Features

Puerto Rico

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I did not come here to kill. I came here to die. – Lolita Lebrón On March 1, 1954, Lolita Lebrón and three men entered the United States House of Representatives armed with weapons. Her fist held high and wrapped in the flag of Puerto Rico, she fired four shots towards the ceiling in defense… Read more »

The Media Policy Wars

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There is a tremendous and silent battle being fought these days, the effects of which could create a culture (locally, nationally, and globally) that is completely beholden to the media giants, even more so than the present. The old-culture industries are engaging with the new digital spaces and internet users on a number of fronts… Read more »

San Francisco Screens

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In her review of Phil Kaufman’s 1978 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, legendary film critic Pauline Kael wrote, “The story is set in San Francisco, which is the ideally right setting, because of the city’s traditional hospitality to artists and eccentrics.” This hospitality extends to movie venues. With its wealth of alternative… Read more »

FCC Changes Afoot?

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What do a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, the host of a long-running Harlem public access show, vice presidents at Fox and CBS, and Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell have in common? They’re all concerned about the future of media ownership laws, and were among the several dozen panelists who assembled at… Read more »

Screening No More

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Earlier this year the Carnegie Museum announced it would close one of Pittsburgh’s oldest and most renowned screening series and shut down the museum’s film and video department, the result of a $4 million budget cut for 2003. In addition to dropping the film and video program, Carnegie Museum is eliminating seventeen full-time and four… Read more »

Step Right Up to the Screenwriting Competition

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In the last year I’ve won some screenwriting contests (Pillage Hollywood, New Century Writer finalist) and lost some (Slamdance, American Accolades) and entered about a dozen others. The scripts are now in revisions based on feedback either from the contests themselves or producers who requested copies of the screenplay. When I was asked to write… Read more »

Cave Paintings, Churches, and Rooftops

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While the Lumiere brothers originally screened their films in a Paris café, the term microcinema was not coined until 1991 with the naming of Rebecca Barten and David Sherman’s Total Mobile Home Microcinema. Since then microcinema has come to define a broad range of small screening spaces specializing in moving image media that hovers out… Read more »

Denver/Boulder

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WITH STARZ IN THEIR EYES The Starz FilmCenter, a unique collaboration between the Denver Film Society, Colorado University-Denver, and the Starz Encore Group, is scheduled to officially open its doors in the Fall 2003. The $9 million center will be home to both the Denver Film Society and the Arts and Media Film Education Program… Read more »

Honolulu, Hawaii

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Hawaii International Film Festival The twenty-two-year-old Hawaii Inter-national Film Festival (HIFF) is an ambitious statewide event that screens films and demonstrates the spirit of Aloha, the spirit of inclusion. The festival features 200 films over ten days at a wide variety of venues, from a beach to a symphony hall, on a total of five… Read more »

P.O.V. Partners with ABC for “Two Towns”

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Ted Koppel may be struggling to save ABC’s Nightline from the expanding late-night entertainment complex, but he is doing all he can to support Two Towns of Jasper, the documentary about the hate-motivated 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, scheduled to air on PBS January 22. Nightline is working with the PBS… Read more »