By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Ebertfest 2016 Sets Its Slate

Posted Thursday, March 24th, 2016 - 1 Comment »
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EBERTFEST ANNOUNCES FINAL SLATE OF FILMS AND SPECIAL GUESTS FOR 2016 FESTIVAL
18th Annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival to take place April 13-17, 2016 in Champaign, IL

CHAMPAIGN, ILL – March 23, 2016 – The 18th Annual Roger Ebert’s Film Festival hosted by Chaz Ebert, also known as ‘Ebertfest,’ announced today the final slate of films in this year’s festival. Additionally, film critics Leonard Maltin, Michael Phillips, Matt Zoller Seitz, Nell Minow, Shawn Edwards, Richard Neupert, Nick Allen, Chuck Koplinski, Eric Pierson, Brian Tallerico and Matt Fagerholm, as well as The Alloy Orchestra, Sony Classics co-president Michael Barker, filmmaker Christine Swanson, and production executive Stephen Feder, will be joining director Guillermo del Toro, critic Gil Robertson, actress Nancy Allen, composer Renee Baker & The Chicago Modern Orchestra Project, filmmaker Paul Cox, crew veteran Angela Allen and director Michael Polish as special guests set to attend.

These films will accompany previously announced CRIMSON PEAK, BLOW OUT, BODY & SOUL, FORCE OF DESTINY, NORTHFORK and THE THIRD MAN.

DISTURBING THE PEACE (2016)

Directed by Stephen Apkon, 82 mins, DCP

Disturbing the Peace is a brand new documentary that follows a group of former enemy combatants – Israeli soldiers from the most elite units, and Palestinian fighters, many of whom served years in prison – who have come together to challenge the status quo and say “enough”. The film traces their transformational journeys from soldiers committed to armed battle to non-violent peace activists. It is a story of the human potential unleashed when we stop participating in a story that no longer serves us, and with the power of our convictions take action to create a new possibility.

GRANDMA (2015)

Directed by Paul Weitz, 82 mins, DCP

Director Paul Weitz and Producer Andrew Miano will be in attendance

Starring Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner. Rogerebert.com’s Glenn Kenny wrote: “The film’s politics— including the way the movie doesn’t just “pass” the “Bechdel Test” but gets 100 on it—are only a part of this really special movie. The other part is, yes, the humanity. The way the movie shows the toll taken by bonds sundered, and the healing made possible by bonds that are restored, however tentatively. And there’s also humor, and plenty of it.”

L’INHUMAINE [silent film] (1924)

Directed by Marcel L’Herbier, 135 mins, DCP

Alloy Orchestra will perform and film historian Richard Neupert will discuss

Director/Producer Stephen Apkon, Director/Cinematographer Andrew Young, film subjects Chen Alon (Israeli) and Sulaiman Khatib (Palestinian) and story consultant Marcina Hale will be in attendance

Marcel L’Hubier’s 1924 classic accompanied live by the Alloy Orchestra. L’inhumaine is a groundbreaking French Sci-Fi film (shot 3 years before Fritz Lang’s Metropolis), which brought together all the avant guard artists of Europe to create astounding sets and costumes. The film is a visual tour de force – building toward it’s finale of dizzying montages, flashing colors and the breathtaking stage set of a futuristic science lab, designed by artist Fernand Leger. Director L’Herbier is one of the first to depict “television” and basically invented the defibrillator. The film cause great controversy upon its release, and even prompted a small riot at its premiere. In the famous scene where the heroine Claire Lescot gives her controversial concert, the audience is reported to have included Erik Satie, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Léon Blum, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and the Prince of Monaco (although none are actually visible in the film). Alloy’s score is audacious and perfectly matches the tone and atmosphere of this strange film.

EVE’S BAYOU (1997)

Directed by Kasi Lemmons, 109 mins, 35mm

Writer/Director Kasi Lemmons will be in attendance

Roger Ebert wrote in 1997: “Kasi Lemmons’ “Eve’s Bayou” is one of the best films of the year – elegant, sensuous, haunting. It’s the story of a Louisiana family and its secrets, with supernatural
undertones; Tennessee Williams has been evoked in reviews, but it reminded me in ways of Ingmar Bergman’s later family dramas, with their fathers, distant and mysterious, and their women confiding and conspiring, and their children interpreting everything in their own ways.”

RADICAL GRACE (2015)

Directed by Rebecca Parrish, 86 mins, DCP

Director Rebecca Parrish, Producer Nicole Bernard-Reis, composer Heather McIntosh, and social activist Father Michael Pfleger will be in attendance

Rogerebert.com’s Matt Fagerholm: “Rebecca Parrish’s “Radical Grace,” is an exhilarating portrait of the “Nuns on the Bus” that easily ranks among the year’s best films. Coming off like a real-life “Sister Act,” this heroic group of women rebelled against a Vatican-ordered censure by becoming engaged in social activism… Enhanced immeasurably by a beautiful, wholly unobtrusive score from Heather McIntosh (“Compliance,” “Black Box”), “Radical Grace” moved me to tears with its portrayal of good people putting their beliefs into action in ways that transcend all ideological boundaries.”

LOVE & MERCY (2015)

Directed by Bill Pohlad, 121 mins, DCP

Director Bill Pohlad’s Love & Mercy explores Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson struggles with emerging psychosis as he attempts to craft his avant-garde pop masterpiece in the 1960s. In the 1980s, he is a broken, confused man under the 24-hour watch of shady therapist Dr. Eugene Landy.

Rogerebert.com’s Glenn Kenny said of the film, “Longtime producer Pohlad (“Brokeback Mountain,” “12 Years A Slave”), working from a daring script by Oren Moverman and Michael Alan Lerner, and using two first-rate actors to play Wilson at two turning points in his life, lavishes his material with love, attention to detail, and empathetic imagination. The result is a story that’s hair-raisingly watchable and frequently moving, regardless of what you believe you might already know of Wilson’s life.”

This screening is sponsored by The Champaign County Alliance for the Promotion of Acceptance, Inclusion, & Respect for the sensitive way it confronts the social stigma of mental illness.

Major filmmakers, stars, historians, critics and film-lovers from all over the world come to experience this annual celebration that includes films from lists Roger drew up over the first 15 years of the festival, as well as others selected by Chaz Ebert and Festival Director Nate Kohn based on Roger’s established criteria for an Ebertfest film.

Festival passes are available for $150, plus processing with only one thousand being available. Passes can be purchased through the festival website, the theater website, or the theater box office, 203 W. Park Ave., Champaign (217-356-9063). Individual tickets for each screening will go on sale Friday, April 1st, 2016, and are $15 ($13 for students and seniors). Ebertfest is a special event of the College of Media at the University of Illinois with special support provided by The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Steak ‘n Shake, and The Champaign County Alliance for the Promotion of Acceptance, Inclusion and Respect.

For additional information, please visit http://www.ebertfest.com/. ###

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Posted in MCN Curated Headlines, Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Ebertfest 2016 Sets Its Slate”

  1. Harold A. Maio says:
    March 25, 2016 at 8:01 am

    —-for the sensitive way it confronts the social stigma of mental illness.

    You believe there is a “sensitive” way to confront a “stigma”??? Surely you jest.

    About the most insensitive thing one can claim is a “stigma”. Think WW II and rethink your statement.

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