News

Alan Brain’s 2021 award-winning “The Rumba Kings” and Jace Panebianco’s “Broken Molds” will be among the films showcased at the Maui Film Festival, which will accommodate guests in an open-air, pod-style seating, from Nov. 17-21 at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center in Kahului. There are 13 premieres among the features in the lineup.

Even though the festival has arranged for guests to show proof of vaccination, for those who wish to participate virtually, 90 feature films and shorts are available to stream. These include Nov. 17 screenings: Emily Sky’s “River,” which explores space and time throughout six continents; Panebianco’s “Broken Molds,” which follows the origin story of windsurfing, and Isaac Halasima’s “Waterman,” a documentary narrated by Jason Mamoa, that tells the story of five-time Olympic Gold medalist Paoa Kahanamoku.

Peggy Callahan and Louie Psihoyos “Mission Joy,” explores the friendship between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and Frauke Sandig’s documentary,...

Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips, Steve Berlin of Los Lobos and drummer Scott Amendola will premiere a new score they wrote for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments Thursday, May 28th, at around 8:15 p.m. Pt/11:15 p.m. Et.

The premiere will be part of Dawn, an all-night virtual celebration of the Jewish holiday Shavuot. Hosted by Reboot, Dawn, will feature a mix of music, comedy, presentations and conversations designed to “unpack the mysteries of the Jewish calendar’s best-kept secret.”

A landmark epic of Hollywood’s silent era,...

The Museum of Modern Art has unveiled its full festival lineup of 28 features and shorts for Doc Fortnight 2020, its annual showcase of the best of nonfiction film, on Monday. The list includes the latest works from the likes of Michael Almereyda, Terrence Nance, Denis Côté, Sky Hopinka, Lucretia Martel, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Ben Rivers, Lynn Sachs, Kazuhiro Soda, Roger Ross Williams, Maya Khoury and the Abounaddara Collective.

Now in its 19th year, Doc Fortnight will run from February 5 to 19, 2020, and will include 12 world premieres, 17 North American premieres, and 14 Us premieres from 38 countries. Doc Fortnight 2020 opens with the New York premiere of “Crip Camp,” a portrait of Camp Jened—a camp for disabled teenagers near Woodstock, New York, that thrived in the late 1960s and ’70s—which established a close-knit community of campers who would become pioneering disability advocates. The film is co-directed and produced by Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht,...

Tiffany Shlain, filmmaker and founder of the Webby Awards, is back with more ruminations on how tech and science affect our lives. Season two of her artistic and fascinating The Future Starts Here series debuted on October 23, 2014, on AOL On. In the second season premiere, “A Case for Dreaming,” Shlain explores the link between creativity and dreaming -- daydreaming, to be exact. Along the way she learned that daydreaming gets us into the “default mode network,” where we make a wandering trip through our own brains, form strong connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, and develop our own personas and creativity. So while many people may tell you not to let your mind wander, Shlain argues you need to do just that. Season two of the AOL Original Series will also find Shlain investigating the link between smartphones and diplomacy, figuring out why humans both love and fear tech like Google Glass and robots,...

In the five months since its snazzy presentation at Digital Content Newfronts, AOL has slowly rolled out its new lineup of original programming. It released Steve Buscemi's Park Bench and season two of iJustine's Hardwired in the spring before debuting the Fullscreen-produced Follow Me and James Franco's Making a Scene in the summer. The fall will be another busy season for AOL; it has announced October arrival dates for five of its original programs. Three of the programs that will debut in October are new original series that will begin their first seasons. As with previous AOL projects, all of these debuts are fronted by recognizable celebrities. Kevin Nealon will host Laugh Lessons, in which well-known comedians will attempt to teach their craft to kids. Zoe Saldana is at the center of My Hero, in which celebrities will set up heartfelt surprises for the people who have changed their lives.

The 4th annual Napa Valley Film Festival (Nvff), scheduled for November 12-16, 2014, announced its Narrative and Documentary feature film competition lineups as well as Jury members. The 2014 Festival will screen 22 feature films in competition. The full film program line-up, including out-of-competition special presentations, sneak previews of awards season contenders, and narrative, documentary and animated shorts, will be announced in September.

“Our thoughts are with everyone in the Napa Valley who have suffered losses from the recent earthquake,” said Co-Founder/Artistic Director Marc Lhormer. “We are proud to be part of a community that rallies in support of each other in such a generous and big hearted way. As they say in the business, the show must go on.”

