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Lucania Film Festival 2011

The festival, organized by Allelammie, with its range of films, debates, discussions, exhibitions, concerts, meetings with filmmakers, experts, writers and the formula which combines severity and dissemination activities, entertainment and social commitment, has emerged as a key event for those who want to be informed on the world production of independent films and to participate in the cultural debate in the country.

Everything is well integrated in the context of geographical and cultural community that is hosting the event. Lucania, Pisticci and other locations. In the wake of continuity, this year the Lucania Film Festival will present a rich program of proposals.

Lucania Film Festival

About 50 countries appear in Pisticci, representing the five continents. In addition to several European countries, there stand out also India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Singapore and Sri Lanka for Asia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico and Venezuela for Central and South America, Senegal and Egypt for Africa, Australia for the Oceania and, as usual, the USA and Canada. During the Twelfth Edition, scheduled in Pisticci (in the province of Matera) from the 10th to 13th of August 2011, the 30 finalist films will be presented: all of them, beyond the issues addressed (social, environmental, emotional), incapsulate a great cinematographic value.

Pisticci, therefore, is preparing to once again become the capital city for Lucanian cinema, being so ready to welcome filmmakers, film makers, artists, designers, cultural tourists and cinema fans from around the world, including France, place of the first stage for the spin-off Lucania Film Family.

www.lucaniafilmfestival.it

Congratulations, Steffen!!!! We are very proud of you and your stunning work!

The official press release comes here:

The Long Island Film Festival is pleased to announce the recipients of its Pioneer Awards. Conceived by LIFF Vice President Thomas Santorelli, a historian of early American cinema, the awards are named after actors, directors, cinematographers, that worked for the pioneer movie studio, Vitagraph Company of America at its branch studio in Bay Shore, Suffolk County in 1916. The Vitagraph branch studio in Bay Shore was a small part of its huge studios in Flatbush that occupied five square blocks. For all of 1916, Vitagraph produced twenty-seven features and shorts there. Developing the film business along with Thomas Edison and Biograph, Vitagraph became omnipresent not just in the United States, but all over the world. The Vitagraph Building in Bay Shore still exists today. The structure is the only standing studio from early American cinema in the world making it the most historically important building in Suffolk County. The names associated with the LIFF Pioneer Awards were not just famous in their time, but were extraordinary participants in the development of cinema, America’s gift to the world.

A few of the awards are named after contemporary film figures related to Long Island such as Mario Puzo, a long time Bay Shore resident, composer John Williams who was born on Long Island, and the late actress, Adrienne Shelly, also from Long Island.

The LIFF awards ceremony will be held at The Scully Estate, (now Seatuck, a wildlife preserve) on May 14, 2011 from 7: pm – 11:00 pm in the estate’s ballroom.

Here are our award recipients.

The Ralph Ince Directors Award
Evan Brenner
The Riddle

The Jules Cronjager Award for Cinematography
Richard Dallett
The Riddle

The J. Stuart Blackton Award for Animation
Signe Baumane
Veterinarian
The Mario Puzo Screenplay Award
Evan Brenner, Danny Brenner
The Riddle

The John Williams Award for Film Scoring
Steffen Greisiger
Africa Light – Gray Zone

Best Student Film
The Indian and the Samurai
Shilpi Roy

Black Tie Screenplay Competition
Joseph Sikorski, Michael Calomino
Fragments From Olympus: The Vision of Nikola Tesla

CinemAmbiente 2011

CinemAmbiente, Torino

Since its debut in Turin in 1998, CinemAmbiente – Environmental Film Festival has presented outstanding environmental films in a year-round program of initiatives that promote cinema and green awareness.

Founded and directed by Gaetano Capizzi, the Festival has been jointly organized with the National Museum of Cinema – Maria Adriana Prolo Foundation since 2006. CinemAmbiente is a member of the Environmental Film Festival Network (EFFN) which unites major international environmental film festivals under its Green Network project.

The CinemAmbiente program features over selected 100 films screened in the national and international competition categories, as well as in the special categories Panorama, Focus, Retrospectives, and Ecokids. Besides film presentations, the program includes debates, meetings with the authors, exhibitions, book presentations, theater and concerts, and events in and around Turin. Over the years, CinemAmbiente has gone from strength to strength, consolidating its position on the international film festival scene.

Complementing CinemAmbiente’s commitment to environmental cinema in Italy are two ongoing educational projects:
CinemAmbiente Tour is a project for the non-commercial distribution of films from the Festival the CinemAmbiente Association selects for screenings held around the country. The Association is now a major source for obtaining environmental films in Italy.
CinemAmbiente TV – Films for Environmental Education is a one of its kind project that offers teachers and educators access to hundreds of environmental films arranged by topic and age group from an internet film database for viewing with their classes.

http://www.cinemambiente.it/

PanAfrican Film Festival 2011 in Cannes

PanAfrican Film Festival 2011, Cannes

The 8th Annual International Pan-African Film Festival of Cannes France (Festival International du Film PanAfricain de Cannes) will be held April 13-17, 2011.  The program includes music, fashion and parties in various locations around the town of Cannes. It brings together an interesting selection of people from movies, and the performing arts from across the world.

