By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

HBO HOSTS MAJOR EVENTS AT FILM LIFE’S 14TH ANNUAL AMERICAN BLACK FILM FESTIVAL, JUNE 23-26, 2010

For Immediate Release

Spotlight Events Feature Cast Members from HBO Series, New Filmmakers, Plus Director Spike Lee

New York, N.Y., June 22, 2010 – As the founding and premier sponsor of Film Life’s 14th Annual American Black Film Festival (ABFF), HBO will once again have a major presence at the industry retreat, being held in Miami’s South Beach, June 23-26, 2010. HBO has been working alongside the ABFF since, 1998, helping call attention to the universality of black cinema through competition, workshops and panels, networking opportunities and the sharing of creative resources and visions.
This year, HBO will celebrate its partnership and support by hosting three key events:


* The 13th Annual HBO® Short Film Award – a competition that honors the writing and directing talents of emerging Black filmmakers, the award has been presented as part of the ABFF’s competitive film program since it was established by HBO in 1998. A special screening will take place on Thursday, June 24th, to showcase the five films selected for the final round of competition: The Cycle directed by Roy Clovis, If I Leap directed by Jackie J. Stone, Moth directed by Hilton Carter, Say Grace Before Drowning by Nikyatu Jusu and Stag & Doe co-directed by Daniel Patterson and Justin Staley. The grand prize winner, who will be awarded $20,000, will be announced during the ABFF’s Awards presentation on closing night.
* HBO Panel Series – On Saturday, June 26th, a panel discussion including actors Nelsan Ellis (“Lafayette” on True Blood), Victor Rasuk (“Cam” on How to Make It in America) and Ntare Mwine (“Jacques” on Treme) will take part in what promises to be a lively chat on the “Young Faces of HBO,” moderated by writer, TV personality and social events hostess Bevy Smith.
* HBO Talk Series – Also on Saturday, June 26th, Soledad O’Brien, the award-winning CNN anchor and special correspondent, will have a one-on-one conversation with two-time Oscar®-nominated director Spike Lee. Lee will discuss the documentary If God Is Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise, his follow-up to the Emmy®-winning HBO documentary When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The new documentary revisits New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina.
Founded in 1997, the American Black Film Festival is an industry retreat and competitive marketplace for films by and about people of African descent. The festival’s mission is to facilitate distribution opportunities for quality films and introduce the top echelon of emerging artists to the industry at large. Since its inception, the ABFF has premiered over 500 films, positioning it as the leading film festival for Black and urban content. The ABFF is a property of Film Life, Inc., a New York-based event marketing, production and distribution company founded by Jeff Friday (CEO). Festival information is available online at www.abff.com.
Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., providing two 24-hour pay television services – HBO® and Cinemax® – to approximately 41 million U.S. subscribers. The services offer the most popular subscription video-on-demand products, HBO On Demand® and Cinemax On Demand(SM) as well as HBO GO(SM), HD feeds and multiplex channels. Internationally, HBO branded television networks, along with the subscription video-on- demand products HBO On Demand and HBO Mobile®, bring HBO services to over 60 countries. HBO programming is sold into over 150 countries worldwide.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon