At first sight when you see Jesse Eisenberg you think to yourself----I've seen this guy?! Oh yea, it's the dude from Superbad! Wrong. Although Jesse is a dead ringer for Michael Cera, the 26 year old actor from New York City has been acting for awhile. His IMDB profile goes back as far as 1999. So how come we haven't heard of him before? Jesse has been in the indie circuit for awhile---his latest film Holy Rollers was screened at The Charlotte Film Festival just last week.
However now Eisenberg is a name that everyone is noticing due to his new film opening today called The Social Network. The Social Network tells the real life story about the young billionaire Mark Zuckerberg who is the founder Facebook. Although Eisenberg plays the role of the famous entrepreneur, he has actually never met him.
He said he would listen to him on his iPod every morning when he was studying for the role. Jesse himself revealed on David Letterman that he's not on Facebook, because as a "self-hating person" he doesn't want to contribute to all the mean things people are already writing about him on the Internet.
Awww....I like this guy already. You're gonna make it in this town kid. Don't get shallow on us.
P.S. Apparently The Squid and The Whale brought Jesse some major popularity---so he's been an indieseen favorite for awhile.
Today is Friday and it is now Day Cinco of the Charlotte Film Festival! If you're in town, fee free to check it out! Below are a list of films to be screened. Some are shorts and some are narratives. You can catch the screening at the Regal Park Terrace 6 or EpiCentre Theaters in Charlotte, NC.
The film festival after party is located at Kalu on 505 East Sixth Street in Charlotte, NC. The festivities begin at 9:30 p.m.
Tonights screenings are:
Shorts Block
Catch up on 6 short films!
Toxic Oranges* - A Wall Street Fairy Tale
A homeless orange seller on Wall Street obtains short lived success and fame after inventing a clever credit system for his clients – until the system collapses because of an unfortunate problem with his orange supply.
earthwork (Best Narrative Feature Award Winner)
In 1994, real-life crop artist Stan Herd travelled from Kansas to New York City to create a massive environmental artwork on land owned by Donald Trump. In an effort to show his unique perspective to a larger urban audience, Stan unexpectedly encounters the true meaning of his art and its ultimate last rewards.
The story of an aspiring fashion photographer whose life is changed when she discovers true beauty hidden inside a facility for people living with extreme disabilities.
The 14th century on the North and Baltic seas … Having fun, sparking chaos and kicking up a riot have long been the way of life for high-sea pirates Klaus Störtebeker and Gödeke Michels. Endless maritime conquests have lent Störtebeker the reputation of a rebel and a revolutionary, and to his loyal troops of sea pirates he is a living legend. But the constant fighting and battling with those loathed “moneybags” of the Hanse, the medieval trade union, has worn down the once invincible buccaneers and their bold crew. When Störtebeker is seriously wounded in a battle to capture a ship, the legendary pirate begins to question whether this life holds a future for him, and when he ends up falling in love with the beautiful and feisty Bille, who evokes in him dreams of a quiet life on land, he is finally forced to face his future: What now Störtebeker? Guerrilla or gardener? A fight with Michels, the flaming full-blooded pirate is inevitable, until the discovery of a secret wonder weapon lifts their spirits and reignites their bond – but the mighty Hanse has also stocked up on its weapons and so the final battle nears …
Under the catchy slogan “Mecklenburg Connection” the Charlotte Regional Film Commission and the FilmlocationMV, both founded to support film teams in their regions, have a contracted partnership since 2009 to exchange more than experience in the movie business. The Charlotte Film Festival and the filmkunstfest Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the German regional Capital Schwerin do exchange presentations of films made in the respective partner region. This year Klaus Störtebeker, who is said to have walked 12 paces after his head had chopped off, in order to save his crew from death, is the German side’s ambassador of the Mecklenburg Connection
House
How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie House (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via a series of mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equal parts absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet. (Janus Films)
Failing Better Now
Mia’s wish for her 30th birthday is to get a new lease on life. It’s about time! Just fired and kicked out of her apartment Mia convinces here perfect sister Anna to let her pet sit Bernard, her sister’s beloved cat. When Bernard goes missing Mia begins a search of the East Village where she meets and falls for an aspiring rock star.
In July 2005 a huge explosion in the Guatemalan capital leads to the discovery of a historic archive of Guatemala’s national police. On the grounds of today’s police academy once stood the Island, the secret prison of the notorious Policia Nacional squads. Aided by an extraordinary visual and emotional interaction, the film traces the story of a tragedy of inconceivable atrocities. It is also the story of a young generation of archive workers willing to free their society from the stranglehold of its own history.
Charismatic Ritchie Wheeler, brother and sister Brent and Michelle, and wise-cracking lady’s man Kenny share a seemingly complacent existence. Their summer of alcohol-induced idling cannot console the collapse of their tumultuous home lives amid the closing of their hometown hangout, the local roller rink. Set in the brutal but beautiful vastness of East Texas during the early 1980s.
AND....
The Award Winning Narrative will be announced today! Stay tuned!
Both screenings will take place at Regal Park Terrace 6 in Charlotte, NC. Check the film festival website http://www.charlottefilmfestival.org/ for details:
Died Young, Stay Pretty
A candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together. What you end up with is a caricature of the black and bloated heart that pulses greed through the US economy. The artists push further into the pulp to grab the attention of passersby, plastering art that’s both vulgar and intensely visceral onto the gnarled surfaces of the urban landscape. The film gives us intimate look at some of the giants of this modern subculture. Outside of their own circle, they’re virtually unknown. But within their ranks they make up an army of bare knuckle brawlers, publicly arguing the aesthetic merits of octopus imagery and hairy 70s porn stars. They’ve created their own visual language for describing the spotty underbelly of western civilization and they’re not shy about throwing it in the face of polite society. Along the way, they manage to create posters that are strikingly obscene, unflinchingly blasphemous and often quite beautiful. Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.
Dogtooth
A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parents’ isolated country estate and kept under strict rule and regimen — an inscrutable scenario that suggests a warped experiment in social conditioning and control. Terrorized into submission by their father, the children spend their days devising their own games and learning an invented vocabulary (a salt shaker is a “telephone,” an armchair is “the sea”) — until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, starts offering forbidden VHS tapes in return for sexual favors.
The Charlotte Film Festival presents a collection of short films by Students, Faculty, and Friends of the Central Piedmont Community College’s Film & Video Program.
STUDENT Films:
The Few, by James Seilaff (Group O production)
Moments , by Andrey Solodyankin (Group O Production)
Children Play Games, by Andrew Olas
Simulation, by Andrew McGary
Where I End and You Begin, Aaron Barnet
FACULTY Films:
Between Dreams, John Errington
My Dinner with Sasquatch, Chris Pittman
9 LivesL: Masterless Film As a Teaching Tool, George Cochran
Metaphor: Just A Few Minutes for 2010 Art Show, George Cochran
FRIENDS of CPCC
A Story trailer by Rohit Gupta, Director
Just Mercy trailer by Jeffrey Gator Henry, Director
AND the premeire of...
Vengeance
In the latest from the director of EXILED and MAD DETECTIVE a French chef swears revenge after a violent attack on his daughter’s family in Hong Kong, during which her husband and her two children are murdered. To help him find the killers, he hires three local hit-men working for the mafia. (IFC Films)
Today is opening night of the Charlotte Film Festival! Tonight's films are Soundtrack For A Revolution and Night Catches Us. Both films will be screened at the Regal Park Terrace in Charlotte, NC. It's not too late to get tickets for this event!
Soundtrack for a Revolution
The story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music -the freedom songs protesters sang on picket lines, in mass meetings, in paddy wagons, and in jail cells as they fought for justice and equality. The film features new performances of the freedom songs by top artists, including John Legend, Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean, and The Roots; riveting archival footage; and interviews with civil rights foot soldiers and leaders, including Congressman John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Julian Bond, and Ambassador Andrew Young.
Night Catches Us
Marcus (Anthony Mackie, “The Hurt Locker,” “Brother to Brother”) returns to the Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age during the Black Power movement. Protecting a dangerous secret in a struggle against the revolution he once embraced Marcus rediscovers a forbidden love, Patricia (Kerry Washington, “Ray,” “Lift”)
An unexpected dismemberment and a one-night-stand paternity suit set the stage for off-key comedy Barry Monday, the closing night feature film for this year’s Charlotte Film Festival. Title character Barry (played by Patrick Wilson), a self-titled ladies’ man, wakes up in the hospital after being attacked in a movie theater to find that he is missing his “family jewels.”
Soon after, he is served paternity papers from Ginger (Judy Greer), a spectacle-clad, eternally pessimistic woman he can’t even remember. As Barry realizes that this may be his only chance to become a father, he discovers that it takes more than testicles to be a man. As the film’s tagline suggests, “It’s what’s missing that makes them complete.”
