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Acefest | |
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Frequency | Annually |
Location(s) | New York City |
Years active | 2007 - 2010 |
ACEFEST (American Cinematic Experience Film Festival - formerly known as the ACE Film Festival) is a film festival first held in 2007 in New York City. [1] The festival focuses purely on showcasing domestic films "in an effort to strengthen and promote pride in American independent cinema". [2] [3]
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases. Some festivals focus on a specific film-maker or genre or subject matter. A number of film festivals specialise in short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians, including Jerry Beck, do not consider film festivals official releases of film.
The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States and thus also in the state of New York. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
The cinema of the United States, often metonymously referred to as Hollywood, has had a large effect on the film industry in general since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1917 to 1960 and characterizes most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the industry as it emerged. It produces the third largest number of films of any single-language national cinema, with more than 600 English-language films released on average every year. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom (299), Canada (206), Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not considered part of the Hollywood system. Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema. Classical Hollywood produced multiple language versions of some titles, often in Spanish or French. Contemporary Hollywood offshores production to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The festival screens premieres of American video art, animation, short films, student films, documentaries and feature films. Band performances, interactive media showcases, games, contests and giveaways are also held.
Video art is an art form which relies on using video technology as a visual and audio medium. Video art emerged during the late 1960s as new consumer video technology such as video tape recorders became available outside corporate broadcasting. Video art can take many forms: recordings that are broadcast; installations viewed in galleries or museums; works streamed online, distributed as video tapes, or DVDs; and performances which may incorporate one or more television sets, video monitors, and projections, displaying live or recorded images and sounds.
Animation is a method in which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets or clay figures.
A short film is any motion picture not long enough to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits". In the United States, short films were generally termed short subjects from the 1920s into the 1970s when confined to two 35mm reels or less, and featurettes for a film of three or four reels. "Short" was an abbreviation for either term.
The 2009 ACEFEST took place July 10–11, 2009, at Tribeca Cinemas in Manhattan's Financial District. While the event was a scaled down iteration of the typically three- to four-day event, it was the fest's most successful to date. [4]
Stanley Lloyd Kaufman Jr. is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. With producer Michael Herz, he is the co-founder of Troma Entertainment film studio, and the director of many of their feature films, including The Toxic Avenger and Tromeo and Juliet.
Christopher Patrick "Chris" Gore is a speaker and writer on the topic of independent film.
The 2008 ACE Film Festival took place from September 4 to the 7th 2008, at New World Stages, 343 West 49th Street, down the street from world-famous Times Square. ACEFest's longtime supporter, New York Foundation for the Arts, held the honor of being the official presenter of that year's event. NYFA, a non-for-profit organization, has supported emerging filmmakers since 1976 and offers a wide variety of programs, including Fiscal Sponsorship, Artists' Fellowships, and NYFA Source.
Times Square is a major commercial intersection, tourist destination, entertainment center and neighborhood in the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City at the junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. It stretches from West 42nd to West 47th Streets. Brightly adorned with billboards and advertisements, Times Square is sometimes referred to as "The Crossroads of the World", "The Center of the Universe", "the heart of The Great White Way", and the "heart of the world". One of the world's busiest pedestrian areas, it is also the hub of the Broadway Theater District and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Times Square is one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, drawing an estimated 50 million visitors annually. Approximately 330,000 people pass through Times Square daily, many of them tourists, while over 460,000 pedestrians walk through Times Square on its busiest days.
The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)3 charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations founded to support individual artists and emerging arts organizations, with a mission to "empower artists in all disciplines at critical stages in their creative lives." The organization has approximately 30 staff members, including executive director Michael L. Royce.
The final programming included 40 films of all genres and lengths, including video art, animation, music videos, documentaries, and narrative-based shorts and feature-length films. Of all of those, 4 were World Premieres, 10 were East Coast Premieres, and 12 were New York City Premieres.
The inaugural ACE Film Festival took place from August 24 to 26 at the Broad Street Ballroom, 41 Broad Street, right in the center of Manhattan's Financial District and in close proximity to the New York Stock Exchange. One of the upper floors on the venue was transformed into "Club Ace", a networking lounge where a variety of activities took place.The independent director Caveh Zahedi, was a guest speaker.
A portion of the festival's ticket proceeds were donated to the New York Foundation for the Arts in an effort to support its efforts in "spreading the gift of creativity." The festival was also part of the River to River Festival, the "largest annual cultural and arts event in New York City's history."
