Big Sonia, directed by Todd Soliday & Leah Warshawski, screens Friday June 1st through Sunday June 3rd at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). The movie starts at 7:30pm each night. Directors Todd Soliday & Leah Warshawski will join family members/cast for a panel discussion following each screening. Please send your name, number of tickets desired, and the screening that you would like to attend to films@webster.edu. The cashier will have a list at the door (tickets are $5 to $7. We can only accept cash or check. Winifred Moore Auditorium seats 240. The seating is general admission only).
In the last store in a defunct shopping mall, 91-year-old Sonia Warshawski – great-grandmother, businesswoman, and Holocaust survivor – runs the tailor shop she’s owned for more than 30 years. But when she’s served an eviction notice, the specter of retirement prompts Sonia to resist her harrowing past as a refugee and witness to genocide.
In the last store in a defunct shopping mall, 91-year-old Sonia Warshawski – great-grandmother, businesswoman, and Holocaust survivor – runs the tailor shop she’s owned for more than 30 years. But when she’s served an eviction notice, the specter of retirement prompts Sonia to resist her harrowing past as a refugee and witness to genocide.
- 5/28/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
The two feature-length documentaries, both of which focus on subjects over the age of 80, are the beneficiaries of a three-year pledge from True Productions founder Dwayne Clark and his wife, Terese. The Seattle-based film, theater, and media production company will award one $50,000 grant annually during that time — though the competition was so strong in this, the program's inaugural year, that Clark tapped Aegis Living, the retirement, assisted living, and Alzheimer's care company of which he's CEO, to support a second $50,000 grant. Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday's "Big Sonia" depicts 90-year-old Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski — who stands at a not-so-big 4'8" — struggling with retirement and imparting life lessons after she's served an eviction notice for John's Tailoring, the last shop left in a dying suburban mall. Kate Dandel's "Gold Balls," filmed at four locations around the country, depicts the competitors in the tennis...
- 1/26/2016
- by Matt Brennan
- Thompson on Hollywood
It’s been a couple months since the last edition of What’s Up Doc? placed Michael Moore’s surprise world premiere of Where To Invade Next at the top of this list and in the meantime much shuffling has taken place and much time has been spent on various new endeavors (namely my Buffalo-based film series, Cultivate Cinema Circle). Finally taking its rightful place at the top, D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hagedus’ Unlocking the Cage is in the midst of being scored by composer James Lavino, according to Lavino’s own personal site. Though the project has been taking shape at its own leisurely pace, I’d expect to see the film making its festival debut in early 2016.
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
Right behind, the American direct cinema masters is a Texan soon to make his non-fiction debut with Voyage of Time. Just two weeks ago indieWIRE reported that Ennio Morricone, who scored...
- 11/5/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Plus… La Film Festival announces partnership with ArcLight Cinemas for 2016; Lakeshore, Phantom Four partner on Miles, Seattle grant finalists; Davoli and Davids merge firms.Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired worldwide rights from Submarine Entertainment and Rosalind Lichter to Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt’s Havana Motor Club (pictured) about underground drag racers in Cuba. The film premiered in Tribeca and will open in 2016.The La Film Festival produced by Film Independent has announced a partnership with ArcLight Cinemas that will see the 22nd edition of the La Film Festival take place at ArcLight Cinemas across the city next summer from June 1-9.Paramount Television has closed a two-year overall television deal with Beasts Of No Nation director Cary Fukunaga and his production company Parliament Of Owls. Fukunaga is collaborating with Paramount Television as director and executive producer of The Alienist for TNT. Benicio del Toro, an awards season contender for Sicario, will take place in an on-stage conversation about his career...
- 11/3/2015
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The fall festival rush is upon us. Locarno is currently ramping up. Venice has released their line-up and Thom Powers and the Toronto International Film Festival team have dropped a bomb with a previously unannounced new feature from powerhouse docu-provocateur Michael Moore. It is truly a miracle that the production of a film such as Moore’s upcoming Where To Invade Next (see still above) managed to go completely undetected by the filmmaking community until it was literally announced to world premiere at one of the largest film festivals in the world. Programmed as a one of the key films in the Special Presentations section at Tiff, the film sees Moore telling “the Pentagon to ‘stand down’ — he will do the invading for America from now on.” Also announced to premiere at Tiff was Avi Lewis’ This Changes Everything, which has slowly been rising up this list, as well as...
