The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers is accepting submissions for the 2017 SMPTE-HPA Student Film Festival. Hosted by SMPTE and the Hollywood Professional Alliance, the film festival is an international competition open to full-time students from around the globe.
Post-production finishing for Parrott Heads, a new feature length documentary about dedicated fans of singer Jimmy Buffett, was completed recently at Roundabout Entertainment. The Burbank facility provided editorial conforming, color grading, sound mixing and DVD authoring services for the film, currently streaming on Amazon, iTunes and elsewhere.
AFI Docs, the American Film Institute's annual documentary celebration in the nation's capital, has announced the Opening and Closing Night films for its 15th annual edition. The festival will open with the East Coast premiere of Netflix's Icarus, directed by Bryan Fogel, and will close with ESPN Films' Year of the Scab, directed by Emmy winner John Dorsey. Both screenings will be held at the Newseum, the festival's Official Gala Screening Partner. AFI Docs runs June 14-18 in Washington, DC, and Silver Spring, Maryland.
The Digital Asset Symposium, presented by the Association of Moving Image Archivists, has added several panel discussions to its May 5 program lineup. The DAS brings together top experts in various fields to address the ongoing challenges facing digital asset management practitioners. The event is being held at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
The Big Sky Film Institute has launched the Native Filmmaker Initiative to bring more Indigenous stories to Missoula, Montana and engage the Native Filmmaking community across the Northwest. The initiative includes a Native Filmmakers Fellowship program, an Educational Outreach arm and special programming of Indigenous films at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
Feature film production company Crimson Forest Entertainment Group and specialty theatrical and home video distributor Hannover House have confirmed plans to merge operations under a stock-swap and financing plan, scheduled to be effective May 1. One of the first new titles to be released under the combined Crimson Forest – Hannover House structure is the $20-million dollar action thriller feature Shockwave starring Andy Lau and Jiang Wu. The film will be co-released together with CMC Pictures in North America next month.
A new set of materials from Orson Welles’ daughter will make the University of Michigan Library's Orson Welles collection the world's most comprehensive resource for Welles scholars and fans. The daughter of the renowned filmmaker and Italian actress Paola Mori, Beatrice Welles had a particularly extraordinary childhood. She was brought up jet setting to different countries, playing on various film sets, interacting mostly with adults (her parents and their friends), and falling asleep to the rhythmic sounds of her father working on his typewriter late into every night.
Dolby’s short animated film Escape, a sequel to two-time Daytime Emmy Award-winning short Silent, premiered last week at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Chosen for the Tribeca short film category out of a record number of 4,38 submissions, Escape is the story of a lone space explorer who crash-lands on a desolate planet and must find a way to make her new home habitable.
Keshet Studios CEO Alon Shtruzman and has announced the launch of Keshet Films. The newly formed global feature development and production division will be co-headed by award-winning producers Mandy Tagger-Brockey and Adi Ezroni. Keshet Studios is the LA-based subsidiary of Keshet International.
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers today announced that Shane Murphy has won the $5,000 grand prize in The Vista Project student filmmaker competition and that Jon Navarro was selected as runner-up. Led by cinema-industry pioneer Bud Mayo, chairman of New Vision Theatres, and by Barbara Lange, SMPTE and Hollywood Professional Association executive director, the judging committee named the winners during CinemaCon week, March 27-30 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
