative Features for MVFF38 include:

YOSEMITE (California Premiere), based on short stories by James Franco, is the feature directorial debut from Gabrielle Demeestere. Set in suburban Palo Alto and featuring a rising cast of Bay Area locals and shot in and around the Bay Area, this nostalgic ode to boyhood weaves together the intertwined tales of three fifth-graders precariously navigating the shifting emotional grounds of their young lives in the fall of 1985.

Early confirmed San Francisco Bay Area Short Docs & Narratives for MVFF38 include:

Meet PENNY Cooper (Bay Area Premiere) - "Champion of the marginalized": celebrated criminal trial attorney, lesbian and staunch supporter of the arts. Shot in the Bay Area by local filmmaker Elizabeth Sher.

In BOXEADORA by Meg Smaker, one woman defies Castro’s ban on female boxing to follow her dream of Olympic glory and become Cuba’s first female boxer.

An internationally renowned artist, IRINA ROZO (World Premiere) is a full time sculptor and painter that lives in Napa Valley, CA. Filmmaker Ashley James documents her work and career.

In MARATHON by Theo Rigby and Kate McLean, Ecuadorean Julio Saucé trains for and competes in the New York City marathon.

FATHER’S DAY (World Premiere) by Emily Towers, is a dramedy about trying to patch foxholes with band-aids.

In NIETA (Granddaughter) (Bay Area Premiere) by Nicolás Villareal, an incoming storm helps transform a young girl’s perspective of the world

Clara Aranovich’s PRIMROSE (Bay Area Premiere) is an unlikely love story between two creatures; one of which may or may not be human.

Catching Up on Fall's Best at Mill Valley Film Festival

Meredith Brody — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 01:38:55 GMT

Despite a healthy drive time from Berkeley, the Mill Valley Film Festival is irresistible: a haimishe event managing to tempt its Bay Area audience with films geared to appeal to all ages, as well as music-themed evenings and industry panels. Its position in the run-up to the Academy Awards and location, in an area with probably the largest concentration of Academy members after LA and NYC, and less than an hour's flight from LA, attracts screenings of glitzy Awards hopefuls, complete with attendees: this year Opening Night alone featured Jason Reitman and Kaitlyn Dever from "Men, Women & Children," and Hilary Swank with Tommy Lee Jones western "The Homesman." (Last year Steve McQueen, Lupita Nyong'o, and Chiwetel Ejiofor were there with "12 Years a Slave," Bruce Dern appeared with "Nebraska," and Jared Leto with "Dallas Buyers Club," among others.)

Its autumnal position in the calendar allows it to cherry-pick titles from as early as January's Sundance and May's Cannes and as recent as Labor Day's Telluride and September's Toronto film festivals. Many contenders from those fests were on hand: "The Imitation Game," "'71," "Mr. Turner," "Clouds of Sils Maria," "Foxcatcher," "Whiplash," "Wild," and "Two Days, One Night."

"Men, Women & Children" played in one of the Bay Area's last remaining single-screen movie theaters, the Century Cinema, not long for this world as there's already a proposal out for a development with 31 single-family homes and townhouses on its two-acre lot. Reitman introduced the film, briefly -- alluding to its screening not all that far from Silicon Valley, the putative source of a lot of the apps and media his onscreen characters were addicted to. Afterwards he sat down for a Q & A, accompanied by Dever (who was appearing in another MVFF film that night, "Laggies," which had premiered at Sundance).

Reitman, whose best films -- "Juno," "Up in the Air" -- explore the zeitgeist, tells us how they created the Internet world of instant messages, websites, and games that swirl around the men, women, and children in inescapable popup graphics that imprison them more than they encourage communication. It's not exactly new news, but it's nice to see the ensemble of actors -- Adam Sandler, Rosemarie DeWitt, Judy Greer, Dean Norris, Jennifer Garner -- work out. And to hear the peerless, plummy, intelligent voice of Emma Thompson, a reliable narrator if there ever was one.

The next day I took my father to two movies: an afternoon screening of "Laggies," from director Lynn Shelton, a story of a young woman (Keira Knightley) who refuses to grow up, a promising premise, peopled by such excellent actors as Sam Rockwell and Chloe Grace Moretz, but somewhat spoiled by its standard, breathless rom-com ending. I drew comparisons while watching: preferred Shelton's arthouse favorite "Your Sister's Sister," Chloe Grace Moretz was better in "Clouds of Sils Maria," Keira Knightley MUCH better in "The Imitation Game," Sam Rockwell better in nearly everything.

Afterwards we segued to "The Judge," a predictable but still engrossing and enjoyable family/courtroom drama, produced by and starring Robert Downey Jr., as a hotshot lawyer locked in Oedipal battle with his father, the redoubtable Robert Duvall, as the judge of the title. There's plenty of scenery chewed between the two lions, but still enough room among the edges to tuck in lots of plot and decent turns by Vera Farmiga (her face a bit plumped-up), Vincent D'Onofrio, and Billy Bob Thornton, enjoying a role as prosecutor rather than prosecuted. My father enjoys it more than he did "Laggies" -- also predictably.

On my own the next day, I run into Geoff Gilmore, of Tribeca and Sundance, here for a State of the Industry panel discussion. The "3-D Sideshow" starts late; it's a complicated presentation of "depth-defying" shorts, including snippets of George Melies and Harold Lloyd, as well as adorable shorts by the presenter, a 3-D enthusiast named Robert Bloomberg, witty music videos featuring OK Go, "The Longest Daycare," Maggie Simpson vs. the Ayn Rand School for Tots, and the new faux-historic "Get a Horse!", starring Mickey Mouse, with assorted other treats. It's the kind of program I could watch all day long.

