Three Filmmakers Named to 2012 TFPF Review Panel
We're excited at the Austin Film Society to annouce that filmmakers Matthew Akers (Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present), Paola Mendoza (Entre Nos) and Brent Hoff (Wholphin) will be coming to town in August to serve on our 2012 Texas Filmmakers' Product Fund review panel. All three will be part of the process of dividing up the $100,000 in cash and in-kind support that will go toward helping Texas filmmakers work on their film and video projects.
TFPF, created in 1996, has given away around $1.2 million to assist Texas filmmakers in getting their projects made. Funding for the program comes from revenues from benefit film premieres as well as donations and the Texas Commission on the Arts. So far, over 348 projects have been the beneficiary of TFPF grants. This year, we received over 168 applications seeking funding. Grants for the 2012 TFPF will be announced on Monday, August 27.
"We're honored to have three highly accomplished filmmakers join us in Austin to determine this year's Texas Filmmakers' Production Fund recipients," said Holly Herrick, AFS associate artistic director. "The panelists represent a broad spectrum of the creative potential of independent film; all have worked across forms and genres throughout their careers. They are well suited to identify a diverse group of projects in need of TFPF support."
A number of past TFPF grantees have had success with their films. PJ Raval was announced as a Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, while Scott Thurman's The Revisionaries was recently purchased by Kino Lorber Films, and won a special jury prize earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival. 2011 TFPF recipients David and Nathan Zellner's Kid-Thing has screened at a number of major international film festivals this year.
In conjunction with TFPF, AFS will hold several special screenings featuring the aforementioned panelists. On Tuesday, August 22 at 7 pm, Austin audiences can catch a screening of Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, along with a Q&A session with Akers, the film's director and cinematographer. On Wednesday, August 23 at 9:30 pm, Hoff will host "The Best of Wholphin," serving up a selection of short films from the quarterly DVD magazine. Both screenings take place at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar and tickets are available via the AFS website.
Find out more about TFPF and this year's events at www.austinfilm.org.
PANELIST BIOS
Matthew Akers is the director and cinematographer of the HBO feature documentary film Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present about artist Marina Abramović, which premiered at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. Akers is a prolific and award-winning producer, director, photographer and cinematographer. His varied work spans documentaries, commercials, music videos, television series and more, and has aired on PBS, HBO, National Geographic and the Sundance Channel. He was producer and camera operator on Brett Morgen’s Peabody-Award winning Nimrod Nation for Sundance Channel, and the series Carrier and Circus for PBS. Recently he has created narrative commercial work under the moniker "Matt and Jean," and was the series producer and cinematographer on a National Geographic Television series about the medical marijuana industry in Colorado.
Brent Hoff is a writer, filmmaker and co-founder of Wholphin DVD where he films drunk bees, crying competitions and illegal trans-border volleyball matches. Before that he authored a book on pandemic disease transmission, made TV at The Daily Show, VH1 and Nickelodeon, and wrote articles about squid. His short Walleyball was chosen as part of TED's Pangea Day and his feature script El Diablo Rojo was recently awarded a Tribeca Sloan grant as well as the 2011 FIND film grant. His feature on the last days of Ol' Dirty Bastard is currently in production.
Paola Mendoza is an award-winning filmmaker and an accomplished actor. She most recently helmed the documentary La Toma, which tells the story of a rural village in Colombia fighting their eviction against a multinational corporation because of the land’s vast natural resources. Ms. Mendoza made her narrative directorial debut with Entre Nos, which world premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and was awarded Honorable Mention by the jury. Ms. Mendoza also directed the documentaries Autumn's Eyes and Still Standing, and produced Without the King for RedEnvelope Entertainment. She was a nominee for the 2008 and 2010 NALIP Estel Awards, given to Latino filmmakers that show extraordinary promise in the field of directing, and was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Film. As an actress, Mendoza has appeared in numerous television shows and films, including Sangre de mi Sangre, which won the 2007 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards. She also starred in the critically acclaimed On the Outs, a film she co-wrote. An accomplished public speaker, Ms. Mendoza was invited to speak by the United Nations at the Iberoamerican Creative Summit about the state of women in Latin America.