06/07/2012
Summer film festivals provide air conditioned refuge from the heat outside and big screen encounters with perspectives from around the world. We hope you’ll be able to attend one or more of these thrilling fests, and catch some Cinereach supported films while you’re there:
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
With an incredible number of films culled across six continents, the Toronto International Film Festival is the largest North American film event of the fall festival season. Cinereach is proud to announce that six films supported through various Cinereach initiatives will be showcased at this year’s festival, running September 8-18.
The Forgiveness of Blood
Director: Joshua Marston
Fiction | Supported through Cinereach Productions & Winter 2009 Grantee
Festival Screening Information – Contemporary World Cinema
In The Forgiveness of Blood, the lives of a teenage boy and his younger sister are thrown into turmoil after a killing in a dispute over land draws their northern Albanian family into a blood feud.
Girl Model
Directors: David Redmon & Ashley Sabin
Nonfiction | Summer 2009 & Summer 2010 Grantee
Festival Screening Information – Real to Reel – World Premiere
Girl Model follows U.S. and Russian model scouts who travel through remote Siberian villages looking for thirteen to fifteen year old girls suitable for modeling jobs in Japan. This poetic film brings viewers into a modeling industry rife with mirrors, images, facades, and uncertainty. It is difficult to know who these young girls can trust and where the industry takes them when their eyes are covered.
Habibi
Director: Susan Youssef
Fiction |Winter 2009 Grantee
Festival Screening Information – Discovery – International & North American Premiere
Habibi, a story of forbidden love, is the first fiction feature set in Gaza in over 15 years. Two students in the West Bank are forced to return home to Gaza, where their love defies tradition. To reach his lover, Qays grafittis poetry across town.
The Patron Saints
Directors: Brian M. Cassidy & Melanie Shatzky
Nonfiction | Winter 2009 & Winter 2011 Grantee
Festival Screening Information – Canada First – World Premiere
The Patron Saints is a disquieting and hyperrealistic glimpse into life at a nursing home. Bound by the candid confessions of a recently disabled resident, the film weaves haunting images, scenes and stories from within the institution walls. Sidestepping conventional documentary methods for a heightened cinematic approach to storytelling, the film employs lyrical realism and black humor in its charged portrait of fading bodies and minds.
Pariah
Director: Dee Rees
Fiction | Winter 2009 & Winter 2010 Grantee
Festival Screening Information – Discovery
When forced to choose between losing her best friend or destroying her family, a Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and endures heartbreak in a desperate search for sexual expression.
Porfirio
Director: Alejandro Landes
Fiction | Supported through The Cinereach Project at Sundance Institute 2011
Festival Screening Information – Visions – International & North American Premiere
Confined to a universe that stretches only from bed to wheelchair, Porfirio – a man in diapers who sells call time on his cell phone in a faraway city on the outskirts of the Colombian Amazon – dreams that he can fly.
02/20/2009
After a remarkable increase in grant applications, we are proud to announce our Winter 2009 Grantees! It was a tough call for our committee members, who carefully considered over 200 letters of inquiry from 51 different countries. Out of the 23 projects invited to submit proposals, ten were selected as exemplifying the Cinereach ethos. We were very impressed by their high visual artistry, engaging stories and unique perspectives and will look forward to keeping you posted as they progress.
Our 2009 Winter Cycle grantees include:
BLOOD FEUD (working title)
Dir. Joshua Marston | USA/Albania | Narrative
A feature-length narrative film which explores the institution of blood feuds and its effect on a family in modern Albania as seen through the eyes of a 17-year-old boy and his younger sister.
HABIBI RASAK KHARBAN (Darling, Something’s Wrong with Your Head)
Dir. Susan Youssef | Palestine | Narrative
A dramatic digital feature that tells the story of a forbidden love in Gaza, and is the modern re-telling of the famous ancient Arabo-Islamic romance “Majnun Layla.”
KUICHI
Dir. Maiko Endo | USA/Japan | Narrative
On the island of Okinawa, 11-year old Kuichi is a biracial boy growing up in a town built by the US military. Like the town itself, Kuichi is trapped between cultures and identities. As he searches for an outlet for his deep spirituality, Kuichi encounters the mythical forces of nature and the history behind the creation of a place not quite American yet not Japanese.
MARMATO
Dir. Mark Grieco | USA/Colombia | Documentary
The film intimately reveals the lives of peasant miners in the historic gold-mining town of Marmato, Colombia as a Canadian multinational mining company plans a total takeover. Through exclusive access to the families affected and activists fighting for their rights, the film will provide insight into the direct effects of how resources are sought, removed, and at what cost to the people and the environment.
PARIAH
Dir. Dee Rees | USA | Narrative
When forced to choose between the fragile cohesion of her middle-class family and loyalty to her best friend, a Bronx teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.
THE PATRON SAINTS
Dir. Brian Cassidy, Melanie Shatzky | USA/Canada | Documentary
A disquieting and at times surrealistic exploration of an assisted living facility. Bound by first-hand ruminations of Jim, the nursing home’s youngest—and recently disabled—resident, the film is a revealing portrait of the changing nature of bodies and minds.
UNTITLED PROJECT
Dir. Alistair Banks Griffin | USA | Narrative
A new project from Visit Films: When Jack’s mother turns up dead at the edge of a field near their rural home, he and his brother set out on an arduous journey to fulfill her last wish.
UNTITLED RAMIN BAHRANI WESTERN PROJECT
Dir. Ramin Bahrani | USA | Narrative
A new project from the writer and director of Goodbye Solo, Chop Shop and Man Push Cart.
WATCHERS OF THE SKY
Dir. Edet Belzberg | USA/Chad/Rwanda/The Netherlands | Documentary
Traversing time and continents to explore genocide and the world’s response, the film interweaves the lives of four exceptional visionaries while setting out to uncover the story of Raphael Lemkin, one of the greatest humanitarians of the twentieth century.
ROOFTOP FILMS 2009 SUMMER SERIES
Mark Rosenberg | USA
Rooftop Films engages large audiences with innovative, entertaining, socially-aware films by hosting screenings in unique locations pertinent to the films’ subject matter, covering issues relevant to the local communities’ diverse audiences. Rooftop Films’ 13th annual Summer Series will present 44 nights of film screenings to approximately 25,000 audience members in spectacular outdoor locations throughout New York City.
