Tag: film

Posted on

The Ridgewood Guild Film Festival

11041820_947801371930748_7817231991591200453_n

WEDNESDAY – FRIDAY, APRIL 29 – EXTENDED TO MAY 1

Come join us for this 3 day long film festival, Wednesday, April 29, Thursday, April 30 and Friday, May 1

TICKETS : https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/1443479

The Ridgewood Guild is proud to be sponsoring its 5th Annual Spring Film Festival! The two day event is slated for Wed. and Thurs. April 29 and 30, 2015 at the BowTie Cinema (formerly Clearview Warner) in downtown Ridgewood, NJ. The Festival will include a red carpet ceremony, an awards presentation, and after party. All proceeds of the festival will go to The Ridgewood Guild to help “Create a Better Ridgewood.”

The Ridgewood Guild International Film Festival is in its fifth year of celebrating excellence in US and International independent films of all genres.

With celebrity guests and film screenings complemented by lively and informative Q&A sessions with cast members and filmmakers, the annual RGIFF is highly anticipated by independent filmmakers, professionals, film lovers and enthusiasts as well as students who participate in our ‘Student Filmmaker Night’

This year a new evening of Foreign Films at the Ridgewood Public Library has been added to the Festival.

Join us at the  Film Makers Lounge which has been added on Thursday from 4:30-6pm at Park West Tavern, 30 Oak Street, Ridgewood, NJ. Come and enjoy a special food and drink menu for Filmmakers and Filmgoers before attending the Red Carpet event and Film Festival.

Thursday’s Film Festival After Party and Awards Ceremony will take place from 10:45pm at Park West Tavern, 30 Oak Street, Ridgewood, NJ. Join us and mingle with the Filmmakers, Actors, Festival Goers, Ridgewood Guild Members while enjoying complimentary bites as we announce the winners of the 2015 Ridgewood Guild International Film Festival.

Tickets are always available each night of the Festival at the door [even when online sales have ended]

Tickets are now on sale for THE 5TH ANNUAL RIDGEWOOD GUILD INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL! WEDNESDAY 4/29 & THURSDAY 4/30 AT THE WARNER THEATER/BOW TIE CINEMA.
FRIDAY 5/1 FOREIGN FILM NIGHT HAS BEEN ADDED AT THE RIDGEWOOD PUBLIC LIBRARY!

All are invited to join us as we kick off to our Ridgewood Guild International Film Festival!!

About the 2014 Film Festival

The two day event took place on Wednesday and Thursday April 23 and 24, at the Bowtie Cinema (formerly Clearview Warner) in downtown Ridgewood, NJ. The Festival included a red carpet ceremony, an awards presentation, and after party at Park West Tavern (30 Oak St.). All proceeds of the Festival went to help “Create a Better Ridgewood.”

About the 2013 Film Festival

The two day event took place on Wednesday and Thursday April 17 and 218, at the Clearview Warner Theater in downtown Ridgewood, NJ. The festival featured over 40 films from award winning filmmakers from around the country, as well as local artists and student films from Ridgewood and surrounding towns. All proceeds of the Festival went to help “Create a Better Ridgewood.”

About the 2012 Film Festival

The two day event took place on Wednesday and Thursday April 25 and 26, at the Clearview Warner Theater in downtown Ridgewood, NJ. All proceeds of the Festival went to help “Create a Better Ridgewood.”

Posted on

Why Can’t We See This In The Cinema?

10531470_511231899012635_5675855337616662689_o-800x420

Why Can’t We See This In The Cinema?

James Carafano / @JJCarafano / September 19, 2014 / 0 comments

James Jay Carafano, a leading expert in national security and foreign policy challenges, is The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. Read his research.

Of late, Hollywood has given us all kinds of movies about the military. The worst of them—such as “Green Zone,” a dreadful 2010 film that rightfully bombed at the box office—demonize and diminish our men and women in uniform to feed Tinseltown’s impulse to please the Code Pink crowd.

But sometimes, a maverick movie breaks out that portrays the heroic side of service. Films such as “Lone Survivor” (2013) often get scorned by the left and snubbed at the Oscars but earn significant applause in the theater.

Life is not easy for many veterans. They make up a significant portion of the homeless population. About 18 per day commit suicide.

It’s all too rare we see movies that humanize those who fight for us, that deliver a truly honest portrayal of the difficulties of balancing service and sacrifice. There is a movie that’s getting a limited theatrical release that does just that.

“Fort Bliss” is the fictional account of an Army medic who returns from combat deployment overseas and struggles to reconnect with her five-year old son. Filmmaker Claudia Myers found inspiration for the film from working with the military.