“This is an exceptionally strong year for both the Narrative and Documentary competition programs,” said Program Director Herb Stratford. “These filmmakers have created new works that provoke, inspire, educate and entertain. They are the heart of our program each year, which includes more than 100 new independent films and advance studio screenings, and we are excited to announce their participation in the festival.”

Directors of the Narrative and Documentary films in competition participate in Nvff’s unique Artists-in-Residence Program presented in partnership with the incomparable Meadowood Napa Valley. Directors stay at the luxury resort for six nights during the festival and are treated to special events and workshops with their competition group and industry mentors. Serving as faculty for a set of Master Classes at Nvff 2014 are producer Ted Hope ( Adventureland, 21 Grams); writer/director Joshua Michael Stern (Jobs, Swing Vote) writer/director Joe Carnahan (The Blacklist; The Grey, Smokin’ Aces); producer Pam Koffler (Killer Films); and producer J. Todd Harris ( The Kids are All Right; Bottle Shock); Ryan Harrington (Tribeca Film Institute); producer Jason Berman (Struck by Lightning, Luv); producer Anne Carey (Archer Gray Productions); executives Tom Quinn (RADiUS) and David Glasser (The Weinstein Company). Meadowood Napa Valley will also award $10,000 to the winning filmmakers in both the Narrative and Documentary competition categories at the Closing Night Awards Ceremony on Sunday, November 16.

Narrative Competition Section

Films in the Narrative competition section feature actors Anne Hathaway, Billie Joe Armstrong, Elizabeth Banks, Tate Donovan, Rachael Harris, Zoe Kravitz, Stephen Lang, Leighton Meester, Debra Messing, Dev Patel, Kyra Sedgwick, Chloe Sevigny and Paul Wesley, among others. The 12 films selected include:

"Thank You A Lot"- Music agent and manager Jack Hand has a bad reputation and an even worse track record. He has only two clients left: an indie band on the verge of a breakup and a part-time hip-hop artist. Jack’s future hinges on signing the one person he is barely on speaking terms with — his estranged father, a respected and reclusive country singer/songwriter. "East Side Sushi"- Juana‘s work – preparing fruit for the family’s sidewalk cart – is steady, but hardly her life’s calling. Despite the objections and concerns of her family, Juana decides to pursue her dream of becoming an expert sushi chef, to go where her heart tells her, not where she is expected to be. "Fall To Rise" - Principal dancer Lauren Drake is beautiful, talented and famous. When Lauren is released from her company after being sidelined by an injury, she quickly becomes frustrated with her new domestic lifestyle. At a performance by another dance company, she meets and teams up with Des, a former dancer who is also eager to have a second chance in the dance world. "Little Accidents" (Isa: William Morris Endeavor Entertainment) - In a small West Virginia town reeling from a recent tragic accident in the local mine, a fresh unfortunate incident in the woods leaves a young boy dead. Meanwhile Owen, an injured miner struggling to adjust to his new life aboveground, joins the search for the first boy who is presumed lost in the woods. "Like Sunday, Like Rain" - Reggie Kipper is a sweet, awkward cello prodigy, a composer and overall genius. He’s about to graduate from high school and enroll at MIT — and he’s is only twelve years old. Eleanor Fallon is a 23-year old struggling musician who meets Reggie when she is hired to be his au pair, and the unlikely duo embarks on a summer adventure that neither of them ever expected. "Sun Belt Express"- Allen King, a man living on the Arizona/Mexico border, finds out what his breaking point is when his ex-wife demands money, and his job teaching at a college south of the border evaporates. Allen then finds a unique way to supplant his income by transporting illegal aliens in the trunk of his car. "Sam & Amira" (Isa: Preferred Entertainment) - Sam is an army veteran struggling to assimilate into normal life stateside. He works a variety of odd jobs, tries his hand at stand-up comedy, and is recruited by his cousin into some shady investment dealings. Sam’s already complicated life is made more so by Amira, an Iraqi woman dealing with her own issues who is the daughter of an old army colleague. "Song One" (Isa: Lotus Entertainment) - Estranged from her family, Franny returns home when an accident leaves her brother comatose. Retracing his life as an aspiring singer-songwriter, she tracks down his favorite musician, James Forester. Against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s music scene, Franny and James develop an unexpected relationship and face the realities of their lives. "The Road Within" (Isa: Panorama Media) - Vincent has Tourette Syndrome. When his mother dies, he becomes obsessed with scattering her ashes by the ocean. Too much for his father to handle, Vincent is sent to a residential treatment center in Nevada where he befriends two other “inmates” struggling with their own personal issues. "Kinderwald" - Pennsylvania wilderness, 1885. John Linden, a hard-working German immigrant, is making a go of homesteading with his brother’s widow and her two young sons. John’s visually and spiritually idyllic world is thrown into utter chaos when the two boys go missing while off playing in the woods. "Wildlike" (Isa: Panorama Media) - Mackenzie is a fourteen-year-old girl whose father died last year. When her struggling mother checks herself into a recovery center, Mackenzie is sent from their Seattle home to live with her uncle in Alaska. At first he seems a supportive caretaker, but when his infatuation crosses a sexual line, Mackenzie runs away. With no one else to turn to, she shadows a solitary backpacker, Bartlett, a widowed man with scars of his own, into the beauty and danger of America’s last frontier.