With "Que Caramba es la Vida," a well-meaning but superficial look at the mariachis of Plaza Garibaldi in Mexico City, German director Doris Dorrie is trying to make a point about the male domination of the music, by featuring both young and old female mariachis. But in the end what I really enjoy is the heartfelt, dramatic music -- something of a surprise, since I never thought much of it before.

Next up, "Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Leary," a documentary about the professional and personal interactions between the erstwhile Richard Alpert and LSD pioneer Timothy Leary, who became friends again (thanks in part to the request of the filmmakers for a dual interview) near the end of Leary's life. Director/producer Gay Dillingham spent over 20 years working on the film, and she's joined onstage by producer Michael Donnelly, who joined the production late and helped her whip it into shape. It's both over-cut and over-psychedelicized, as well as a bit worshipful of the two men, especially the beatific Ram Dass, who, in a special surprise, joins os onscreen via Skype from Hawaii. It's a lovely gesture, marred slightly by the fact that the communication is imperfect, but kisses are blown all around. Ms. Dillingham opines that her movie is "very different from what a boomer would have made -- I was born in '65." But boomers are born in-between 1946 and 1964. What a difference a year makes.

Then comes a special event, a screening of "Low Down," with a MVFF Award presentation to Elle Fanning, the 16-year-old star, who arrives onstage in an over-the-the pale beige silk ball gown, charmingly giggly and unself-conscious. The film, based on the memoirs of the young daughter of talented, self-destructive, junky jazz pianist Joe Albany, premiered at Sundance, the first feature directed by the gifted documentarian and cinematographer Jeff Preiss, who introduces the film by giving kudos to his swell cast, which includes John Hawkes, a previous MVFF awardee for "The Sessions," and Glenn Close, also a MVFF awardee for "Albert Nobbs": the MVFF trifecta. I was moved I was by the film and its uncanny you-are-there feeling.

The afterparty, at the Il Fornaio has tons of free food, for me anyway: others have paid $75 or $85 for the privilege. But with overflowing platters of shrimp wrapped in prosciutto, fried calamari, little smoked-salmon sandwiches, and endless pizzas, it's one of the more lavish events of this kind that I've seen.

Wayne Wang's delightful "Soul of a Banquet" is right up my alley, combining as it does two of my favorite preoccupations, food and film. It's partly a portrait of venerable San Francisco restauranteur Cecelia Chang, and partly a document of a banquet she served in her home as part of the celebrations surrounding the 40-year anniversary of Alice Waters' Chez Panisse. I'm pleased and surprised to see the wonderful Malaysian chef Alexander Wong, late of Betelnut, who's one of the three chefs preparing the feast under Chang's tutelage. When I email him congrats the next day, he's surprised: he thought only his hands showed up in the film, in the act of preparation.

I stay put and watch an intermittently moving documentary called "Allot" (A Long List of Things), by prolific Bay Area artist John Sanborn. Touching and revelatory interviews with fellow classmates at his 40th high school reunion, about what they expected from life and what they got, are interspersed with jarring, over-the-top graphics and introspection from Sanborn that's sometimes witty, sometimes not. The interviews could have gone on forever, as far as I'm concerned -- I laughed, I cried.

Only two movies the next day, too: a pretentious and naive botch called "Hide and Seek," about polyamory among four young English people in a modest country house -- but not Shakespeare's punning "country pleasures," not by a long shot, as you know nothing more about the four superficially-attractive but clueless group when the movie ends than you did at its start. Much is made about how quickly and cheaply the movie was shot (and it does look nice, I'll give you that), but only extreme politesse on my part kept me from pointing out that it costs nothing to write interesting things for people to say during the worshipful Q & A that ensued with one of the actresses and the actor/director afterwards. Politesse also held me back from saying, when the (American) actor/director said living as an expatriate in England removed him from everything that he knew, "Except a common language."

Then the more conventional -- and also more satisfying -- "Like Sunday, Like Rain," by Frank Whaley, more known to me as an actor (93 credits! and counting!), than as a director (4 credits, and his directorial debut earned him the Waldo Salt screenwriting award at the 1999 Sundance festival). Leighton Meester is nanny to a 12-year-old prodigy, played by young discovery Julian Shatkin, and over a few months their lives intertwine. There are brief appearances by Debra Messing (as the boy's inattentive, largely absent mother), and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, as Leighton's ex. Armstrong joined the funny, self-deprecating Whaley onstage, alongside the beautiful Meester. He was also the source of the best interaction I've seen at the festival all week: I watched from the sidewalk as a car behind a black SUV pulled over when the SUV was stopped at a red light. Somebody ran out from the car with a guitar, ran up to the SUV, rapped on a window, and a spectral hand (which I later realized belonged to Billie Joe) emerged and signed the guitar. Light changed. Guitar holder ran back to his car.

A twisty, moonlit drive to Tiburon for the afterparty at the Tiburon Tavern. Again, we're greeted by overflowing platters of food, as well as swell glasses of Prosecco. I'm so impressed by the abundance that it seems churlish of me to say that all the food not actually cooked by the place -- Italian antipasto including marvelous prosciutto, mortadella, salamis, amazing cheeses, elegant condiments and breads -- is perfect, and all the cooked stuff -- cold pulled pork sliders, baby pizzas, gluey cheese gougeres -- is rather a failure.

