Black Field - A Film to Watch

Black Field, a gorgeous, literary-quality and superbly crafted period piece, has been picked up by Altadena Films. Based in London, Altadena is a world-class boutique with satellite offices in Los Angeles and New York. Black Field won Honorable Mention - Best Picture at NHFF 2010.

Elias Plagianos in USA Today

Filmmaker Elias Plagianos, winner of NHFF's 2010 Audience Favorite award in the Action Film category, recently spoke about his film The Crimson Mask in a July 27 cinemaspy.com piece. You can check out Phil Gule's engaging interview here.



Then John Frankenheimer picked up the story at USA Today. Here's a link.

Congratulations to Plagianos for garnering the buzz. The Crimson Mask made its world debut at Cannes Film Festival on May 17.

All This and Novels, Too

Many people who've discovered the New Hope Film Festival don't realize I've been publishing literary novels for almost five years. Two of my novels, Shadow Fields and Dasha, are on the back burner for film adaptations and the third, Snooker Glen, also exists as a screenplay. I have a farcical romantic comedy with the working title Peg on my iMac's hard drive and three more novels in progress, two of which are complete in first draft form.

Although it's the height of summer and I'm taking it pretty easy, no one could accuse me of sloth. For the better part of a year, I put most of the writing on hold to get NHFF off the ground, but now I'm moving ahead with projects.

I spent most of today integrating my film and literary worlds, and I have to say it's an exciting moment! With a new sense of focus and purpose, I'm writing again; and in that spirit, I'm also running a special on the Kindle editions of Dasha (USD $2.99) and Snooker Glen ($4.99). These prices are good through August 31st. If the lower price points attract the kind of readers I want, that is, those who are looking for more than a cheap beach read, I may extend the low-price model indefinitely. I also lowered the Shadow Fields price to $9.99, as Amazon.com no longer requests a price that is 100% in line with the paper version.

If you want to experience the art created by the man behind NHFF's curtain, now is a great opportunity. They're beautifully written and lots of fun, and many say they were, and still will be, prophetic. They were certainly a joy to write, although as living documents, they never feel finished.

Black Field-NHFF Honorable Mention, Best Picture

Morning everyone! I hope you all found some new favorite films at our Festival a few weeks back. Here's a review of one of my mine--check it out, and let us know what your favorites were.

Black Field

Dir. Danishka Esterhazy, Canada

By Sarah Leventer

Black Field, a historical drama set in the 1870s, follows sisters Maggie (The Vampire Diaries’ Sara Canning) and Rose McGregor (Ferron Guerreiro) as they struggle to make a life on the Canadian prairies. Their parents died years ago, leaving Maggie as the family farm’s and her sister’s only protector, a role complicated by the arrival of the mysterious, handsome French Canadian, David. This role is even further complicated when Rose goes missing.

The McGregor women live constricted lives typical of the time period, but have the same depth and self-possession as Jane Eyre and other Gothic heroines that inspired Esterhazy when making her film. Maggie is particularly wise, flawed and untamable. The desperation verging on wildness in her eyes, coupled with her conviction and protective instincts make for powerful tension as she searches for Rose and sets off a final chain of events that alters hers and her sister’s life forever. Complimenting Canning’s captivating performance is Mathieu Bourguet as David, who matches Maggie in intelligence with the charm (and moral ambiguity) of a lost Romantic poet.

These strong performances are what give the film life, along with Paul Suderman’s striking cinematography. Especially stunning is Rembrandt-style lighting and shadows created during the Black Field’s darker scenes. When the three leads share a meal early in the film, the budding connection between David and the much younger Rose first becomes clear to Maggie and the audience. As Maggie’s awareness crystallizes, the camera moves to a close-up of her face glowing out from the darkness in the center of the room as she seems to vibrate with worried energy—the candles around her face visually separate her from Rose and David, with a hauntingly beautiful effect.

The night scenes in the McGregor home form an even more striking contrast with the stark, day-lit prairie—the film as a whole is beautifully shot, and in look as well as in tone, has a palpable Gothic influence. As is perhaps obvious, however, this is not the castle-on-a-dark-stormy-night, pulpy kind of film.

Black Field is Gothic in the classic, literary sense of the word, meaning the film tells a story about 19^th century characters in a style true to that place and time. The end result of Esterhazy’s almost scholarly devotion to matching style to content is a film that actually takes the viewer somewhere: not to the could-be-next-door set often expected in independent films, or the glamorous, recognizable locales of Hollywood cinema but inside a fully-realized, earthbound fantasy.

To learn more about the director, see some gorgeous cast photos and watch trailers for Black Field, check out: Black Field Movie and Danishka Esterhazy

Announcing 2010 Award Winners

(L to R) Doug Whipple, Andre Hennicke, Andreas Arnstedt & Thom Mulligan

Festival Director Thom Mulligan

Greetings! New Hope Film Festival announced awards on the stage of Havana Restaurant on Sunday night, and for the official record, here are the winners:

Danny Award, Best Picture The Dispensables (Andreas Arnsedt, Germany)

Honorable Mention - Best Picture Black Field (Danishka Esterhazy, Canada)

Artistic Spirit Award The Soil and the People (Sisir Sahana, India)

Audience Favorite - Short Film Saveta’s Gift (Mark Parees, USA)

Audience Favorite - Documentary When Police Become Prey (Candis McLean, Canada)