- 8/7/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It’s been a surprisingly interesting month of moving and shaking in terms of doc development. Just a month after making his first public funding pitch at Toronto’s Hot Docs Forum, legendary doc filmmaker Frederick Wiseman took to Kickstarter to help cover the remaining expenses for his 40th feature film In Jackson Heights (see the film’s first trailer below). Unrelentingly rigorous in his determination to capture the American institutional landscape on film, his latest continues down this thematic rabbit hole, taking on the immensely diverse New York City neighborhood of Jackson Heights as his latest subject. According to the Kickstarter page, Wiseman is currently editing the 120 hours of rushes he shot with hopes of having the film ready for a fall festival premiere (my guess would be Tiff, where both National Gallery and At Berkeley made their North American debut), though he’s currently quite a ways away from his $75,000 goal.
- 7/6/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Well folks, after a rather long and brutal winter (at least for me here in Buffalo), we are finally heading into the wonderful warmth of summer, but with that blast of sunshine and steamy humidity comes the mid-year drought of major film fests. After the Sheffield Doc/Fest concludes on June 10th and AFI Docs wraps on June 21st, we likely won’t see any major influx in our charts until Locarno, Venice, Telluride and Tiff announce their line-ups in rapid succession. In the meantime, we can look forward to the intriguing onslaught of films making their debut in Sheffield, including Brian Hill’s intriguing examination of Sweden’s most notorious serial killer, The Confessions of Thomas Quick, and Sean McAllister’s film for which he himself was jailed in the process of making, A Syrian Love Story, the only two films world premiering in the festival’s main competition.
- 6/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
It should come as no surprise that Cannes Film Festival will play host to Kent Jones’s doc on the touchstone of filmmaking interview tomes, Hitchcock/Truffaut (see photo above). The film has been floating near the top of this list since it was announced last year as in development, while Jones himself has a history with the festival, having co-written both Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. and Martin Scorsese’s My Voyage To Italy, both of which premiered in Cannes. The film is scheduled to screen as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar alongside the likes of Stig Björkman’s Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words, which will play as part of the festival’s tribute to the late starlet, and Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna’s Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (see trailer below). As someone who grew up watching road races with my dad in Watkins Glen,...
- 5/1/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Four years after my original guest post “Navigating Rejection With Grace” (May 10, 2011) we’re still navigating plenty of rejection (c’mon, does that really ever end!?) but also proud to share some “wins” – seven years in-the-making! Our doc Finding Hillywood (www.findinghillywood.com) has screened at more than 60 festivals around the world, and is available on iTunes (and a myriad of other digital platforms) this month!
I remember being knee-deep in production and fundraising just to finish our film. Grant-writing, crowd-funding, trying to stay positive, constant highs and lows… it all takes a toll. But then you premiere in front of a packed theater with friends and family who give you an emotional standing ovation, and it feels pretty damn good. Things can only get easier from here, right? We made an inspiring film about the universal power of story and the power of art to heal – themes that should resonate globally.
I remember being knee-deep in production and fundraising just to finish our film. Grant-writing, crowd-funding, trying to stay positive, constant highs and lows… it all takes a toll. But then you premiere in front of a packed theater with friends and family who give you an emotional standing ovation, and it feels pretty damn good. Things can only get easier from here, right? We made an inspiring film about the universal power of story and the power of art to heal – themes that should resonate globally.
- 10/7/2014
- by Leah Warshawski
- Hope for Film
On the heels of the 39th edition of the Toronto Int. Film Festival (Sept 4-14), Ifp’s Independent Film Week is where a plethora of fiction, non-fiction and new this year, web-based series from the likes of Desiree Akhavan and Calvin Reeder find future coin. Sectioned off as projects at the very beginning of financing to those that are nearing completion, there happens to be tons of Sundance alumni in the names below. Among those that caught our attention we have Medicine for Melancholy‘s Barry Jenkins’ sophomore feature, produced by Bad Milo!‘s Adele Romanski, Moonlight is about “two Miami boys navigate the temptations of the drug trade and their burgeoning sexuality in this triptych drama about black queer youth”. Concussion‘s Stacie Passon digs into the thriller genre with Strange Things Started Happening. Produced by vet Mary Jane Skalski (Mysterious Skin), this is about “a woman who has...
- 7/24/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
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