I approach Mr. Whaley, walled off somewhat from the hoi polloi in a circle of low chairs. getting the fish-eyed stare from the security guy standing inches from him. But I tell Whaley that I hope he gets the actors back together in a decade or so, a la Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy, to see what time has wrote. "I've had LOTS of younger boyfriends," I say, merrily, "and it's worked out just fine!" The boyish Whaley (I'm surprised when I look him up, later, and find he's 51) says "I love that! I'm going to steal it, and not give you credit!" Whaley tells me that he's always loved Truffaut's Antoine Doinel movies, further enlarging upon the idea, and introduces us to his adorable family, wife Heather Bucha (an actress-writer who has a small role in the film), and children Buster and Tallulah, who greet us cordially despite the late hour.

As we pull out of the parking lot in beautiful downtown Tiburon, a deer and her fawn trot across our headlights, lazily. A forty-mile roundtrip and I'll be back tomorrow for the second half of the festival.

Mill Valley Film Fest to Showcase 35 Women-Directed Films, Celebrate Elle Fanning and Laura Dern

Inkoo Kang — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 17:30:00 GMT

Lynn Shelton's Laggies, Doris Dorrie's Que Caramba Es La Vida, and Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz's Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem are among the nearly three dozen women-directed films that will be featured at the 37th Mill Valley Film Festival (October 2-12) in Marin County, California.

The MVFF will also celebrate the careers of Elle Fanning and Laura Dern, who will each attend and participate in onstage conversations. Fanning, who is currently in theaters in The Boxtrolls (voicing the kind of highly intelligent and delightfully morbid girl character that's never seen in mainstream children's movies), will be feted with a screening of her latest film, Low Down, in which she plays the daughter of troubled jazz-pianist Joe Albany (John Hawkes).

Laura Dern's long and distinguished career will also be honored at the festival, which will screen previews of Wild, in which she co-stars as Reese Witherspoon's mother. Yes, it's unfortunate that Dern is only nine years younger than her onscreen daughter, but the Oscar-nominated actress -- who also played mom roles with warmth and humanity in The Fault in Our Stars and When the Game Stands Tall earlier this year -- has already received rave reviews for her supporting role.

Here are the MVFF's women-directed films:

13 / USA (Director: Cynthia Pepper)

Ahco on the Road / South Korea/USA (Director: Soyeon Kim)

American Gladiators / USA (Director: Lara Gallagher)

Art is the Tree of Life / USA (Director: Christine Weicher and Geoffrey Quinn)

Bella / Mexico (Director: Maricarmen Marino)

Casting a Stone / USA (Director: Tiffany Farmer)

Counting the Dead / USA (Director: Catharine Axley)

Demolition: Troll / USA (Director: Megan McHugh)

Diary of a Fridge / France (Director: Josephine Derobe)

Disaster Preparedness / USA (Director: Melissa Finell)

Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary / USA (Director: Gay Dillingham)

Finding the Gold Within / USA (Director: Karina Epperlein)

F R E E / USA (Directors: Suzanne LaFetra and David Collier)

Freestyle / USA (Director: Lexi Lefkowitz)

From the Ground to the Cloud / US, Tanzania (Director: Denise Zmekhol)

The Future Starts Here / USA (Director: Tiffany Shlain)

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem / Israel, France, Germany (Directors: Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz)

Gnosis / USA (Director: Tamara Hahn)

Hide and Seek / UK (Director: Joanna Coates)

How I Got Over / USA (Director: Nicole Boxer)

Hula Hoop / USA (Director: Tess Martin)

In Plain Sight / USA, India, Guana, Tibet (Director: Erica Jordan)

Laggies / USA (Director: Lynn Shelton)

Madam Armande / Canada (Director: Laurence Christen, Frederique Dallaire, Catherine Picard, Alexandra Thibault)

Miriam’s Kite / Estonia (Director: Riho Unt)

Ni-Ni / USA (Director: Melissa Hickey)

The Patent Wars / Germany (Director: Hannah Leonie Prinzler)

Que Caramba Es La Vida / Germany (Director: Doris Dorrie)

Riding My Way Back / USA (Director: Robin Fryday)

The Right to Love / Slovenia (Director: Barbara Zemljic)

States of Grace / USA (Director: Helen S. Cohen)

Sure Thing / USA (Director: Deborah Reinisch)

Tin Can / Russia (Director: Tatiana Kiseleva)

Tu Dors Nicole / Canada (Director: Stephane Lafleur)

Yalom’s Cure / Switzerland (Director: Sabine Gisiger)

Mill Valley Film Fest Lineup Boasts Oscar Contenders, 'Star Wars' and Metallica

Ryan Lattanzio — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:48:06 GMT

The Mill Valley Film Festival celebrates its 37th birthday this year in Marin County with 11 days of Bay Area premieres and festival faves from 2014. The festivals runs October 2 to 12.

Opening Night gala films are Tommy Lee Jones' feminist Western "The Homesman," and Jason Reitman's zeitgeisty satire "Men, Women & Children." Mill Valley also spotlights "Low Down"'s award-winning star Elle Fanning, who costars opposite John Hawkes' troubled jazz piano man Joe Albany. "The Theory of Everything" and Oscar-hopeful breakout Eddie Redmayne (as Stephen Hawking) will also be spotlighted at the venerable Smith Rafael Film Center.

Mill Valley will close with "Wild" and a tribute to Laura Dern, who is a Best Supporting Actress contender as a sympathetic mother in this wanderlust-of-the-soul film from Jean-Marc Vallée, starring Reese Withersoon.

