The Mammoth Lakes Film Festival revealed its lineup for this year’s festival, taking place from May 22 – 26 at venues across Mammoth Lakes.
The festival will open with the California premiere of director Lucy Lawless’ “Never Look Away,” which follows a CNN combat camerawoman who gets injured and must find the strength to carry on. The closing night features “Black Box Diaries,” directed by Shiori Ito, who investigates her own sexual assault through the film.
A Short Films Program will also be featured at the festival, consisting of 38 narrative shorts, 20 documentary shorts, 10 animation shorts and a program of music videos and a screenplay competition.
The Mlff film lineup is as follows:
North American Narrative Features:
All I’ve Got and Then Some
Tehben Dean and Rasheed Stephens | United States
Atikamekw Suns
Chloé Leriche | Canada
Psykhodrame
Miles Blim | United States
The Last Night in the Life of Death
Isaiah Brody | United States...
The festival will open with the California premiere of director Lucy Lawless’ “Never Look Away,” which follows a CNN combat camerawoman who gets injured and must find the strength to carry on. The closing night features “Black Box Diaries,” directed by Shiori Ito, who investigates her own sexual assault through the film.
A Short Films Program will also be featured at the festival, consisting of 38 narrative shorts, 20 documentary shorts, 10 animation shorts and a program of music videos and a screenplay competition.
The Mlff film lineup is as follows:
North American Narrative Features:
All I’ve Got and Then Some
Tehben Dean and Rasheed Stephens | United States
Atikamekw Suns
Chloé Leriche | Canada
Psykhodrame
Miles Blim | United States
The Last Night in the Life of Death
Isaiah Brody | United States...
- 5/4/2024
- by Jazz Tangcay, Selena Kuznikov, Lexi Carson and Jack Dunn
- Variety Film + TV
Sffilm has announced the winners of the juried Golden Gate Awards competition and the Audience Awards at the 67th San Francisco International Film Festival (Sffilm Festival). The awards serve as a launching pad for internationally renowned filmmakers who are early in their careers, and they qualify films under 40 minutes for the Oscars. Past Golden Gate Award winners include Panah Panahi, Reid Davenport, Nadav Lapid, Marlon Riggs, Céline Sciamma, Jia Zhang-ke, Stanley Nelson, and Tasha Van Zandt.
This year, the 2024 Sffilm Festival ran five days from April 24 – 28 rather than its usual sprawling two weeks. The Sffilm board opted to pull back conservatively where others would have gone bigger to keep a more expansive footprint. Altogether they brought in 130 filmmakers this year, an excellent global selection of films despite the calendar disadvantage of being caught between Sundance and Cannes.
The big talk at this year’s Sffilm was the news that San...
This year, the 2024 Sffilm Festival ran five days from April 24 – 28 rather than its usual sprawling two weeks. The Sffilm board opted to pull back conservatively where others would have gone bigger to keep a more expansive footprint. Altogether they brought in 130 filmmakers this year, an excellent global selection of films despite the calendar disadvantage of being caught between Sundance and Cannes.
The big talk at this year’s Sffilm was the news that San...
- 4/30/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio and Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
Neon announced on Tuesday that it will bring Academy Award nominee Ava DuVernay’s acclaimed drama Origin back to 500 U.S. theaters on February 28, for a one-night-only special screening event, featuring an exclusive pre-recorded introduction and post-screening Q&a with DuVernay.
Released wide on January 19, Origin has recently been awarded Best Drama, Best Director and Best Actress by the African American Film Critics Association, also securing NAACP Image Awards nominations for Outstanding Motion Picture, Directing in a Motion Picture, Actress in a Motion Picture, and Youth Performance in a Motion Picture.
Written and directed by DuVernay, the film explores the mystery of history, the wonders of romance, and a fight for our future. While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor leads a cast also including Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts,...
Released wide on January 19, Origin has recently been awarded Best Drama, Best Director and Best Actress by the African American Film Critics Association, also securing NAACP Image Awards nominations for Outstanding Motion Picture, Directing in a Motion Picture, Actress in a Motion Picture, and Youth Performance in a Motion Picture.
Written and directed by DuVernay, the film explores the mystery of history, the wonders of romance, and a fight for our future. While investigating the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society, a journalist faces unfathomable personal loss and uncovers the beauty of human resilience.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor leads a cast also including Jon Bernthal, Niecy Nash-Betts,...
- 2/27/2024
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Investigative documentaries are some of the most interesting films you can watch. There’s no need to create artificial drama, as the subjects are real, and you can’t help but get swept up in the investigation. Basically, everyone loves to be a sleuth, even as a member of the audience. On paper, “Seeking Mavis Beacon” has all the makings of a great investigative documentary—wonderful characters, an intriguing mystery at the center, and plenty of twists and turns.
