Since its inception in 2009, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival (SFIFF) has always been a homegrown shindig. Moreover, under the auspices of sibling cinephiles Jacques and Liesette Paisner, it's also a family affair. The Paisners, former programmers at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, have nurtured a lifelong love of movies. Although Jacques, the festival's founder and executive director, was born in Minneapolis, he was raised in Santa Fe and his sister was born here. READ MORE

In the summer of 2015, I called my mother to tell her she had to move out of her house in Portland, Oregon. My sister, on conference call from Minneapolis, agreed. We were both breathless. That morning, we'd inhaled Kathryn Schulz's infamous New Yorker article, "The Really Big One" ("An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when"). READ MORE

"Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin released a new book this week, but it wasn't the one fans have been pining for. "The Winds of Winter," the sixth installment in his "Song of Ice and Fire" series, remains elusive. In its place: "Fire and Blood," a mammoth history of the Targaryen dynasty with all the dragon fire, platinum tresses and shameless inbreeding that readers (and HBO subscribers) would expect. READ MORE

America
Matthew K. Gutierrez
Time catches up with us all, and for 93-year old America, the twilight of her life culminates in gathering her three grandsons to care for her in the feature-length documentary debut from co-directors Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside. READ MORE

Bill Plympton isn't your average animator. In fact, he's entirely unaverage. It isn't just that Plympton, self-proclaimed King of the Indie Animators, is one of very few feature filmmakers who still works entirely with hand-drawn animation. It's that his stories are wildly, fascinatingly unconventional. READ MORE

For the fifth consecutive year, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival has been named one of 50 film festivals "worth the entry fee," according to MovieMaker Magazine, a quarterly trade publication that has produced an annual list of top-tier festivals in the U.S. and abroad since at least 2012. READ MORE

The virtual reality and augmented reality world moves at a quick rate.
And the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival is recognizing that.
The annual event is teaming up with the Institute of American Indian Arts to screen films on its state-of-the-art Digital Dome.
This new addition to the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival's diverse programming will not only allow SFIFF to screen the most cutting-edge spherical films, but also invite the audience to experience the incredible 360 degree experience of the IAIA Digital Dome. READ MORE

Ten years.
That's the milestone the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival is celebrating this year.
It recently released the first 10 features to be screened during the festival, which takes place Oct. 17-21 in Santa Fe.
The first 10 films are: READ MORE

Film premieres, filmmakers from around the globe, awards galas, celebrity guests, and spectacular parties erupt into the main event this October.

THE FEST THAT WAS DUBBED "A YOUNG SUNDANCE" BY INDIEWIRE MAGAZINE PRESENTS ITS TENTH SEASON!!!
The Santa Fe Independent Film Fest begins October 17th and comes to a close October 21st, presenting films, discussions and parties in the heart of downtown Santa Fe. READ MORE

The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival will honour the city's rich history, as a centre for Native American arts and culture, by announcing its Indigenous Film Programme, which aims to highlight the best new short film projects by indigenous filmmakers, and feature films, including indigenous themes, and subjects. The 10th edition of the festival will run from 17 October to 21 October. READ MORE

The 10th annual Santa Fe Independent Film Festival is October 17-21, 2018 and showcases over 30 feature films and 60 shorts over five days and nights at venues around Santa Fe. The venues include Violet Crown, Jean Cocteau, the Lensic Performance Arts Center, CCA and The Screen. The festival has an amazing selection of the hottest independent films of 2018, which include films from New Mexico, internationally acclaimed and world premieres, as well as community events, galas, educational panels and discussions, and much more. READ MORE

Much like the movies in its lineup, the inaugural Santa Fe Independent Film Festival had a dogged crew and a bare-bones budget. Jacques Paisner and two like-minded friends--David Moore and actor Gary Farmer--came up with the idea for the festival in 2009 and transformed the nonprofit teen arts center Warehouse 21 into a makeshift theater. READ MORE

KSFR's Wake-Up Call for October 16, 2018
Today on KSFR's fall fund-drive version of Wake-Up Call, host Tom Trowbridge speaks with Laura Green, co-director of a new documentary titled, "The Providers," which will screen on October 18 at 5pm and October 21st at 3:30pm at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, as part of the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. READ MORE

Award-winning Documentary 'The Providers' To Be Screened at UNM
Film features three UNM Heath Sciences Center alumni.

