NewEnglandFilm.com

What’s Happening

Soul Sister, with Rahman Oladigbolu as director and Ken Willinger as cinematographer, has started production this spring south of Boston. The film is about the friendship that develops between an African American woman and an African immigrant. For more information visit homepage.mac.com/getken/.

Images Cinema in Williamstown, MA is having its spring fundraiser and will be showing the 1920 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on Sunday, April 22nd at 7 pm with a live musical score by the Devil Music Ensemble. For more information visit www.devilmusic.org or www.imagescinema.org.

Providence College will hold its Student Film Festival on Tuesday, April 24th at 6 pm.  They will be screening student films and discussing film technique.  This event is free and open to the public. For more information contact mcoppa@providence.edu.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre will be showing a retrospective of the films edited by three-time Academy Award winning film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, March 20-April 10.  She is best known for her work on Martin Scorsese films.  She will be present April 11-12 to receive The Coolidge Award and lead a master film editing class. For more information visit www.coolidge.org.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, MA will be showing the documentary Keeping Time, about jazz bassist and photographer Milt Hinton who took thousands of pictures of Jazz icons from the 1930’s to the 1990’s.  The film will be playing April 19th at 8 pm; for more information visit www.massmoca.org.

The Naked Eye Film Festival is dedicated exclusively to student work. It will be held at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on April 24-26.  For more information visit www.nakedeyefestival.com.

What’s Happened

The 9th Annual Boston Underground Film Festival, which took place March 22-25, announced its awards.  Director and Boston University graduate Jeremy Carr became the first-ever Dewey Award recipient for the most outstanding quotation or saying from a film for a line from his short film Ice Cream Ants, "I have a theory that all theories are wrong."  The Spirit of Underground award went to Emerson College grad Sean Meredith for Dante’s Inferno and the Most Effectively Offensive to Ken Takahashi for Gary’s Touch.  If you want to know who won the more traditionally-named awards, visit www.bostonunderground.org.  

The Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film also announced annual award winners, yet to its organizers’ shock and disbelief, David Lynch’s Inland Empire didn’t wind up winning in any of its four nominated categories.  For those who did win, visit www.chlotrudis.org.

The 6th Annual Boston Turkish Film Festival runs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from March 29-May 13. Films from the Turkish Academy Awards will be screened, amongst others, and on April 1st, the first Boston Turkish Film Festival Award for Excellence in Turkish Cinema will be presented to filmmaker Zeki Demirkubuz for his contributions to Turkish cinema. For more information visit www.bostonturkishfilmfestival.org.

On March 20th, Women in Film & Video/New England held its first of several Breakfast Series events to provide an opportunity for industry professionals and aspiring artists to get together and exchange ideas.  Boston filmmaker Lorna Lowe Streeter was presented with a $1,500 Accelerating the Creative Scholarship to help her complete her current project Romeo.  New MA Film Office director Nick Paleologos will be the guest speaker at the next Breakfast Series, a champagne brunch on Saturday, April 28th from 10 am – 12 noon, in collaboration with the IFF of Boston. Details at www.womeninfilmvideo.org.

Our Town, a documentary about a small town’s heated debate for and against building a Wal-Mart, premiered on March 29th in Damariscotta, ME.  Learn more about the film at www.ourtownmaine.com.

The 17th Annual Pro Video Show was held March 9-10 at Stonehill College in Easton, MA.  In previous years it has been both a pro photo and video show but this year focused exclusively on pro video. Local media makers were able to check out and purchase new equipment, talk with colleagues, and attend a wide range of workshops and seminars such as "Delivering Video on the Web" by filmmaker and NewEnglandFilm.com contributor David Tamés, "Lighting For Video Film Style" by director of photography Tom Musto, and "Editing Aesthetics" by filmmaker Eric Scott Latek.

New England-based screenwriter Caitlin McCarthy continues to rack up awards for Free Skate, a sports drama about a talented, but broke, teenage figure skater from Worcester, as well as Vera, the true story of Vera Laska who, as a young teen, defied statistics and lasted three years as a Czech Resistance fighter; survived Auschwitz as a political prisoner; and escaped the Nazis during a death march.  Learn more about Caitlin at www.NewEnglandFilm.com/news/archives/2006/06/mccarthy.htm.

Creative Screenwriting Magazine selected New England writer Tom Deedy’s pilot teleplay, River Street as a quarterfinalist in its AAA Screenplay competition, 2007.  Learn more about Tom’s work at www.tomdeedy.com.

What Will  Happen

Big Operations, of Dartmouth, MA will be filming a feature length documentary about the King Philip’s War.  The film will be called The First Patriots and will include re-enactments of the story of the brave Native Americans who rose up against the English in 1675.  It will be shooting around New England this spring. For more information, visit www.bigoperations.com.   

A new documentary chronicles one month in the Area Four Youth Center in Central Square in Cambridge, MA. One Brick At A Time; Building People at an Inner City Youth Center was produced, directed and edited by Federico Muchnik. It was shown last year at the New England Film and Video Festival and in just a few weeks, it will be available for purchase online at www.customflix.com.  For more information visit http://federicomuchnik.com/home.html. 

The 3rd Annual Plymouth Independent Film Festival will be held July 18-22 and will be accepting entries until April 20th. The PIFF showed 110 films in 2006, and brought in more than 4,00 attendees. For more information visit www.plyfilmfest.org. 

The film noir featurette, The Long Fall, will be shooting around Rhode Island this spring. The film will be reminiscent of such films as The Big Sleep, and the Maltese Falcon. It will be directed by Chris Magdalenski and produced by Sleather Studios. They are doing casting for all roles as well as looking for art directors and production designers. For more information visit www.thelongfallmovie.com.  

The 3rd Annual Maine Women & Girls Film Festival will be held in Portland, ME on Saturday, April 7th as well as for a full weekend in October.  The April schedule is online at www.acompanyofgirls.org/mwgff.htm. 

Working actor Michael-John Wolfe left Wallingford, CT three years ago for the bright lights of Hollywood.  He just completed his first book How to Make a Living as a Working Actor in L.A.  Here’s a line from it,  “Am I famous?  No.  Am I a star?  No.  Regardless of fame and stature, I get paid to work on a film, television or commercial set on a weekly basis and I am able to make a very comfortable living on acting jobs alone.”  Learn more about the author at www.mjwolfe.com.  

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciencess has elected to recognize the Rhode Island International Film Festival as a qualifying festival for the Short Films category for the Annual Academy Awards. The festival will take place August 7-12, 2007 in the Providence.  Entries will be accepted through June 1st.  Visit www.film-festival.org/enterafilm2.php for info.

Related Image: Lowe Streeter in her last film, Shelter.