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.

Coming: Three Film Festivals of Note

Three well-known U.S. regional international film festivals are opening this month. They open the 23rd or 24th. These festivals are unique because each is offering the screening of a classic highly-honored silent movie with live accompaniment.

One accompaniment group is The Alloy Orchestra, a three-man musical ensemble, writing and performing live accompaniment to classic silent films. Working with an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects, they thrash and grind soulful music from unlikely sources.

The other accompaniment will be provided by Black Francis, a.k.a., Frank Black, who was born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV in Boston. He has composed scores for other German silent classics. He also performs and tours with his Pixies.

Ebertfest (Urbana-Champaign, IL)
25th - The Alloy Orchestra will accompany the silent movie UNDERWORLD (USA), Austrian Josef von Sternberg's 1927 silent classic that won an Oscar for writer Ben Hecht (story). Then Sunday, they play for the silent classic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA at RiverRun's closing in North Carolina.

Roger Ebert said of this group, "They are the best in the world in accompanying silent films."

RiverRun (Winston-Salem, NC)
27th - Festival Closing Night: The Silent Movie Classic PHANTOM OF THE OPERA with The Alloy Orchestra, Sunday, 9:00 p.m. EDT. This 1925 movie directed by Rupert Julian, stars Lon Chaney. If they have the original print or an excellent copy thereof, it will contain the first two-color scene in a motion picture, that of the Masque Ball.

San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
25th - Special events include a special screening of the silent German Expressionist classic, THE GOLEM (Der Golem: wie er in die Welt kam, (Germany 1930, 82 min), Pauls Wegener, Carl Boese. Live musical accompaniment by Black Francis.

Other notable festivals opening this month: Hot Docs (Toronto), and Tribeca (NYC). For extensive information about these five festivals click the link on the sidebar of this blog for my Film Festivals Page, or the title of this blog post. Also there, you will find direct links to the official Web sites, the musical groups mentioned here, plus miscellaneous info links. I also include little tidbits about musical and film history, now and then.

Next up in May - Cannes (14-25 May). They are just now getting it together. Some hints: Sean Penn, Indiana Jones, Cate Blanchett and MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS. Follow it on my Festivals Page.

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.