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Recipient of 2012 Global Film Initiative Grant Factory Girl – Congratulations!

By The Global Film Initiative, on February 6th, 2015%

Cairo, Egypt | Friday- 6 February, 2015

In a fresh breakthrough for Mohamed Khan‘s Factory Girl across film festivals worldwide, Arab Cinema in Sweden (ACIS), a distribution arm under the umbrella of Malmo Arab Film Festival, has announced the theatrical release of Factory Girl across Sweden on Friday, April 24th, 2015. Marking the film’s first release beyond the Arab world, Factory Girl is part of the European Film Market (EFM) within 65th Berlin International Film Festival.

Across Sweden where the largest Arabic-speaking community resides in Europe, Factory Girl will release in 12 screening venues including, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, Norrkoping, Fajo, Umeå, Luleå, Lund and Hillsburg.

Produced by Mohamed Samir‘s DayDream Art Production, MAD Solution handled the distribution of Factory Girl in the Arab world, which also helms the Arab Cinema Center in its 1st edition at Berlinale as part of its long-term strategy to support and promote the Arab filmmaking industry in the Arab world.

Alaa Karkouti, CEO and Co-founder of MAD Solutions commented, “Factory Girl‘s theatrical release across Sweden is going to function as a new window on the Arab cinema for all film lovers in Sweden. He further added, “Our collaboration with the ACIS is an important step to us, as the screening of Factory Girl will highlight the artistic diversity and abundance of the Arab cinema. Since its inception, Malmo Arab Film Festival has been playing a crucial role in backing Arab filmmakers and this step marks a culmination of these long-standing efforts.”

Expressing his eagerness

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Now Playing: Global Lens Dives Into Summer

By The Global Film Initiative, on May 31st, 2013%

THE PARADE (Global Lens 2013) plays The Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York this June

THE PARADE, STUDENT and the rest of Global Lens 2013 soak up the summer screen…

Global Lens 2013 is heating up screens across the country all through the summer! This month in the spotlight:

Srdjan Dragojević’s THE PARADE is set to screen at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival this month (June 13-23) in New York City. Through its humane and shrewdly comedic story, this powerful film exposes us to gay rights issues that many face in Serbia today.

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INTERVIEW: Life, Death and Moving On with Sebastián Silva

By The Global Film Initiative, on May 1st, 2013%

Filmmaker Sebastán Silva

Rob Avila asks the [young] veteran about his very first feature, LIFE KILLS ME, and whether there’s any truth to the saying ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’…

Rob Avila met Sebastián Silva-the 34-year-old New York-based Chilean filmmaker, who received international acclaim in 2009 with his beautifully wrought, darkly funny drama, THE MAID (LA NANA)-at the beginning of a very big week. Silva debuted not one but two new films at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival—CRYSTAL FAIRY and MAGIC MAGIC—both featuring popular Canadian actor Michael Cera. Even before that happened, Silva headed to the Museum of Modern Art for the New York premiere of yet another of his films-his very first, 2007’s LIFE KILLS ME (LA VIDA ME MATA), as part of the Global Film Initiative’s Global Lens 2013 series.

LIFE KILLS ME centers on a taciturn young man, Gaspar (Gabriel Díaz), emotionally immobile and feebly suicidal with grief since the death of his idolized older brother. Gaspar lives with his older sister, his senile mother, and his dying grandfather, but occupies his time working as a cinematographer on a short horror film written and directed by, as well as starring, a flamboyant and irrepressible no-talent named Susana (the scene-stealing Claudia Celedón, who with costar Catalina Saavedra would go

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FEATURE: SOUTHWEST Screened at San Francisco’s Historic Clay Theater in 35mm

By The Global Film Initiative, on April 24th, 2013%

A birth, a death, a lifetime-Eduardo Nunes’ incredible debut feature film contains the longest measure of time imaginable in a single day and on April 10, GFI hosted one unforgettable screening of the film…

The Global Film Initiative held an event for local friends that might be called a purist-cinephile’s dream-a screening of Eduardo Nunes’ visually striking, black and white film, SOUTHWEST, in 35mm, at San Francisco’s historic Clay Theater. It was a return to the collective spectatorship that went hand-in-hand with the cinematic experience in days before the advent of personal computers and televisions, a celebration of film and the connectivity it can provide.

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FEATURE: The Conservation of SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS

By The Global Film Initiative, on April 17th, 2013%

A scene from SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS

As Earth Day approaches, GFI intern Isabella Lyle-Durham shares her thoughts on the global environmental landscape in both the Global Lens 2013 film SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS and reality…

On April 22nd, Earth Day, we dedicate 24 hours, as a global society, to thinking about our physical future. And sometimes that “thinking” means we step away from the rhetoric, and into films like SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS—shining a light not just on what we can do to preserve the earth, but also on how what we’re currently doing may not be working and may actually contradict the idea of ‘conservation.’

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FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Africa Movie Academy Awards, Miami IFF, ReelWorld FF and festivals, festivals, FESTIVALS!

By The Global Film Initiative, on March 27th, 2013%

Screening of TANTA AGUA

NINAH’S DOWRY (Cameroon), SO MUCH WATER (Uruguay) and WHEN I SAW YOU (Palestine/Jordan) are just a few titles among a host of Global Lens films and grant recipients keeping our news feed a-buzzing…

The buzz just won’t stop. From nominations, to awards, to screenings in festivals across the globe, GFI grant recipients and Global Lens films are continuing to impress in a big way. Check out the most recent news:

Continue reading FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Africa Movie Academy Awards, Miami IFF, ReelWorld FF and festivals, festivals, FESTIVALS!

EDUCATION: TILT and GFI-A Match Made in Film Education Heaven

By The Global Film Initiative, on March 27th, 2013%

Angelica Dongallo speaks to students and teachers at last year’s screening

World Cinema Week is just around the corner, and with it comes our second annual educational screening with our neighbors at Ninth Street, TILT…

As March draws to a close, it’s impossible not to notice a change in the San Francisco air. The weather is getting warmer, the birds are chirping, the flowers are blooming, and here at The Global Film Initiative we know that this can only mean one thing: World Cinema Week is right around the corner!

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FEATURE: An Indie from India Comes to SF

By The Global Film Initiative, on March 22nd, 2013%

Ashim talks to students at Berkeley High School

Joanne Parsont, Director of Education at the San Francisco Film Society, reflects on SFFS’ incomparable artist in residence, Ashim Ahluwalia…

Each time the San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) invites an international filmmaker to participate in our Artist in Residence program (funded this winter by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences), there’s a mix of eager anticipation and wary uncertainty. We’ve seen their films, but what will they actually be like in person? Will they take full advantage of their two weeks in San Francisco? Will they be any fun to hang out with? For our latest Artist in Residence (and, really, all of our previous residents), the answer to both of these questions is a resounding “yes.”

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SPOTLIGHT: Rob Peaslee of Texas Tech University

By The Global Film Initiative, on March 21st, 2013%

Texas Tech University Professor of Media and Communication Robert Peaslee talks to GFI about screening Global Lens and the importance of international film in education…

The Global Lens film series first caught Robert Peaslee’s eyes as a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Fast forward to the present, and Peaslee, now an Assistant Professor at Texas Tech University, has been screening GFI’s Global Lens series at the university’s College of Media and Communications for five years! This relationship has fostered engaging discussions in an educational setting, while also providing an important context for students living in a world where international stories are told from a domestic perspective…

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