“It made me realize I’d been very sheltered from this aspect of the war,” she said in a recent interview. “I didn’t understand….there was a story there to be told.”

There is more than a little realism in this story. And, that’s something America needs more of. There has been an outpouring of concern for veterans who have served since 9/11, but much of that empathy has been a reaction to the costs of conflict.

But there are more than 22 million living veterans, and life is not easy for many of them. They make up a significant portion of the homeless population. About 18 per day commit suicide. Nearly a half-million are living with wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Through it all, they are veterans, not victims. They want to be like the rest of us, to come home and reconnect with jobs and families. A movement has arisen to press communities to have a more realistic appreciation for America’s veterans and to understand better how we can serve them.

That said, there ought to be more films like “Fort Bliss,” but Americans would never know that if they don’t get to see the film. The film has gotten rave reviews at a handful of screenings, such as one at the GI Film Festival where it won the award for Best Narrative Feature, but that’s about it. Today the film opens in limited release in just three theaters in New York, California and Texas. If it does well, it might earn more screens along the way.

https://dailysignal.com/2014/09/19/cant-see-cinema/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Posted on

‘US manufacturing has been lost. Now it’s happening to TV’

gameofthrones_3017186b

‘US manufacturing has been lost. Now it’s happening to TV’

From Game of Thrones to Modern Family, more US TV series are being filmed outside America than ever before, says John Hiscock

Hollywood’s big-budget blockbuster movies have often been filmed overseas, particularly in England because of the tax incentives offered. Now television is following suit and more US series than ever before are filming outside North America. Why?

US TV networks are increasingly drawn by accommodating tax breaks, the easy availability of professional crews and the novelty of fresh scenery and different landscapes. This combination has greatly increased the attraction of shooting their shows overseas.

Smaller nations such as Sri Lanka have begun offering tax incentives, and others such as New Zealand have improved their own production infrastructures to make them state-of-the-art. Iceland recently lured the HBO series Game of Thrones as well as the feature films Noah and Prometheus.

In Japan, government and film industry officials are considering an incentive programme that would bring them in line with the more than 30 foreign countries trying to lure US TV series.

Even shows which are specifically set in California, such as the Fox TV series Alcatraz, have gone abroad. Alcatraz, whose story begins in the infamous prison in the San Franciso Bay, is in fact filmed in Vancouver, where now-cancelled series such as The X-Files were filmed in the past.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11056398/US-manufacturing-has-been-lost.-Now-its-happening-to-TV.html

Posted on

The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education

bromwich_1-081414_jpg_600x636_q85

Students at Deep Springs College in the California desert, near the Nevada border, where education involves ranching, farming, and self-governance in addition to academics

The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher Education

David Bromwich
AUGUST 14, 2014 ISSUE

Ivory Tower

a film directed by Andrew Rossi

Andrew Rossi’s documentary Ivory Tower prods us to think about the crisis of higher education. But is there a crisis? Expensive gambles, unforeseen losses, and investments whose soundness has yet to be decided have raised the price of a college education so high that today on average it costs eleven times as much as it did in 1978. Underlying the anxiety about the worth of a college degree is a suspicion that old methods and the old knowledge will soon be eclipsed by technology.

Indeed, as the film accurately records, our education leaders seem to believe technology is a force that—independent of human intervention—will help or hurt the standing of universities in the next generation. Perhaps, they think, it will perform the work of natural selection by weeding out the ill-adapted species of teaching and learning. A potent fear is that all but a few colleges and universities will soon be driven out of business.

It used to be supposed that a degree from a respected state or private university brought with it a job after graduation, a job with enough earning power to start a life away from one’s parents. But parents now are paying more than ever for college; and the jobs are not reliably waiting at the other end. “Even with a master’s,” says an articulate young woman in the film, a graduate of Hunter College, “I couldn’t get a job cleaning toilets at a local hotel.” The colleges are blamed for the absence of jobs, though for reasons that are sometimes obscure. They teach too many things, it is said, or they impart knowledge that is insufficiently useful; they ask too much of students or they ask too little. Above all, they are not wired in to the parts of the economy in which desirable jobs are to be found.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/aug/14/hi-tech-mess-higher-education/

Posted on

The Dream , A fantasy Martial Arts Comedy Release date October 2014

10537755_10202668242562320_3799629354740650597_n

The Dream , A fantasy Martial Arts Comedy Release date October 2014

Lead Actor ,Written, and Directed by Jennifer Linch Producer and Director of Photography : Jennifer Linch Associate Producer: Dustin SG Producer : John Paul Ouvrier Video Editor : Jennifer Linch Cinematographer : Sean ML Production Manager : Romualdo Caraballo Production Assistants : Rochell Leslie , Morgan Macedo , Patty Maltman Blaine Production Photographers : Robert M. Bennett , Tom Truman, Dan Cymarron

