2006 Silver Lake Film Festival Unspools March 23-31 With 200+ Films Including 85 Premieres

2006 Silver Lake Film Festival Unspools March 23-31 With 200+ Films Including 85 Premieres

Los Angeles Premieres of EDMOND, starring William H. Macy in a David Mamet-Penned Screenplay, and THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL, a 9-11 Drama Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Set for Opening Night and Centerpiece Gala Programs

Rob Nilsson to Be Honored With 'Spirit of Silver Lake' Filmmaker Award

Special Film Series Tackle Wide-Ranging Issues From the State of Organized Labor in the U.S. to an Emerging Urban Environmental Movement

Foreign Series Spotlight Armenian and Croatian Cinemas and Asian Cult Films, Including the First Los Angeles Retrospective of Japanese Master Filmmaker Nobuo Nakagawa

The Merging of Digital Communication Technology and Filmmaking Explored in MP4-Fest Series That Includes First Los Angeles Screening of Machinima

PLUS Sally Field, Philip Seymour Hoffman, k.d. lang, John Doe, Dicky Barrett, Bobcat Goldthwait, Penelope Spheeris, Goran Visnjic and the Honorable Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council

LOS ANGELES, March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The 6th Silver Lake Film Festival, sponsored by Adelphia and LA.com, debuts at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood, the Vista Theater in Los Angeles, the Japan America Theater and other venues throughout Los Angeles' Eastside communities, March 23-31.

Under the direction of Kate Marciniak, Roger M. Mayer and Greg Ptacek, the sixth edition of Los Angeles' leading independent film and video festival is being held for the first time during the Spring. The festival will present over the course of nine days more than 70 narrative and documentary features and 135 shorts films, including 85 Los Angeles, U.S. and world premieres.

Scheduled for Opening Night, March 23rd, is the Los Angeles premiere of "Edmond," a First Independent Pictures release, starring William H. Macy and directed by Stuart Gordon with a screenplay by David Mamet. Using downtown Los Angeles as a backdrop, the story revolves around a bland business executive whose midlife crisis quickly devolves into a freefall that he mistakes for freedom. In Mamet fashion, the screenplay explores race, class and social issues in the context of a personal story. The film co-stars Joe Mantegna, Julia Stiles, Rebecca Pidgeon, Bokeem Woodbine, Bai Ling, Denise Richards, Mena Suvari, Dule Hill and Debi Mazar.

"The Great New Wonderful," starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edie Falco, Tony Shalhoub, Olympia Dukakis, Judy Greer, Will Arnett and directed by Danny Leiner, will be presented during the festival's Centerpiece Gala, Saturday, March 25th. Making its Los Angeles premiere, the First Independent Pictures release encompasses five darkly comic and deeply human stories woven against the backdrop of an anxious, post-9/11 New York City.

Independent film iconoclast Rob Nilsson will be honored by the festival with the Spirit of Silver Lake Filmmaker Award for career excellence in independent cinema. The program will present three narrative features by Nilsson: "Signal 7" (1986), the first feature ever shot on video, transferred to film and released theatrically -- a precursor to today's digital film revolution; "Stroke" (2000), a personal favorite of the director; and "Need" (2005), a Los Angeles premiere, which documents the fragile lives of four prostitutes in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.

Other highlights of the festival's feature film line-up include the world premiere of the Cinema Libre release "Giuliani Time," a documentary by Kevin Keating that surgically removes the carefully constructed post-9/11 image of former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, mentioned frequently as a leading candidate for the 2008 presidential race; the Los Angeles premiere of director Kevin Dobson's "The Virgin of Juarez," starring Minnie Driver and Esai Morales, a drama-fantasy using the real-life mysterious killings of young women along the Tex-Mex border to explore race and religious stereotypes; and the Los Angeles premiere of director Philip Chidel's "Subject Two," fresh from its debut at Sundance, a haunting psychological thriller that updates the classic Frankenstein tale.

The festival will present 135 short films -- 49 world premieres -- including five shorts programs at the ArcLight. Highlights include the 2006 Oscar-winning short documentary, "A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin" by filmmakers Corinne Marrinan and Eric Simonson and "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello," by Anthony Lucas, nominated for a 2006 Best Animated Short Oscar.

Special Film Series and Events include:

* State of the Union -- The first-ever film festival program sponsored by
the AFL-CIO, this program, examining the transitional state that
organized labor finds itself in the U.S. through a series of films,
including "Class Dismissed: How TV Frames the Working Class" and "Norma
Rae" with a special appearance by Sally Field, who won a Best Actress
Academy Award for her role in the film.

* Green Films -- Executive curated by Eric Garcetti, president, Los
Angeles City Council, the program addresses what role environmentalism
should play in an increasingly urbanized world. Garcetti will be
joined in a panel discussion addressing the urban ecological movement
on the evening of Tuesday, March 28th, by Bernadette Del Chiaro,
director of Environment California's Clean Energy Program; Jennifer
Wolch, dean of USC's Center for Sustainable Cities; Gail Goldberg,
director, Los Angeles City Planning Department; Peter Barsuk,
architect, Gensler, and member of the U.S. Green Building Council, and
environmental filmmaker Jim Jackson.

* Fusion Asian Cinema -- The new generation of Asian cult films blurs the
lines of national borders and incorporates universal themes and images
that make them more accessible to an American audience. The program
includes nine features, eight documentaries and five short films from
nine countries, and the first-ever Los Angeles retrospective of Nubuo
Nakagawa, the acclaimed master of Japanese horror films.

* Celebrity Guest Curators -- Indie 103.1FM morning D.J. Dicky Barrett,
former X frontman and actor John Doe, singer-songwriter k.d. lang and
comedian-filmmaker Bob Goldthwait present their favorite films of all
time in a series of special screenings.

* MP4-Fest -- The program is the first organized look in Los Angeles at
the work by contemporary artists making videos exclusively for hand-
held devices such as Sony Playstations, iPods, PDAs and a number of
other small gadgets. Facets of MP4-Fest will be available online, on
flat-screens at the festival Cinema Lounge at the ArcLight Cinemas, at
a theatrical screening at the ArcLight Cinemas, and at LACE Gallery in
Hollywood.

Tickets to Silver Lake Film Festival screenings and related programs are $11 at the ArcLight Cinemas and $10 at all other venues, unless otherwise designated. Advance tickets to screenings and additional information about the festival, including addresses of venues and screening times, are available at www.silverlakefilmfestival.org.

Source: Silver Lake Film Festival

CONTACT: Greg Ptacek, +1-323-660-1935, gregptacek@earthlink.net, for
Silver Lake Film Festival

Web site: http://www.silverlakefilmfestival.org/

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