Lawrence Edward Kasdan is an American filmmaker. He is the co-writer of the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Force Awakens (2015), and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). He also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and The Bodyguard (1992), and is the writer-director of Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Dreamcatcher (2003).
Dragon Con is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. As of 2017, the convention draws attendance of over 80,000. It features hundreds of guests, encompasses five hotels in the Peachtree Center neighborhood of downtown Atlanta near Centennial Olympic Park, and runs thousands of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and other elements of fan culture. It is owned and operated by a private for-profit corporation, with the help of a 1,500-member volunteer staff. Dragon Con has hosted the 1990 Origins Game Fair and the 1995 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is a private art school with locations in Savannah, Georgia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Lacoste, France. It was founded in 1978 to provide degrees in programs not yet offered in the southeast of the United States. The university enrolls more than 16,000 students from across the United States and around the world with international students comprising up to 17 percent of the student population. SCAD is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and other professional accrediting bodies.
Arthur Morris Blank is an American businessman. He is best known for being a co-founder of the home improvement retailer The Home Depot.
The Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards, also known as the KCAs or Kids' Choice, is an American annual awards ceremony show produced by Nickelodeon. Usually held on a Saturday night in March or early April, the show honors the year's biggest in television, film, music, and sports as voted by viewers worldwide of Nickelodeon networks. Winners receive a hollow orange blimp figurine, a logo outline for much of the network's 1984–2009 era, which also functions as a kaleidoscope.
The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is produced by Cinequest, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that is also responsible for Picture The Possibilities and the distribution label Cinequest Mavericks Studio LLC. Cinequest awards the annual Maverick Spirit Awards. In addition to over 130 world or U.S. premieres from over 30 countries, the festival hosts writer's events including screenwriting competitions, a shorts program, technology and artistic forums and workshops, student programs, and a silent film accompanied on the theatre organ. Founded in 1990 as the Cinequest Film Festival, the festival was rebranded in 2017 as the Cinequest Film & VR Festival and expanded beyond downtown San Jose to Redwood City. It took its present name in 2019.
Fantasia International Film Festival is a genre film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. It focuses on niche, low budget movies in various genres, from horror to sci-fi. Regularly held in July/August, by 2016 its annual audience had already surpassed 100,000 viewers and outgrown even the Montreal World Film Festival.
Austin Film Festival (AFF), founded in 1994, is an organization in Austin, Texas, that focuses on writers' creative contributions to film. Initially, AFF was called the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference and functioned to launch the careers of screenwriters, who historically have been underrepresented within the film industry.
The Atlanta Film Festival (ATLFF) is an international film festival held in Atlanta, Georgia and operated by the Atlanta Film Society, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Started in 1976 and occurring every spring, the festival shows a diverse range of independent films, with special attention paid to women-directed films, LGBTQ films, Latin American films, Black films and films from the American Southeast. ATLFF is one of only a handful of festivals that are Academy Award-qualifying in all three short film categories.
The Boulder International Film Festival (BIFF) is held annually in March in Boulder, Colorado. BIFF features films by new and emerging filmmakers, as well as industry directors, writers, producers, and actors. There are 25,000 attendances annually.
The National Museum of Patriotism was a museum in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. At its peak, the museum occupied a 10,000-square-foot site on Spring Street in Midtown Atlanta.
James Kicklighter is an American film director, producer, and writer from Bellville, Georgia.
The Provincetown International Film Festival (PIFF) is an annual film festival founded in 1999 and held on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The festival presents American and international narrative features, documentaries and short films for five days in June of each year.
The arts in Atlanta are well-represented, with a prominent presence in music, fine art, and theater.
Paper Clips is a 2004 American documentary film written and produced by Joe Fab, and directed by Fab and Elliot Berlin, about the Paper Clips Project, in which a middle school class tries to collect 6 million paper clips to represent the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II.
Atlanta United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Atlanta. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference.
Topher Payne is an American playwright and screenwriter based in Atlanta, Georgia. Two of his plays premiered in 2015: Perfect Arrangement, which premiered Off-Broadway and was produced by Primary Stages, and Angry Fags, which was produced at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre. Perfect Arrangement was awarded the M. Elizabeth Osborn Award for best new play by an emerging playwright by the American Theatre Critics Association in 2014. Since 2016, he has scripted five original films for The Hallmark Channel, including My Summer Prince and the Gift to Remember series.
Fanny's Journey is a 2016 French-Belgian children's war drama film co-written and directed by Lola Doillon. The film is inspired by the autobiographical memoir Le journal de Fanny by Fanny Ben-Ami.
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Arthur M. Blank Hospital is a 446-bed children's hospital that opened September 29, 2024. Located at the northeastern corner of North Druid Hills and I-85 in Brookhaven, Georgia, the 19-story, 2-million-square-foot faciliy features a Level I Trauma Center. With an Emergency Department, state-of-the-art operating rooms, infusion center and advanced diagnostic equipment, Arthur M. Blank Hospital is home to many pediatric clinical specialties, including cardiac, cancer and blood disorders, critical care, lab, transplant and more. Its regional pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and neonatal intensive care units (NICU) serve the Atlanta and greater Georgia region.
Michèle Taylor is an American diplomat who is the United States ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council. She previously served as a board member of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and was a founding board member and vice chair of President Joe Biden’s Super PAC, Unite The Country.
