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By Jill Yesko, University Relations
Contact (336) 334-3890
Posted:2-4-08
GREENSBORO, N.C. –Filmgoers who couldn’t make it to the glitzy Sundance Film Festival in Utah take heart, you won’t have to go farther than the Carolina Film and Video Festival to see some of latest offerings from international filmmakers and award-winning Triad producers and directors.
This year’s festival, which will take place at Elliott University Center at UNCG and the Carousel Cinemas in Greensboro, includes films from Quebec and New Zealand along with independent and student films from the Carolinas.
Thirty-six films selected from more than 300 entries will be screened.
In addition to the films in the competition, films making their North Carolina debut include “Clarence John Laughlin: An Artist with a Camera,” by Michael Frierson, UNCG professor of broadcasting and cinema, and Michael Murphy.
The film, which will be shown at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 20, at the Carousel Cinemas, documents Laughlin, a self-taught photographer whose 17,000 pictures captured the plantation houses, enigmatic graveyards and iconographic, vanishing landscapes of New Orleans and the South during his 50-year career.
Tony Fragola, also a professor in the UNCG department of broadcasting and cinema, will present “Beyond Selinunte,” a documentary that explores one man’s 20-year struggle to preserve an ancient archeological site in southern Sicily from encroaching development. The screening will be at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 20, at the Carousel Cinemas. Salvo Cuccia, the filmmaker, will speak.
Films will be competing for various awards including the second annual Bill Arnold North Carolina Filmmaker Award. Other special awards will be the Kodak Cinematography Award, CineFilm Directing Award, Jacob Froelich Screenwriting Award and the UNCG Filmmaker Award.
Debra Zimmerman, executive director of Women Make Movies, and Carrie Certa of the Producers Guild will be among the festival’s judges and featured speakers.
At 9:30 a.m. on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 21-22, the public can attend a free CFVF Filmmaker Speaker Series in the EUC auditorium where festival judges will give presentations about their work. On Friday, Feb. 22, The Producers Guild of America will begin its nationwide education program The Truth About Making it in the Entertainment Industry. The program will be held at 2 p.m. in EUC auditorium.
“The Carolina Video and Film Festival is proud to showcase filmmakers doing exciting work on their way up,” said Jason Brown, co-director of the festival. “In the past two years, we’ve had filmmakers visit our festival who have since starred in their own television series or have been featured on the Sundance Channel. Who knows where this year’s filmmakers will be seen next?”
Ticket prices are $5 public, $4 students. Some events will be free. Winners’ Night tickets are $10 public, $9 students. Festival passes are $30. For ticket and schedule information, visit www.carolinafilmandvideofestival.org, www.carouselcinemas.com, or contact the Department of Broadcasting and Cinema at (336) 334-4197.
University Relations
Location: 500 Forest Street
Mailing Address: PO Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402-6170
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