Film Festival
Each fall, The Cine-Files has the pleasure of covering the Savannah Film Festival. Sponsored by Savannah College of Art and Design, the yearly festival boasts more than 40,000 attendees and features a diverse array of first-run blockbusters, cutting edge indies, European art films, as well as student and professional competition films. The 75-plus screenings, in addition to the panels, post-film Q-and-A’s, workshops, and lectures, offer cinephiles near and far a unique opportunity to indulge themselves in an 8-day bacchanal of sensory and intellectual provocation in the otherwise laid-back setting of Savannah, Georgia. This year’s notable guests included 7 honorees: Stan Lee, Matt Dillon, John Goodman, Diane Lane, Geoffrey Fletcher, John Gatins and Michelle Monaghan. The Cinema Studies Department hosted two guest scholars during the festival, Timothy Corrigan (University of Pennsylvania) and Peter Hitchcock (City University of New York). Corrigan spoke about his recent book The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker (Oxford UP), winner of the 2012 Katherine Singer Kovács Award for the best book in film and media studies. Both Corrigan and Hitchcock joined SCAD’s Cinema Studies faculty and visiting critic Claudia Puig (USA Today) for the panel “A Critical Eye on Film: the Cinema Studies Perspective,” featured below in its entirety.
“Sex and the City: A Festival Introduction” by Roger Rawlings
“Wonder Women in the Savannah Film Festival: From the Page to the Screen, and Finally, Beyond” by Alexa Boehringer
“Chris Marker and the Essay Film: a Presentation by Timothy Corrigan” by Tracy Cox-Stanton
Panel: A Critical Eye on Film
This yearly panel models how a cinema studies perspective fosters a certain kind of dialogue about film, allowing SCAD faculty (Dr. Roger Rawlings, Dr. Tracy Cox-Stanton, and Dr. Chad Newsom) and invited guests (Dr. Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania; Dr. Peter Hitchcock, City University of New York; and critic Claudia Puig, USA Today) to engage one another and the audience in a discussion of recent trends in film history and current film innovation.
Reviews
A Place at the Table, by Ingela Hartman
Brief Encounters, by Jae Matthews
Fat Kid Rules the World, by Ben Barbour
Rust and Bone, by Scotty Barnhart
Silver Linings Playbook, by Kyle Taubken
Violet and Daisy, by Steve Drum
Interviews and Profiles
2012 Savannah Film Festival Honorees
Diane Lane, interviewed by Chad Newsom
John Gatins, interviewed by Kyle Taubken
The Cine-Files wishes to extend a sincere “thank you” to the employees of the Savannah Film Festival and Savannah College of Art and Design who made possible our coverage of the festival: Tarana Mayes, Aaron Pompei, Danny Filson, Len Cripe, Sheila Bolda, and Christine Routhier.