TIFF in collaboration with Instagram has launched the TIFFxInstagram Shorts Festival, a digital shorts competition, which invites aspiring and established filmmakers from around the globe to upload their original 60-second-or-less short using Instagram video. Competition opens today; deadline for submissions is July 20, 2016. To submit, upload your entry on Instagram with hashtag #TIFFxInstagram and complete the submission form here.
“TIFF’s commitment to discovering and developing emerging filmmakers is unwavering,” said Piers Handling, director and CEO of TIFF. “Our collaboration with Instagram is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the work of filmmakers from all over the world and discover up-and-coming talent through the world’s largest creative digital community, showcased by the world’s largest public film festival.”
Marne Levine, chief operating officer of Instagram, said, “More than 500 million people are using Instagram each month for visual inspiration and creative expression, including video. Over the last six months, the total time people spent watching video on Instagram has increased by 150%. Filmmakers are already taking advantage of this platform to promote their work and to create films for the Instagram community. We are looking forward to be collaborating with TIFF to celebrate the craft of short filmmaking through the TIFFxInstagram Shorts Festival.”
TIFF programmers will select 30 finalists, which will be showcased on TIFF’s website and Instagram channel from August 8 to 17. A six-person jury comprised of film industry professionals and influential Instagram community members will then select one winner for Judge’s Choice Award. Judges include director Ava DuVernay (Selma) (@directher); writer-director Xavier Dolan (Mommy, I Killed My Mother) (@xavierdolan); music video director and photographer Nabil Elderkin, (Kanye West’s “Mercy”, John Legend’s “All of Me”) (@nabildo); and stop-motion animation artist Rachel Ryle (@rachelryle). In addition to the jury awards, online audiences can vote for their favorite film by liking it on Instagram. Voting closes August 17. The film with the most “likes” will receive the Fan Favorite Award. Awards will be announced August 18.
More judges and prizing will be announced in the coming weeks.
Raoul Peck Resurrects A Once-Forgotten Anti-Apartheid Photographer In “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found”
When the photographer Ernest Cole died in 1990 at the age of 49 from pancreatic cancer at a Manhattan hospital, his death was little noted.
Cole, one of the most important chroniclers of apartheid-era South Africa, was by then mostly forgotten and penniless. Banned by his native country after the publication of his pioneering photography book "House of Bondage," Cole had emigrated in 1966 to the United States. But his life in exile gradually disintegrated into intermittent homelessness. A six-paragraph obituary in The New York Times ran alongside a list of death notices.
But Cole receives a vibrant and stirring resurrection in Raoul Peck's new film "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found," narrated in Cole's own words and voiced by LaKeith Stanfield. The film, which opens in theaters Friday, is laced throughout with Cole's photographs, many of them not before seen publicly.
As he did in his Oscar-nominated James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," the Haitian-born Peck shares screenwriting credit with his subject. "Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is drawn from Cole's own writings. In words and images, Peck brings the tragic story of Cole to vivid life, reopening the lens through which Cole so perceptively saw injustice and humanity.
"Film is a political tool for me," Peck said in a recent interview over lunch in Manhattan. "My job is to go to the widest audience possible and try to give them something to help them understand where they are, what they are doing, what role they are playing. It's about my fight today. I don't care about the past."
"Ernest Cole: Lost and Found" is a movie layered with meaning that goes beyond Cole's work. It asks questions not just about the societies Cole documented but of how he was treated as an artist,... Read More