I sat down with a PR professional in the film industry for an inside look into anime, awards campaigns and what it means to work in animation distribution.  *Editor’s Note: Staff Writer Grace Rubin is a cousin of Lucy Rubin. “It was a moment I will remember for the rest of my life,” Lucy Rubin, the Director of PR for GKIDS Films animation, described her first time holding an Oscar for Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron.” “Up until this year, GKIDS Films had had 12 nominations, 13 including ‘The Boy and The Heron’, and we kept calling this ‘Lucky 13.’ We really wanted to win it.” Desp ..read more

The American Cinematheque has always been known for their unique festivals; some past ones include The All Night Horrorthon at the Aero, Mods & Rockers Festival and the Screwball Comedy Festival. This year American Cinematheque is slated to continue this tradition of distinctive festivals with the This Is Not A Fiction film festival. This Is Not A Fiction, scheduled to run from April 10–18, 2024, is a nine-day celebration of documentaries and non-fiction storytelling that will take place across three different venues in LA/Santa Monica: Aero Theatre, Egyptian Theatre and Los Feliz. A total ..read more

The Festival de Cannes, the most prestigious film gathering in the world, has just announced the official lineup for 2024. Released on April 11, the lineup for this year’s festival features a variety of works by independent filmmakers. Greta Gerwig is presiding over this year’s jury for the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival, which is scheduled to start on May 14. Prior to the press conference, a few films had been confirmed to debut at the festival, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” George Miller’s “Furiosa” and Kevin Costner’s Western “Horizon: An American Saga.” Opening night of ..read more

 Wicked Queer, the fourth-longest LGBTQ+ film festival in North America, is back for its 40th anniversary. Film programmer, George Mansour, founded Wicked Queer in 1984, Downtown Boston, with the effort to promote queer voices via storytelling and filmmaking, unite community and keep the verve of queer history alive. Sponsored by Queer Film Institute (QFI), this festival will run from April 5th to the 14th, and will feature long and short form narrative films, as well as documentaries from 27 countries available both online and in person at varied Boston venues.  The opening night be ..read more

Within nearly every subcategory of the horror genre, women fulfill a unique role as both villain and victim. Barbara Creed, a feminist film theorist with her work focusing on the horror genre, has identified several character archetypes. Women are thus deemed virtuous or monstrous by the viewer through the lens of patriarchal ideology.  One such archetype Creed identifies in her 1993 book, “The Monstrous-Feminine,” is the archaic mother. Borrowing a term coined by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Creed explains how matriarchal figures in horror are depicted as monstrous because of their prima ..read more

The Indie Film Music Contest has just announced its winners for the Winter 2023 season. Focused on celebrating beginner and intermediate composers within the independent music niche, the contest helps composers gain real-life experience in the industry. Falken Media is a group consisting of both composers and filmmakers who independently organized the contest. This is the media group’s first major project as a company, and they are taking this opportunity very seriously. Falken Media feel adamantly about their judging guidelines, and are proud in their assertion that they, “won’t judge by crit ..read more

With the ever expanding film industry we have had the opportunity for a myriad of people from a myriad of walks of life to tell their stories. Continuing to honor women’s history month and the power of female creatives we celebrate the women who have told tales of coming of age, adventure and girlhood through film. Here is a list of 5 female directed indies that you should watch.  Booksmart (2019) dir. Olivia Wilde  “Booksmart” (2019), a coming of age buddy comedy, follows two high-school seniors Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) in the final days of their senior yea ..read more

At the end of February, Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced the lineup for the 53rd edition of New Directors/New Films, which will take place from April 3–14, 2024. The festival’s opening night film is Aaron Schimberg’s “A Different Man,” and on closing night the festival will screen Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions.” The opening night film, “A Different Man,” was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin International Film Festival in February for Sebastian Stan’s role. Dan Sullivan, Programmer for Film at Lincoln Center and 2024 ND/NF ..read more

This year marks the debut of a new festival, the Los Angeles Festival of Movies (LAFM), co-presented by MUBI and Mezzanine. The event will run from April 4–7, 2024 and aims to “redefine Los Angeles as a destination for independent film” according to the festival’s website.  The LAFM is being programmed by Micah Gottlieb, founder and artistic director of Mezzanine, and co-produced by Sarah Winshall, a Smudge Films producer. In a recent interview with the LA Times, Gottlieb said “Film festivals in LA are often defined in relation to the commercial film industry. We wanted to create a space ..read more

The Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF), the oldest experimental and avant-garde film festival in North America, is in its 62nd year this March. The AAFF was founded in 1963, and is internationally known as a premier forum for independent cinema. The festival will run in person March 26–31, 2024, and will also be available online. This year’s festival will include 110 screenings in competition by filmmakers from 23 different countries. The festival opens with screenings of the “Films in Competition 1” program on Tuesday, and continues throughout the week with feature screenings as well as the rest ..read more