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MICHAEL MOORE ANNOUNCES 2010 TRAVERSE CITY FILM FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

Posted Wednesday, July 14th, 2010 - Comments Off on MICHAEL MOORE ANNOUNCES 2010 TRAVERSE CITY FILM FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
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Two Big Opening Night Films — Focus Features’ “The Kids Are All Right” and The Weinstein Co.’s “Nowhere Boy” to Kick Off Festival –
TRAVERSE CITY, MI – Traverse City Film Festival founder Michael Moore has announced the line-up for the 2010 edition of the festival, now in its 6th record-breaking year. Moore, the Academy Award-winning mooreimage002.jpgdirector of “Bowling for Columbine” and “Capitalism: A Love Story,” launched the Traverse City Film Festival in 2005 in an aim to bring often-undistributed national and international films to the public in this remote area of Michigan. The festival will be held from July 27 to August 1.
“You might call this year’s fest a brazen, incendiary celebration of art – and specifically, the art of cinema,” said Moore. “Cinema that is not afraid to take risks, to challenge the conventional wisdom, to move an audience so profoundly that everyone will feel transported to a place where one can think and explore and rebel.”
Held in downtown Traverse City, Michigan on the shores of Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay, the Traverse City Film Festival is quickly becoming one of the most renowned independent film festivals in the country. It has gained a reputation for attracting the best in independent world cinema. Along with an assortment of over 100 films, this year’s festival boasts favorites such as an expanded film school schedule, daily free panel discussions, an array of parties and other special events including a series of free films, on a huge outdoor screen set against the beautiful Traverse City waterfront, which has been expanded and will take place Tuesday through Sunday nights.
New to the festival this year, the University of Michigan is teaming up with the Traverse City Film Festival to teach filmmaking and prepare students for jobs in the film industry. In addition, U of M faculty members will serve as moderators, panelists and jurors in the first step toward a broader participation in the film festival.
“Along with realizing our goal of becoming a major international film festival, we now can draw on the educational support of the University of Michigan to lend its expertise to our educational initiatives,” said Moore. “We celebrate great filmmaking, aim to help budding filmmakers on their paths, and also want to offer opportunities for the general public to deepen its appreciation of film.”
Early tickets will go on sale to the 3,000-strong Friends of the Traverse City Film Festival this Sunday, July 11, and then to the general public on Saturday, July 17.
2010 Festival Highlights:
• The festival kicks-off opening night for the first time with TWO brand new films: Focus Features’ “The Kids Are All Right” starring Annette Benning and Julianne Moore, and the Weinstein Co.’s John Lennon biopic, “Nowhere Boy.” “We are doing two opening night movies this year,” said festival executive director Deb Lake, “to accommodate the overwhelming demand for tickets for what we expect to be our fifth straight year of record-breaking sales.”
• Luminaries of the Indie Film Industry: Two of the most important leaders of independent movies for the last 30 years, the co-presidents of Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard — the men who brought us this year’s “The Secret in Their Eyes” and “Please Give” — will be in attendance and accept an award for their work.


• Newly Expanded TCFF Film School: The number of film school classes offered this year will be doubled and relocated to NMC’s Scholars Hall. New to this year’s festival will be a master class with animator and one of America’s great all time artists, Bill Plympton. Plympton also has a short in this year’s festival.
• A Tribute to The Beatles: Rare prints of “A Hard Days Night” and “Help!” will be screened in addition to the aforementioned new feature based on John Lennon and The Beatles’ formative years. This year is the 40th anniversary of the breakup of The Beatles.
• Music, Music, Music: In addition to the Beatles celebration, a documentary on the group Rush will be screened. For classical music lovers, don’t miss “The Concert.” And once again the festival will present a newly restored silent film classic, “The Last Command,” with a LIVE orchestra — in this case the acclaimed Alloy Orchestra from New York City.
• Our Favorite Filmmakers Return: As part of a sizeable group of films by returning filmmakers, two U.S. Premieres of foreign documentaries with the directors present will take place: “Draquila – Italy Trembles” by Traverse City Film Festival board member Sabina Guzzanti and “Czech Peace” by the Eastern European mischief-makers who were the hit of the first festival in 2005 with “Czech Dream.”
• A Salute to Cuban Film: Cuban filmmakers and their films are coming to the festival as part of a special spotlight on a country with a vibrant and highly undiscovered film industry.
• 3D Comes to TC: 3D comes to the festival for the first time, but not to sell inane action films or rip the public off with outrageous ticket prices. The unconventionally hilarious “Cane Toads: The Conquest” and the mind-blowing concert doc “U2 3D” will be presented.
• Short Films Get Their Due: This year two of the most acclaimed and prominent filmmakers of the short film genre will come to Traverse City — Jon Alpert and Academy Award nominee Rory Kennedy.
• TCFF Outdoor Film Forums: 10 festival screenings will be part of a new Film Forum series. After the movie, festival-goers can participate in free after-the-movie community discussions in the round at the festival’s outdoor Film Lounge in Lay Park on Union Street.
• Free Outdoor Films on the Bay in Open Space Park: “Twister,” “Finding Nemo,” “Help!,” “Raising Arizona,” “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” and “Mary Poppins” will all be shown on the giant screen in Open Space on the Bay, expanding the popular family film series by a night.
Admission prices to regular movies are $9.50. Opening and closing night films are $25, with opening and closing night parties ticketed separately at $50. Friends of the Traverse City Film Festival receive half off opening and closing night party tickets.
The entire festival schedule can be viewed at www.traversecityfilmfestival.org.
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL: The Traverse City Film Festival is a charitable, educational, nonprofit organization committed to showing “Just Great Movies” and helping to save one of America’s few indigenous art forms — the cinema. The festival brings films and filmmakers from around the world to northern Michigan for the annual film festival in late July to early August.
It was instrumental in renovating a shuttered historical downtown movie house, the State Theatre, which it continues to own and operate as a year-round, community-based, mission-driven and volunteer-staffed art house movie theater.
The festival was founded by Academy Award-winning Director Michael Moore (who makes his home here),who runs the festival and serves as president of the board of directors. Other board members are filmmakers Larry Charles (director, “Borat”), Terry George (director, “Hotel Rwanda”), Sabina Guzzanti (director, “Viva Zapatero!”), and Christine Lahti (actor, “Running on Empty”), as well as photographer John Robert Williams and New York Times best-selling author Doug Stanton, both Traverse City residents.

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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?

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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

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~ David Simon