Video Contests, Film Festivals, and Awards

Actress Karen Black to Appear as Special Guest at The Maine International Film Festival

By StudentFilmmakers.com
posted Jun 27, 2012, 09:32

(Waterville, ME) - Actress Karen Black will also be appearing as a Special Guest at The 15th annual Maine International Film Festival (MIFF). Black is noted for appearing in such films as Easy Rider, The Great Gatsby, The Day of the Locust, and Nashville. Over the course of her career, she has won two Golden Globe Awards (out of three nominations) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1970 for her role in Five Easy Pieces, which will be screening at this year�s festival. Her role in 1982�s Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean was hailed by LA Weekly as �the best performance of the year.�

Black also stars in the festival�s opening night film, Vacationland, a narrative feature about several members � and one would-be member � of a scattered family who journey to the mountains of western Maine for a reunion that no one seems to know about, and find beauty, truth and a buried treasure of no particular worth. According to Festival Programmer Ken Eisen, Vacationland is �a very funny, very honest, very observant human comedy� from Jamie Hook, director of the acclaimed Indie feature The Naked Proof. The Opening Night film will screen on Friday, July 13 at 7:00pm at the Waterville Opera House.

Mr. Eisen made the following statement upon learning that Karen Black would be a guest at MIFF:

�What a jaw-dropping actress Karen Black is, and what a jaw-dropping career she's had! Unforgettable and absolutely distinctive in films from Five Easy Pieces (for which she gained an Oscar nomination and Best Supporting Actress of the Year from the National Society of Film Critics) to Nashville to horror fave House of a Thousand Corpses, having worked with directors from Alfred Hitchcock to Robert Altman to Dennis Hopper along with Bob Rafelson, Rob Zombie and John Schlesinger. And she's kept working�in a big way! By now, her amazing output has reached over 150 films, bridging the best of American cinema when it was at its most fertile, in the 1970s with the current Indie cinema renaissance, with VacationLand and Maria My Love�and her own short Help, as particularly fabulous examples�with stops for singing along the way. We are truly thrilled and honored to have her with us this year at MIFF.�

About the Maine International Film Festival: The 15th annual Maine International Film Festival will take place in Waterville, Maine from July 13-22, at Railroad Square Cinema and the newly renovated Waterville Opera House. During the 10 days of the festival, MIFF will feature nearly 100 films, representing the best of American and International independent cinema and spotlighting some of Maine and New England�s most innovative filmmakers.

More than just watching movies, audiences also have opportunities to meet and talk with some of the people behind the movies including directors, producers, writers and actors. Every year MIFF honors members of the independent film industry whose contributions deserve recognition. Honored guests and visiting filmmakers host panel discussions and Q&A sessions, giving festival audiences an incredible chance to hear about the art of film from those on the front-lines.

The full MIFF schedule will be available on the festival�s website, http://www.miff.org, as soon as it is finalized in mid to late June. Passes start at $85 and are now available for purchase through the website. As the festival date approaches, tickets to individual films will also be available. Founded in 1998, The Maine International Film Festival is a project of the Maine Film Center.





Resources:

www.miff.org