By The Global Film Initiative, on June 25th, 2014%
Recently, Global Lens 2013 was hand-delivered to William Wells, Executive Director of The Townhouse, in Cairo Egypt, by one of GFI’s longtime San Francisco friends and supporters, Kurt Oberhuis. As part of our ongoing support, offering visibility to Global Lens filmmakers through a few international cultural venue partners, we are pleased to donate this curated series of films from countries rarely screened in Egypt.
In addition, The Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo, Egypt recently hosted screenings of Global Lens 2007 in January and February. This “global partnership” is an exciting innovation to our series and in the coming year, GFI hopes to extend the reach of Global Lens through similar partnerships around the world.
To donate this curated series of films, The Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art is one of the region’s leading independent spaces for the arts, and provides an extensive program of visual arts, film, theatre and music, and also focuses on community development initiatives and educational programs.
Click here for more photos and information on The Townhouse
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.’
Continue reading FEATURE: The Conservation of SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS
By The Global Film Initiative, on March 6th, 2013%
 Founder and Board Chair Susan Weeks Coulter traveled to Vienna this past week to take part in the UNAOC panel on media and intercultural dialogue…Continue reading FEATURE: Global Migration-More Than The Birds
By The Global Film Initiative, on February 27th, 2013%
THE PARADE brings the global conversation on gay rights into focus in Serbia, France and Canada…
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:
Continue reading FEATURE: THE PARADE @ Human Rights Watch FF Toronto
By The Global Film Initiative, on February 25th, 2013%
 Dr. Anthony Galvez of Rhode Island College’s Dialogue on Diversity Committee on engaging the campus in a conversation about global understanding…
In the fall of 2011, Anthony Galvez, a communications professor at Rhode Island College (RIC), first contacted us to discuss the possibility of hosting Global Lens in Providence. A year later, RIC had struck a partnership with the Providence Public Library to co-present the 2012 series for their community, premiering THE FINGER and THE PRIZE in Rhode Island in September. The series was a hit, and the screenings sparked spirited audience discussions, sometimes continuing onto the streets of downtown Providence! The College and the Library are partnering again this year to showcase Global Lens 2013, and we recently caught up with Dr. Galvez and Antoinette Gomes (Director of RIC’s Unity Center) to chat about the impact of our films on the community.
Continue reading SPOTLIGHT: Dialogue, Diversity, and Community in Rhode Island
By The Global Film Initiative, on February 19th, 2013%
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:
Continue reading SPOTLIGHT: CAIRO 678 and The Carter Center
By Santhosh Daniel, on December 27th, 2012%
Global Lens 2013: Change the Way You See the World
Our tenth anniversary opens with China’s Sixth Generation, Sebastián Silva, the biggest film you’ve ever seen from Brazil (literally), and a host of Global Lens alumnus.…
It’s our tenth year and we’re kicking off Global Lens 2013, January 10th-26th, with ten films at the Museum of Modern Art! It’s going to be some celebration…
BEIJING FLICKERS will open the series on January 10th with a week-run at MoMA and director Zhang Yuan and actor Li Xinjun in attendance, to launch the festivities (a must see: Zhang is the acclaimed director of Beijing Bastards, and part of the gritty Sixth Generation ethos—who in the ‘90s, pushed Chinese filmmaking out of an overly-romanticized lens into the alter-reality of its edgy, urban psyche).
Also in New York for the GL13 opening: Suman Ghosh for the North American premiere of SHYAMAL UNCLE TURNS OFF THE LIGHTS, on January 11th. This film is something to indeed be experienced with the director, as he runs his fingers through the tangled hair of Kolkata’s bureaucracy; an inspired and insightful work that carries a subtle charm, similar to another Global Lens standout.
Continue reading NEWS: Global Lens 2013 @ MoMA!
By Santhosh Daniel, on December 26th, 2012%
The Inauguration: MARGARETTE'S FEAST, the first film acquired for Global Lens
After years of ‘pushing the envelope’ and ‘changing the game’ with Global Lens, we went back to the basics for our tenth year…
Global Lens 2013 is just around the corner, and if you haven’t noticed [with all the fanfare], it’s the tenth anniversary of our most beloved series. A ‘decade of film’—from silent to sign language, notes of opera and narrative “firsts.” Baghdad. Mina Gerais. The Caspian Sea…
It’s an accomplishment. Over the years, almost 100 filmmakers, from backgrounds as varied and diverse as the history of cinema, trusted us to take their vision to screen via Global Lens. That we did, with the help of just a few thousand friends. And in just a few short weeks, we’ll be heading to New York to christen this tenth year of Global Lens with our very first friend: the Museum of Modern Art.
Continue reading SUPPORT: Our Roots Are Showing
By The Global Film Initiative, on December 22nd, 2012%
A retrospective look at Global Lens via the images and ideas that took our signature series from infancy to adulthood…
As writer Robert Mckee said, “Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”
We agree.
Stories are the basis of humanity. They teach, they entertain, and they shape how we see the world. As humans, we are wired to connect and bond with others.
GFI was created with this purpose: to create global understanding, empathy and connectivity through the powerful medium of film, and to promote and support the vibrant growth of global filmmaking. To date, we have distributed 96 independent films from over 38 countries to North American audiences, and hosted screenings in every U.S. state except North Dakota. (Anyone in North Dakota want to help us with our 2013 New Years Resolution? Contact us!)
Through these films, we hope to inspire people to keep learning about other perspectives and ways of life. In celebration of Global Lens’ 10th year anniversary in January, we take a look at some of our films and the themes they contain from the past decade…
Continue reading INDUSTRY: A Decade of Film
By The Global Film Initiative, on November 27th, 2012%
Thomas Logoreci is a filmmaker, sometime journalist and occasional film festival programmer living and working in the Balkans.
Thomas Logoreci, co-writer of GFI grantee WORLD, discusses the evolution of cinema within an ever-changing landscape of Albania…
Thomas Logoreci here. I used to live in San Francisco. I produced and edited Caveh Zahedi’s Bay Area indie comedy I AM A SEX ADDICT which was released back in 2005. Five years later, I picked up and moved my entire life to the East European nation of Albania. I’m half-Albanian but owing to the country’s fifty years of North Korea-like communism, violent civil unrest in 1997 and the 1998-99 war in neighboring Kosovo, I did not get to Albania for the first time until 2005.
Even though I barely advanced my Albanian language skills, I ended up visiting the country several times, eventually earning a modest income rewriting scripts for some of the country’s foremost filmmakers. In 2008, I was asked to come back to the capital to program the country’s Tirana International Film Festival. During the frantic fest week, I met Iris Elezi, a talented cineaste who pitched me her script titled BOTA (the Albanian word for ’world’), which she intended to direct.
We ended up reshaping the story together - a group of outsiders working in a café at the edge of a haunted swamp cope
Continue reading FEATURE: Shooting the Past and Present of Albanian Cinema
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