THE FILM FESTIVAL BLOG

New Award for the Filmmaker Festival

2009-08-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

We are delighted to announce a brand new award for the International Film Maker Festival, to be presented for the first time at the awards ceremony this year.

The award for New Film Maker of the Year will be presented to Sanjay Puran Singh Chauhan for his outstanding work on the movie Lahore. The award will be chosen and presented by Festival President, Carl Tooney, who's vision for the Festival has always been to honour innovators in the Film industry.

Sanjay is delighted to be the inaugural winner of this award and will be attending the Awards Evening on October 29th.

For tickets and information on the Awards Evening, please e-mail contact@filmmakerfestival.com.

Bollywood Comes to The Filmmaker

2009-08-15T06:32:00.000-07:00

BREAKING NEWS ...

We are delighted to confirm that 3 major Bollywood stars will be in attendance for this years Film Maker Awards. The movie Lahore has attained nominations in the categories of Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Film of the Festival. We can today announce that Bollywood Heavyweights Nafisa Ali (Supporting Actress) and Mukesh Rishi (Supporting Actor) will attend the Festival Awards Evening along with Bollywood Newcomer Aanaahad Khatkar (Leading Actor).

Tickets for the awards evening are on general sale now. Please e-mail contact@filmmakerfestival.com for more information.

Till You're Told To Stop

2009-08-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

We are very excited to announce that Till You're Told to Stop will be screened at the International Filmmaker Festival in October this year.

This independent film by Ruth Somalo follows the progress of singer, James Blunt, from a man with no musical background to an artist with enormous worldwide success following his debut album release Back to Bedlam.

The filmic voyage of a humble soldier who resigned from his post as a Queen's Guard to become a musician starts with rare footage of James at his home in London prior to a rehearsal with his newly formed band. They are rehearsing together (for the fourth and last time) before nervously facing an intimate audience at the Garage Club in London in preparation for a baptism of fire supporting Elton John at Ipswich Football Stadium in front of 25,000 people.

The film documents the friendship that grows between James and his accompanist Paul Beard (keyboards player) while gaining public exposure by playing to ever growing audiences in small venues throughout London.

Tickets to the screening of this Documentary at the Iternational Filmmaker Festival in Thanet in October are available by request. Please e-mail contact@filmmakerfestival.com.

August Premieres

2009-08-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's a quick round up of this month's major movie Premieres. Only two to talk about, the first being The Ugly Truth starring Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl. This Romantic Comedy about the battle of the sexes is a little lacking in substance and originaility. The cast is good but unfortunately the movie is at best, watchable. This one Premieres at the West End Vue on August 4th in the afternoon.

The second Premiere this month is Funny People starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Eric Banna and Leslie Mann. This one is Judd Apatow's funniest film so far (40 year old virgin, knocked up). It just about compensates for its many indulgences with typically warm humour and a knockout lead performance from Adam Sandler which shows a deepening maturity in the actor that could land him awards attention.

That one is also Premiering at the West End Vue on August 24th, early afternoon.

More to come next month. Please reply with some Indie Movie Premieres, we would be happy to promote for any of you Indie Film Makers out there.

UK Film Premieres in July

2009-07-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

OK, I may be a week or so behind the times with this one but as we all know, the huge movie premier of the month - possibly even the year so far - was Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. The 6th installment of the Harry Potter Septuplet (actually that's Octuplet as the final book will become a 2 part movie), suffers from as many growing pains as its young wizards. While Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince does venture into darker, more adult areas than its predecessors it also injects more humour and character development than previous encounters, which doesn’t always make for a satisfying concoction.

David Yates’ second outing as director picks up in the aftermath of a spectacular attack on London by Death Eaters and builds towards the death of a key character that will pre-empt the final confrontation between Harry and Lord Voldemort in two-part finale, The Deathly Hallows.

Slightly more low key is the premier of Inglourious Basterds. Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino, this World War 2 drama tells the tale of a group of Jewish-American soldiers know as "The Basterds". The group are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers.

The film is by no means terrible but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing. Star of the movie, Brad Pitt did not attend the UK premiere, however the A-List quota was boosted by Rihanna & Mickey Rourke. One must assume that the pair are Tarantino fans and we hope they enjoyed the different style that this movie adopts.

So that's the biggest Premieres of the month, next month I'll be sure to post news of the movies before they actually happen!

The First Post

2009-07-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Film Festival Blog, brought to you by The Tenerife International Film Festival & The Film Maker Festival. We have been running international festivals for 5 years now and we thought it was high time to start a Blog so we can share all that we do with you. We'll also be bringing you any and all new on film premier's as well as Actor/Actress information and any other information from our most beloved industry, the Film industry.

We don't have a particular focus so we will be posting about Indie & Mainstream films as well as foreign language films.

We feel very fortunate to be involved in an industry with such a history and we want to celebrate everything that has made it great, so please subscribe to this feed and share your comments on each of our posts.

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Speak to you all soon.