Documentary Competition Section

"American Native" - For years, the legend of the Jackson Whites tribe has been told, passed down from generation to generation of New Jersey suburbanites. While the garish stories and tall tales have never been hard to find, the truth behind them has. Accessing the community is not easy; few outsiders have been able to penetrate the insular walls formed from centuries of discrimination. "Botso" - Dr. Botso Korisheli, 91 and still teaching music along with his unique philosophy, has a fascinating and unforgettable life story. Born in the former Soviet State of Georgia, Botso witnessed his father imprisoned under orders from Josef Stalin while his home was taken over by the Kgb. Forced to dig ditches for the Soviet army, Botso was then captured by the Germans. "Flying The Feathered Edge" - Robert A. “Bob” Hoover, age 92, is considered by many to be our greatest living aviator. Nicknamed “The Pilot’s Pilot” by his peers, Bob is largely unknown outside aviation circles despite his staggering array of accomplishments. Following a storied career during WWII as a fighter pilot, Bob continued to serve for years as one of our best test pilots. Mr. Hoover will be in attendance for screenings and Q&As. "Happy Valley" (Isa: Submarine Entertainment) - Few sports dynasties in the modern era have had a larger and longer-lasting profile than college football’s Penn State and its legendary coach Joe Paterno. State College, Pennsylvania, is in the heart of an area known as Happy Valley, ground zero of a proud football tradition for decades. When the shocking sex abuse scandal of assistant coach Jerry Sandusky rocked that town and college in 2011, the impact was unprecedented. "Havana Curveball" - At age 13 and preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, Mica takes to heart his rabbi’s injunction to help “heal the world.” Mica imagines himself a hero for other kids, and hatches a grand plan to send baseballs, bats and gloves to Cuba. Mica knows only that Cubans are poor and love baseball, and that Cuba “saved” his grandpa’s life when he was escaping from Nazi Germany. "States of Grace" - Dr. Grace Dammann’s life was forever altered when a driver crashed head-on into her car on the Golden Gate Bridge. After a seven-week coma and numerous surgeries, Grace miraculously regained consciousness, with her cognitive abilities almost entirely intact, but her body left shattered and severely disabled. "Underwater Dreams" - The epic story of four teenage boys from the Arizona desert who dare to go up against college engineering students from MIT. Inspired by two energetic high school science teachers, the boys build a robot from hardware store parts and enter an underwater robotics competition sponsored by Nasa. "An Honest Liar" - For as long as there have been magicians and illusionists, there have been doubters and debunkers making sure that the general public doesn’t get taken for a ride. One of the greatest illusionists of his era was “The Amazing Randi,” who made the shift from magic and escape acts to exposing the frauds who prey on unsuspecting victims. "Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank" (Isa: Preferred Content) - Few members of the U.S. Congress have ever been as polarizing and revolutionary as Barney Frank has been over the past 40 years. Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank examines the career, passions and legacy of our first openly gay Congressman. This rare and intimate documentary is entertaining, enlightening and thought-provoking. "#chicagoGirl: The Social Network Takes On A Dictator" (Isa: Preferred Content) - In #chicagoGirl, we meet freedom fighters in the streets of Homs and Damascus along with the stateside collection of exiles working to return Syria to a stable and human rights-respecting country. Will 21st century tools of change stand up to guns and violence and terror in the streets? Narrative Features Jury

Christine Vachon , (Producer, "Boys Don’t Cry," "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," "Far From Heaven")

Peter Baxter ( Co-founder/Director Slamdance Film Festival)

Dierk Sinderman (Hollywood Foreign Press Association)

Lisa Truitt ( Producer, James Cameron’s "Deepsea Challenge 3D,""Mysteries of Egypt")

Don Lewis (Producer; Editor Film Threat)

Documentary Features and Shorts Jury

Morgan Neville ("Twenty Feet From Stardom")

Tiffany Shlain ("The Tribe; Connected: An Autobiography About Love," "Death & Technology")

Freida Lee Mock ("Anita. G-Dog,""Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision," "Return with Honor")

Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine ("Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,""Ballets Russes").

