Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival Announces 2009 Special Screenings
7 non-competitive features round out festival line-up
Birmingham, Alabama-- August 25, 2009-- The Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival, recently recognized as one of MovieMaker magazine's "Top 25 Coolest Film Festivals", is pleased to release the following Special Screenings of non-competitive feature films. This year's festival will be September 25-27 and will take place in downtown Birmingham. Venues include the Alabama Theatre, Alabama Power Auditorium, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham Museum of Art, Branch Life Church, Carver Theatre, McWane Science Center and the Young & Vann Building.
The following is a list of this year's Special Screenings feature films. This year's Closing and Opening Night Films are eligible for competition and will be announced later in the week along with the short film program and panel topics. Visit www.sidewalkfest.com for more a festival schedule, trailers, and updates.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Crude
Directed By Joe Berlinger
An intensely disturbing advocate centered documentary, Crude focuses on corporate wrongdoing and extreme environmental catastrophe. Directed by renowned filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) and three years in the making, Crude is one of the most highly anticipated documentaries of 2009. At the center of the film is a landmark case that takes place in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador. The case involves marginalized indigenous rainforest residents battling U.S. big oil, specifically Texaco and current owners, Chevron.
Dead Snow
Directed By Tommy Wirkola
Nazi zombies! The story goes something like this: Seven college students head to a secluded cabin in the woods for an Easter holiday vacation. They drink, smoke, hangout. There's a knock on the door, it's a mysterious stranger who warns the group that the area where they are vacationing has a horrible, troubled history. The wayward hiker cautions the youngsters to do the smart thing and pack up and get out. He departs and the group shrugs and head straight back to drinking. That is, until the bodies begin to pile up. Sound familiar? That's because Dead Snow is an ingeniously self-reflexive comedy-horror film from a bunch of crazy-talented Norwegians. It is an immodest homage that tips its hat at all the greats from Friday the 13th to Evil Dead. A central character even sports a Braindead (Dead Alive) t-shirt and chatters about Sam Raimi. One difference between Dead Snow and most of the 1980s classics that it salutes is its aesthetic. Dead Snow is highly stylized and has more of the look of high-definition, big budget commercial projects than the warmth and grain of vintage horror cinema. The American premiere of Dead Snow was held this past winter at the Sundance Film Festival, directly after IFC Films purchased the US distribution rights. Nazi zombies!
Guest of Cindy Sherman
Presented in partnership with the Collector's Circle of the Birmingham Museum of Art
Directed By Tom Donahue & Paul Hasegawa-Overacker
Years in the making, Guest of Cindy Sherman initially launched with the approval and support of interestingly elusive and immensely talented photographer and visual artist Cindy Sherman and ended with the breakup of the relationship and the withdrawal of consent by the visual artist. Ironically, Paul H-O points out that his identity had been sucked up by the overwhelming presence of a woman who goes to great lengths in her own work to hide any true identity of her own. As if reflexive of questions posed by Sherman's work, an undercurrent of the documentary asks if such an investigation, alone, is innately misogynistic. One wonders where would Ms. Sherman weigh in on such? Featured are interviews with celebrity significant others, such as David Furnish, Panio Gianopoulos and April Gornik. Better known as Elton John's husband, Molly Ringwald's husband and Eric Fischl's wife. Part love story, part portrait of an established artist, part profile of an aspiring celebrity, part personal journey, part investigation into the Soho art scene of the 90s and New York art world, Guest Of Cindy Sherman is a unique and interesting examination that provides a rare glimpse into the exclusive and elusive world of art and artist.
Say My Name
Directed By Nirit Peled
Say My Name communicates the struggles, conflicts and triumphs of female MC's, R&B singers, rappers and hip-hop artists. The film focuses on female artists and the women who they've inspired, all who reside in a variety of multicultural inner cities. From the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop, to the Eastside of London, Say My Name covers a lot of ground. Included are communities in London, New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles and Atlanta. The documentary features rappers and singers from old school, big influencers like Sparky Dee and Roxanne Shante to current phenomenon like Georgia Girls and Estelle. Say My Name's roster of interviews is long and includes Eryka Badu, Mc Lyte, Jean Grae, Remy Ma, and Monie Love.
Directed by Judith Shaeffer
So Long Are You Young charts the journey and influence of a poem written by Birmingham businessman, author and humanitarian Samuel Ullman in 1917 and its unlikely influence on Robert and Ted Kennedy, Konosuke Matsushita, Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of Korea, Kim Dae-jung and General Douglas MacArthur who shared the poem with a demoralized post- war Japan and subsequently influenced generations of Japanese.
Taxidermia
Presented in partnership with the SHOUT Gay & Lesbian Film Festival
Directed by György Pálfi
A grandfather, a father, and a son, are all linked together by recurring motifs. The dim grandfather, an orderly during World War II, lives in his bizarre fantasies; he desires love. The huge father seeks success as a top athlete "speed eater" in the post-war pro-Soviet era. The grandson, a meek, small-boned taxidermist, yearns for something greater: immortality. He wants to create the most perfect work of art of all time by stuffing his own torso. Historical facts and surrealism become intertwined as magical reality.
We Live in Public
Directed By Ondi Timoner
From, Ondi Timoner, the award-winning Director of DiG! (Sidewalk 2004), We Live In Public examines the life and times of media artist, Internet entrepreneur, futurist and visionary Josh Harris. Referred to as "the greatest Internet pioneer you've never heard of" and the "Warhol of the Web", Harris founded Jupiter Communications, the first Internet market research company, as well as the first Internet television network, Pseudo.com. Timoner is the only director to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize twice, recently for We Live In Public and in 2004 for DiG!. She also directed the haunting documentary Join Us (Sidewalk 2007).
Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival
Birmingham's Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival was founded in 1999 by a small group of independent film lovers including former MTV VJ Alan Hunter. In the 11 years of the festival's operation, filmmakers from across the country and around the world have come to Birmingham to screen their work at Sidewalk and have been thrilled to discover fresh, enthusiastic crowds eager to view new independent cinema.
Films are shown in various locations of Birmingham's Historic Theatre District to accommodate festival attendee spontaneity. Low-priced weekend passes provide easy access to Sidewalk venues, encouraging festival goers to seek out new films and sample programming they might otherwise never have the opportunity to view. The result is a crowd rich in diversity and united in a hunger for new film.
PLEASE NOTE: Media registration for Sidewalk is now open - contact Ashley Fulmer at Ashley@wilbanksagency.com for instructions on requesting press credentials. Press credential requests must be submitted by Friday, September 18, 2009. Walk-up requests for press credentials will not be granted.
Press Contact:
Ashley Fulmer
Ashley@wilbanksagency.com
205.251.2225 (O) - 205.251.8885 (F) - 205.515.9114 (C)
