Now Playing: Global Lens Dives Into Summer

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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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NOW PLAYING: Bright Lights on BEIJING FLICKERS

BEIJINGFLICKERS_bannerBeijing Flickers looks deep into the psyches of this generation that doesn’t know quite what it wants, and finds at least flickers of hope that they can, together, make their own future.” – Vancouver International Film Festival

The accolades continue to roll in as Global Lens 2013 enters the Spring! This month in the spotlight: BEIJING FLICKERS, which recently played at both Chapman University’s Busan West Film Festival and the Miami International Film Festival, where it won the Miami Future Cinema Critics Award.

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FEATURE: THE PARADE @ Human Rights Watch FF Toronto

THE PARADE brings the global conversation on gay rights into focus in Serbia, France and Canada…

ThePARADE

This month, THE PARADE is highlighted in a screening at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Toronto, Canada. Srdjan Dragojevic’s darkly humorous film turns a lens on a very real issue being debated right now in Serbia and the rest of the world.

Joël Coppens, a former intern and native Belgian, came across a clip of THE PARADE being discussed on the major French talk show On est pas couché. Joël translated some of the conversation, and weighed in with some of his own thoughts:

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FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Miami IFF, FESPACO, Guadalajara IFF, Berlinale Awards and more!

The forecast is sunny for BEIJING FLICKERS (China), NO AUTUMN, NO SPRING (Ecuador) and SO MUCH WATER (Uruguay) @ Miami!

Just two months into 2013 and already a number of GFI grant recipients and Global Lens films have been stirring up international hype from Berlin to Burkina Faso. Here’s the scoop:

GFI grant recipient NO AUTUMN, NO SPRING (Ecuador) screens in Cartagena and Miami International Film Festivals!

GFI grant recipient NO AUTUMN, NO SPRING (Ecuador) screens in Cartagena and Miami International Film Festivals!

BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: Annemarie Jacir’s WHEN I SAW YOU (Palestine/Jordan, Summer 2011 honorable mention) took home the NETPAC award from Berlinale! The jury noted after its unanimous vote: “We were all impressed by the film’s distinctive narrative perspective: that of conveying the longing for freedom of an oppressed people in an era when idealism, solidarity and justice still had meaning…” Read on, here!

CARTAGENA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: SO MUCH WATER (dir. Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge, Uruguay, Summer 2012 honorable mention), following its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival, won the FIPRESCI Prize after receiving waves of screen time at the Cartagena International Film Festival (FICCI)! The film continues on to several other renowned festivals (see

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SPOTLIGHT: CAIRO 678 and The Carter Center

The Carter Center

This month, The Carter Center will be screening CAIRO 678, from Global Lens 2013, at their “Winter Weekend” in San Diego—a four-day event featuring guests such as former UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and a town hall with former U.S. President and Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter, and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

This is our first time working with the Center, and so we asked Ahna B. Machan, Senior Associate Director of Development, and organizer of the event, to discuss why this particular film was selected for the Winter Weekend, and how it fits with The Carter Center’s mission and vision:

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NOW PLAYING: Right on Time with CAIRO 678

“Cairo 678 is an important film — one all women should watch and all men should pay attention to.” – The Huffington Post

Global Lens 2013 is full-steam ahead, wrapping up at the Santa Barbara IFF and Portland IFF, and this month we’re putting the spotlight on CAIRO 678.

 

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NEWS: Ashim Ahluwalia @ San Francisco Film Society, February 23rd-March 9th

Ashim Ahluwalia

SF Film Society announces its newest Artist in Residence and it happens to be one of our filmmakers. How LOVELY…

After what seems to be the longest drum-roll ever, we’re pleased to announce that Indian director (and GFI grantee) Ashim Ahluwalia will be visiting the Bay Area next month as part of the San Francisco Film Society’s Artist in Residence program, February 23rd-March 9th!

The residency will feature the Bay Area premiere of MISS LOVELY-Ashim’s second feature, post Cannes, currently in Rotterdam, big stuff—on Thursday, January 28th (co-presented by GFI-tickets here), and a post-screening discussion moderated by Ivan Jaigirdar (of 3rdi). Also included in the residency will be visits to schools and universities, and in-classroom screenings of Ashim’s first film, JOHN & JANE (students only).

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NOW PLAYING: A (Not-so) MODEST RECEPTION for Global Lens 2013

Ringing in the New Year with fresh films and packed houses…

A new year means a whole new slate of incredible films from Global Lens! Oh, you haven’t seen the 2013 lineup yet? Not to worry—you can check it out here! The series just wrapped its two-week premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and next month will begin playing at select venues throughout the United States and Canada.

Which means, if you’re a festival, theater or other venue, Global Lens 2013 is now open for booking! And you may want to get a jump on a particularly popular new title, Mani Haghighi’s Iranian MODEST RECEPTION, which has been playing everywhere recently—MoMA, Palm Springs IFF, Santa Barbara IFF, MFA Boston, MFA Houston, Smithsonian, Portland IFF… You get the idea.

In MODEST RECEPTION, a mysterious pair of urban sophisticates from Tehran travel the countryside in their Lexus coupe with the bizarre, inexplicable mission of pushing big bags of cash onto the locals they pass along the way. Something like Bonnie and Clyde in reverse, the couple (or are they siblings?) find that their job isn’t quite as simple as it should be, and their increasingly distressing encounters are alternately hilarious and alarming—sometimes existing somewhere in between.

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FESTIVALS & AWARDS: Berlinale, Rotterdam and Beyond

SO MUCH WATER (Uruguay) and A FOLD IN MY BLANKET (Georgia) @ Berlinale Panorama are just two jewels in a mother lode of GFI films, fests and awards this month….

SO MUCH WATER (Uruguay), GFI grant recipient, premieres at Berlinale!

 

It’s a new year and our Global Lens films and GFI grant recipients are back in a big way, with screenings all over Europe this month for some of the biggest conferences of world cinema on the globe, at Berlin, Rotterdam and beyond. Without further adieu, here are this month’s headlines:

BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL: The Berlin International Film Festival is always host of a wide array of world and European premieres, and this year these premieres include those of six GFI grant recipients—likely our greatest showing at Berlinale to-date!

For those of you attending Berlinale, be sure to catch our grant recipients—from Costa Rica to China—premiering and screening at this year’s festival:

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SPOTLIGHT: A Taste of Gasparilla

Following its January premiere at MoMA, Global Lens 2013 heads to Tampa and marks GFI’s sixth year working with Gasparilla…

Every January, without fail, we premiere a brand new Global Lens film series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, before it begins its yearlong tour of the country the following month. And this February, the fine folks at the Gasparilla International Film Festival (GIFF) will bring Global Lens to Tampa, FL, for its sixth consecutive year! Starting with Zhang Yuan’s wonderful BEIJING FLICKERS (the opening-night film at the MoMA premiere), GIFF will present two screenings each of all ten films at the Tampa Museum of Art throughout 2013, and most of the series will also be included in the festival proper, which runs from March 19th to the 24th.

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