Narrative Shorts Jury

Joshua Michael Stern ("Jobs,""Swing Vote," "Neverwas")

Ralph Macchio (Actor, "The Karate Kid;" Director, "Across Grace Alley")

Neil Berkeley ("Beauty in Embarrassing;" Founder Brkl)

Animated Shorts

Bill Plympton (The King of Indie Animation)

Adam Glick (Amazon Web Services)

Ryan Tudhope (Atomic Fiction)

About The Napa Valley Film Festival

The Napa Valley Film Festival (Nvff) is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Napa, California. The ultimate celebration of film, food and wine, Nvff lights up the picturesque towns of Napa, Yountville, St. Helena and Calistoga at the most colorful time of year. Nvff features over 100 new independent films and studio sneak previews screening in 12 beautiful venues throughout four walkable villages, as 300 visiting filmmakers interact with audiences at screenings and intimate events. Attendees enjoy film panels & culinary demonstrations, wine tasting pavilions, the spectacular Festival Gala, Celebrity Tributes, Awards Ceremony, and an array of parties, VIP receptions and winemaker dinners and more. For information or to buy passes, visit NapaValleyFilmFest.org...

Streaming service teams up with Reinventors for a six-part interactive web series.

Fandor and Reinventors have joined forces in the six-part interactive web series Reinvent Hollywood which seeks to address the future of film.

Episode 1 of the series launches today [May 28].

“Art, regardless of the medium, has always been advanced by the audience, creators and technology – far more than business or the market can,” said Fandor CEO Ted Hope. “Fandor’s mission is to help build the world’s film community through the advancement and preservation of film art and culture.”

Hope, along with a roundtable of industry experts, will host 90-minute episodes to be streamed live on Reinventors.net. Audiences are able to join the conversation for each episode via Google Hangout. Recordings of the episodes will be available on Fandor.com.

The topics to be addressed in the series are: The Form, The Artists, The Audience, The Business, The Festivals, Schools And Non-Profits...

AOL has ordered 12 new web series produced by a diverse group of A-list Hollywood talent, including James Franco, Steve Buscemi and Ellen DeGeneres. AOL unveiled its new slate of shows Tuesday at a presentation for advertisers in New York. In addition to the 12 new shows, it picked up four series for new seasons, including Tiffany Shlain's “The Future Is Here” and “city.ballet,” executive produced by “Sex in the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker. While Yahoo, Microsoft and Hulu have poured money into long-form narrative series, AOL remains committed to short-form reality shows. Also read: Yahoo Snags YouTube Star for Recap Show.

MovieTickets.com renewed its long-term arrangement to provide remote ticketing to Harkins Theatres. The extension of the deal between MovieTickets.com and Harkins builds on an 11-year relationship between the two companies. Also read: Why Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain Has Given Up on Movie Theaters MovieTickets.com works with more than 250 theater chains, allowing users to purchase tickets in advance via mobile devices or by calling a phone number. It currently enables remote ticketing for consumers across 22 countries and territories. Harkins Theatres is the largest independently owned theater chain in North America. Operating 30 locations in five states and representing 432 screens, Harkins has been in existence.

For the second year in a row, the Tribeca Film Festival has awarded the best, most creative Vine videos it can find. The winners have been announced for the #6SecFilms competition, with five champions emerging from the initial field of 536 videos. All of the contest's videos were created via Vine, the video capture app that limits submissions to six-second runtimes. The time constraint forces users to get creative, and this often causes adept artists to turn to stop-motion. This year, three of the five champions are animated via stop-motion, while a fourth has stop-motion elements as well. The #6SecFilms jury included online video notables like Gary Vaynerchuk, Jerome Jarre, and Tiffany Shlain. "At last year's Tff, Vine was a brand new and many creators were just beginning to get their hands dirty," said Tribeca Film Festival Director of Programming Genna Terranova. "A year later, there is more mastery of the...

Last year, AOL debuted 15 new web series, a lineup that included a bold collection of celebrity-driven content. Out of those 15, four have now been picked up for second seasons: City.Ballet, Hardwired, The Future Starts Here, and #CandidlyNicole. The most prominent of the four pickups is #CandidlyNicole, which follows Nicole Richie's life through a loose basis around her Twitter feed. After 20 episodes garnered millions of views across AOL On and YouTube, VH1 picked up the series for an eight episode TV run. #CandidlyNicole's renewal guarantees a second web season as well, with viewers getting another taste of Richie's "uncensored perspective on style, parenting, relationships and her journey through life," according to a press release. The renewals will also bring back Hardwired, in which YouTuber iJustine tries out futuristic technologies. Season one focused exclusively on wearable technology, but season two will extend its reach to beauty and gaming-related gadgets, with...