Continue reading ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Review: Jazmin Renée Jones Delivers A Unique Investigative Doc With A Lot On Its Mind [Sundance] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Seeking Mavis Beacon’ Review: Jazmin Renée Jones Delivers A Unique Investigative Doc With A Lot On Its Mind [Sundance] at The Playlist.
- 2/2/2024
- by Charles Barfield
- The Playlist
Mavis Beacon is the proud, kind, capable Black woman who’s the face of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, the typing program that ushered so many people into the digital age. The way director Jazmin Jones sees it, Mavis Beacon belongs on any list of the most important Black women in modern history, and her reasoning is sound. Indeed, one of the successes of Seeking Mavis Beacon is its emphasis on just how many people would never have found a foothold in the 21st century if not for Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. That feels like enough to qualify Mavis Beacon for many an honorific. That is, if the woman were actually real.
Turns out, Mavis Beacon is a mascot character crafted by the three men who developed the typing program. The model for Mavis is a very real Haitian immigrant named Renée L’Espérance, who was paid $500 for her likeness before falling off the grid.
Turns out, Mavis Beacon is a mascot character crafted by the three men who developed the typing program. The model for Mavis is a very real Haitian immigrant named Renée L’Espérance, who was paid $500 for her likeness before falling off the grid.
- 1/30/2024
- by Justin Clark
- Slant Magazine
In her debut feature, Jazmin Jones and collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross are looking for answers. They turn to the divine, the public, and, of course, the Internet for guidance. Their holy grail is Mavis Beacon, the virtual instructor who led one of the most popular learning games of all time. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is a font of nostalgia for those who played it in its heyday, and Black fans like Jones saw Mavis as an especially important pioneer for their digital representation.
Seeking Mavis Beacon is a more artistic and conceptual film than investigative, though Jones and Ross uncover some intriguing context about Renée L’Espérance, the model who first portrayed Beacon. As the game’s first face––and thus the blueprint for Mavis, who was henceforth a Black, female character––L’Espérance played a key role in the birth of the blockbuster game. But what does it mean...
Seeking Mavis Beacon is a more artistic and conceptual film than investigative, though Jones and Ross uncover some intriguing context about Renée L’Espérance, the model who first portrayed Beacon. As the game’s first face––and thus the blueprint for Mavis, who was henceforth a Black, female character––L’Espérance played a key role in the birth of the blockbuster game. But what does it mean...
- 1/30/2024
- by Lena Wilson
- The Film Stage
There are a few silver linings of covering Sundance remotely, which — as a critic with two young children and a marriage that I would still like to have at the end of the month — I elected to do for the fourth consecutive year. You don’t have to wait in lines, sit through the same ads about “the power of storytelling” before every screening, or stare longingly at nearby ski slopes as you take a deep breath and head into a high school auditorium to watch a documentary that will be on Netflix three days later.
More significantly, “doing Sundance” from the relative comforts of Eric Adams’ New York City has a way of unburdening the films you watch from the pressure forced upon them in Park City, where each premiere is attended by some of the most generous audiences on the planet…and also the unreasonable expectation that what...
More significantly, “doing Sundance” from the relative comforts of Eric Adams’ New York City has a way of unburdening the films you watch from the pressure forced upon them in Park City, where each premiere is attended by some of the most generous audiences on the planet…and also the unreasonable expectation that what...
- 1/29/2024
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
2024 Sundance Film Festival
Through Sunday, one can experience the 2024 Sundance Film Festival from the comfort of their own home, if it’s in the United States. Having seen over 50 titles in the lineup, in terms of films with tickets still available I can highly recommend Good One, Between the Temples, Tendaberry, Black Box Diaries, Ibelin, Kneecap, Didi, Brief History of a Family, Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Sujo, Seeking Mavis Beacon, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Union, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, and Realm of Satan. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Official Site (through Sunday only)
Amanda (Carolina Cavalli)
Sofia Coppola’s eighth feature doesn’t hit theaters for another few months, but you’d be forgiven if you thought it was actually Amanda, writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s darkly humorous,...
2024 Sundance Film Festival
Through Sunday, one can experience the 2024 Sundance Film Festival from the comfort of their own home, if it’s in the United States. Having seen over 50 titles in the lineup, in terms of films with tickets still available I can highly recommend Good One, Between the Temples, Tendaberry, Black Box Diaries, Ibelin, Kneecap, Didi, Brief History of a Family, Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Sujo, Seeking Mavis Beacon, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Union, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, and Realm of Satan. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Official Site (through Sunday only)
Amanda (Carolina Cavalli)
Sofia Coppola’s eighth feature doesn’t hit theaters for another few months, but you’d be forgiven if you thought it was actually Amanda, writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s darkly humorous,...