Other notables include a restored big-screen presentation of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly," a 4K Film Competition, a celebration of the late Robin Williams, screenings of "The Judge," "Clouds of Sils Maria," "Foxcatcher," "The Imitation Game," "Laggies," "Mommy," "Whiplash," "Mr. Turner" and a special presentation of "The Empire Strikes Back."

Oh, and Metallica are the Artists-in-Residence. More info on the MVFF here.

Attention, Filmmakers: Here's How to Apply to Sharp's Art of Amazing 4k Film Competition

Brandon Latham — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 16:41:11 GMT

In its second year, Sharp's Art of Amazing 4k filmmaking contest has grown, with prizes to match. This year's edition features Sharp partnering with RED, Lucasfilm, THX, the California Film Institute and Adobe to bring about $65,000 of prizes and a chance to be screened at a premiere film festival.

Focusing on the cinematic art of capturing detail, the Art of Amazing competition this year will include consideration of all projects for inclusion in its showcase at the Mill Valley Film Festival this October. The contest is structured for fan voting, where 15 projects will be selected to be shown online where viewers can vote for their favorite projects. Prizes include technology from the sponsors, including RED 4k. Filmmakers considering submitting work for the contest should visit http://sharpartofamazing.com/. Full list of prizes and the video promo for the contest are below:

READ MORE: RED Digital Cinema Wants You to Submit to its YouTube Channel

Multiple Opportunities for Recognition

The Grand Prize winner selected by the panel of judges will be awarded a Sharp 70” (69.5” diagonal) class THX 4K Certified* AQUOS 4K Ultra HD LED TV ($4,500 value), a 6K Scarlet-X® RED Dragon® Light weight Collection ($23,510 value) and a trip for two to CES 2015 in Las Vegas to see a screening of their winning film in the Sharp CES booth (hotel and air travel valued at approximately $10,000).
A fan favorite prize package will be awarded to the filmmaker who receives the most fan votes. The winner will be eligible to receive a Sharp 32” 4K Ultra HD LED Professional Display ($3,595 value), a Freefly MoVi M10 ($14,995 value) and a 12 month subscription to Adobe creative cloud ($840 value). Fans who vote for their favorite film at www.sharpusa.com/ArtofAmazing will also be eligible to win a THX 4K Certified* 70” class Sharp AQUOS 4K Ultra HD LED TV ($4,500 value).

The festival audience will also choose a favorite film. The festival audience winner will be eligible to receive a 60” THX Certified* Sharp AQUOS 4K Ultra HD LED TV ($3,500 value).

Festival Circus: Are Film Festivals Too Focused On Oscar Season?

Robert Koehler — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 15:03:55 GMT

The impact of film festivals on current cinema around the world is undeniable. But the rules, logistics, politics and factors that govern the way festivals highlight movies worth your time are often mysterious to anyone outside of the industry. In this column, festival veteran and critic Robert Koehler delves into many of the pluses and minuses of film festivals today.

It might be the effect of attending too many film festivals, but one way of looking at the October-December glut of Oscar contenders is as the "Awards Festival."

From day one of the big-time festivals featuring world premiering competition lineups, the buzz is all about what's in line for the Palm, Bear, Lion, Leopard, pick your animal -- and what's not, plus who might pick up the acting prizes. Sometimes, a ten-day period at one of these festivals is like a compressed Oscar season, with the new movies rolling out and the guesswork and prognosticators working overtime.

Maybe this is a way of making the Oscar season tolerable, something different from the gargantuan publicity contest it always becomes.

But when this gets flipped -- when festivals turn themselves into Oscar season derbies -- trouble's on the horizon.

The pull that the Oscar race has on the big media centers and the places where most Academy members live -- Los Angeles and New York -- is painfully obvious to anyone who lives near those cities' cultural ground zeroes.

Less noticed is that while the greater New York area is done with festivals when November rolls around, the Oscar epicenter of Southern California is just getting started. AFI Fest took over the TCL Chinese complex on Hollywood Blvd. from Nov. 7 - 14 -- grandly, I might add. January's around the corner, when Oscarmania reaches fever pitch, and so does the Palm Springs Film Festival (Jan. 3-13) and the Santa Barbara Film Festival (Jan. 30-Feb. 9).

There's a literal alignment of the stars going on, and while it undoubtedly brings publicity and ad impressions, the intersection of the Oscar contender machinery with a film festival's ongoing life can hijack a festival's entire identity…that is, if the festival allows it. The three So Cal events are studies in how this can be massaged, or not.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Of the three, Palm Springs was the first to aggressively flirt with Oscar and turn it into a serious commitment. Founder and Palm Springs mayor Sonny Bono wanted the festival to have a global profile (Sonny was no dummy) that would help it stand apart from the American-centric focus of Sundance, which runs immediately after Palm Springs.

This meant a program weighted toward foreign-language films. And almost as naturally as the sun daily dipping behind the massive San Jacintos that loom over the desert resort, the Oscar's foreign-language submissions came into great favor at Palm Springs as an ideal match of dates and slate. When the Oscar show took place in late February or early March, the festival arrived right when Academy voters were starting to make their choices, just as the filmmakers of the submitted films were being brought to Los Angeles for their last-minute get-out-the-vote push. (Never mind that most Academy voters pay little heed to these sorts of campaigns.)

The idea appeared to work, since attendance grew. Then something funny happened.