The film, which premiered this year at SXSW and has since gained widespread acclaim, is based on the 2003 novel Life is a Strange Place by Frank Turner Hollon. First-time director Chris D’Arienzo teams up with a cast of farce superstars, including Malcom McDowell, Chloë Sevigny, Cybill Shepherd and Shea Whigham. The film is scheduled for wide release on Oct. 1.
Barry Munday is one of more than 60 films that will be showcased at this year’s Film Festival. The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival will be held Sept. 20-26 at two locations – EpiCentre Theaters and Regal Park Terrace, both in Charlotte.
Barry Munday will screen at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 26 at EpiCentre Theaters. For tickets, see http://www.charlottefilmfestival.org/2010/barry-munday-closing-night-film or visit the EpiCentre Box Office.
The Charlotte Film Festival is a partner of Indie Film Force, a non-profit organization featuring and debuting groundbreaking independent films. For more information about this year’s festival, special events and screenings contact Brandon Falls at 704-807-0435, or pr@CharlotteFilmFestivl.org. Visit The Charlotte Film Festival on Facebook and on Twitter @CLTFilmFest, or find out more at charlottefilmfestival.org.
Greek Americans are as woven into Charlotte’s fabric as the oak trees that line its streets. In a special presentation, The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival is proud to present “Hometown Stories: The Greek Americans of Charlotte.”
This inspiring documentary explores the numerous contributions Greeks have made in Charlotte over the last 100 years. The Emmy Award winning story highlights their deep roots winding back to the turn of the 20th century when Charlotte was barely on the map. The Greeks – known now for festivals, food and civic contributions – survived poverty, foreign occupations, and war. Working together they managed to bring a wealth of culture and community to their new home: America.
The film is one of many produced at WTVI, Charlotte’s award-winning public television station that has provided education and entertainment for 45 years. This year, the station also is co-sponsoring “A Long and Winding Road,” another film with Carolina roots.
“A Long and Winding Road” encapsulates the story of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the National Park Service’s most visited treasure. Surprisingly, the 469-mile parkway was not initially welcomed by the settlers of the North Carolina and Virginia mountains. And this controversial documentary reveals the stunning secret deal that shaped the route of the Parkway and changed lives and American society in unexpected ways.
Decades after thousands of Guatemalans disappeared into the abyss of civil war, thousands of families learn how they died in “La Isla – Archives of a Tragedy” being presented at The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival.
A building explosion in Guatemala City two years ago shed light on the archives of the secret police. This allowed an investigation into the hidden history of this Latin American country from the military coup of in the film, to screen during the festival Sept. 20-27th, young Guatamaleans sift through troubling documents that describe people dying from shock torture and how, during police interrogations, officers sliced wounds into the soles of suspects who were then forced to walk over salt. The archives also include horrific photos of mutilated bodies.
The U.S.-supported dictatorship had set up an extensive program of elimination against the opposition, complete with death squads. Surviving relatives of untraceable "revolutionaries" and "communists" study documents in the film that reveal the fate of their loved ones. Thousands were dumped anonymously into a cemetery.
The film highlights how saddened relatives finally get answers to so many unanswered questions. It also creates a venue for dialogue about the disturbing facts that have come to light. Director Uli Stelzner is an author, director and producer in Berlin and Central America. Over the years he’s been a mailman, garbage man, semi-pro football player and teacher. He’s a member of the German Association of documentary filmmakers (Agdok) and co-founder and member of the Guatemalan Association of Audiovisual Workers (AGA).
Celebrating its partnership with filmmakers in Mecklenburg, Germany, The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival presents “12 Paces Without a Head.”
Set in the 14th Century, the film unravels the adventurous and bloodied story of Klaus Störtebeker – a living legend of his time leading pirates in battles across the North and Baltic seas. But after being severely wounded in a grizzly fight, the rebel buccaneer is forced to choose between his embattled life at sea and the woman he loves on land.
The film is one of more than 60 feature, short and documentary films being shown Sept. 20-27th at the EpiCentre Theater and Regal Park Terrace Cinemas in Charlotte. Internationally-acclaimed director Sven Taddicken has been recognized for numerous short films, including “Counting Sheep” (Schäfchen zählen). His debut feature film, “Getting My Brother Laid” (Mein Bruder, der Vampir), also wowed audiences at the Max Ophüls Film Festival and the International Film Festival in Rotterdam.
