Moviemaker - CA (2019 Summer)

PHOTOGRAPH BY KATE SEAMAN

DAVID NINH

is the Director of

Press and Publicity

at arthouse distribu-

tor Kino Lorber, Inc.

overseeing press

outreach for theatrical, home video, and

streaming. Prior to that, he was a Senior

Communications Specialist at Kickstarter,

working with creators during the initial

funding stages of their projects, and

worked on the press teams of the Film at

Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival,

and PMK*BNC. He calls Brooklyn, NY home.

INA PIRA

is a curator for

Vimeo’s signature

Staff Picks. Prior

to that she was the

Senior Programmer

at the Hamptons International Film

Festival, the Montclair Film Festival, and

Sarasota Film Festival. She also serves

on the Advisory Board of the North Bend

Film Festival and recently launched

a Live Director’s Commentary screening

series in NYC.

ADAM PIRON

is the Assistant

Curator of Film at

the Los Angeles

County Museum of

Art (LACMA) where,

according to an interview last year, he

seeks to “provide a blended mix of clas-

sics and offer different perspectives,

expanding the definition of classic films.”

Prior to joining LACMA he was a Sundance

programmer, serving as manager of the

festival’s Native American and Indigenous

Film Program from 2014 to 2017.

SANDI TAN

is a moviemaker,

writer, and critic known

for her 2018 docu-

mentary Shirkers,

which debuted at

Sundance 2018 and won a directing award.

She’s working with Animal Kingdom and

Cinereach to write and direct an adapta-

tion of Elif Batuman’s autobiographical

2017 novel The Idiot. Her forthcoming novel,

Lurkers, is a darkly comic tale on a group

of suburban L.A. neighbors with interlocking

furies and desires.

Americas, dating back to 1957, SFIFF has

screened over 5,000 features, docs, and

shorts and presents 200 films from over

50 countries. It also prides itself

on being one of the Bay Area’s premiere

cultural events and a repository of film

history (at a SFIFF tribute in his honor

in 1974, Truman Capote told the crowd

he felt Audrey Hepburn had been mis-

cast as Holly Golightly). Venues include

an Alamo Drafthouse theater and an

electronic arts facility. Says one panel-

ist: “SFFILM is constantly evolving with

its year-round grants and programs, cul-

minating in a festival that holds screen-

ings at places like the dream movie box

that is the SFMOMA’s Cinematheque and

the legendary Castro, where I saw the

Kronos Quartet perform the live score to

The Green Fog. There’s room enough for

thought, dreaming, and everything

in between.”

SKÁBMAGOVAT INDIGENOUS

PEOPLES’ FILM FESTIVAL

January 23-26, 2020/ Inari, Finland /

skabmagovat.fi

The Skábmagovat festival, which is run

by advocates of the Sámi peoples of

Finland and recently saw its 20th anni-

versary, is a regional fest for promot-

ing indigenous peoples’ cinema. Recent

screenings have included indigenous

films from the Sápmi regions of Europe

and Arctic areas of Greenland, Alaska,

and Russia. A film made in the endan-

gered Haida language, which counts only

a dozen or so speakers, was screened

at the most recent fest. And the filmgo-

ing facilities are anything but ordinary:

“Their Northern Lights Theater is an

actual wall of snow which films are pro-

jected onto,” explains a panelist. “The

theater’s ‘roof’ is the Northern Lights.”

SOUND UNSEEN

November 13-17, 2019 / Minneapolis,

Minnesota / soundunseen.com

Inaugurated in the great movie year

of 1999, Sound Unseen refers to itself

as a “films-on-music” festival that offers,

in addition to features, docs, and shorts,

music videos, rare concert footage,

musical biopics, music panels, and live

performances, as well as live musical

accompaniment for most events.

In recent years the festival has screened

Laurie Anderson’s Heart of a Dog and

notably maintains its presence in the home

of His Purpleness, the Twin Cities. Says

one panelist: “Hitting its 20th anniversary,

Sound Unseen is consistently able to put

on amazing events and compiles the best

music films every year.”

THIRD HORIZON

FILM FESTIVAL

September 29-October 2, 2019 /

Miami, Florida / thirdhorizonmedia.com

A fest catering to an emerging generation

of Caribbean moviemakers, the

Third Horizon Film Festival was founded

five years ago in partnership with

the Brooklyn-based non-profit

Caribbean Film Academy to promote films

offering a Caribbean experience “more

nuanced than the tourist brochures.”

Adds a panelist: “A smaller fest in Miami

showing new works from the Caribbean

and diaspora: varying cultures, languages,

and voices are given a platform and it really

feels like an exchange rather than tokenism.

Also, the parties have the best music of any

film festival I’ve ever been to.”

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST

March 5-8, 2020 / Columbia, Missouri /^

truefalse.org

“So much has already been said and writ-

ten about True/False that it’s hard to cover

new ground, but it’s all true,” declares

a panelist. For one four-day weekend

each year, the college town of Columbia

becomes such a bustling hub of non-fic-

tion moviemaking that “even the busboys

in local restaurants give film recommen-

dations,” a panelist observes. Would-be

attendees who are broke and pressed for

time can rejoice, too: “Unlike 99 percent

of film festivals, they actually pay filmmak-

ers to attend and pack everything into one

exuberant weekend, so you can get on

with your filmmaking lives,” says a panelist.

There’s also the opening night jubilee and

Gimme Truth!, a documentary game show.

“True/False is hands down the most good-

vibes, great-taste, filmmaker-friendly film

festival I’ve ever known,” raves a panelist.

“Co-founders Paul Sturtz and David Wilson

bring 40 feature documentaries and

20 shorts out to a college town and ply

you with beer, snacks, hoodies, good cheer,

and everything you need to relive the

youth you never had.” MM

TRUE/FALSE FILM FEST-GOERS PAY TRIBUTE TO

SUPREME COURT JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG IN

A MARCH THROUGH DOWNTOWN COLUMBIA, MISSOURI

MOVIEMAKER.COM SUMMER 2019 4141