5-25-07
Three Chicago Features at Hollywood Black Film Festival
The Hollywood Black Film Festival will play host to three Chicago independent features, including one world premiere and one festival premiere, when the fest unspools June 5-10.
Stacy B. Hawkins’ debut feature, The Rise and Fall of Miss Thang, is screening for the first time. Renowned tap dancer Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards stars as a former tap-dancing prodigy and club girl who rediscovers tap as a young woman. With Dori King, Trinia Defourneau and Martin ‘Tre’ Dumas III. Executive producers, Ayeshah Wright and Ben F. Hawkins.
Parris Reeves’ Ran$um Games has its festival premiere at HBFF, after premiering in December in a private theatrical booking. Ran$um Games stars co-writer/producer Devin Wesley as a reformed drug dealer whose sister-in-law has him kidnapped. With Khadija Muhammad, Wood Harris, Elise Neal and Eric Lane. Ran$um Games is the eighth film by co-writer/producer William Pierce (My Phamily BBQ) of CLASS Productions.
Mark Harris’ romantic comedy Why Men Cheat also screens at HBFF. Starring Vanessa Fraction (Barbershop). Why Men Cheat was released on DVD in 2005 by Hobart Street Distribution. See hbff.org.
Masahiro Sugano’s debut feature Second Moon returns to the Gene Siskel Film Center after selling out its local premiere in the Asian American Showcase there in April.
Second Moon stars Andre Ing as a lieutenant in a free-love gigolo cult, torn between his mentor (filmmaker Jim Finn) and a vulnerable immigrant woman (Jennifer Shin, CollaborAction’s The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow).
Inspired by “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” Second Moon was shot by Sundance veteran and UIC alum Sugano on HD in 2005. Sanghoon Lee produced. The film first played at the Pusan International Film Festival in October.
Sugano and Lee are developing their follow-up feature, Transcendental Joe, “a neo-fundamental Buddhist journey across the U.S.”
Second Moon screens June 9 and 12 at 8 p.m. at the Film Center, 164 N. State St. Sugano will attend. See secondmoonmovie.com.
John Mahoney hosts the Film Center’s annual gala, this year honoring husband-wife thesps William H. Macey and Felicity Huffman. It’s June 2, 6-10 p.m. at the Four Seasons. Tickets start at $400. See siskelfilmcenter.org.
Chuck Statler who directed classic new wave music videos for Elvis Costello, DEVO, Pere Ubu, and many others, headlines the 6th Anniversary Movieside Film Festival June 7.
“Arguably the godfather of the music video,” is the way Movieside founder Rusty Nails described Statler, who shot videos for independent artists and labels beginning in the ’70s, before the advent of MTV.
Movieside will feature a selection of Statler’s videos and a live conversation between Statler and Nails, beginning at 9 p.m. At 7 p.m., there will be shorts by Usama Alshaibi and Bobby Conn, Chris Hefner, Lillia Carro, Matt Marsden, Hank Henry, Jason Sandri, Shana East, Arthur Jones, Raymond Salvatore Harmon, Nails, Patrick Cheng, Random Touch, Aaron Augenblick, Jeffrey Stjules, and Ray Harryhausen.
There will also be live music from Aleks and the Drummer and Lord of the Yum-Yum. $8. At the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. See movieside.com.
Maria Gigante is a top 5 finalist in MTV/MTVu’s Best Filmmakers on Campus completion. Her short film, Girls Room, has earned a slot on the contest Web site and a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The grand prize winner will receive a $25,000 production grant, handed out at the MTV Movie Awards on June 3, “apparently to be presented by Borat!!?” Gigante said in an e-mail.
Girls Room is online along with the other four finalists at bestfilmoncampus.com. The winner will be chosen by votes at the site through May 29.
Girls Room is a “horror comedy about the disgusting, horrific and scary school bathroom,” Gigante said. She shot the film as her MFA thesis at Columbia College.
Ava Raddatz stars in Girls Room. Steve Ware shot. Sound by Jason Rizzo. Co-producer, Danielle Corches.
Gigante is developing the feature film Eva Eva, “about a sassy but unpopular Polish-American 12-year-old who launches an all-too successful voodoo doll operation, and in the process learns a bit about friends, family, and what kind of person she wants to become,” Gigante said. E-mail gigantemaria@yahoo.com.
Daniel J. Pico is in post-production on his debut feature Farewell Darkness, about an Iraq War veteran coping with post-traumatic stress disorder and his traumatic family history. Starring Michael Pasternak, BriAnna Weaver, producer David Bianchi, Circus-Szalweski, Heidi Klefstad, and James Sharp. Pico wrote the script with Roy Mauerer. Matthew M. Jones of UPressplay and composer James Azrael also produced. DP, Jason Deuchler.
Breakthrough Distribution is scheduled to release Farewell Darkness on DVD in August.
See myspace.com/farewelldarknessthefilm.
Mark Mamalakis’ short film Portrait of a Filmmaker was accepted into the Museum of Modern Art in New York’s permanent film collection. Three years ago Mamalakis edited the piece together from footage that he shot years earlier on 8mm and 16mm while a film student.
Portrait of a Filmmaker won Best Experimental Short at the Chicago International Film Festival and the IFP/Chicago Flyover Zone Film Festival, Best of Festival at the Berkeley Film Festival, and a Gold Medal for Excellence at the Park City Film Music Festival.
Mamalakis has been a Chicago location manager for studio features, including Flags of Our Fathers, Derailed, Last Kiss, and currently Wanted. E-mail mrkpm@earthlink.net.
Kerry Devine’s short The Art of Wine was chosen as one of 10 films to represent Francis Ford Coppola’s Rosso & Bianco wines as “Wine for Everyday Life.” An image from each winning movie will appear on a bottle of Rosso & Bianco.
See rossobianco.com/contest.
Ed M. Koziarski is in post-production on the feature film The First Breath of Tengan Rei, formerly Untitled Okinawa Project. E-mail edk@homesickblues.com.