Releases
James Schamus to Receive Kanbar Screenwriting Award at 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival
Screenwriter/Producer/Film Executive Will Receive Honor, Presented by John Waters, at Film Society Awards Night, and an Onstage Tribute Featuring Ride with the Devil
2/23/2010
The San Francisco Film Society announced today that James Schamus will be the recipient of the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting at the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival (April 22–May 6). The Kanbar Award, which acknowledges the crucial importance of a script in the production of an exceptional film, will be presented to Schamus by John Waters at Film Society Awards Night Thursday, April 29 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel.
The Award is named in honor of Maurice Kanbar, a longtime member of the board of directors of the Film Society, film commissioner and philanthropist with a particular interest in supporting independent filmmakers. Kanbar is the creator of New York’s first multiplex theater and, most recently, Blue Angel Vodka.
The Film Society’s much-lauded Youth Education program will be the beneficiary of the black-tie fundraiser honoring Schamus. Also honored at the gala event will be the soon-to-be-announced recipients of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting and the Founder’s Directing Award. Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein are chairs of this year’s Film Society Awards Night, and Penelope Wong and Timothy Kochis are the honorary chairs.
Schamus will also be honored at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas at 1 pm, Saturday, May 1. An onstage interview with critic and cultural theorist B. Ruby Rich will be followed by the West Coast premiere of the newly completed director’s cut of Ride with the Devil (1999). Director Ang Lee’s underappreciated Civil War epic, with a cast including Tobey Maguire as a pistol-packing Missouri Bushwhacker, Jeffrey Wright, Simon Baker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jewel, is revitalized with crucial battle sequences restored and highlights Schamus’s period-perfect dialogue.
“The 2010 Kanbar Award highlights the writing accomplishments of a man with a uniquely multifaceted career as a writer, producer, executive and scholar,” says Rachel Rosen, SFFS director of programming. “We’re pleased to be able to honor James Schamus, who appreciates, as does Maurice Kanbar, the essential role that screenwriting plays in the genesis of a great film.”
An integral contributor to the American independent film business for more than two decades, James Schamus has the unique distinction of being an award-winning screenwriter and producer who is also a film executive. He is chief executive officer and cofounder of the worldwide film company Focus Features, which exists to produce, acquire and distribute original and daring films that challenge the mainstream to embrace and enjoy voices and visions from around the world.
As a screenwriter Schamus received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for his work on Ang Lee’s multi-Oscar-winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He has collaborated as writer and producer with Lee on 11 feature films. Brokeback Mountain, on which Schamus served as a producer, won three Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. Lee and Schamus’s other films together include Taking Woodstock, which Schamus adapted and produced; Lust, Caution, which Schamus cowrote and produced, and which won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the 2007 Venice International Film Festival; The Hulk, which Schamus wrote and produced; Ride with the Devil, which Schamus adapted and produced; The Ice Storm, which Schamus produced and adapted, and for which he earned the best screenplay prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival; Sense and Sensibility, which Schamus coproduced; Eat Drink Man Woman, which Schamus cowrote and associate-produced; The Wedding Banquet, which Schamus cowrote and produced; and Pushing Hands, which Schamus produced.
Focus’s releases have included seven more Academy Award winners: Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries and Joe Wright’s Atonement, as well as Henry Selick’s Coraline, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading and A Serious Man, Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice, Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven, François Ozon’s Swimming Pool and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams.
Upcoming releases include Greenberg from writer/director Noah Baumbach; Babies, directed by Thomas Balmès; Anton Corbijn’s The American; Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald’s The Eagle of the Ninth; writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story; Coppola’s Somewhere; and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right.
Prior to the formation of Focus, Schamus was copresident of the independent film production company Good Machine. He and his partners produced more than 40 films during an 11-year period, in collaboration with filmmakers including Lee, Haynes, Todd Solondz and Nicole Holofcener, and represented dozens more filmmakers, among them Pedro Almodóvar and the Coen brothers. Good Machine was honored with a ten-year retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Schamus is also a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory, and he currently serves on the board of directors of Creative Capital. He was the 2006 Presidential Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley in 2003.
Previous recipients of the Kanbar Award are James Toback (2009), Robert Towne (2008), Peter Morgan (2007), Jean-Claude Carrière (2006) and Paul Haggis (2005).
For tickets and information for Film Society Awards Night only call 415-561-5005.
For tickets ($20 Film Society members/$25 general) and information on the tribute to James Schamus at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas visit sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
For interviews contact hilary@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
San Francisco Film Society
The San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts and education organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in four core areas: Internationalism and Cross-Cultural Exchange, Educating and Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Media. Its activities are organized via three major program areas: Exhibition, Education and Filmmaker Services.
The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen and presents the San Francisco International Animation Festival, New Italian Cinema, Cinema by the Bay and French Cinema Now each fall. SFFS presents more than 300 days of programming each year, reaching a total audience of more than 100,000 people. Its acclaimed Youth Education program introduces international cinema and media literacy to more than 10,000 teachers and students annually.
SFFS publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, with broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film culture and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through Filmmaker Services, including grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship, production assistance and development, networking and conference events and professional-level filmmaker classes and workshops.
53rd San Francisco International Film Festival
The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 22–May 6, 2010 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and the Clay Theatre in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 80,000+ people.
For tickets and information, visit sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
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The Award is named in honor of Maurice Kanbar, a longtime member of the board of directors of the Film Society, film commissioner and philanthropist with a particular interest in supporting independent filmmakers. Kanbar is the creator of New York’s first multiplex theater and, most recently, Blue Angel Vodka.