Posted on

Seniors, graduate students, and recent grads Paid Screenwriting & Production Internship/Filmmakers Workshop

casting-calls3

Seniors, graduate students, and recent grads Paid Screenwriting & Production Internship/Filmmakers Workshop

The deadline for our screenwriting and production internship is coming up, and I wondered if you knew folks who would be interested in a 3-month paid Hollywood internship or The Filmmakers Workshop hosted at UCLA this summer, with free room and board. 

Any seniors, graduate students, and recent grads with a demonstrated drive to pursue a creative career in screenwriting, directing or producing, and who share a passion for individual liberty, may be eligible.

Here are some highlights of the programs; more details are available at www.TalNexus.com.

Taliesin Nexus Internship Program
Selected applicants will be placed at production companies in the Los Angeles area. In addition to a stipend to help cover living expenses, interns receive:

• Mentoring 
• Possible travel assistance for participants outside Southern California
• Automatic acceptance in The Filmmakers Workshop 

Previous interns have worked at leading production companies whose credits include Noah, Elf, The Wedding Crashers, and Braveheart.

Filmmaker’s Workshop
August 15-17, Taliesin Nexus is bringing Hollywood veterans and industry professionals to Los Angeles for a free 3 day workshop at UCLA with panels, work sessions, and discussion groups designed to inspire and inform. 

Sessions cover topics such as “How to Pitch Your Idea”, “How to Land a Job on a TV Writing Staff”, and “How to Fund an Independent Film”. In addition, there will be opportunities throughout the weekend to network with other participants and build your network. Tuition, room and board for the weekend is free for accepted applicants.

All applications must be received by June 15. Preference will be given to applicants who submit byMay 31.

Posted on

NJ lawmakers want more tax breaks for movie, TV studios

01front_of_theatre

Ridgewood film festival

NJ lawmakers want more tax breaks for movie, TV studios

TRENTON — Lights. Camera. Legislative action.

The state Senate’s Economic Growth Committee today approved a bill intended to make New Jersey more attractive to film and video production companies by expanding a tax credit program.

The bill (S1952) would remove a $10 million limit on incentives for film production, as well as a $5 million incentive cap on digital production.

The advance of the legislation by a vote of 4-0 comes less than a week after industry insiders, speaking on a panel at the Montclair Film Festival, said New Jersey is losing its appeal as a filming location because it is not offering competitive incentives.

Christine Peluso, an attorney with Tax Credits LLC – which helps studios secure tax credits – told lawmakers that incentives were her clients’ “number one consideration” when considering shooting locations.

“In order to attract filming, you have to have an incentive,” Peluso said.

New York, by contrast, offers $420 million a year in credits. (Friedman/Star-Ledger)

https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/05/nj_senate_panel_wants_more_tax_breaks_for_movie_tv_studios.html#incart_river

Posted on

Two film festivals cross cinematic paths

01front_of_theatre

Two film festivals cross cinematic paths

APRIL 20, 2014, 3:40 PM    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, APRIL 20, 2014, 3:40 PM
BY JIM BECKERMAN
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

Two festivals at the same time? Not so good if you’re a kid, and your birthday comes on Christmas. Very good, if you’re a movie fan in North Jersey, and you have two events to choose from.

The Ridgewood Guild Film Festival ( tickets https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/632575 ), on Wednesday and Thursday, this year coincides with a special presentation by the Northeast Film Festival on Thursday.

Expect movies, personal appearances and a chance to see work by Hollywood’s future Scorseses and Spike Lees.

“They’re previewing films by unknown filmmakers who in a couple of years may be very well known,” says Tony Damiano, president of the Ridgewood Guild. “These are films that people would never ordinarily see.”

Two screens, on two nights running, will be given over to the 4th annual Ridgewood Guild Film Festival at the Bow Tie Cinemas. On Wednesday, student filmmakers from Allendale, Bergenfield, Ho-Ho-Kus, Ridgewood, Cresskill and New York will see their work on the big screen for the first time. There will also be a reprise of winning student films from previous years, and a new film, “Shutterflies,” from past winners Spencer Muhlstock and Hayes Walsh of Ridgewood. “It’s about a boy’s adventures, through his love of film and camera,” Damiano says.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/arts-and-entertainment/two-film-festivals-cross-cinematic-paths-1.999815#sthash.UuqJaVI1.dpuf