AOL has renewed four of its original web series for second seasons on the AOL On network. Returning to the digital video platform are #CandidlyNicole, starring Nicole Richie, based on her Twitter feed; city.ballet, a look at the world of the New York City Ballet from executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker; Hardwired 2.0, an examination of tech trends with host iJustine; and The Future Stars Here, a docuseries from Webby awards founder Tiffany Shlain. Several advertisers also have returned to AOL On. Citi will once again sponsor city.ballet, and Verizon will sponsor Hardwired 2.0 and The

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Only 32% of the world’s population has access to the Internet. That figure, coming from the organization A Human Right, means that 4.6 billion people are effectively left out of the Information Age that most of us take for granted. Individuals and organizations across the world are working to ameliorate that and spread online connectivity into underdeveloped and rural areas from the U.S. to Kazakhstan. And films like Tiffany Shlain’s Connected (2011) are starting to probe what can happen to global consciousness when the collective wisdom of the world, not just our meager social networks, are finally truly linked together. […]...

Only 32% of the world’s population has access to the Internet. That figure, coming from the organization A Human Right, means that 4.6 billion people are effectively left out of the Information Age that most of us take for granted. Individuals and organizations across the world are working to ameliorate that and spread online connectivity into underdeveloped and rural areas from the U.S. to Kazakhstan. And films like Tiffany Shlain’s Connected (2011) are starting to probe what can happen to global consciousness when the collective wisdom of the world, not just our meager social networks, are finally truly linked together. […]...

Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker first and a technologist second. The co-founder of the Webby Awards went to film school, learned to edit movies by splicing actual film, and has made more than a dozen films in her life. Yet Shalin is ready to move past the movie theater after shooting eight episodes of a new series for AOL, which she considers eight short films. “Everyone can watch them all at once on any screen any time,” Shlain told TheWrap. “It’s so liberating; I can’t describe it to you. I’m never going to release the same way again.

1. Women in Film: Columbia University Libraries' newly launched Women Film Pioneers Project is a compendium of film resources and material seeking to reverse the historical fallacy that the film production process is and always has been male-dominated. Read all about it here. 2. Sundance: The Sundance Institute has selected six projects for New Frontier Story Lab, which supports artists innovating the art and form of storytelling at the convergence of film, visual art, media, live performance, music and technology. Read more about it here. 3. The Future is Here: Tiffany Shlain's new web series for AOL, "The Future Starts Here," which went live early this morning, explores the role that technology plays in our lives and how it has changed the way we relate to each other. The eight films that comprise "The Future Starts Here" are: "Technology Shabbat," "Motherhood Remixed," "Tech Etiquette," "Why We Love Robots," "Participatory Revolution," "The Creative.

Writer, director, innovator and public speaker Tiffany Shlain is perhaps best known as the founder of The Webby Awards. Establishing an organization devoted to honoring the "best of the Internet" back in 1996, when CompuServe and AOL were still the major internet players and the majority of Americans had yet to get online, was an optimistic move and Shlain continues to exude optimism. It's no surprise then that AOL asked her to create a series of films about the future of technology. The resulting series, "The Future Starts Here," which went live early this morning, explores the role that technology plays in our lives and how it has changed the way we relate to each other. "These eight episodes are all subjects that I'm super interested in," Shlain told Indiewire. "I wanted to explore, the past, the present and the future. Everyone is looking so far into the distance, but to me,...

Tiffany Shlain, who has been a player in the Bay Area tech scene for over a decade and who directed the 2011 Sundance film "Connected," is currently promoting her cloud filmmaking project, a way for organizations and others to get filmmakers all over the world to contribute to collaborative film projects on specific topics. Shlain also recently announced that she would be creating a web series, "The Future Starts Here," about connected life, for AOL Here is the full transcript of filmmaker Tiffany Shlain’s keynote address “The Cloud Filmmaking Manifesto” delivered at Tribeca Film Festival’s Interactive Day 2013 in New York on April 20th. One of my favorite sayings is, "Go as far as you can see and when you get there, you'll be able to see further." I want to thank Ingrid Kopp and her terrific team at Tribeca have created a wonderful day today letting us go as far as we can see.

