SCAD Announces 2010 Savannah Film Festival Competition Films and Jurors

The Savannah College of Art and Design has announced the competition film lineup and jurors for its 13th annual Savannah Film Festival, scheduled for Oct. 30-Nov. 6 in historic downtown Savannah.

Competition Films (for a complete list of all competition films, please contact ashearer@scad.edu)

Competitions will be held in the categories of narrative features, documentary features, professional shorts, animated shorts and student entries. This year’s films in competition come from almost a dozen different countries including Cambodia, Japan, Brazil, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan. Among the 35 films in competition are:

• Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Bill Plympton’s animated short, “The Cow Who Wanted to be a Hamburger” about a cow seduced by advertising and led down the path of butchers and carnivores.
• Emmy Award-nominated MTV animator Patrick Smith’s musical short, “Masks,” a “Fantasia”-like animated interpretation of the music of rock musician Karl von Kries.
• “Dressed,” the inspirational story of fashion designer Nary Manivong, who defied the odds of a broken childhood and homelessness to follow his dream of showing his collection at New York's Fashion Week.
• “Quadrangle,” a compelling documentary about two middle-class couples, encouraged by the free-love zeitgeist of the '60s and '70s, who find a way out of their disappointing marriages by striking up an unusual four-way love affair.
• “Night Catches Us,” a feature film starring Anthony Mackie of “The Hurt Locker,” is about one man in 1976 dealing with the aftermath of the black power movement.
• “The Kid,” starring Rupert Friend of “Young Victoria,” is an adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name about a young man, beaten and bullied at home, who becomes caught up in the criminal underworld of London, where he was known as “The Kid.”

Competition Jurors

The jurors for this year’s Film Festival include:
• James Foley, director, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “At Close Range,” TV’s “Twin Peaks”
• Lisa Gillian, head of production and development for Red Om Films, Julia Roberts’ production company
• Lynn Hirshfeld, Participant Media’s senior vice president of publishing, involved in production of “The Kite Runner,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Good Night and Good Luck,” “An Inconvenient Truth”
• Alicia Lipinski, vice president of development at Headlong Entertainment
• Stephen Nathan, executive producer for the television series, “Bones.” Emmy nominee for writing “Tracey Takes On…” Produced “Laverne & Shirley,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Joan of Arcadia”
• Amy Robinson, producer, “Julie & Julia,” “After Hours.” Actress, “Mean Streets”
• Kaila York, founder of Headlong Entertainment, a literary management and film production company

For more information on the films in competition, visit www.scad.edu/filmfest. Further information about the Savannah Film Festival, including special screenings and guests, is forthcoming.

ABOUT THE SAVANNAH FILM FESTIVAL
Featuring the best in independent and innovative film from around the world, the Savannah Film Festival presents a full range of cinematic creativity from both award-winning professionals and emerging student filmmakers, bringing world-renowned filmmakers, producers, actors and journalists, as well as other film enthusiasts, to SCAD and Savannah for eight days of feature films, lectures, workshops, panels and competition films from a range of genres. Highlights of the festival include intimate “coffee talks” with film professionals, Q & A panels, lectures and special screenings. Last year’s Savannah Film Festival previewed award-winning films prior to their release, including “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious,” “Up in the Air,” “The White Ribbon,” “An Education” and “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” among others. The Festival played host to Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Jeremy Renner, Hugh Dancy, Emmy Rossum and Patricia Clarkson. Past festival guests and honorees include John Waters, John Sayles, James Franco, James Ivory, Jeff Daniels, Alec Baldwin, Peter Bart, Roger Ebert, Terrence Malick, Sydney Pollack, the Redgrave siblings (Vanessa, Lynn and Corin), Malcolm McDowell and Milos Forman, among others. Passes to the Savannah Film Festival will be available for purchase through the SCAD box office, 216 E. Broughton St., online at www.scadboxoffice.com or by phone at 912.525.5050.

PLEASE NOTE: THESE TICKET OUTLETS ARE NOT OPEN YET. FURTHER INFORMATION ON TICKET AVAILABILITY IS FORTHCOMING.

Individual tickets to screenings and workshops will be available through the SCAD box office beginning Friday, October 1 at 10 a.m. Morning and afternoon screenings and panels will be $5 for the general public; $3 for students, seniors and military; and free for SCAD students, faculty and staff with a valid SCAD ID. The price for tickets to the evening screenings will be $10 for the general public and $5 for SCAD students, faculty and staff with a valid SCAD ID. The Savannah Film Festival schedule is subject to change.

SCAD: The University for Creative Careers The Savannah College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit, accredited institution that offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in 43 majors. Visit scad.edu.

---
www.ArtsAcrossGeorgia.com
Twitter:
@artsacrossga
@softnblue (music & dance)
@RimbomboAAG (books, authors +)
Read our other Arts related blogs:
http://backstagegeorgia.blogspot.com/ (Theater)
http://musicmattersga.blogspot.com/ (Music)
http://georgiaswriter.blogspot.com/ (GA Authors)
http://rimbombo.blogspot.com/ (Book reviews)
http://artzapalooza.blogspot.com/ (Art reviews)
http://dancingacrossgeorgia.blogspot.com/ (Dancing)
http://gaclicks.blogspot.com/ (Photography)
http://secalls.blogspot.com/ (Auditions, Calls, Contests)
http://georgiahappenings.blogspot.com (Events)
---
Also check out:
www.Hummingbird-Hollow.com (Pottery)
http://hummingbirdhollowstudio.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @hhpotterystudio
---

Georgia State Students’ Film to Premiere at Olympics

For most, going to the Olympics as a spectator is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For three Georgia State graduate students — Phoebe Brown, Shanna Gildersleeve and Micah Stansell — and their faculty adviser, Niklas Vollmer, attending this summer’s games in Beijing will offer another unique experience: the world premiere of their documentary film.

The Coca-Cola Co. commissioned Vollmer and his students to film a segment on Doug Stoup, an environmentalist and expeditionist who has led teams to the North and South poles and was selected as a torchbearer for this year’s Olympics. Teams of students from Australia, China, Pakistan, Russia, Tanzania and Turkey also filmed their own segments. After seeing the work from Georgia State, Coca-Cola asked Vollmer, Brown, Gildersleeve and Stansell to edit each five-minute segment into one film.

“Hopefully at some point, we’ll at least make some kind of personal contact with the other students,” Brown says. “We’ve spent a lot more time with their work. As you keep watching, you start feeling like you get a sense of what the people who made it would be like.”

The film blends the different filmmakers’ unique storytelling styles to illustrate the need for global awareness of environmental issues ranging from water pollution to melting glaciers to wildlife conservation. Each segment follows an environmentalist who was selected as an Olympic torchbearer and highlights his or her cause.

“Hopefully, it will effect some sort of change,” Stansell says.

Vollmer says it’s been rewarding to guide his students through the process of putting together the film, calling it a bridge between Georgia State and other universities.

“These three have been great at adapting to something that all of us, when we first agreed to it, had no idea what it really would turn out to be,” he says. “I wanted a sharp crew, and they’re sharp.”

The film will premiere Aug. 13 at the Coca-Cola Shuang Experience Center, a hospitality venue on the Olympic Green.

-----
Fayette Front Page
www.fayettefrontpage.com