Boots Riley News

The 2019 Film Independent Spirit Award winners were announced today, February 23. The awards ceremony was held on the beach in Santa Monica, just north of the Santa Monica Pier, and was broadcast live exclusively on IFC.

The nominees for the 50th NAACP Image Awards were exclusively announced today at the Television Critics Association's (TCA) TV One's joint press conference with Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP and Alfred Liggins, Chairman and CEO of TV One. The winners will be revealed during the Two-Hour LIVE TV special airing on TV One on Saturday, March 30, 2019.

Peace of Mind is like a soundtrack to this crazy time in America. Each of the eight songs has a different theme — like immigration, voter suppression, mental health, etc. And Bhi didn't want to just release them into the album-cycle ether.  So, he and the team at Critical Frequency have packaged these songs, one per episode, into what plays like a half-hour radio show w/ conversations, storytelling and cool sound design (comprised entirely of the stems for that song).  At the end, Bhi shares the full song and the story behind it.  

Sundance Institute will convene dozens of offscreen events, including inclusive and intersectional conversations on the next wave of storytelling, radical data transparency, the future of democracy at its intersection with the arts, behind-the-scenes panels on the art of filmmaking and musical performances that range from intimate to raucous at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival taking place in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Sundance, Utah, January 24 through February 3, 2019.

Final Draft, a Cast & Crew Company, now in its 28thyear as the industry standard for screenwriting software, today announced the honorees for the 14thAnnual Final Draft Awards. Academy Award® winning screenwriter Callie Khouri will be presented the prestigious Hall of Fame Award for her prolific contribution to the art of screenwriting and devotion to writers and the writing community. This year's New Voice Award recipient for Film is writer-director Boots Riley whose critically-acclaimed debut feature Sorry To Bother You announced the arrival of Riley as an exciting, brave new voice in cinema. The New Voice Award for Television will be presented to Tanya Saracho, the dynamic creator and executive producer of the acclaimed Starz Original series Vida. Final Draft will also announce the winners of the prestigious 2018 Big Break® Screenwriting Contest. The 14thAnnual Final Draft Awards will be held at the Paramount Theatre on the Paramount Studios lot in Hollywood, CA on Jan. 29th and will be hosted by comedy duo Randy and Jason Sklar (The Sklar Brothers).

Directors Guild of America President Thomas Schlamme today announced the five nominees for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film for 2018. 

Today, the five nominees for this year's prestigious EE Rising Star Award were announced at BAFTA's headquarters, 195 Piccadilly in London.

Roma took two top awards from the Toronto Film Critics Association, named the year's Best Picture winner with Alfonso Cuarón chosen Best Director.

Fifty-eight film and television writers have been named finalists for The 44 th Annual HUMANITAS Prize, it was announced today by HUMANITAS Executive Director Cathleen Young and President Ali LeRoi. The writers are nominated for their work in the 30-minute Comedy, 60-minute Drama, Children's Teleplay, Independent Feature Film, Drama Feature Film, Comedy Feature Film, Family Feature Film and Documentary categories. The HUMANITAS Prize was created to honor film and television writers whose work inspires compassion, hope, and understanding in the human family.

The Gotham Awards ceremony was held last night, Monday, November 26th, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

This morning, Film Independent announced the nominations for the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards. The Spirit Awards are the primary fundraiser for Film Independent's year-round programs, which cultivate the careers of emerging filmmakers and promote diversity in the industry. Film Independent President Josh Welsh presided over the press conference held at the W Hotel in Hollywood, with actors Gemma Chan and Molly Shannon presenting the nominations. Nominees for Best Feature included Eighth Grade, First Reformed, If Beale Street Could Talk, Leave No Trace and You Were Never Really Here.

Three established Bay Area performance organizations are coming together to create a new immersive multidisciplinary experience, offering a future vision of catharsis, engagement, and optimism, so needed in this cultural moment. The powerful storytelling of Crowded Fire Theater and playwright Star Finch, the musical and poetic impetus of Ensemble Mik Nawooj, and the diverse and unique physical rhythms of AXIS Dance Company come together at the beautiful Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre. In this immersive study of aesthetics, the artists merge hip-hop, contemporary dance, and theater into a boundary-pushing work featuring a 12-person orchestra; a work which challenges the conventions of performing arts at large while creating a future vision that can be replicated in communities in need of healing throughout the country.

The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the nation's premier member organization of independent storytellers, announced today the nominees for the 28th Annual IFP Gotham Awards. Ten competitive awards will be presented to independent features and series. In addition to the competitive awards, Gotham Tributes will be given to actors Rachel Weisz and Willem Dafoe, director Paul Greengrass, and the Gotham Industry Tribute to Jon Kamen.

Following a successful 4-city tour of Florida that included a well-received appearance at the Forward Motion Physically Integrated Dance Festival in Miami, the company brings its vaunted skill set back to the Bay Area with select performances that include a newly reconceived staging of Robert Dekkers' Flutter, along with AXIS Artistic Director Marc Brew's Quartet No.1 to the Berkeley Ballet Theater, that will then be followed by a collaboration with Crowded Fire Theater, Star Finch, and Ensemble Mik Nawooj at the Bay View Opera House in San Francisco entitled Death Become Life: Banish Darkness, all before segueing to its 2019-20 season that will include a special Oakland-based educational event for Dance Access Day in February, as well as the world premiere of Alice in Oakland-their ambitious and much anticipated collaboration with Arthur Pita-coming to and co-presented by Z Space in San Francisco, November 2019

Whiskey Bayou Records proudly releases Pain By Numbers, the new album by acclaimed guitarist-vocalist, Eric McFadden.

Indie Memphis Film Festival is pleased to announce the full slate of films for its 2018 incarnation, spanning from November 1st - 5th, 2018. This year's festival promises to be a very exciting and wildly varied one, featuring five World Premiere screenings and one U.S. Premiere screening, as well as Special Presentations such as CABIN BOY with Chris Elliott in attendance and Barbara Loden's feminist masterpiece WANDA presented by Amy Seimetz (Showtime's “The Girlfriend Experience”), as well as a retrospective of the recent films of filmmaker Hong Sangsoo.

As the first Asian-American solo rapper to perform at Lollapalooza and Coachella and to release a greatest hits record, LYRICS BORN has broken through countless cultural, racial and musical barriers to cement his illustrious career. Today he becomes the first Asian-American solo rapper to release a 10th album -- a record of funk and soul woven into classic, boom-bap Hip Hop called Quite A Life via Mobile Home Recordings. 

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment presents SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, arriving on Digital and Movies Anywhere October 9 and on Blu-ray and DVD October 23.

The Indie Memphis Film Festival presented by Duncan Williams, Inc. announces select special events for the 21st edition (November 1st - 5th, 2018).