San Francisco-based filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain has signed on with AOL to create an original eight-episode web series for the company's video hub On Network. Using archival footage, animation and personal anecdotes, "The Future Starts Here" -- which will be produced by Shlain's own production company The Moxie Institute -- explores human identity and connectedness in the post-internet age. Shlain, who is an adept self-promoter, similarly broached this topic in her 2011 documentary "Connected: An Autobiography About Love, Death and Technology." Shlain joins a roster of web-worthy celebs -- including Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jonathan Adler -- who will soon be launching web series on AOL On Network. Watch the trailer for "The Future Starts Here" below.

Tiffany Shlain directed the award-winning documentary Connected, which was released last fall. She is also the founder of the Webby Awards, and has been honored by Newsweek as one of the “Women Shaping the 21st Century.”

Currently Tiffany is working on a series of short films called “Let it Ripple,” all of which deal with themes of humanity. The films all have a global impact, as far as their creation and distribution, which is why I thought it might be of particular interest to you. One of the films, “Engage,” stresses the importance of participating in a meaningful way in our lives and communities and will premiere as part of the Interdependence Day celebration on September 8.

With the “Let it Ripple” series, Tiffany is paving the way for a new style of collaborative filmmaking she calls Cloud Filmmaking, which involves cloud-sourcing the creative content used to create the film, as well as distributing the films via nonprofit organizations. Tiffany and her production team work with nonprofits to include their customized call-to-action at the end of each Let it Ripple film so they can utilize the short in their efforts to maximize advocacy, fundraising, or other communication efforts on the web.

In addition to her many film projects, Tiffany has given a number of TEDTalks and will be publishing a TEDBook on September 27 to coincide with the premiere of her “Brain Power” short film. She delivered the campus-wide keynote commencement address at UCBerkeley in 2010 and has served as an advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on technology and society.

A celebrated thinker and catalyst, known for her ability to illuminate complex ideas in culture, science, technology, and life through her unique films, dynamic talks, and innovative projects, a chat with Tiffany is always illuminating and entertaining.

Further information about Tiffany is available below and at http://tiffanyshlain.com/bio/...

Tribeca Film Festival, Professor Clayton Christensen

And Disruptor Foundation Announce Honorees

For Third Annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards

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Awards to highlight successful disruptive innovation in non-traditional, identity-based domains such as culture, education, healthcare, philanthropy, politics, religion and social entrepreneurship

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Twitter and Square Founder Jack Dorsey and Room to Read Founder John Wood to Receive Lifetime Achievement Honorees; .Thinking, Fast and Slow. by Daniel Kahneman named Book of the Year; Award Winners Also Include Justin Bieber, Scooter Braun, Rick Rubin, Pat Metheny, Edward Burns

The Tribeca Film Festival (Tff), in association with noted Harvard Business School Professor Clay Christensen and the Disruptor Foundation, announced it will hold the third annual Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, hosted by Nyu Stern School of Business, on April 27. The 11th edition of Tff runs April 18 to 29.

Lifetime Achievement Awards will be given to Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square, and John Wood, founder of Room to Read.

The Documentary Channel and the Ida have reteamed to create a special Doctalk show from the Ida’s 27th Annual Documentary Awards. This year, the awards show was hosted by Eddie Schmidt, Tiffany Shlain and Josh Fox. This special Doctalk show features exclusive interviews with the nominated feature and short subject filmmakers, along with red carpet and awards show footage.

The Ida awarded its prestigious 2011 Career Achievement Award to legendary filmmaker Les Blank, which was presented by Werner Herzog. The Pare Lorentz award went to Bill Haney for The Last Mountain, ...

Distribution panels have it tough: There's always an audience for the information, but the panelists are always loath to give up real numbers. So this year Sundance tried to have it both ways with "Distribution X," a January 21 panel that asked top distributors to spill the numbers on imaginary projects. The panelists were very real: independent producer Karin Chien acted as moderator for veteran sales agent Josh Braun of Submarine; New Video co-president Susan Margolin; Tom Quinn, co-president of TWC's new label RADiUS; distribution strategist Peter Broderick and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain ("Connected"). Pitching the mock movies were producer Alicia Van Couvering ("Tiny Furniture") and filmmaker Senain Kheshgi ("Project Kashmir"). Jay Van Hoy, executive producer of Sundance 2012 selection "Keep the Lights On," also presided, weighing in and doing the math. Chien asked for "real numbers" and that...

