AFI award winners from LEFT to RIGHT: Daniel Stamm (DIR: A NECESSARY DEATH), Brian Udovich (PROD: A NECESSARY DEATH) Audience Award winner for Narrative Feature, Kief Davidson (DIR/PROD: KASSIM THE DREAM) Grand Jury Prize winner and Audience Award co-winner for Documentary Feature, Rose Kuo (Artistic Director), Lane Kneedler (Senior Programmer), Kassim "The Dream" Ouma, Igor Voloshin (DIR: NIRVANA) Special Mention for Narrative Feature, Shaz Bennett (Associate Artistic Director).

The annual AFI festival based at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood this year presented an exciting and very significant number of superb films. The festival opened on October 30 with a gala screening of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt starring Meryl Streep. Other big event, special screenings, reviews of which will follow on the site included Steven Soderburgh's biographical masterpiece, Che, with an Oscar deserving performance by Benicio Del Toro. Also presented were The Brothers Bloom, with Adrian Brody, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz; The Wrestler with who everyone thinks is going to win the Oscar, Mickey Rourke; and a nice little film about grown-up love called Last Chance Harvey with grown up actors, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. It all closed with a spectacular gala screening of Edward Zwick's Defiance, with Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell and based on a true story of Byelorussian brothers who fought the Nazis. It's a story that is both heroic and sobering, with a nice balance of action, history and melodrama.

It all began when I picked up my press creds at The Roosevelt Hotel. I was a first timer covering the festival, so I had a few things to learn about juggling screenings. One little glitch was the "historic election" of fellow classmate Barack Obama, which probably turned out to be an unfortunate scheduling conflict for the the AFI folks. In fact, on Wednesday evening when I showed up for the Tilda Swinton Tribute (separate coverage will follow), the halls were so quiet that even the ticket takers assumed people had exhausted themselves. Yet I soldiered on and hit, not only the special events but some other films of note. One lesson learned, next year, sans presidential election, daily blogging coverage will be in order.

As far as features were concerned my pick of the festival would have to be Che in the larger budget category. This film is a masterpiece and signals the arrival for good of high quality digital cams like the Red on which it was shot. Another outstanding feature was Hunger, a film by the Irish artist Steve McQueen on the famous hunger strike by Bobby Sands. Also worth mentioning in the feature cateogry was Skin, a compelling story of a biological throwback in apartheid era South Africa who was born with dark skin to "white" parents.

Kassim the Dream which won in the Best Documentary category is an outstanding film directed by Kief Davidson about an absolutely engaging former child soldier from Uganda who has rapidly become a world champion boxer. It's a great story arc with a charismatic person at the center, which all equals success. The World We Want inspires and perhaps teaches adults and children that community organizing does in fact make the world a better place.

Awards for the festival are as follows:
Grand Jury Prize, Feature - Acne
Best Documentary - Kassim the Dream
Grand Jury Prize, Short - The Legless Boy Cannot Dance
Audience Award for Best Feature - A Necessary Death
Audience Award for Best Documentary (2) - Kassim the Dream and The World We Want
Audience Award for Best Short - Busco Personas: The Faces of Columbia's War


I can't say enough about this festival. Wonderfully organized, centrally located and most significantly with an outstanding slate of great films all of which, unfortunately, I was not able to see. Reviews of the above referenced films and tribute will follow as will my coverage of The American Film Market.