Motion Picture Academy Awards $450,000 to Festivals

The Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences® has awarded $450,000 to 24 U.S. film festivals for the 2009 calendar year, Festival Grants Committee Chair Gale Anne Hurd announced yesterday.

Two festivals, the Nashville Film Festival and the New Orleans Film Festival, will each receive a total of $75,000 over a three-year period to help develop long-term projects. The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and the Virginia Film Festival are each in the second year of a multi-year grant. The San Francisco International Film Festival will receive $50,000 as part of multi-year grant awarded in 2007.

While the grants are awarded for a variety of programs, film festivals are encouraged to submit proposals that make festival events more accessible to the general public, provide greater access to minority and less visible filmmakers, and help strengthen the connection between the filmmaker and the general public.

The 2009 film festival program allocations are as follows:

$50,000
San Francisco International Film Festival **
$30,000
Chicago International Film Festival
Heartland Film Festival (Indianapolis, IN)
Mill Valley Film Festival (San Rafael, CA) **
Sarasota Film Festival (FL)
Seattle International Film Festival
$25,000
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival (Durham, NC)
Nashville Film Festival
New Orleans Film Festival
Virginia Film Festival (Charlottesville)
$20,000
Portland International Film Festival
Native American Film & Video Festival (New York City)
Roger Ebert’s Film Festival (Urbana, IL) **
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival (Birmingham, AL)
Woodstock Film Festival (NY)
$10,000
Asian American International Film Festival (New York City)
$5,000
Arizona International Film Festival (Tucson)
BAMKids Film Festival (Brooklyn, NY)
Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival (AZ)
Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival (WY)
Olympia Film Festival (WA)
Rocky Mountain Women’s Film Festival (Colorado Springs)
San Francisco Black Film Festival
Washington Jewish Film Festival (D.C.)

Since its establishment in 1999, the Academy’s Festival Grants Program has distributed 198 grants totaling $3.5 million in funding. For more information on the program, visit www.oscars.org/grants/filmfestival.

The program is one of the many activities of the Academy Foundation – the Academy’s cultural and educational wing – which annually grants more than $1 million to film scholars, cultural organizations and film festivals throughout the U.S. and abroad. The Foundation also presents the Academy’s rich assortment of screenings and other public programs each year.

** I follow these and more on my Film Festivals Page. Links on sidebar to the 2008 page, parts I, II, and III.

Roger Ebert of Ebertfest

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is the world’s preeminent movie-related organization, with a membership of more than 6,000 of the most accomplished men and women working in cinema. In addition to the annual Academy Awards – in which the members vote to select the nominees and winners – the Academy presents a diverse year-round slate of public programs, exhibitions and events; provides financial support to a wide range of other movie-related organizations and endeavors; acts as a neutral advocate in the advancement of motion picture technology; and, through its Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive, collects, preserves, restores and provides access to movies and items related to their history. Through these and other activities the Academy serves students, historians, the entertainment industry and people everywhere who love movies.

Film Festival Page Updated

My new updates include the about-to-wrap San Diego Latino and the just-wrapped South by Southwest (SXSW) Festivals. There is new information on the upcoming Memphis (TN), River Run (NC), Canadian Hot Docs Documentary (Toronto), Ebertfest (IL), Tribeca (NYC), San Francisco (CA), and the festival most festival-watchers consider the world's most prestigious film festival, Cannes (France).

You can read about those already completed this year, which included Berlin (Germany), Santa Barbara and Palm Springs (CA), Sundance (UT), Miami (FL), and the Mexican sister-festivals, Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta (MX). That's just Part I of Mimi Film Festivals 2008.

Part II, which will include festivals from June through September 2008, will go online sometime in April. The festivals highlighted will begin with Jackson Hole (WY) and probably conclude with San Sebastián (Spain) or San Diego (CA), but new ones are always cropping up, so there are no guarantees at this point.

In between, there will be the world's oldest festival, Venice (Italy), and the world's bravest, Sarajevo (Bosnia). Major festivals in the USA include Los Angeles (CA) and Telluride (CO). Foreign ones, other than San Sebastián, include Montreal and Toronto (Canada), Deauville (France), and Edinburgh (UK), plus any new ones that may spring up during this time frame.

Film Festival Page Updated

Anjelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the Santa Barbara Festival earlier this year.
There is new information on my Mimi's Film Festivals Page about the film festivals now playing: Miami International, San Diego Latino, Austin's South by Southwest, and the sister festivals in Mexico: Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta in conjunction with the University of Guadalajara.

Check the happenings at these festivals, and start preparing for the other upcoming international festivals: Memphis, River Run, Canadian Hot-Docs, San Francisco, and the biggest of the internationals - - the 61st in Cannes, France.

Oh, I haven't forgotten NYC's Tribeca, or the Ebertfest, as in Roger Ebert. This will be the 10th in Champaign, IL. As always, there are links to the festival's official Web sites.

All the above, and it is only Part I this year of my Mimi's Film Festivals Page 2008! This year's previous festivals are included, and I update the page about every week, but don't always post an update notice here, so visit often. There is a permanent link on the right sidebar of this blog.