After months of anticipation, documentary filmmakers and fans of non-fiction gathered at the Directors Guild of America Theater on the night of Friday, December 2, 2011, for the 27th annual Ida Documentary Awards. Awards chosen by special committees, including a select group of Ida Members who voted on the Best Short and Best Feature winners, were presented by hosts Josh Fox (Gasland), Ida Board President Eddie Schmidt (Producer, This Film is Not Yet Rated), and Webby Awards founder and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology). ...

We’ve officially landed three amazing personalities from the world of non-fiction to host this prestigious fundraising event. Representing the dizzying diversity of documentary filmmaking, filmmakers Josh Fox and Tiffany Shlain and Ida Board President Eddie Schmidt will each bring their own unique flavor to the events of the night. Accompanying the Mc responsibilities will be Oscar®- nominated documentary filmmaker, Lucy Walker, who be spinning live during the show.

Emmy Award-winning and Academy Awards-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox is also the founder and Artistic Director of International Wow Company, a film and theater ...

The documentaries "Il Castello," "Senna" and "Better This World" have been named winners of new awards for cinematography, editing and music, respectively, the International Documentary Association announced on Thursday. The Ida's new Creative Recognition Awards will be handed out at the Ida Awards ceremony on Friday, December 2 at the Directors Guild in Los Angeles. That show, the Ida also announced, will be hosted by documentary filmmaker Josh Fox ("Gasland"), Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain and the Ida's board president, producer Eddie Schmidt. Oscar-nominated director Lucy Walker (whose "Waste Land" won the...

Editor's Note: Just before Tiffany Shlain's movie Connected opened in New York, we hosted a screening and discussion of the film led by Geoffrey Gilmore. Here is the video in which they discuss how the film came to be, its aesthetic strategy and how we might understand a world that each day becomes more and more connected. Our connected world informs every post we feature in the Future of Film Blog as each of our contributors wrestles with its implications. Here it is featured front and center. Enjoy the video and let us know your thoughts.

Title: Connected Director: Tiffany Shlain A documentary snapshot of the blurry, ever-evolving intersection of the relationship between technology and human bonds and grander societal development, “Connected” is wonderfully emblematic of the ways that intelligent artists can use the medium of film to explore issues and ask questions in a manner that encourages and bolsters a pleasantly unsettled life of exploration and outreach in the minds and hearts of viewers. Self-touted as “an autobiography about love, death and technology,” Tiffany Shlain’s film is a deeply felt personal travelogue in the vein of Tom Shadyac’s similarly questioning “I Am,” in which the director set out (broadly speaking) to make sense of his feelings of emptiness...

“Some films go deep,” filmmaker Tiffany Shlain said at the Sundance premiere of her documentary, Connected. “Mine goes wide.” Indeed, Shlain’s film does go wide — it’s like a rubber band stretching in multiple directions while not breaking. Examining the ways in which technology can productively unite our global citizenry, Connected details nothing less than the history of consciousness and its arrival within today’s always-on, hyper-wired mind. Through voiceover narration and breezy montage, Connected explores the right brain/left brain split and its effect on social and economic organization, and it highlights the transformative potential of today’s communication tools. As a modern-day David Hume might argue, the film thoughtfully and entertainingly proposes that the Internet’s power to spread knowledge and experience can create a worldwide community capable of embracing the goals needed to sustain ourselves and our planet. Connectedwants you to use your handheld connective devices...

Associated Press Tiffany Shlain

Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of The Webby Awards and a Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute.

I never intended to be in my own movie. I have made eight movies and have never made a “personal” film. But I will never forget sitting in the editing room after working on “Connected” for two years feeling that here I was making a film about what it means to be connected in the 21st century...

When filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain set out to make her first feature, she wanted it to focus on 'a brief history of everything in the universe.' After watching that first cut, she realized her signature humor was completely absent from the film. Almost on cue, life intervened and entirely rewrote her goals. Her new objective for the film practically dictated itself: she had to enter her film, becoming both an on-screen presence and one of two narrative voices. Suddenly, the story was given the poignancy she desired.

If babies need more sleep for their developing brains, as studies have confirmed, then our ever-increasing reliance on email and text messaging have some unforseen consequences for human evolution? Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain tackles these and other questions at the intersection of technology and humanity in ”Connected,” a sort of investigative documentary and canted memoir which bowed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and stands poised to release both in theaters and across various multimedia platforms. This isn’t a new topic of interest for Shlain, who years ago launched the honorific Webby Awards, casting a spotlight on some of the best creativity on the Internet. ShockYa had a chance to speak...

