Infinnito Group, an independent international promoter of Brazilian cinema, today announced the official line-up of films for the 15th Annual Brazilian Film Festival of Miami, which includes 25 features and documentaries and 15 shorts. The festival will be held August 19-27 at the Colony Theatre and Miami Beach Cinemateque.
Highlights include an appearance by Arnaldo Jabor, one of the founders of Brazil’s 1960’s Cinema Novo movement, who will attend the festival with “The Supreme Happiness,” his first film in 25 years, “VIPs,” starring Wagner Moura, Brazil’s most popular actor, “Our Home: The Astral City,” the most expensive film in Brazilian history, and “Smoke Screen,” a documentary on the Brazilian government’s drug policies.
BFFM takes place in Miami August 19 – 27. The complete schedule of films can be found here.
Festival release follows:
Inffinito Group, the premier independent promoter of Brazilian cinema and cultural arts around the world, today announced the official lineup of features, documentaries and short films scheduled to commemorate the 15th Annual Brazilian Film Festival of Miami, the largest annual showcase of independent Portuguese-language films from Brazil presented in the United States. Premieres and screenings of 25 award-winning features and documentaries and 15 shorts will be held August 19-27. Entries will be eligible to compete for the Festival’s Crystal Lens Awards for Best Feature Film, Best Short Film, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay, among other juried categories. The Festival is the only exhibition in the U.S. that receives perennial support from Brazil’s top public and private film production and promotion entities, including oil giant PETROBRAS, the Brazilian Ministry of Culture’s Audiovisual Secretariat and ANCINE (Agência Nacional do Cinema).
“To turn 15, it has a very special meaning in Brazil,” explains Brazilian Film Festival co-founder Viviane Spinelli. “During that time, the Festival has come of age, just like the Brazilian film industry is coming of age, and our films, our directors and our stars are being embraced by audiences around the world.”
During the past 15 years, the biggest names in Brazilian cinema have attended the Festival, including director Fernando Meirelles (City of God), actor Rodrigo Santoro (300, Carandiru) actor Selton Mello (To the Left of the Father, My Name Isn’t Johnny), actress Andrea Beltrão (Time of Fear), actress Glória Pires (Lula, the Son of Brazil), actor José Wilker (Elvis & Madona), actress Lília Cabral (In Therapy) and directors Bruno Barreto (Four Days in September) and Fabio Barreto (Lula, Son of Brazil).
The 2011 Festival will feature performances and films by actor Wagner Moura, producer Fernando Meirelles and director Toniko Melo (VIPs); singer/musician Caetano Veloso (A Night in ’67) and samba queen Elza Soares (Elza); actor/screenwriter Bruno Mazzeo (Trap.com, Take It Easy); actor Marco Nanini and actress Maria Luisa Mendonça (The Supreme Happiness); actor Bruno Garcia (Head Over Heels); actress Cleo Pires (Any Stray Cat); actor André Ramiro (Speechless); and actor Marcelo Serrado and actress Fernanda de Freitas (Malu on Bicycle), among others.
Festival screenings will be held at two venues: the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, and the region’s newest boutique art-house theater, the Miami Beach Cinematheque, 1130 Washington Ave., both located in Miami Beach. Tickets are now on sale through Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.com), the Colony Theatre box office and the Miami Beach Cinematheque box office (www.mbcinema.com or www.miamibeachfilmsociety.com). Tickets at the Colony Theatre are: $10 for general admission and $5 for students, seniors and Miami Beach Film Society members. Tickets at the Miami Beach Cinematheque are: $10 for general admission, $8 for Miami Beach Film Society members and $8 for students and seniors.
The complete schedule of screenings, special events (after-parties at Delano and Mondrian South Beach), ticket prices, scheduled VIP appearances, as well as regular news updates before and during the Festival, will be available online at the Festival’s website: www.brazilianfilmfestival.com/miami.
Inffinito Group’s Brazilian Film Festival is the leading international circuit for new films, filmmakers and talent emerging from the South American country, a member of the so-called “BRIC” nations (along with Russia, India and China), which is quickly gaining prominence in Hollywood and around the world, due to a rapidly growing middle-class with disposable income, as one of the fastest-growing centers for film production, distribution and cinematic consumerism. Launched in Miami in 1996, the Festival was created to cater to South Florida’s booming Brazilian population in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach corridor—now one of the largest living outside Brazil and the largest in any U.S. metropolitan area, at 250,000-plus and counting. Since then, the Festival has become a gateway for Brazilian cinema coming into the U.S. and a marketplace for filmmakers to meet with U.S. and Brazilian producers, distributors, sales agents and financiers. Festival founders Adriana Dutra, Cláudia Dutra and Viviane Spinelli have since expanded from Miami and in recent years have produced Inffinito Festivals for audiences in New York, London, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, Vancouver and Canudos.
The Festival receives professional support and programming input each year from prominent figures in the Brazilian film production, distribution and financial worlds in their roles as Festival Curators. They include: Oscar-nominated O2 Filmes director-producer Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardner); Paulo Sérgio Almeida, CEO of Filme B, Brazil’s leading box-office analysis and domestic film production and distribution monitoring agency; LC Barreto executive Paula Barreto, producer of Lula, Son of Brazil, Brazil’s official entry to the 2011 Oscar race for Best Foreign Language Film; Migdal Filmes CEO Iafa Britz, producer behind Brazil’s most expensive feature to date, Our Home: The Astral City (Nosso Lar); Gávea Filmes owner Bianca de Felippes, veteran producer of Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil (1995), which launched the rebirth of modern-day cinematic production in Brazil; and, MovieMobz digital distribution company founder Marco Aurélio Marcondes, also an independent domestic distributor with Europa Filmes, the company behind A Grande Família and Ó Pai Ó!, as well as many Hollywood films, including Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain.
Capitalizing upon the 15-year record of critical and financial success in the international promotion of new Brazilian cinema around the world, Inffinito Group on August 25, during the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami, will launch a new business portal, MediaFundMarket.com, a digital platformforBrazilian filmmakers to pitch their latest productions online, searching for private-sector crowd funding, government grants, and international acquisition and distribution opportunities. For distribution and acquisition executives in Brazil, Hollywood and around the globe, the portal will offer immediate access to the latest films being produced in Brazil and/or by Brazilian filmmakers in a free, secure and user-friendly online environment. The website is being underwritten by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture and the national Audiovisual Secretariat—two of the country’s leading governmental sponsors of film production and promotion, both perennial sponsors of the Brazilian Film Festival of Miami and the Inffinito Festival Circuit.
“Say the director of acquisitions for MGM wants to buy 30 features from Brazil,” explains Inffinito Group co-director Adriana Dutra. “He can search the website for titles. When he finds one he wants to watch, he can send an e-mail request to the director, producer or seller for the password to download the film and watch it once.”
Dutra and Inffinito Group staff will conduct workshops with Brazilian producers, directors and production company executives in September and October to discuss the website and gather content. Currently, Brazil produces approximately 250 features and documentaries annually, plus hundreds of short films and hundreds of hours of telenovelas and other TV variety shows that could be dubbed and distributed overseas. By November, Dutra expects to have approximately 1,000 titles available for viewing and sale on the site.
“We created the Inffinito Festival Circuit so people filmmakers and buyers could meet in person and do business in person,” Dutra continues. “Now, through MediaFundMarket.com, acquisition executives anywhere in the world will be able to see and buy new Brazilian content 24 – 7.”
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