This event is a gathering of filmmakers, artists, designers and musicians that celebrates the fine art of film and music from the African Diaspora. With over 8,000 in attendance in previous years over the 5 day period, this year is proved to be even bigger.

http://www.festivaldufilmpanafricain.org/welcome/

WE are already seven days into a very significant year for Namibia’s Independence – the year in which we will celebrate 21years of Independence and hopefully get rid of the epic political buffoonery and other negatives that preoccupied our minds recently.

Celebrating 21 years is synonymous with maturity and becoming an adult. In some cultures and societies a child who reaches that age receives keys from their parents. Such keys signify the opening of new doors and also the transfer of responsibility from the parents to such children. In most cases the gifts given to the maturing children are of much higher value than the normal birthday gifts. The well-off parents might even give a child a key to a flat or for a car. The most significant key, however, is the one given to a child to unlock his or her own new opportunities in life.

With Namibia set to celebrate its 21st Independence anniversary this year, our democracy should be maturing to the next level. We should see a democracy in which political campaigning will be peaceful and elections transparent, among others.

Compared to some other states Namibia has done well since Independence but our yardstick should always be the countries above us. Those are countries known for the integrity, accountability and transparency of leaders they produce year-in and year-out. Such leaders practice zero tolerance for poor performance, corruption, factionalism, patronage and promote unity in action. While we are known to be a model of democracy among African states, corruption and cronyism have reached levels that have started systematically eroding the few gains we made.

Namibian Prime Minister Nahas Angula delivered remarks and individually welcomed the new Peace Corps volunteers to the Sub-Saharan African nation.

Albert Einstein once said: “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them”. Our problem is the way we see problems. In the majority of cases we politicise things such as the high rate of unemployment, crime, lack of housing and what should normally be a mature debate for solutions to such issues end up being trashed. This year we need to realise that there can be no fudging about the bread-and-butter issues. You win or you don’t; you have work or you don’t; there is an abnormally high level of murders or there isn’t.

For such problem-solving we need a new and deeper level of thinking across the board – whether Government or private sector, in Parliament or at traditional level, in the capital city or at a village.

Workshops and trips for the sake of subsistence and travel (S&T) allowances must stop. Instead, we need to work the problems with the affected people and shop for the right answers at their level. Quick fixes have proven costly in the past. That is why a few toilets in a rural area like Omusati were built for N$20 million! And let’s get rid of disposable comrades. These are the corrupt and those whose sell-by dates have passed. Let our year of coming of age be marked by maturity.

For that to happen a lot depends on an enlightened leadership who are ready to take the bull by the horns. Leaders must be ready to get their hands dirty rather than seek sanctuary in their air-conditioned offices. There is no better time than 21 years to come of age, and it only comes around once!

AfricAvenir International is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation engaging in political education and information dissemination both in Africa and in Europe. It’s main section was founded in Douala, Cameroon, by Prince Kum’ a Ndumbe III in 1990 while the European section was founded in 2000 during his exile in Berlin, Germany. Since 2007 AfricAvenir is also present in Windhoek, Namibia.

The Namibian Movie Collection is an integral part of AfricAvenir and initiated by Joel Haikali, founder of Joe-Vision Production. It consists of films made by Namibian filmmakers and foreign films with relevance to the Namibian film landscape. For the purpose of promotion, filmmakers agreed to grant non-commercial rights of their films to be part of the collection and the FNCC granted space in its Multimedia Library for public access. For a broader dissemination and exposure, a catalog of the Namibian Movie Collection is published on the website of AfricAvenir, introducing Namibian films and filmmakers to an international audience. We believe this is necessary and crucial towards achieving the overall objective, the development of the Namibian film industry.

From now on, “Africa Light / Gray Zone” is part of The Namibian Movie Collection.

Find further information on The Official Website of AfricAvenir / The Namibian Movie Collection.

› Deutsch

AfricAvenir International ist eine politisch unabhängige und gemeinnützige Nichtregierungsorganisation, die sich auf dem Gebiet der politischen Bildung sowohl in Afrika als auch in Europa engagiert. Die Hauptgeschäftsstelle in Douala, Kamerun wurde 1990 von Prinz Kum’a Ndumbe III. gegründet. 2000 folgte die deutsche und 2007 die namibische Sektion.

