The 2009 Miami International Film Festival
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The 2009 Miami International Film Festival will take place from March 6th to March 15th at six venues throughout the city. The majestic 1400-seat Gusman Theatre, located in the downtown area, is the site where the opening and closing films are shown. The Awards Ceremony and the Career Achievement Tribute will also be held at the Gusman, as well as a number of Red Carpet events and screenings. Dramatic and Documentary features competing for awards usually receive three screenings at smaller venues located in Miami Beach, Little Havana and Coral Gables.
The Festival will show nearly 100 feature films from throughout the world, with a continued concentration on films from Latin America and Europe. The Miami festival has been hailed as the premiere showcase for Iberoamerican cinema in North America.
In 2009, the Festival will include a World Issues sidebar and a Cutting The Edge programme showcasing "provocative and sometimes extreme works that stand at the crossroads of video installations, boldly intersecting with other art disciplines". There will be 19 short films competing for cash awards, and a Preservation Screening Program consisting of restored prints of John Cassavetes' highly influential debut Shadows (1959) and his magnificent Faces (1968) starring Gena Rowlands. A program called Reel Music Scene will showcase music documentaries and videos.
Festival director Tiziana Finzi makes his debut this year. She was head of programming at the Venice Film Festival in the 1990s and programmer and director of the Locarno (Switzerland) Film Festival prior to her arrival in Miami. There are a number of apparent changes. The Miami festival has historically served, like the New York Film Festival, as a launching pad for U.S. distributors to showcase upcoming releases. This is no longer the case. There are very few films in this year's schedule that have distribution deals. Actually, the vast majority of the films in competition have never been exhibited in this country. The most important development is that the MIFF is placing even more emphasis on discovering new talent.
The recipient of the Career Achievement Award for 2009 is American iconoclast Abel Ferrara. The festival will exhibit seven of Mr. Ferrara's films. These include his undistributed Mary (2005), Go Go Tales (2007), Chelsea on the Rocks (2008) and his work-in-progress Mulberry St..
Let the films begin!