The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Venice, Italy. It is the world's oldest film festival and one of the "Big Five" International film festivals worldwide, which include the Big Three European Film Festivals, alongside the Toronto Film Festival in Canada and the Sundance Film Festival in the United States.These festivals are internationally renowned for giving creators the artistic freedom to express themselves through film. In 1951, FIAPF formally accredited the festival.
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structures behind these conditions. While the movement's characteristics vary from nation to nation, it almost always uses a form of descriptive or critical realism.
Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active filmmaker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend's Home? (1987), Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
An art film, art cinema, or arthouse film is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", and containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content".
Pather Panchali is a 1955 Indian Bengali-language drama film written and directed by Satyajit Ray in his directoral debut and produced by the Government of West Bengal. It is an adaptation of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name and features Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta, Pinaki Sengupta and Chunibala Devi in major roles. The first film in The Apu Trilogy, Pather Panchali depicts the childhood travails of the protagonist Apu and his elder sister Durga amidst the harsh village life of their poor family.
Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that rigorously re-evaluates cinematic conventions and explores non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many experimental films, particularly early ones, relate to arts in other disciplines: painting, dance, literature and poetry, or arise from research and development of new technical resources.
CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the San Francisco Bay Area in the United States as the nation's largest showcase for new Asian American and Asian films. It annually presents approximately 130 works in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose. The festival is organized by the Center for Asian American Media.
Raúl Ernesto Ruiz Pino was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher whose work is best known in France. He directed more than 100 films.
Parallel cinema or New Indian Cinema, is a film movement in Indian cinema that originated in the state of West Bengal in the 1950s as an alternative to the mainstream commercial Indian cinema.
Film Comment is the official publication of Film at Lincoln Center. It features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, Film Comment began publishing on a bi-monthly basis with the Nov/Dec issue of 1972. The magazine's editorial team also hosts the annual Film Comment Selects at the Film at Lincoln Center. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, publication of the magazine was suspended in May 2020, and its website was updated on March 10, 2021, with news of the relaunch of the Film Comment podcast and a weekly newsletter.
SFFILM, formerly known as The San Francisco Film Society, is a nonprofit arts organization located in San Francisco, California, that presents year-round programs and events in film exhibition, media education, and filmmaker services.
Soviet parallel cinema is a genre of film and underground cinematic movement that occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1970s onwards. The term parallel cinema was first associated with the samizdat films made out of the official Soviet state system. Films from the parallel movement are considered to be avant-garde, non-conventionalist and cinematographically subversive.
San Francisco Playhouse is a non-profit theater company in San Francisco, California, founded in 2003 by Bill English and Susi Damilano. The theater stages nine plays yearly, including Broadway plays, musicals, and world and regional premieres.
Amit Dutta is an Indian experimental filmmaker and writer. He is considered to be one of the most significant contemporary practitioners of experimental cinema, known for his distinctive style of filmmaking rooted in Indian aesthetic theories and personal symbolism resulting in images that are visually rich and acoustically stimulating. His works mostly deal with subjects of art history, ethno-anthropology, and cultural inheritance through cinema.
Eberhard Fischer is a German art historian, ethnologist and author based in Switzerland. He is a former Director and the incumbent President of Rietberg Society, Switzerland. Fischer was honored by the Government of India, in 2012, with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri.
Nainsukh was an Indian painter. He was the younger son of the painter Pandit Seu and, like his older brother Manaku of Guler, was an important practitioner of Pahari painting, and has been called "one of the most original and brilliant of Indian painters".
Brijinder Nath Goswamy was an Indian art critic and historian, and a vice chairman of the Sarabhai Foundation of Ahmedabad, which runs the Calico Museum of Textiles. Goswamy was best known for his scholarship on Pahari painting and Indian miniature paintings. He was the author of over 20 books on arts and culture, including Sakti Burman: A Private Universe, a monograph on the life and works of Sakti Burman, renowned Bengali painter and Masters of Indian Painting 1100-1900, a treatise on Indian miniature art. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri in 1998 and followed it up with the third highest honour of the Padma Bhushan in 2008.
Newton is a 2017 Indian Hindi-language black comedy-drama film directed and co-written by Amit V. Masurkar. The film stars Rajkummar Rao in the title role of a government servant who is sent to a politically sensitive area of central India on election duty. Pankaj Tripathi, Anjali Patil and Raghubir Yadav appeared in prominent roles. The film was produced by Manish Mundra under Drishyam Films, known for the 2015 film Masaan. The film is Amit Masurkar’s second feature after his debut with Sulemani Keeda in 2013.
Kramasha is a short experimental film directed by Amit Dutta. Released in 2007, the film won two National Film Awards in 2007 and received recognition at various international film festivals.