Die namibische Movie Collection ist ein fester Bestandteil von AfricAvenir und wurde von Joel Haikali, dem Gründer von Joe-Vision Produktion, etabliert. Sie besteht aus Filmen von namibischen Filmemachern und aus ausländischen Filmen mit einer Relevanz für die namibische Filmlandschaft. Zum Zweck der Förderung vereinbaren Filmemacher die nicht-gewerblichen Rechte an ihren Filmen und werden Teil der Sammlung. Die FNCC stellt dafür den Ausstellungsplatz in ihrer Multimedia-Bibliothek mit öffentlichem Zugang zur Verfügung. Für eine umfassendere Verbreitung und Exposition wird weiterhin ein Katalog der namibischen Movie Collection auf der Website von AfricAvenir veröffentlicht, die namibische Filme und Filmemacher für ein internationales Publikum vorstellt. Wir glauben, dies ist notwendig und entscheidend zum Erreichen unseres übergeordneten Ziels, der Entwicklung der namibischen Filmindustrie.

Von nun an wird auch “Africa Light / Gray Zone” Teil der Namibian Movie Collection sein.

Weitere Informationen auf der Webseite von AfricAvenir und der Namibian Movie Collection.

Excerpts on Youtube:

PEER-RABEN-MUSIC-AWARD at SoundTrack_Cologne 7.0

SoundTrack_Cologne again awards the prize for the best music in a short film for young upcoming composers – the PEER-RABEN-MUSIC-AWARD.

For the PEER-RABEN-MUSIC-AWARD which has been awarded for the first time in 2009 we are looking again for the best music to a short film. Awarded will be film scores where the relationship between the narration and the music and sound is innovative and dramaturgically clear. The film music must mainly have been written for the film.

Oscar-winner Jan A.P. Kaczmarek is the special guest of SoundTrack_Cologne 7.0

When Jan A.P. Kaczmarek moved to the US from Poland in 1989 he could already look back at a career as an award-winning musician and composer for theatre. It was in the theatre that, initially, he succeeded in his new home country but soon the US movie industry discovered the skills of the composer who describes making music and composing as his personal religion. Following films such as LOST SOULS (2000), UNFAITHFUL (2002) and large-scale TV productions like WAR AND PEACE (2007) or THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS (2009) he received the film music Oscar in 2005 for his score to Marc Forster’s film FINDING NEVERLAND. Kaczmarek, who has worked with major directors like, for example, Lasse Hallström, Agnieszka Holland, Lajos Koltai, Adrian Lyne and Janusz Kaminski, is the founder of the film music teaching institute Rozbitek on the German-Polish border.

SoundTrack_Cologne 7.0 will focus on the work of Jan A.P. Kaczmarek in workshop talks, screenings with live commentary and a masterclass. Additionally, Kaczmarek will chair the jury of the EUROPEAN TALENT AWARD.

28 October 2010 is the day! The Berlin-Windhoek Film Night 2010 will take place at 8 pm in The Babylon Cinema in Berlin.

The opening film of the event is the film “Africa Light / Gray Zone” (2010) by Tino Schwanemann. “Africa Light / Gray Zone” tells the story of Namibia, “The Light of Africa”. It is representing the development of identity for an entire continent: Between tradition and modernity, between the cattle and slums, between colonialism and the ownership reforms to the minimum wage for everyone. Namibia is neither black nor white – but infinitely gray.

Additional highlights of The Film Night will be the film “City Code” by Tabea Sternberg, other films by German and African filmmakers, a poetry slam performance in Windhoek, live music, a photography exhibition and the official reception by the chairmen of The German Namibian Association.

The Film Night will be held by the German Namibian Association in co-operation with the German TV broadcaster ZDF and will be supported by the Senate of Berlin, the German Department of State and Air Berlin.

Ein interkultureller Austausch zwischen Vertretern der Kunst und Politik aus Berlin (Deutschland) und Windhoek (Namibia) findet im Oktober statt.

Am 28. Oktober 2010 ist es soweit! Die Filmnacht Berlin-Windhoek findet um 20 Uhr im Berliner Babylon Kino statt.

Eröffnungsfilm der Veranstaltung ist der Film “Africa Light / Gray Zone” (2010) von Tino Schwanemann. “Africa Light / Gray Zone” erzählt die Geschichte Namibias, dem “Licht Afrikas”, repräsentativ für einen gesamten Kontinent. Zwischen Tradition und Moderne, zwischen Viehzucht und Slums, von Kolonialismus über Eigentumsreformen bis zum Mindestlohn für alle. Namibia ist weder schwarz noch weiß – sondern unendlich grau.

Weitere Highlights werden der Film “City Code” von Tabea Sternberg, gefolgt von weiteren Filmen deutscher und afrikanischer Filmemacher, eine Poetry Slam Performance aus Windhoek, Live Musik, eine Fotoausstellung sowie der offizielle Empfang sein.

Die Filmnacht wird veranstaltet von der Deutsch-Namibischen Gesellschaft in Kooperation mit dem ZDF und wurde unterstützt vom Senat der Stadt Berlin, dem Auswärtigen Amt und Air Berlin.

Additional events of The Shnit Filmfestivals 2010 will take place in Cologne and in Cape Town. Above all, for our film “Africa Light – Gray Zone” this now closes the circle between the film’s subject of matter, its immediate shooting location and its screening venue. We are looking forward for the feedback in Cape Town! Goeiedag, hoe gaan dit, Kaapstad?