Buddhist Film Festival, GameSoundCon 2010, Festival de Cannes, Jazz Foundation Benefit, DocMiami Film Festival, Highlight May Media and Entertainment Industry Networking Events
Following the Opening Night screening of 'Soundtrack for a Revolution', the Ninth Santa Cruz Film Festival continues the celebration with a “Southern-style” culinary offering prepared by a soul food guru, along with a no-host bar, music by a live DJ and gallery viewing in the Museum of Art & History @ the McPherson Center where festivities take place and continue through May 15. After-Film Parties are held practically every night of the Santa Cruz Film Festival. The Future of Cinema Festival is for high school filmmakers looking to become part of a global community of other passionate, driven high school students in cinema, while screening national and international works of high school students, from May 7-9 in Interlochen. The Second Annual Buddhist Film Festival, Colombo, May 9-16, is in celebration of the birth, enlightenment and the Parinibbana of Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha. The Film Festival provides an opportunity to all filmmakers from around the globe to showcase their creations on Buddhist themes. The Festival will be brought to a climax in 2011, in celebrating 2600 years of Buddhism, where “VESAK 2011” will be the home to all filmmakers on Buddhist themes. On May 10 in Seattle, popular music innovation group, Experience Music Project, will organize and host the GameSoundCon 2010 Conferences and Seminars for composers, sound designers, audio engineers and others who want to learn what it takes to work in the video game music and sound industry with a focus on craft, technology and tools for composing game music and creating game sound effects. "My Production Workshop in Commercial Advertising" will be held May 12-16 in North Hollywood, as an accelerated creative production workshop on how to create, develop, pre-produce, produce, post produce and deliver a 30 second commercial, with participants emerging from the five-day workshop with a completed reel to be able to submit in future job searches.
Evolving as a business hub for the low-budget indie film industry, now in its third year — and for this year taking place May 12-23 — Cannes Independent Film Festival (separate from, but organized in conjunction to Cannes Film Festival) is the first major addition to the Festival de Cannes since the Director’s Fortnight in 1968 started with a mission to provide independent films an opportunity to be screened at the world's most prestigious film festival and the biggest International Film Market — the Festival de Cannes. Villa Off the Croisette, the designated CIFF venue during the Festival de Cannes, combines a chilled social space with pool, garden, and is also the location of networking poolside cocktail soirees, meet-and-greet breakfasts, and other launch events. The Festival de Cannes has celebrated cinema for more than 60 years, and this year holds its festivities May 12-24, in Cannes. Festival de Cannes offers programmes and events which enable festival goers to discover its offerings differently, including: Cannes Classics, Cinema Masterclass, tributes, Cinéma de la Plage held outdoors. Services such as the Film Market, allow professionals to meet and exchange ideas: the International Village, Producers' Network and cinando.com, and the Village international, a place where all motion picture-producing countries have the chance to showcase their cinematography within a pavilion. The Ravel Orchestral Study Group Los Angeles holds an open study session at a Studio City restaurant, May 14, followed by lunch. The session — led and organized by ASCAP Film/TV composer Ron Jones — will be an in-depth examination of Ravel's art and the technique of his orchestrations and music, includes a special performance by an instrumental guitarist, and is open to anyone wishing to attend.
Peter Pappas who has been with Valko/Miller Casting doing such series as Malcolm in the Middle, Two & a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, Center of the Universe, Side Order of Life, and upcoming Fox midseason comedy, Sons of Tucson, conducts a May 15 workshop in Costa Mesa. The Media-Tech 2010 Global Expo and Summit in Frankfurt, May 19-21, is an equipment show combined with a conference highlighting emerging trends in the media manufacturing industry and focusing on current optical disc formats and future growth markets such as electronic games, flash memory, and Blu-ray Disc. On May 20 in New York, The Jazz Foundation presents its annual gala concert to benefit the Jazz Musicians Emergency Fund — “A Great Night in Harlem". With hosts Michael Imperioli, Chevy Chase, Danny Glover, and David Johansen, the evening will raise money to assist jazz and blues musicians in time of need, feature an intimate private dinner for the major sponsors, patrons and celebrity guests before the concert, and the VIP after-party where performers, celebrities and participating audience gather, drink, dance, and get treated to rare after-hour performances with stellar musicians. The 36th Seattle International Film Festival, a large film festival generally screening more than 400 features, documentaries and short films to an audience of over 140,000, gets started this year with an opening night reception screening the comedy, The Extra Man, starring Paul Dano, Kevin Kline, John C. Reilly and Katie Holmes, with both the film and gala party taking place at Benaroya Hall with complimentary cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Urban Individualists (info@theurbanindividualists.org), Helene Ruiz, curator, opens a gallery reception for "MASQUERADE": A Multi-Media Arts Event and Masquerade Ball! on May 22 in Fort Lauderdale, an exhibition that will include masks and other art works by artists responding to symbolic and concrete uses of masks related to carnival, ceremonial, spiritual, and other societal appearances of "masking". The evening's presentation also includes performance-poetry reading by Mia Roman-Hernandez and "Masked" performance by Jean Minuchin, wine and refreshments.
London’s Audio Engineering Society Convention is a known gathering point — of learning, networking and business opportunities — for audio professionals and enthusiasts for over 60 years. A slated workshop “Life in the Old Dogs Yet—Part One: Keeping Studios Alive”, gives an analysis of the trends in the professional recording business in recent years and invites a new generation of recording entrepreneurs to share ideas. In addition, Professor Andrew Leyshon from Nottingham University presents his analysis of the changing worldwide recording climate followed by a distinguished panel of recording stakeholders discussing current and possible future recording business models. Competitive film festival, DocMiami International Film Festival, opens May 27-30 in Miami, and in addition to the special youth screenings, expert panels, and awards gala, are three evening benefit concerts hosted by Tito Puente, Jr. who will be joined by Music Concert Director, Ivan Van Hernandez of Radio Caracol, and others. The Mexico International Film Festival is held in the town of Rosarito, situated on the Baja coast, with the crystal azure of the Pacific as a backdrop. There are awards given in several categories, round-table discussions, and seminars that explore the craft, creative and business process of cinema, and there are also nightly live events and parties including a widely anticipated beach party and closing night awards ceremony.
The above events are only a sample of what is fully listed. Complete details are on the "Media, Entertainment and Performing Arts Industry News and Events" page at www.actorschecklist.com/news.html. Video and podcast versions of this news summary are also available at popular video sites around the Web like MySpace, YouTube, Daily Motion, as well as on The Actor's Checklist podcast blog at actorschecklist.com/loudblog. Follow the posting of the news summary on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/actorschecklist. Last month on the video news summary you saw new video from newly released single on iTunes - Make Your Move - from UK's soulful, R&B songstress, Bukola. Music producing Padded Cell Productions of Toronto with a newly released art film, Jane Doe. And there was the "spiritual fusion of acoustic sitar experimental chanting spoken word improvisation" of Scot Aaron and Govinda Schlegel who form Shaman Strings. These videos are now available on the Free Home Video Showcase at http://www.actorschecklist.com/video which now serves as an archive for all past video presentations but without the audio news narration.