"When French filmmakers and music lovers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tuyalle landed in the Congo in 2004 with the intention of recording some local music," writes Ernest Hardy in the Voice, "they had no idea that their dream would take five years, grow to include a documentary film, and be centered on four paraplegic musicians, three able-bodied ones, and the homeless boy (a self-taught music wunderkind with a homemade string instrument) they took in."

David DeWitt in the New York Times: "The documentary Benda Bilili!, in French and Lingala, captures five years in the lives of this intergenerational street band, five years in which the buskers move from practicing at the decaying Kinshasa zoo to performing for enraptured crowds on the strength of their album, Très Très Fort, French for 'Very Very Strong' — which they are."

In Slant, Andrew Schenker finds that "the film's inquiry into the artistic method...

Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death and Technology Trailer. Tiffany Shlain‘s Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology (2011) movie trailer is about a documentary that “explores the visible and invisible connections linking major issues of our time-the environment, consumption, population growth, technology, human rights, the global economy-while searching for her place in the world during a transformative time in her life. Employing a combination of animation and archival footage, Shlain constructs a chronological tour of Western modernization through the work of her late father, Leonard Shlain, a surgeon and best-selling author. Connected illuminates the beauty and tragedy of human endeavor while championing the importance of personal connectedness for understanding and coping with today’s global conditions.”

Interesting documentary movie trailer. People have become very dependent on tech and constant connectivity. This film delves into that. The story about the cell phone and texting was pretty fun and sad coterminous.

Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? Some of the best authors will tell you that writing a short story is a lot harder than writing a long one, that you have to weigh every sentence. What better medium to see how this theory plays itself out beyond that than with movie trailers? Hell and Back Again Trailer I talked about the first trailer for this movie a couple of months ago [1]. Danfung Dennis looks like he's made...

Courtesy of the Sundance Institute The Artist Services website homepage.

The organization that hosts the Sundance Film Festival announced plans on Wednesday designed to get participating feature films onto iTunes, Netflix, YouTube and other major online video services after they play at the annual midwinter gathering.

The non-profit Sundance Institute is mounting the online campaign through an expansion of its Artist Services program, in a bid to keep movies from sinking into obscurity after the end of the festival—a...

Paladin Has ‘Whale’ Of A Time

in documentary about friendly orca

New York, June 28, 2011 . The Whale, a new documentary about a lonely young killer whale who causes upheaval in a small town and amazement around the world when he tries to make friends with humans, will be released theatrically by Paladin, it was announced by company president, Mark Urman.

The Whale (http://www.thewhalemovie.com/) was directed by noted journalist Michael Parfit and veteran producer-cinematographer Suzanne Chisholm, who encountered the young orca whale, nicknamed Luna, at the height of his celebrity and spent several years chronicling his adventures both in print and on film.

Ryan Reynolds, who hails from the very region in Western Canada where the story unfolds, narrates the film and served as executive producer, along with Scarlett Johansson and Eric Desatnik. The Whale will play its first commercial engagements in late summer and expand in the fall.

Paladin has acquired Webby founder Tiffany Shlain's documentary "Connected," and will be releasing the film this fall. The film premiered in the Documentary Competition at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Full press release below.l New York, NY (June 1, 2011)--Tiffany Shlain's award-winning documentary Connected will be released this fall by Paladin, it was announced today by company President, Mark Urman. Subtitled "An Autoblogography about Love, Death, & Technology," the film ...

If you roam through all the docu competition titles that have played at Sundance over the years you'd pretty much recognize how important this festival has become for the documentary film. While I know of none of the 16 film titles announced below (hence the reason why I suck at predicting the doc film selections) and I barely know some of the documentarians attached, what I do know is we'll be speaking about five to seven of these films by the end of the 2011 year. Among the more intriguing titles we have another eco man vs. corporation battle in Bill Haney's The Last Mountain, we have docu filmmaker Andrew Rossi gaining access into the NYTimes newsroom with Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times and Morgan Neville's Troubadours will musically bring us down memory lane. Here are the selections -- 16 films were selected from 841 submissions. Each is a world premiere.

The Sundance Film Festival has announced the films in competition for the awesome and cold film festival running January 20th through January 30th 2011 in Park City, Utah.

This will be my third year attending the festival, and I'm really excited for it! There's a great line-up of films this year! Check out the list below!

From the press release:

Sundance Institute announced today the lineup of films selected to screen in the U.S. and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary Competitions for the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. In addition to the four Competition Categories, the Festival presents films in six out-of-competition sections to be announced on December 2. The 2011 Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-30 in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah.

On Day One, the Festival will forego the convention of one opening night film and instead screen one narrative film and one documentary from both the U.