Taddicken is expected to attend CFF’s fifth annual festival with a delegation of German filmmakers from Mecklenburg, Germany where Queen Charlotte was born and for whom the state’s largest county was named. In 1994, county leaders here made a pact with Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to celebrate culture, education and scientific experiences.
Building on that commitment, film enthusiasts in Charlotte created “The Mecklenburg Connection,” a partnership between The Charlotte Film Festival and Filmkunstfest Mecklenburg Vorpommern in the German regional capital of Schwerin. Their relationship, which began as a film exchange between the festivals, has blossomed into an annual celebration of culture and art during film festivals in both countries.
At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film having sat undiscovered in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply “Ghetto,” this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel, inclusive of multiple takes and cameraman staging scenes, complicated earlier readings of the footage. This documentary presents the raw footage in its entirely, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a stage dinner party) that falsely show “the good life” enjoyed by Jewish urbanites. A Film Unfinished probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film.
Dozens of Utah DVD retailers attracted unwanted attention from Hollywood heavyweights when, in the name of conservative family values, they began sanitizing films of sex, nudity, profanity, and violence. Outraged over the unauthorized editing of their work, prominent filmmakers began to speak out, thrusting the two groups into an intense legal, theoretical, and moral battle that would last six years before coming to a shocking conclusion.
The Charlotte Film Festival provides a cultural hub for established and emerging film-artists to showcase their works to the region’s top producers, peers, investors and viewers. Within the past four years, the Charlotte Film Festival has continued to grow attracting filmmakers from around that nation as well as gaining international attention. They continue to attract festival goers and enthusiasts from Charlotte, North Carolina and nearby states.
What happens when you mash together 300 volunteer zombies, a $10,000 budget and an “end of the world, romantic-zombie-action-musical” screenplay? The 2009 Australian indie film I am Bish, currently buzzing through the international film festival circuit with the appropriate tagline, “Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean we can’t have a few laughs.”
The film, directed by David Bishop, tells the story of a film student (Bish) shooting a documentary in his hometown of Perth, Australia, which has secretly been chosen as the site of a joint U.S./Australian defense project. When something goes massively wrong, a neutron wave blast wipes out the community and transforms any remaining survivors into zombies.
The film is a spoof of the 2007 movie I am Legend, starring Will Smith. However, instead of a larger-than-life action hero as the “last man on earth,” Bish is just an average guy trying to survive in a zombie-infested Western Australia. I am Bish has become an Official Selection of 5 International Film Festivals, including the Edmonton International Film Festival, the Southern Winds Film Festival, the Riverside International Film Festival, the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival and the upcoming Charlotte Film Festival. The film has also won 4 awards, including the Golden Palm Award at Mexico International Film Festival, The Silver Lei Award at Honolulu International Film Festival, the Award of Merit at The Indie Fest, and the Award of Excellence at the Twin Rivers Media Festival.
I am Bish is one of more than 60 films that will be showcased at this year’s Film Festival. The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival will be held Sept. 20-26 at two locations – Epicenter Theaters and Regal Park Terrace, both in Charlotte. I am Bish will screen at 11:15 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 25 at Regal Park Terrace.
Charlotte, NC – The Fifth Annual Charlotte Film Festival is proud to present a collection of short films by the Students, Faculty and Friends of Central Piedmont Community College’s Film & Video Program.
The showcase event will begin at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 21 at Regal Park Terrace Cinemas on Park Road and will consist of 11 short films by CPCC Students, Faculty and Friends. A Q&A session will be held with the filmmakers following this special community screening.
This homegrown series kicks off a week of more than 50 plus documentary, short and narrative films being shown at this year’s festival beginning on September 20. Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.charlottefilmfestival.org/2010/ or at the box office the day of the event.
CPCC’s Film and Video Program, called Image Tree Branches, is designed to prepare students to function effectively in the film industry and to help students deal with the realities and challenges of film and video production. The Charlotte Film Festival highlights Image Tree Branches and its budding filmmakers in an effort to support the growing North Carolina film industry at its roots.
The Charlotte Film Festival is a partner of Indie Film Force, a non-profit organization featuring and debuting groundbreaking independent films. Last year’s festival drew more than 2,000 visitors and nearly 100 filmmakers, cast and crew.
For more information about this year’s festival, special events and screenings, contact Keia Mastrianni at 941.587.9912, or at pr@CharlotteFilmFestival.org Visit The Charlotte Film Festival on Facebook and on Twitter @CLTFilmFest. To learn more about the Charlotte Film Festival and its partners, visit http://www.charlottefilmfestival.org/
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