- 1/26/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
If you came of age during the height of computer typing programs, the name Mavis Beacon will conjure the image of a pixelated Black woman with a honeyed voice. You might remember her introduction, delivered in a dulcet tone: “Welcome to typing class, I’m your teacher Mavis Beacon.” She was an encouraging presence in the ’80s, reminding you that, with Mavis on your side, you could do anything — especially learn to type.
But who was Mavis Beacon? Is the person who helped acclimate generations to a requirement of the computer age real? In Seeking Mavis Beacon, a frenzied and enlightening documentary, filmmaker Jazmin Jones embarks on a Searching for Sugarman-style quest to find the actual Mavis Beacon. She’s joined by her associate producer and friend, Olivia McKayla Ross, a young woman whose shifting relationship to the internet becomes a key plot point. Together, Jones and Ross dig into web archives,...
But who was Mavis Beacon? Is the person who helped acclimate generations to a requirement of the computer age real? In Seeking Mavis Beacon, a frenzied and enlightening documentary, filmmaker Jazmin Jones embarks on a Searching for Sugarman-style quest to find the actual Mavis Beacon. She’s joined by her associate producer and friend, Olivia McKayla Ross, a young woman whose shifting relationship to the internet becomes a key plot point. Together, Jones and Ross dig into web archives,...
- 1/23/2024
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Mavis Beacon taught the world to type.
Starting in the late 1980s, a software program featuring the eponymous instructor drilled computer users on their keyboard skills, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. But it often comes as a shock to find out that Beacon never really existed. A triumph of the advertisers’ art, the typing teacher was an entirely fictional creation. And the image of Beacon that resonates most deeply, the photo of a Black woman in business attire that appears on the packaging, actually belongs to Renee L’Esperance, a Haitian model who was paid a measly $500 for her work and didn’t get to share in any royalties from the game’s success (she’d later sue when her image was altered on subsequent editions).
Decades after the program debuted, Beacon’s outsized influence is being reexamined in “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” a documentary that premiered last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.
Starting in the late 1980s, a software program featuring the eponymous instructor drilled computer users on their keyboard skills, selling more than 10 million copies worldwide. But it often comes as a shock to find out that Beacon never really existed. A triumph of the advertisers’ art, the typing teacher was an entirely fictional creation. And the image of Beacon that resonates most deeply, the photo of a Black woman in business attire that appears on the packaging, actually belongs to Renee L’Esperance, a Haitian model who was paid a measly $500 for her work and didn’t get to share in any royalties from the game’s success (she’d later sue when her image was altered on subsequent editions).
Decades after the program debuted, Beacon’s outsized influence is being reexamined in “Seeking Mavis Beacon,” a documentary that premiered last weekend at the Sundance Film Festival.
- 1/22/2024
- by Brent Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Jazmin Renée Jones’ “Seeking Mavis Beacon” isn’t your typical kind of quest movie. Premiering in the Next section at Sundance, the format-defying film follows the nonbinary Black filmmaker on an elaborate search to find — but also to better understand — someone who shaped what they thought of the world and themselves. Someone who didn’t really exist: the cover model for popular 1987 computer program “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing.”
As past users of the bestselling software surely recall (but may never have consciously considered), Mavis Beacon was a Black woman — knowledgeable and warm, with a striking face and long, elegant fingernails — who encouraged young people to master their keyboard skills. She served as a virtual teacher and confidant for countless kids, including Jones and computer prodigy Olivia McKayla Ross.
An early example of AI, Mavis Beacon was an invention of three white male computer programmers. Why did they choose a Black woman as their avatar?...
As past users of the bestselling software surely recall (but may never have consciously considered), Mavis Beacon was a Black woman — knowledgeable and warm, with a striking face and long, elegant fingernails — who encouraged young people to master their keyboard skills. She served as a virtual teacher and confidant for countless kids, including Jones and computer prodigy Olivia McKayla Ross.
An early example of AI, Mavis Beacon was an invention of three white male computer programmers. Why did they choose a Black woman as their avatar?...
