By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Announcing the 10th Annual BendFilm Film Festival in Bend, Oregon

Posted Monday, February 11th, 2013 - Comments Off on Announcing the 10th Annual BendFilm Film Festival in Bend, Oregon
Be Sociable, Share!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BendFilm Ramps Up for 10th Annual Festival In October
Announces Call for Entries for 2013

Bend, Oregon – February 11, 2013 –  Ten years is a long time in the life of a film festival. Like restaurants, many Festivals start with the best intentions only to fall by the wayside a few years later.

However, as it prepares for its 10th Annual Festival, BendFilm has proven to have growing and staying power bulwarked by great programming for the Festival and year-round, strong juries, terrific local support and sponsorship, and its prizes and awards. In ten years, BendFilm has grown to become a beloved regional happening that established the central Oregon town in the national festival firmament featuring more than eighty films over four days.  It was named one of Moviemaker Magazine’s “20 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee.”

The festival has just announced its call for entries for 2013.

“We’re confident in continuing our tradition of excellence for 2013,” says Festival Director Orit Schwartz. “We’ve been able to build a strong following among both our contributors, sponsors and most of all, our audience and are planning the best BendFilm ever for our 10th year.”

BendFilm is also unusual in the scope and generosity of its prizing.  This year they’ll again offer the Brooks Resources Corporation $5,000 cash prize (one of very few festivals that still does so) for Best of Show. Past winners include True Adolescents and This Way of Life. 2013 also marks the second consecutive year of the Best Narrative Feature juried award.  That award carries a $60,000 camera rental package from Panavision.

Romy Mortensen, VP Sales and Marketing for Brooks, BendFilm’s founding sponsor, said, “Brooks Resources is very proud to be celebrating BendFilm’s 10th annual festival with them.  [It’s] hard to believe that 10 years ago we all took a leap of faith in a creative, new arts and culture idea that has grown to be one of Bend’s best attractions, if not amenities.”

As the year progresses, BendFilm will announce its jury, additional sponsors and , in the fall, its 10th annual film slate.  Past jurors have included: Two-time Oscar® nominee, writer/director Gus Van Sant; two-time Oscar® nominee, animator Bill Plympton; filmmaker Ondi Timoner  (DIG! and WE LIVE IN PUBLIC); Christian Gaines, Festival Specialist at IMDb.com; Dana Harris, editor in chief and general manager of IndieWIRE.com; Jon Korn, Sundance shorts programmer; and Steve Wilson, VP of leading film public relations agency B|W|R.

About BendFilm:

BendFilm is a non-profit group inspired by the opportunity to open doors for artists and to cast Bend, Oregon as the cultural and economic beneficiary. The BendFilm Festival runs every October in downtown Bend, Oregon at the historic Tower Theatre; McMenamins; Regal Cinemas; The Oxford Hotel; the Cascades Theatrical Company and Tin Pan Theater. Plan now to attend October 10-13, 2013 for a long weekend of films, lectures and parties as filmmakers compete for cash awards in Bend’s charismatic setting of mountains, rivers and screaming blue skies. Follow us on Facebook.

BendFilm Info:

Address: 2748 NW Crossing Drive, Bend, OR 97701.

For questions or more information:  call 541.388.FEST, email info@bendfilm.org or visit www.bendfilm.org.

#     #     #

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on Announcing the 10th Annual BendFilm Film Festival in Bend, Oregon

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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