The festival organizers -- these went through various permutations over the two-plus decades of the festival's existence -- got it in their heads that if having 30 foreign Oscar contenders was a good thing, then getting 40, 50, or maybe even 60, might be great. Even more, organize a FIPRESCI jury (comprised of critics of FIPRESCI, the International Federation of Film Critics, a mainstay at significant festivals worldwide) that would consider the field and come up with a prize that -- who knows? -- might influence the Academy.

I served on this jury twice in the ‘00s, where it quickly became famous for being "the jury from hell," as one amusing jury president once labeled it to me over a drink.

Now here's a fixed rule of festival life, never to be broken: No festival jury should ever be assigned to watch and weigh in on more than 25 films. There's just not enough time to take them in and judge them fairly. (Cannes maxes out at 22.)

My second Palm Springs jury had to watch 56, making it easily the world’s most overworked festival jury. Prospective jury members (many traveling from the other side of the planet) had to have watched at least half of the lineup before they arrived.

But the jury problem was just a blip compared to the issues this posed for audiences. The mandate to book so many Oscar submissions meant that what could be a finely curated program would be molded into something else -- a weird amalgam of "official" movies submitted by nation-states with occasionally dubious submitting "committees" and movies that the programmers actually preferred. Despite a fairly vast lineup such as Palm Springs' (nearly 200 features landed there in recent editions), every slot is precious. Even if they weren't aware of it, festival audiences would be cheated out of a potentially better movie that would have to be put aside for that bad submission title.

And ask anyone who's seen enough of the Oscar submissions during these bloated years: There were plenty of baddies. There still are.

Part of this process was wisely amended in recent years by festival director Darryl MacDonald, so that the jury would only need to see a selection of the overall Oscar field. This helps the jury, but Palm Springs still goes after as many of the submission titles as it can get -- as high as nearly 90% plus of total submissions -- which still weights the overall program heavily toward official national selections and away from programming curation. With a record field of 76 titles (five more than last year), this can create a huge and not always welcome footprint in the program.

Inoffensive mainstream audience-pleasers still dominate the category (because these are what many countries' selection groups presume will appeal to Academy voters), but genuinely important and vital films do get through. Palm Springs programmers try to get these for the audiences, but it isn't a slam-dunk that they will; that depends on whether the movie's sales company or U.S. distributor -- the ultimate festival gatekeepers -- gives a green light.

TROPHY PARTIES

Festivals love giving out prizes like they’re candy. Palm Springs and Santa Barbara put a spin on this, giving out prizes to Oscar contenders for being Oscar contenders. This has become such a dominant quality of both festivals that it's what they're both widely known for on the international festival circuit. (When I told a Norwegian producer that I often attend both events, he said, "Oh, yes, those Academy Awards festivals.")

Most festivals select honorees, tributes and subjects for focus -- such as the New York Film Festival's massive focus on the entire filmography of Jean-Luc Godard or AFI Fest's honoree/guest programmer Agnes Varda -- based on programing taste (the former was a top mission for NYFF director Kent Jones in his first year) or any combination of factors (Varda is an AFI Fest fave, a lover of all things Los Angeles and the subject of a major LACMA show).

The ongoing roster of Palm Springs and Santa Barbara "winners," now being announced in a roll-out of press releases, reads like a contenders list in the trades: over in Palm Springs, here are Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts, Steve McQueen, Bruce Dern and Matthew McConaughey; up in Santa Barbara, in come Cate Blanchett, Oprah Winfrey, Forest Whitaker and Emma Thompson, with many more Oscar hopefuls waiting in the wings.

How these names are picked is a closely-held process, but be certain that they result from lengthy negotiations between the studios backing these contenders' movies, the contenders' handlers and the festivals. Often, like the choices for festival galas, it comes down to availability as much as design. It's a messy business, full of compromises, something that can make festival directors want to tear their hair out at the end of the day.

But behind it all is an mutual back-scratching bear hug: Festivals raise bucks off the parties held in the "winners'" honor, the studios and the contenders get good publicity. Win win.

Not so fast. Both Palm Springs and Santa Barbara give the impression that they're picking favorites in the Oscar race. What does it mean, as Palm Springs has done, to name McQueen "director of the year"? So Alfonso Cuaron, a director contender for "Gravity," is chopped liver? Alexander Payne, in the race with "Nebraska," is an also-ran? Especially when, as is often the case, that none of the movies in the race actually screen at the festivals?

This is a classic case of festivals placing their carts before their horses, allowing outside interests to dictate and create conditions. It can ruin a festival's look.

PUT OSCAR IN HIS CORNER

Can't ignore Oscar, especially in Southern California during winter. So what to do with the little naked guy?

AFI Fest practices one good idea, also adopted by the Denver Film Festival and in an even more severe way at the Mill Valley Film Festival, all events appearing at the start of the Oscar season: sector them off in their own corner, and let the rest of the festival run at its own pace.

AFI filled its 2013 Gala and Special Screening slates almost entirely with already established contenders (such as "Saving Mr. Banks," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" or "Her") or new ones ("Lone Survivor"), while all of the other non-glitz sections were pretty much contender-free.

Denver informs its audience up front that its special presentations section includes "some of the year's best cinematic, Oscar-worthy films," which this year included "August: Osage County," "Nebraska" and "Philomena." Oscar fever isn't permitted to spread beyond that point.

Mill Valley pared it down further this year, slotting contenders strictly for opening ("Nebraska") and closing night ("Walter Mitty") and a pair of "spotlights," on "Dallas Buyers Club"supporting actor Jared Leto and "12 Years a Slave" director McQueen with star Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Of course, Denver and Mill Valley can easily manage to keep Oscar craziness to a low volume, being physically far enough away from Oscar Central. AFI Fest's discipline is perhaps more impressive, given its Hollywood Blvd. location.