- 1/21/2024
- by Murtada Elfadl
- Variety Film + TV
Exuberantly maximalist in approach, Jazmin Jones’s blast of a debut feature, Seeking Mavis Beacon, is a rapid-fire blend of neo-noir road movie, desktop essay film and meta critique of the “searching for” documentary subgenre. The picture follows Jones and cyber doula friend Olivia McKayla Ross — self-described “e-girl detectives” — on their years-long journey to locate Renee L’Espérance, the Haitian-born model whose face in 1987 adorned the software packaging for the typing instructional program “Mavis Beacon Learns to Type.” As the program sold in the millions, the character of Mavis Beacon, who many believed was a real person, became an […]
The post “Let’s Talk about Glitch Feminism, and What is a Cyber Doula?”: Jazmin Jones on Her Expansive Sundance-Premiering Doc, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “Let’s Talk about Glitch Feminism, and What is a Cyber Doula?”: Jazmin Jones on Her Expansive Sundance-Premiering Doc, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 1/21/2024
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Exuberantly maximalist in approach, Jazmin Jones’s blast of a debut feature, Seeking Mavis Beacon, is a rapid-fire blend of neo-noir road movie, desktop essay film and meta critique of the “searching for” documentary subgenre. The picture follows Jones and cyber doula friend Olivia McKayla Ross — self-described “e-girl detectives” — on their years-long journey to locate Renee L’Espérance, the Haitian-born model whose face in 1987 adorned the software packaging for the typing instructional program “Mavis Beacon Learns to Type.” As the program sold in the millions, the character of Mavis Beacon, who many believed was a real person, became an […]
The post “Let’s Talk about Glitch Feminism, and What is a Cyber Doula?”: Jazmin Jones on Her Expansive Sundance-Premiering Doc, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “Let’s Talk about Glitch Feminism, and What is a Cyber Doula?”: Jazmin Jones on Her Expansive Sundance-Premiering Doc, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 1/21/2024
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
“I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Given the investigative nature of Seeking Mavis Beacon, I knew I wanted to play with elements of noir and true crime. It’s worth mentioning that I have a contentious relationship with these film genres but, aesthetically speaking, they’re rife with visual motifs that […]
The post “I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 1/20/2024
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
“I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Given the investigative nature of Seeking Mavis Beacon, I knew I wanted to play with elements of noir and true crime. It’s worth mentioning that I have a contentious relationship with these film genres but, aesthetically speaking, they’re rife with visual motifs that […]
The post “I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post “I Attribute Our Ingenuity to Collective Organizing Principles” | Jazmin Jones, Seeking Mavis Beacon first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 1/20/2024
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Festival runs January 18-28.
Sundance Film Festival kicks off on Thursday when the industry will gather on the mountain to put the world to rights and buyers will engage in the annual hunt for the festival’s must-have acquisition titles.
Streamers and theatrical buyers will vie for coveted breakouts and while there will almost certainly be a number of on-site deals as there were last year when Netflix swooped on Fair Play in a $20m deal, Apple forked out close to that amount for Flora And Son, and Searchlight Pictures paid $8m for Theater Camp, the post-Covid deal lag will...
Sundance Film Festival kicks off on Thursday when the industry will gather on the mountain to put the world to rights and buyers will engage in the annual hunt for the festival’s must-have acquisition titles.
Streamers and theatrical buyers will vie for coveted breakouts and while there will almost certainly be a number of on-site deals as there were last year when Netflix swooped on Fair Play in a $20m deal, Apple forked out close to that amount for Flora And Son, and Searchlight Pictures paid $8m for Theater Camp, the post-Covid deal lag will...
- 1/17/2024
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
What was the biggest story at Sundance last year? That’s easy: when “Coda” sold big in 2021 and went on to win Best Picture in 2022. Would that happen in 2023? It didn’t, and what did happen at last year’s festival and what it means for the market in Park City in 2024 is now harder to pin down.
It might be the story of “Fair Play,” which sold to Netflix for $20 million and was the biggest sale in a market that also included aggressive bidding wars for “Flora and Son” (Apple) and “Theater Camp” (Searchlight). It could be the tale of “Talk to Me,” which A24 knew how to market into a $92 million worldwide box office hit when nothing else that premiered at the festival gained nearly the same box office traction. Or it could be that Lily Gladstone is taking time out of the Oscar circuit to hype “Fancy Dance,...
It might be the story of “Fair Play,” which sold to Netflix for $20 million and was the biggest sale in a market that also included aggressive bidding wars for “Flora and Son” (Apple) and “Theater Camp” (Searchlight). It could be the tale of “Talk to Me,” which A24 knew how to market into a $92 million worldwide box office hit when nothing else that premiered at the festival gained nearly the same box office traction. Or it could be that Lily Gladstone is taking time out of the Oscar circuit to hype “Fancy Dance,...
- 1/15/2024
- by Brian Welk
- Indiewire
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