
Photograph ©Movie City Entertainment
Star, Chris Mulkey and Director, Murray Mintz
accepting Crystal Penguin awards for best actor
and best director.
McMurdo Sound, Antarctica - The First Annual Antarctic Film Festival, has gotten off to a hot start, which says a lot for summer in Antarctica, with little known faux Cinema Verite feature BAD BUSINESS(U.S.A - 1998),
starring Chris Mulkey as a hitman with a heart, grabbing the prestigious CRYSTAL PENGUIN
award for Best Picture and nine more "Pengi's." Best Director award went to Murray Mintz who turned in a magnificent job after years of languishing in the depths of Hollywood development hell. The pair (Mulkey and Mintz also snatched a Crystal Penguin for their deft humorous screenplay, which judges deemed "avante garde" for it's experimental use of subjective camera.
In the question and answer period following the world premiere screening, the brave souls who ventured out in the blizzard-like conditions, heard Mintz explain his use of subjective camera " to make the camera an actual character in the film, for the first time in a feature film. " [more]
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McMurdo Sound, Antarctica - In Keeping with the idea of being left out in the cold, the jury has selected the great Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, for the Antarctic Film Festival's Lifetime achievement of award for "Great Films shot on Ice." Eisenstein, who died at the beginning of the cold war, made only a half dozen feature films (including the ill fated Que Viva Mexico) before his untimely death from heart disease at the age of 50, shortly after the beginning of the cold war. He left the world a body of work of just six feature films, but each is a masterpiece and as each is studied by successive generation of filmmakers we continue to learn from him. There is little doubt that has he lived, his work would have certainly won awards at, Cannes or Venice, or Berlin and perhaps even at Sundance.
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From Alexander Nevsky (1938) The greatest film shot on ice. ©
Mosfilm
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For periods during his career, Sergei Eisenstein was certainly a filmmaker left out in the cold. After making his last film, Ivan The Terrible, Eisenstein was fearful that Stalin would not let him work again. After completing that film, he was quoted as saying "I may be the only director who ever committed suicide by making a film ". The Festival Jury found themselves sad at the thought that Eisenstein's entire body of work consists of only six films (Including the ill fated Que Viva Mexico),each a masterpiece in its own right. So, in our debut year we salute Sergei Megalopolis Eisenstein for making the greatest film shot on ice and for all of lessons his films have taught us.
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