Downtown Film Festival Announces August Lineup

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — The Downtown Film Festival, coming to Broadway and the Arts District in August, has announced its programming lineup. The festival claims to feature more than 200 films over its five days.

It opens at the Orpheum on August 13th with IFC’s “In Search of a Midnight Kiss,” by director Alex Holdridge. It closes with the documentary “Flow,” from director Irena Salina.

The festival also looks to highlight Downtown L.A. and its role in cinema history. From the release:

In the beginning of a new tradition, the festival’s Centerpiece Gala presentation is devoted to celebrating downtown L.A.’s unique starring role in the early development of the city’s movie industry and American cinema. The downtown’s Historic Theatre District contains more architecturally significant movie theaters than any place in the world. This year’s Centerpiece film is the 1929 classic silent film “Piccadilly,” starring silver screen siren Anna May Wong – the Silent Era’s most significant female Asian-American actress (Wong was born in downtown’s Chinatown neighborhood). The film will be presented at the historic Los Angeles Theatre.

It continues:

Other highlights include the Los Angeles premiere screenings of Overture’s “Traitor,” by writer-director Jefrey Nachamanoff (writer of 2004’s blockbuster hit “Day After Tomorrow”) and starring Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce and Jeff Daniels; “Guest of Cindy Sherman,” a documentary about the reclusive superstar artist-photographer; “Remembering Phil,” starring Nicholas Turturro and Don Castellanata (best known as the voice of Homer Simpson); and “Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans,” a documentary feature exploring the roots of a historic African-American community that became the birthplace of jazz and a progenitor of the civil rights movement.

The ambitious line-up also includes a series of films from Africa, one highlighting American-Latino filmmakers, a set of shorts from Downtowners, a drive-in movie at SCI-Arc, and a series of lunchtime shorts at the Biltmore geared for the office crowd.

A full schedule should be appearing on the festival’s website shortly.

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