Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival Releases 2021 Lineup
The Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (HSDFF) has released the lineup of films and honorees for its 30th edition, which will take place Oct. 8-16.
The opening night presentation will be a screening of Samuel D. Pollard and Rex Miller’s “Citizen Ashe,” a biographical piece about the tennis player Arthur Ashe. The centerpiece films will be “The Rescue” directed by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, which follows Tham Luang cave rescue, and “Neutral Ground,” C.J. Hunt’s film about the 2015 removal of four Confederate monuments from New Orleans. The festival will close with “Julia,” Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s film about Julia Child.
Pollard will be honored with the HDSFF career achievement award. The impact award will go to Garrett Bradley, director of the 2020 documentary “Time.” This year’s honorary festival chair will be Dawn Hudson, CEO of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Other highlights from the festival include Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s “Flee” and Brad Lichtenstein’s “When Claude Got Shot.” For more information, visit www.hsdfi.org.
Cinema Audio Society to Honor Paul Massey with CAS Career Achievement Award
The Cinema Audio Society announced that the organization will honor sound mixer Paul Massey with the CAS career achievement award at the 58th CAS Awards on March 19, 2022.
CAS president Karol Urban said, “Paul has been crafting the final sound for films that have become part of the fabric of our popular culture and collective experiences for decades.”
Massey said, “I am overjoyed, honored and humbled to receive this CAS career achievement award. It means so much to me accepting this recognition from my peers who I respect so much.”
Massey served as the sound mixer for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (2019), which won him an Academy Award and a BAFTA, as well as “Ford v Ferrari” (2019) and “Almost Famous” (2000), which won him a BAFTA. He studied music growing up in London, then moved to Canada where he recorded and mixed albums, commercials and scores with various musicians such as The Police. Massey then began to move into film and television and has since worked at studios such as Sony and 20th Century Fox.
Tehran International Short Film Festival Named An Academy Award Qualifying Fest
Moving forward films awarded at the Tehran Short Film Festival festival will be eligible to receive Oscars.
The Tehran Intl. Short Film Festival is organized by the Iranian Youth Cinema Society (IYCS). Few other festivals in the region have received this honor — example, Egypt, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and India are the only nearby countries with Academy Award-qualifying festivals, according to IYCS and festival director Sadeq Musavi, who also said there are only 127 short film festivals worldwide that provide Oscar eligibility.
“At present, there are over 10,000 festivals being organized across the world. Most of them are unreliable. Meanwhile, the Tehran International Short Festival has a good status in the world. Although the festival is not decidedly familiar, it can be considered as the most important short film festival in West Asia,” Musavi said. “Free registration will be set aside after the restrictions on international payments are lifted, and, like other festivals, we will collect a registration fee from participants and the festival will be able to cover all its expenses.” Musavi also said that the festival is the only one in the region to offer a free admission program.
The Tehran short film festival takes place every year in October and is a member of Intl. Short Film Conference. The 2020 edition of the festival screened 55 films, which were produced across five different continents.