Audience Favorite - Student Film Made in America (Mike Infante and Jessica Thoubourron, USA)

Audience Favorite - Action Film The Crimson Mask (Elias Plagianos, USA)
Audience Favorite - Feature Film The Dispensables (Andreas Arnsedt, Germany)

Audience Favorite - Mid-Atlantic Film Embraceable You (Geri Delevich and Doug Keith, USA)

Audience Favorite - Mid-Atlantic Student Film Memory Collect (Elizabeth Phillips, USA)

Additionally, the following films were nominated for jury awards:

Danny Award - Best Picture Nominees
Hope (Steve Thomas, Australia, Documentary)
The Good Fight: James Farmer Remembers the Civil Rights Movement (Jessica Schoenbaechler, USA, Documentary)
Black Field (Danishka Esterhazy, Canada, Art House Feature)
Earthwork (Chris Ordal, USA, Art House Feature)
The Dispensables (Andreas Arnstedt, Germany, Art House Feature)
The Soil and the People (Sisir Sahana, India, Art House Feature)
The Book of Tomorrow (David Yohe, USA, Student)
Breathtaking (Vojin Vasovic, Serbia/Montenegro, Short)

Artistic Spirit Award Nominees
This award honors artistic quality and bravery in the face of substantial obstacles.
The Soil and the People (Sisir Sahana, India, Art House Feature)
Esther's Diary (Mariusz Kotowski, USA, Art House Feature)
The Journey (Chineze Anyaene, Nigeria, Student)
When Police Become Prey (Candis McLean, Canada/UK, Documentary)
Made in America (Jessica Thoubbouron and Mike Infante, USA, Student)
Bakhtiari Alphabet (Sima Sedigh and Reza Ghadyani, USA/Iran, Documentary)
Overload (Robert Fritz, USA, Art House Feature)
A Little Bit of Love: The Making of a Message (Scott Hatfield, Uganda/USA, Short)

The Dispensables-Film Review

Hi Everyone!

I'm Sarah, a recent addition to the New Hope Film Festival--I'm looking forward to meeting you all! I just got a chance to screen Andreas Arnstedt's, The Dispensables. Here's my take on the film--you can check it out this Saturday (6/26) at the Stephen J. Buck Auditorium in New Hope, PA. It's definitely worth the price of admission so I hope you can all check out, and let me know what you think!

The Dispensables

Dir. Andreas Arnstedt, Germany

By Sarah Leventer

The Dispensables is a beautifully shot family drama, reminiscent in look and tone of Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return. Based on a true story, the film follows 11-year-old Jacob (Oskar Böckelmann) as he tries to hide a devastating secret about his father, Jürgen (André Hennicke), and opens as a drunk Jürgen publicly defaces a German political campaign poster with an axe. This opening suggests that, also like The Return, The Dispensables is an intensely personal story with connections to a much longer, complicated national history, another aspect that sets it apart from the air-brushed perfection of Hollywood summer blockbusters of late. However, it is worth noting that The Dispensables’ nationalistic tone is subtle and understated, meaning references to Germany’s past are there for those who choose to see them, but majoring in German is not a prerequisite to appreciate the film.

Fitting its semi-autobiographical content, The Dispensables is told in first-person so the audience gets to experience the world as Jacob does. While lying beside his father, Jacob looks up lights that remind him of a carnival, and flashes back to a date with his girlfriend, Hannah (Kathi Hahn); this is one of many instances when Jacob’s memories erupt (often unexpectedly) into the present-day. Moments like these are an interesting comment on the way memories work in life, coming unexpectedly and often “out of order,” and also give insight into Jacob’s current situation in a subtle, artful way. As Jacob snaps out from the memory of the carnival, for instance, the audience realizes that, because of the man lying beside him, this date will be the last carefree memory he’ll have for a very long time.

Andreas Arnstedt treats the children who anchor his film with a great deal of respect and authenticity. The director successfully resists the urge to infantilize his protagonists though they don’t sound straight off the set of Dawson’s Creek either. Jacob and Hannah are at once thoughtful, considerate and thoroughly childlike—they are also wiser than adults give them credit for, another aspect that makes watching the world from their perspective a uniquely worthwhile experience: especially compared to their precocious or alternatively 20-somethings-playing-a-14-year-old Hollywood counterparts.

In addition to Hannah, Jacob’s world is populated by compelling characters like his grandmother, Rosemarie, (Ingeborg Westphal) the only truly reliable adult in his life, Mr. Rott (Mathieu Carrière), an elderly neighbor who is a haunting reminder of Germany’s past and Jacob’s only other friend, and Jacob’s parents, Jürgen and Silke (Steffi Kühnert). Demonstrating a wisdom few first-time directors have, Arnstedt shows both the loving and damaging sides of Jacob’s parents, giving their performances the same meaningful complexity as the rest of his film.

To buy tickets to the U.S. premier of The Dispensables, go to: https://new-hope-film-festival-ltd.ticketleap.com

Happy Filmgoing!

Links on Facebook

If you're the type of person who dives into anything you do, and you want to learn more about our movies, check out the dynamic Links section of our Facebook page.

Sarah Leventer, a terrific and new addition to New Hope Film Fest, earned her Master's of Fine Arts in Film Studies at Boston University last year and now, in addition to working as a freelance writer, she's heading up our online efforts.

Don't miss the terrific reviews, interviews and other gems she's finding all over the World Wide Web!