Festival audiences vote on each film in competition. Four “Roger”
statuettes, designed by sculptor James Knowles, plus $70,000 in
filmmaking services and products, go to the two short and two feature
films at "Avignon/ New York” who receive the highest audience
votes.
Awards will be announced at the Closing Ceremony, 4/22, 7:30pm.
Also to be announced is the Kodak Vision Award for best cinematography,
voted on by audiences. Sponsors of
"21st Century Filmmaker" Awards are Eastman Kodak, Final
Draft, LVT Subtitling,
Panavision, Post Perfect & Tribeca Film Center.
"Neighbor's Dog" is the only film to
have won the Best Feature awards at both the New York and French
festivals - the New York one awarded by the audience; the French
one awarded by a jury.
April 16, 2001
How to Kill Your
Neighbor's Dog, starring Robin Wright Penn and Kenneth Branagh,
is just one of the overlooked independent films screening at
the 7th
Avignon/New York Film Festival at the French Institute.
As part of this transatlantic interchange, French and American
movies will compete for the Avignon Oscar, called the Roger,
and competitors include two films - The Sleepy Time Gal
(pictured) and Let the Devil Wear Black - starring Jacqueline
Bisset, who will also be on hand for a five-picture retrospective.
"Sleepy Time Gal is the thrill I've been looking
for as an actress," Bisset, the cross-cultural screen goddess
who's traded Europe for L.A., says. "My last part this
good was in Rich and Famous" - twenty years ago.
The festival opens April 16. (See Museums, Societies, Etc.")
Writer/Director Michael Kalesniko and cast member Suzi Hofrichter
take questions from the audience. Festival director Jerry
Rudes is at right.
photo courtesy J. Tessel
May 21, 2001
The 7th Avignon/ New
York Film Festival
Billed as the ‘transatlantic
crossroads for French and American Independent Cinema, the Avignon
festival never fails to offer an
exceptional mix of the traditional French narrative and the risky
American outsider art film.
And for the second year, the festival
will open with a live original rock opera symphonic/choral score
composed for a silent classic by Kevin Saunders Hayes This year
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Lon Chaney , 1923, restruck by
Kino International .
As a tribute to Jacqueline Bisset, a retrospective of films spanning
her 30-year career will include Day for Night (Truffaut), Rich and
Famous (Cukor), The Ceremony (Chabrol), and new features, Let the
Devil Wear Black (Stacey Title), an updating of Hamlet set in Los
Angeles; The Sleepy Time Gal (Chris Munch). Amos Kollek’s Fast
Food Fast Women will premiere . Lonely-hearted Bella (Anna Thomson)
waits tables in a quirky New York- centered serio/comic drama about
relationships between people with defects of personality and age
disparities. Louise Lasser is one of the Kollek characters with
blemishes whose sex drive doesn’t end at 60 and who starts
up a guarded relationship with the awkward, stiltedly civil Paul
(Robert Modica) while Bella suffers through an awkward romance with
dysfunctional cabby Bruno (Jamie Harris). This is a work of subtle
clarity that illuminates the tensions and passions of unions of
convenience and the illusion-breaking realities of city life.
In How To Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog,
Michael Kalesniko casts Kenneth Branagh and Robin Penn Wright in
a tale about conflicts of desire and parenthood.
Actress Julie Delpy uses a hand-held Hi-8 camera to chronicle
the adventures of Los Angelenos searching for a lost friend. Likewise,
Leif Tilden furthers the mandate set by the Dogma group (von Triers,
et al) with his Hi 8 rendering of Reunion as small town friends
discover back to the future realities of life. Danny Glover, Pam
Grier
and Michelle Rodriquez enact all the nightmares, loves, and obsessions
of New York cabbies in Lee Davis’ 3 AM. The 1974 overthrow
of Portugal’s dictatorship is chronicled by first-time director-actress
Maria de Medeiros. Tony Gatlif examines another aspect of Gypsy
life in Vengo , chronicling a blood feud between two families in
the dusty plains of Spain. Gastronomic adventure turns perilous
in Bernard Rapps tale Un Affaire de Gout about a magnate who hires
a man as
a personal food taster. Stand-by (Roch Stephanik) features Best
Actress (Cesar Award) Dominique Blanc as a woman who
must find a way to survive when abandoned at Orly Airport. Origine
Controlee sets three dead-beats as raucous fugitives keeping one
step ahead of the French police and immigration officers –another
example of the entertaining mix that defines the Avignon experience.
