http://www.independentfilmweek.com/ Independent Film Week • In the News Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:37:00 GMT en-us http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 July 1, 2008 12:23pm Loot, directed by Darius Marder and an alumnus of IFP's Independent Film Week 2006 "Spotlight on Documentaries" program, took Los Angeles Film Festival's top documentary prize this weekend. The Target Documentary Award jury granted Marder a $50,000 unrestricted cash prize for his film about WWII veterans searching for their buried wartime treasures. http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 June 26, 2008 12:23pm Independent Film Week alumnus The Garden premiered at SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, and took home the Sterling US Feature award. The Garden , directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy's showed as a work-in-progress in the 2005 "Spotlight on Documentaries" program. The award includes $10,000 cash and $5,000 in Kodak film stock. In a statement from the jury, which included Sandi Dubowski, the award went to The Garden for it's "tenacity in storytelling in the face of injustice, and the filmmaker's singular vision in bringing a gripping, dramatic, and important story to the public eye... It unravels a complex and layered tale of the destruction of America's largest urban farm that must not be forgotten." http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 June 26, 2008 12:23pm Oklahoma City's DeadCENTER Film Festival laid accolades on IFP alumni, showing that modern indies play well around the US. Tom Quinn's New Year Parade took the Narrative Feature award, and Beau Leland and Kevin Ely's Rainbow Around the Sun won the Oklahoma Film award - both are alumni of the 2007 Narrative Independent Filmmaker Labs. The Documentary Feature award went to Adam Zucker's Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, an alumnus of the 2006 Independent Film Week's "Spotlight on Documentaries." Zucker also served in May as an editor-mentor for IFP's Documentary Independent Filmmaker Labs. http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 June 26, 2008 12:23pm Two of the four films selected for Sundance's Documentary Editing and Story Laboratory are alumni of the 2007 Independent Film Week Spotlight on Documentaries program. The films are NC Heikin's Kimjongilia, which relays the stories of persecuted North Korean exiles and those that aid them, and Jennifer Maytorena Taylor's New Muslim Cool, on a Muslim Puerto Rican rapper in Philadelphia struggling to keep his family together, enduring rising popularity and increasingly aggressive government surveillance. The week-long program allows the directors, with their editors, to focus on honing story structure with the aid of experienced advisors. Kimjongilia is an IFP Fiscally Sponsored project. New Muslim Coolwas the recipient of a development grant from IFP's Anthony Radziwill Documentary Fund in 2005. http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 June 26, 2008 12:23pm Indie distributors First Run Features are to release Moving Midway, an alumnus of the 2006 Independent Film Week "Spotlight on Documentaries" program. The film will launch in New York in September; expanding to the South and other regions shortly after. Moving Midway, directed by film critic Godfrey Cheshire, uses the relocation of his North Carolina family home as a catalyst to examine the history of Southern plantations, and their lasting impact on modern culture. Moving Midway premiered at the prestigious New Directors/New Films program in 2008. http://www.ifp.org/ifpnews/newsitem.php?id=604 June 06, 2008 12:23pm Eleven narrative films poised to make their mark at film festivals in the coming year have been selected to participate in IFP's prestigious Independent Filmmaker Lab this June 10-13... http://www.ifp.org/ifpnews/newsitem.php?id=602 June 04, 2008 12:21pm Ten documentaries poised to make their mark at film festivals in the coming year have been selected to participate in IFP's prestigious Independent Filmmaker Lab... http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 May 23, 2008 4:16pm Hüseyin Karabey received the Best New Narrative Filmmaker award at the just-concluded 2008 Tribeca Film Festival for his feature My Marlon and Brando (Gitmek)... http://www.ifp.org/membernews/chapter.php?id=1 May 23, 2008 4:16pm Lisa Merton and Alan Dater's Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai recently won the Audience Award at the 2008 Hot Docs International Documentary Festival...