The Film Society’s much-lauded Youth Education program will be the beneficiary of the black-tie fundraiser honoring Schamus. Also honored at the gala event will be the soon-to-be-announced recipients of the Peter J. Owens Award for excellence in acting and the Founder’s Directing Award. Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein are chairs of this year’s Film Society Awards Night, and Penelope Wong and Timothy Kochis are the honorary chairs.
Schamus will also be honored at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas at 1 pm, Saturday, May 1. An onstage interview with critic and cultural theorist B. Ruby Rich will be followed by the West Coast premiere of the newly completed director’s cut of Ride with the Devil (1999). Director Ang Lee’s underappreciated Civil War epic, with a cast including Tobey Maguire as a pistol-packing Missouri Bushwhacker, Jeffrey Wright, Simon Baker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Jewel, is revitalized with crucial battle sequences restored and highlights Schamus’s period-perfect dialogue.
“The 2010 Kanbar Award highlights the writing accomplishments of a man with a uniquely multifaceted career as a writer, producer, executive and scholar,” says Rachel Rosen, SFFS director of programming. “We’re pleased to be able to honor James Schamus, who appreciates, as does Maurice Kanbar, the essential role that screenwriting plays in the genesis of a great film.”
An integral contributor to the American independent film business for more than two decades, James Schamus has the unique distinction of being an award-winning screenwriter and producer who is also a film executive. He is chief executive officer and cofounder of the worldwide film company Focus Features, which exists to produce, acquire and distribute original and daring films that challenge the mainstream to embrace and enjoy voices and visions from around the world.
As a screenwriter Schamus received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category for his work on Ang Lee’s multi-Oscar-winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He has collaborated as writer and producer with Lee on 11 feature films. Brokeback Mountain, on which Schamus served as a producer, won three Academy Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. Lee and Schamus’s other films together include Taking Woodstock, which Schamus adapted and produced; Lust, Caution, which Schamus cowrote and produced, and which won the Golden Lion Award for Best Picture at the 2007 Venice International Film Festival; The Hulk, which Schamus wrote and produced; Ride with the Devil, which Schamus adapted and produced; The Ice Storm, which Schamus produced and adapted, and for which he earned the best screenplay prize at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival; Sense and Sensibility, which Schamus coproduced; Eat Drink Man Woman, which Schamus cowrote and associate-produced; The Wedding Banquet, which Schamus cowrote and produced; and Pushing Hands, which Schamus produced.
Focus’s releases have included seven more Academy Award winners: Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Walter Salles’s The Motorcycle Diaries and Joe Wright’s Atonement, as well as Henry Selick’s Coraline, Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading and A Serious Man, Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges, Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice, Todd Haynes’s Far from Heaven, François Ozon’s Swimming Pool and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams.
Upcoming releases include Greenberg from writer/director Noah Baumbach; Babies, directed by Thomas Balmès; Anton Corbijn’s The American; Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald’s The Eagle of the Ninth; writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story; Coppola’s Somewhere; and Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right.
Prior to the formation of Focus, Schamus was copresident of the independent film production company Good Machine. He and his partners produced more than 40 films during an 11-year period, in collaboration with filmmakers including Lee, Haynes, Todd Solondz and Nicole Holofcener, and represented dozens more filmmakers, among them Pedro Almodóvar and the Coen brothers. Good Machine was honored with a ten-year retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Schamus is also a professor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, where he teaches film history and theory, and he currently serves on the board of directors of Creative Capital. He was the 2006 Presidential Fellow in the Humanities at the University of Chicago and received his Ph.D. in English from UC Berkeley in 2003.
Previous recipients of the Kanbar Award are James Toback (2009), Robert Towne (2008), Peter Morgan (2007), Jean-Claude Carrière (2006) and Paul Haggis (2005).
For tickets and information for Film Society Awards Night only call 415-561-5005.
For tickets ($20 Film Society members/$25 general) and information on the tribute to James Schamus at Sundance Kabuki Cinemas visit sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
For interviews contact hilary@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
San Francisco Film Society
The San Francisco Film Society is a nonprofit arts and education organization dedicated to celebrating the world of film and media in four core areas: Internationalism and Cross-Cultural Exchange, Educating and Inspiring Bay Area Youth, Showcasing Bay Area Film Culture and Exploring New Media. Its activities are organized via three major program areas: Exhibition, Education and Filmmaker Services.
The Film Society shows the best of world cinema year-round on its SFFS Screen and presents the San Francisco International Animation Festival, New Italian Cinema, Cinema by the Bay and French Cinema Now each fall. SFFS presents more than 300 days of programming each year, reaching a total audience of more than 100,000 people. Its acclaimed Youth Education program introduces international cinema and media literacy to more than 10,000 teachers and students annually.
SFFS publishes a daily online magazine, SF360.org, with broad-ranging news and features on Bay Area film culture and provides crucial support to the Bay Area filmmaking community through Filmmaker Services, including grants, residencies, fiscal sponsorship, production assistance and development, networking and conference events and professional-level filmmaker classes and workshops.
53rd San Francisco International Film Festival
The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 22–May 6, 2010 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, the Castro Theatre and the Clay Theatre in San Francisco and the Pacific Film Archive Theater in Berkeley. Held each spring for 15 days, the International is an extraordinary showcase of cinematic discovery and innovation in the country’s most beautiful city, featuring 15 juried awards, 200 films and live events with upwards of 100 participating filmmakers and diverse audiences of 80,000+ people.
For tickets and information, visit sffs.org or call 925-866-9559.
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