In all three cases, audiences can get an early taste of the Oscar season if they wish, or can simply ignore it. They can do this because these festivals know where to put Oscar: In his corner.

Notes on the 36th Mill Valley Film Festival

Jennie-Marie Adler — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 19:00:00 GMT

The 36^th Mill Valley Film Festival had over 125 screenings, over 75 directors in attendance, and over 1600 California Film Institute members have attended films. It’s been a busy 8 days and I’m not counting on any sleep until Monday.

The past few nights have included some serious high profile talent: Jared Leto came with Dallas Buyers Club's US premiere. For his first acting role in five years, he showed no rust. The audience must have been undoubtedly different than a Thirty Seconds to Mars concert with an arena filled with screaming teens. Few ticket holders knew him from his his raw performance in Requiem for a Dream and even fewer remembered him as dreamy Jordan Catalano from My So-Called Life (I almost got out my Angela Chase costume from last year's Halloween but thought it might clash with my staff badge). Unfortunately I wasn't able to see the film but neither was Leto who revealed to the audience in the Q&A that he had still not seen Dallas Buyers Club and wasn't planning to anytime soon.

Following the screening of his film 12 Years A Slave (which just won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival), director Steve McQueen sat down this morning with colleagues J.C. Chandor (All is Lost), Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station), Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace), and John Wells (August: Osage County) for " Variety Focus on Director's Panel ," or, my favorite hour and a half of the festival. The five directors spoke with moderator Peter Caranicas from Variety about their recent projects and the process of working with distributors and actors. The five had great energy and honesty. Coogler told us how he wore a tie and backpack to his initial meeting with the film's producer Forrest Whitaker and Scott Cooper gave a gracious shout out to legendary independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson who was in the audience. For me, I enjoyed the panels comments on scoring a film whether it was the challenges of working with composers or the power of an absence of music in film to let the sound design do the magic.

With a great morning behind me, I'm excited to take on the last two days of the festival. Maybe I'll even be able to fit in a movie!

Trailers:

Dallas Buyers Club

12 Years a Slave

Festival Focus: Mill Valley Film Festival

Jennie-Marie Adler — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 17:28:10 GMT

This is the first of a series of blogs to be written during the Mill Valley Film Festival (October 3-13) which we are honored to be posting.

Founded in 1978 by California Film Institute Director Mark Fishkin, the Festival is well known for the quality of its programming. It has established an impressive track record for launching new films and new filmmakers, and has earned a reputation as a filmmakers’ festival by offering a high-profile, prestigious, noncompetitive environment for celebrating the best in independent and world cinema.

Each year, the 11-day Festival sells over 40,000 tickets and welcomes more than 200 filmmakers from around the world. Festival sections include: World Cinema; U.S. Cinema; Valley of the Docs; Children’s FilmFest; 5@5, a daily shorts program; and Active Cinema, our activist films initiative. Gala celebrations, tributes to actors and filmmakers, workshops, panels and seminars, as well as opportunities to mingle with filmmakers in the spectacular setting of the San Francisco Bay Area are just a few of the reasons Screen International named Mill Valley one of its top 10 U.S. film festivals.

The Festival is also an important industry resource, both for its emphasis on films that have not yet secured U.S. distribution and for fall launches and northern California Academy Award® campaigns. The Bay Area continues to be a significant market for independent and international film, and MVFF consistently provides a forum for introducing new films to West Coast audiences.

Presented by the California Film Institute, the 36th Festival will take place at the CinéArts@Sequoia and 142 Throckmorton Theatre (Mill Valley), Century Cinema (Corte Madera) and the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center (San Rafael). The non-profit California Film Institute celebrates and promotes film as art and education through the presentation of the Mill Valley Film Festival and year-round exhibitions at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, and by building the next generation of filmmakers and audiences through CFI Education, which reaches over 6,500 under-served students in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Smith Rafael Film Center annually serves approximately 150,000 attendees.

Here is the firsts installment by Jennie-Marie Adler, Membership Manger of the California Film Institute:

Part of my job as the Membership Manager of the Mill Valley Film Festival is to stop into either of our filmmaker lounges and talk to members. The converted art gallery space in Mill Valley is filled with oversized leather arm chairs, chocolate, fresh fruit (which is a rare thing at a festival), and plenty of wine (we are in Marin after all). It’s a tough job but someone has got to do it!

I was talking to a member today over my glass of wine and she commented that the reason why she loved the Mill Valley Film Festival so much is because she could submerge herself into so many different cultures, all in a day. She described her early morning trip to a Bolivian circus on a thrilling rescue mission in “The Lion Ark” and then off to France to watch two plucky young girls find friendship and shenanigans in “The Dandelions.”

It’s true. A film festival is not like watching a movie on your couch with a bowl full of microwave popcorn or even a trip to the multiplex. It’s an experience. Days filled with subtitles, lines, ballots, volunteers in matching t-shirts and the most wonderful of all: Q&As. With a 11-day festival, my metaphorical passport will be full.

Mill Valley Film Festival Sets 2013 Lineup

Clint Holloway — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 15:42:36 GMT

The Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF) has grown to be one of the most prominent cinema-related events on the West Coast, bearing the proud distinction of presenting the Bay Area with the last five Best Picture winners. About to kick off its 36th year, MVFF has just unveiled its roster of prestigious and anticipated titles as well as other exciting events sprawled out over the festival's 11-day span taking place October 3 to 13.

The festival will kick off in grand fashion with two films sharing the Opening Night, Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" and Brian Percival's adaptation of "The Book Thief." The premiere of the former will be accompanied by stars Bruce Dern and Will Forte, while the latter set to have director Brian Percival and stars Geoffrey Rush and Sophie Nélisse in attendance. "August: Osage County" will serve as the festival's Centerpiece, with director John Wells in attendance. Closing out the festival will be Ben Stiller's directorial debut "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," with Stiller on hand to also receive the Mill Valley Film Festival Award.

Other notable events of this year's festival include two Special Tributes; one to political filmmaker Costa-Gavras, who will be present for an on-stage interview about his work as well as have the Bay Area premiere his latest film "Capital," with the other belonging to Rush. The subjects of the festival's Spotlight program will include director Wells, "Dallas Buyers Club" star Jared Leto, "12 Years A Slave" director Steve McQueen and star Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Dakota Fanning, all of whom will partake in an on-stage conversation before showing their films.

To get the festival's full lineup and find out more about their special events and programs, head over to their official website.

34th Mill Valley Film Festival Wraps Up

Indiewire — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:45:42 GMT

Mill Valley may sit just north of San Francisco in Marin County, but its annual film festival proves once again that it's not too far from Hollywood. The 34th Mill Valley Film Festival closed Sunday after eleven days of screenings and appearances from international stars. The event opened with two films: "Jeff Who Lives at Home" and "Albert Nobbs;" it closed with "The Artist."

In between, the festival held 178 screenings with 30 official premieres. Audience Awards were awarded to "The Artist," "Albert Nobbs," "Girlfriend," "Pariah," "The Lady," "The Welcome," and "Voices From The Shadows." Also recognized with awards were Glenn Close and Michelle Yeoh, as well as newcomers Elizabeth Olsen and Ezra Miller.

Full festival release follows with winners:

Oscar® Buzz, Distribution Buzz and a live Worldwide Simulcast:
34th Mill Valley Film Festival Takes on the World!
Glenn Close, Michelle Yeoh, Gaston Kaboré,
Ezra Miller, Elizabeth Olsen Among Those Honored
SAN RAFAEL, Calif. (October 17, 2011) — The California Film Institute wrapped its 34th Mill Valley Film Festival (October 6–16, 2011) after a very successful 11-day run, once again proving itself a world-class event, as top-notch industry participants joined an impressive roster of international stars whose newest works premiered alongside talented newcomers. Honoring actors Glenn Close, Michelle Yeoh and Burkina Faso director Gaston Kaboré—the revered godfather of African Cinema—the festival cemented its place as a significant venue for launching and celebrating great work by major film artists. From two very different, but equally great Opening Night films, Jeff Who Lives at Home, with the directors, brother Jay and Mark Duplass appearing in two Mill Valley Q and A’s explaining their distinct style of filmmaking, and Albert Nobbs, with the film’s star Glenn Close and director Rodrigo Garcia in attendance in San Rafael talking about shooting a period piece in record time, through to the Closing Night film The Artist with the film’s director Michel Hazanavicius regaling the audience about making a black-and-white silent movie in 2011, festival attendees delighted in the discovery of local and independent features, while also getting early looks at the most prominent higher-profile, Oscar®-track films.
MVFF Audience Award Winners
The 34th Mill Valley Film Festival featured 178 screenings representing 57 countries, with 30 official premieres and more than 50% (over 90) sold out screenings and events. Total attendance to the festival was over 40,000 for this year. MVFF Audiences enjoyed voting for their favorite MVFF selections. After the ballots were counted, The Artist won the Audience Favorite Award. Albert Nobbs won the Audience Favorite World Cinema Award. Girlfriend and Pariah tied for the Audience Favorite US Feature Award. The Lady garnered the Audience Favorite Active Cinema Award. The Welcome won the Audience Favorite Documentary Award, along with Voices From the Shadows being voted as the Audience Favorite International Documentary Award.
BAFTA LA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Los Angeles) annually presents an award to an exceptional short film in collaboration with the Mill Valley Film Festival. The winner this year was The Telegram Man directed by James F. Khehtie, with Certificates of Excellence going to Out of Erasers by Erik Rosenlund and The Wind is Blowing on My Street by filmmaker Saba Riazi.
Tribute, Spotlight and Centerpiece Events
MVFF Awards were given this year to actor Glenn Close, who was honored for an outstanding body of work, and African director Gaston Kaboré in special Tribute events. In a Spotlight program featuring a presentation of her new film The Lady, Michelle Yeoh, accompanied by the film’s internationally esteemed director Luc Besson, was recognized for her artistry in the service of justice and human rights for her portrayal of imprisoned Burmese pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. After an extensive and celebrated television career, director Simon Curtis transfixed the audience with his first cinematic effort, My Week With Marilyn that was a Centerpiece event of the festival.
MVFF Awards were also give in Spotlight events this year honoring two young rising stars that included a look at their latest films— Ezra Miller (We Need To Talk about Kevin) and Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene)—who each bring an intensity and nuance to roles that establish them as stars of the next generation to follow. Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones, stars of Like Crazy, who appeared at their film’s screening, were further examples of the abundance of young talent on display at this year’s festival.
Distribution Buzz
Onstage last Friday, Australian director Stephan Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) wowed his audience with a hilarious stand-up introduction at the World Premiere of A Few Best Men, joined onstage by star Kris Marshall and producers Laurence Malkin and Share Stallings. The irreverent romance kept the audience in stitches from start to finish, boding well for US distributors on the lookout for the next big comedy. Other festival faves with distribution buzz: the North American premiere of actor-turned director Martin Donovan’s Collaborator; and the World Premiere of John Roberts’ Day of the Flowers, with Roberts and writer Eirene Houston presenting to sold-out audiences. Documentaries that had a strong festival showing and interest in domestic distribution included the US Premiere of Dolphin Boy and the World Premiere of Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? that in a stroke of synchronicity sold out 3 screenings while real-life political action in support of “Occupy Wall Street” was taking place half a block away from the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center where it was playing.
From Tehran To Java, From Istanbul To San Rafael: MVFF Connects With Live Audiences Worldwide
In a festival first, MVFF premiered One Through Love, an event that played live to audiences world wide: participants from as far afield as Java, Istanbul and Tehran joined the MVFF audience via TV and a live webcast for filmmaker Stephen Olssen’s latest. The film was simultaneously projected for the packed house at the Smith Rafael Film Center, had a national simulcast across the US by LINK TV, and a simultaneous, world-wide webcast of the film and the post-film discussion with Rumi experts. Reports of audiences logging in from as far away as Tehran brought the world together in ways that director Stephen Olssen compared to the Beatles “All You Need Is Love” world broadcast 44 years ago: “whether it’s the Beatles or Rumi, the 13th century poet who is a bestseller in the US, the message is the same: we’re united by love.”
Active Cinema Program/New Movies Lab Continue to Inspire
The Mill Valley Film Festival’s Active Cinema program continued with its commitment to explore, engage and transform audiences featuring screenings of inspiring films followed by discussions. Of the 15 Active Cinema films programmed for this year’s festival, two received MVFF Audience Awards. Active Cinema panel sessions such as “Can A Film Make A Difference?” with actress Michelle Yeoh (The Lady), Pamela Yates (director, Granito: How To Nail A Dictator), Ron Yerxa (producer, Cold Mountain, Little Miss Sunshine), moderator writer and critic Michael Fox talking about innovative ways, means and resources to get their work seen, heard and acted upon, along with New Movies Lab panels including “The State of the (Independent Film) Industry” with Albert Berger (Bona Fide Productions), Marcus Hu (Strand Releasing), Ed Arentz (Music Box Films), Annie Roney (ro*co films) and Stephan Elliot, director (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; A Few Best Men) drew strong interest.
Backstage Drama
MVFF programmers worked long days and nights pre-festival to help Chinese indie director Gao Xiongjie (The Butcher’s Wife (Wangliang’s Ideal)) obtain a visa to attend the festival, eventually getting support from a California senator in a last-ditch and last-minute attempt to obtain official support for his US visit. While daKAH, launched a successful $7,500 Kickstarter campaign to bring the world's first Hip Hop Orchestra and the subject of the highly acclaimed film, Hip Hop Maestro by Christine Lee, to bring 31 musicians up from Los Angeles up to perform at the MVFF Closing Night Gala, where they moved the crowd with an amazing show and 2 encores.
Children’s FilmFest
Clowns, Gnomes, Anime, Elmo—the MVFF Children’s FilmFest, now in its 17th year of programming, had it all. Bay Area families came out in force for the Children’s Film Fest that included four films, a circus parade, two parties, and a clown workshop. Then, nearly 3000 students from kindergarten to college participated in CFI Education’s Mill Valley Film Festival programs. Afternoon school screenings with the filmmakers were held at the Smith Rafael Film Center as well as filmmakers visiting schools all over the Bay Area to show clips of their films and to talk to students about filmmaking. The MVFF Children’s FilmFest was made possible by the generous support of The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (A.M.P.A.S.) and Bellam Storage and Boxes.
Live Music Events
The festival has a long history of presenting top live musical entertainment that ties in with special films, and this year was no exception. To celebrate the US Premiere of Play Like a Lion: The Legacy of Maestro Ali Akbar Khan, MVFF presented the “Play Like a Lion: LIVE” concert which celebrated Ali Akbar Khan’s life with an emotional performance by his son Alam Khan, who’s relationship with his father is the subject of the film. This was followed by a unique, one-time musical collaboration as surprise guest musicians Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman joined Alam Khan and his group for a musical jam based on an Ali Akba Khan classical raga.

"Conviction" and "The King's Speech" to Open Mill Valley Festival

Nigel M Smith — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:03:37 GMT

In an interesting move, two potential Oscar contenders in the acting categories - Tony Goldwyn's "Conviction," starring Hilary Swank, and Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech," featuring Colin Firth as King George VI - will open the 33rd Mill Valley Film Festival. The U.S. premiere of John Madden's "The Debt," will meanwhile serve as the closing night film of the festival which runs October 7 - 17 in towns north of San Francisco.

On top of the films slated for the lineup, the festival will also honor director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu ("Babel," "21 Grams"), who will do a Q&A after a screening of his new film "Biutiful." Edward Norton is also scheduled to speak following a showing of his new film "Stone." In addition, director Julian Schnabel and his "Miral" screenwriter Rula Jebreal will speak after a screening of their new film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Other events include a concert in honor of "Nowhere Boy," Sam Taylor-Wood's new film about the early years of John Lenon, and another live musical event courtesy of the ska and rock fusion band Fishbone, who are featured in "Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone."

"For the last 33 years, the California Film Institute’s Mill Valley Film Festival has made San Francisco and the Bay Area a destination for tourists, film enthusiasts, and filmmakers from all over the world to celebrate outstanding cinema," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.