My Breathing on Everest journey kicked off less than a year out of university when my friend and frequent collaborator Meredith Gaito came to me with an idea she knew most other people would call too ambitious or downright crazy. A year and a half later I have been to Nepal twice filming at the base camp of Mount Everest for what has become a deeply personal documentary.
The producers of the Conscious Cartoons International Animation Festival, which starts September 14-16 on Vashon Island, Washington, are calling it the first of its kind worldwide. Conscious Cartoons will feature three days of animated shorts – many of them award winning – from around the world with socially conscious, humanist themes. The festival includes something for everyone, from kids to adults. The goal is to harness the power of animation to inspire compassion and provide insights into the human condition in ways that live action media often fails to do.
The 22nd annual Arab Film Festival begins October 12 at the historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco, and this year, for the first-time, will partner with the Asian World Film Festival for its screenings in Culver City at ArcLight Cinema.
In response to what it says is the shifting intersection of theatrical film distribution and moviegoers’ accelerating trend towards in-home entertainment, new over-the-top company Row8 is launching what it claims will be the most cinematic and highest security digital streaming service – initially focused on exclusive premieres of foreign theatrical titles in the U.S. market. Row8’s goal is to elevate the experience of viewing theatrical features at home, presenting quality filmmaking fresh from theaters to targeted and passionate audiences
Applications for The Made in NY Women’s Film, TV and Theatre Fund went live today. The fund provides finishing grants for film, television, digital projects and theatre productions. To be eligible, projects must be made by, for, or about women or female-identifying individuals.
New York Women in Film & Television have announced the latest recipients of NYWIFT Scholarships and Awards. With support from the Ha Phuong Foundation this year, the newly re-branded NYWIFT Ha Phuong Scholarships provide a $5,000 scholarship each year to a second-year female film student at the Brooklyn College Feirstein School of Cinema, City College of New York, Columbia University, New York University, and the Stony Brook/Killer Films MFA in Film program
The Fourth Annual Asian World Film Festival will once again be held in Culver City, California with opening night scheduled for October 24 and closing night November 1. This year's theme will focus on the female empowerment, said the festival’s executive director Georges N. Chamchoum.
Terence Curren founded AlphaDogs in 2002 when he envisioned a future that would have a demand for more than just a conventional post-production facility. Sixteen years ago, the traditional business model was just beginning to show cracks as the falling costs of equipment led some producers to invest in their own. Curren believed talent would be the key ingredient to thrive in the technological world of the 21st Century. A veteran editor and colorist by trade, Curren assembled an elite team of like-minded post-production professionals that brought the perfect balance of creativity and technical know-how to the table. Sixteen years later, AlphaDogs continues to evolve with the ever-changing technology and needs of their clients.
Panasonic has announced the AU-EVA1 Share Your Vision Video Contest, open to video professionals throughout the United States and European Union countries. To participate, contestants should register at https://eva1contest.hscampaigns.com/ and submit videos shot with the Panasonic EVA1 cinema camera from 25 seconds to five minutes in length from June 1 through August 24, 2018.
[Editor’s Note: Mark Smith is the owner and director of photography for Oh Seven Films, the production company he started in 2001. In this exclusive guest column he talks about the documentaries he's made about the search for Amelia Earhart.]
Over the years, my company has been involved in productions that span the gamut, from creating ads and television programs to documentaries and indie feature films. Though there’s certainly a lot of variety in our work, we focus heavily on documentary projects. For example, for the past 17 years, I’ve been the documentarian for TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) on an ongoing project to discover what happened to pilot Amelia Earhart — work that has resulted in a couple of Discovery Channel programs.