Among the films screened was Robert Liano's and Tom Coppola's A Broad Way , a documentary film shot over the period of one hour by more than 400 filmmakers, dispersed along 258 blocks of New York City's famous Broadway.
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and film composer. He was a central figure in the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking.
William James Dafoe is an American actor. A highly prolific character actor, Dafoe has received multiple awards and nominations, including four Academy Award nominations. Dafoe has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, and Wes Anderson.
Sofia Carmina Coppola is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and former actress.
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and film critic. Schrader wrote or co-wrote screenplays for four Martin Scorsese films: Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Bringing Out the Dead (1999). Schrader has also directed 18 feature films, including his directing debut crime drama, Blue Collar, the crime drama Hardcore, his 1982 remake of the horror classic Cat People, the crime drama American Gigolo (1980), the biographical drama Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), the true life biopic Patty Hearst (1988), the cult film Light Sleeper (1992), the drama Affliction (1997), the biographical film Auto Focus (2002), the erotic dramatic thriller The Canyons (2013), and the dramatic thriller First Reformed (2017), the latter earning him his first career Academy Award nomination.
Jon Blair, CBE is a South African-born writer, film producer and director of documentary films, drama and comedy who has lived in England and the United States ever since he was drafted into the South African army in the late 1960s. He is the only director of documentaries working in the United Kingdom who has won all three of the premier awards in his field: an Oscar, an Emmy (twice) and a British Academy Award. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2015 Birthday Honours for services to film.
Abel Ferrara is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his films, his use of neo-noir imagery and gritty urban settings. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best known films include Ms .45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996).
The Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) is a prominent film festival held in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan, showcasing a diverse selection of independent films. Since its inaugural year in 2002, it has become a recognized outlet for independent filmmakers in all genres to release their work to a broad audience.
Roman François Coppola is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, and entrepreneur. With the 2012 film Moonrise Kingdom, he and co-writer Wes Anderson were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 2016, his television series Mozart in the Jungle won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy.
Filmmaker, or "Filmmaker: a diary by george lucas", is a 32-minute documentary made in 1968 by George Lucas about the making of Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People.
Jennie Livingston is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.
Little Chenier is a 2006 American drama film directed by Bethany Ashton and written by Jace Johnson and Ashton. It is set in the bayous of Louisiana, and stars Johnathon Schaech, Frederick Koehler, Tamara Braun, Jeremy Davidson, Clifton Collins Jr., and Chris Mulkey. The film completed production in 2006 but had difficulty finding a distributor despite generally positive reviews from a number of film festivals. It premiered at the Austin Film Festival on October 20, 2006 and was released January 18, 2008. Radio London Films released it on DVD on July 8, 2008.
Giada Colagrande is an Italian film director and actress.
Michael Dominic is an American filmmaker and photojournalist who grew up in New York City. He is best known for his documentary Sunshine Hotel which won three awards for best documentary.
Nickolas Perry is an American film director, writer, editor, photographer, and film instructor who began his career working as a camera assistant and assistant director on independent films in San Francisco before becoming Francis Ford Coppola's editing assistant on Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The Human Experience is a 2008 documentary produced by Grassroots Films and directed by Charles Kinnane. The film tells the story of brothers Clifford and Jeffrey Azize and their travels as they search for answers to the question, "What does it mean to be human?". Their friends Michael Campo and Matthew Sanchez participate in some of the travels. The film is divided into three sections, covering the experiences of Jeffrey and his friends in New York, Peru, and Ghana. The Human Experience is rated PG-13.
Julie Casper Roth, is an American artist, documentary filmmaker, experimental video artist, and writer based in Upstate New York.
Athina Rachel Tsangari is a Greek filmmaker and projection designer who has worked on projects such as the 2004 Olympic Games.
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Maya Kenig is an Israeli film director, writer and actress. As a director, she is known for In the shade of the palm tree (2018), The Bentwich Syndrome (2015), Off-White Lies (2011) and Top of the world (2005). Her films were awarded in many festivals worldwide. As an editor, she is known for On the spectrum, Uri and Ella, Up the wrong tree, Connected . These days she is writing a script for a feature film Milk which was selected for the Berlinale talent Market 2018 and it won the VFF Talent Highlight Award. As an actress she is known for Around trip (2018), You're Next (2016), A Strange course of events (2014) Up the Wrong Tree (2013), Petah Tiqva (2007).