A free screening of the award-winning documentary "The Providers" will be shown on Thursday, Jan. 17, at 6 p.m. at The University of the New Mexico Continuing Education Auditorium, 1634 University Blvd. NE. Doors open at 5 p.m. READ MORE

As a filmmaker, one hopes a film will last.

Glenn Silber's 1979 Oscar-nominated documentary "The War at Home" is finding a new audience decades after its initial release.

The Santa Fe-based filmmaker has gone on to restore the original version and it is making its way across the country with screenings. READ MORE

Watching The Blessing, Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein's exquisite portrait of one family on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, during the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival this month marked one of the rare times I've seen a doc that could have used a longer (theatrical) cut. READ MORE

The Blessing, the latest from the Emmy Award-winning team of Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein, is the story of a Navajo coal miner and single dad as well as his teenage daughter, who navigate life on their reservation in northern Arizona. Other than Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside's stealthy stunner America, I can't think of another documentary I've seen this year in which the simplest of premises yields such an emotional powder keg. READ MORE

Part of making a great documentary is having the trust of your subjects.
In the case of "The Blessing," Hunter Robert Baker and Jordan Fein did just that.
The two were able to tell a poignant story.
"We worked together to find a way to not only bring the reality of the present and the importance of the stories from their past; we're also able to bring the audience into the world that they might not have access to," Fein says. READ MORE

The Blessing takes a while to warm up, but once it captures your attention, you can't help but watch. This documentary not only has a powerful story to tell, but it's all done in surprising ways that are much more intimate, organic, and dramatic than expected. READ MORE

Director Lee Chang-dong's slow-burn thriller is a love triangle. In this atmospheric psychodrama, Jong-su (Ah-In Yoo) is a disaffected young man down on his luck. He wanders the commercial districts of Paju, South Korea, delivering merchandise amid market carts and hustlers hawking items at discounted prices and luring customers with perky young women. READ MORE

Local filmmaker Alejandro Montoya Marin's award-winning film Monday makes its Santa Fe debut at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival (SFIFF). The action-comedy follows Jim as he gets fired and dumped and then staggers into the midst of a ruthless cartel war. READ MORE

Santa Fe's own Adam Horowitz, producer, writer, and director of Nuclear Savage, begins this unsettling documentary on secret radiation experiments conducted on Pacific Islanders with a brief history of the Marshall Islands, from the first European contact there to the devastating tests on Bikini Atoll starting in 1946. Early in the film, footage is shown of the Castle Bravo detonation over the atoll, a 15-megaton hydrogen blast that, in addition to its deleterious impact on the environment, took an immediate and lasting toll on the health of human populations. In the 12 years after that first test, the U.S. government…READ MORE

The Yazidi people, an Iraqi religious minority, were the victims of genocide by the Islamic State in 2014 when terrorists invaded Sinjar. Men were murdered en masse and women and children were kidnapped, raped, and tortured. Some Yazidis were able to flee into the mountains, while many others perished. Nadia Murad, now twenty-five years old, escaped captivity and sexual slavery after three months and is now the first United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. READ MORE

Alexandria Bombach had one of those weeks.
"Is it really Friday?" she said, laughing. "I could've sworn it was Saturday."
It was Friday afternoon, one more day in what has been an exhausting stretch for Bombach, 32, a Santa Fe-based documentarian. The tax has been both physical, as she tours with her latest acclaimed film, and emotional, as the subject matter of that feature is genocide and a survivor's struggle to be heard. READ MORE

"Palaio Faliro" screening at the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival
Friday, Oct 19th - 2018
DESCRIPTION:
Salt water and sand, salt water and ash. On a busy Athens beach an American woman receives a message from the sea...
Kiki Love Productions is excited to announce that the short film, Palaio Faliro, is a Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Official Selection. READ MORE

In the grocery store or at the airport, Dick Rosemont's shirts turn heads.
"It ranges everywhere from someone walking by and saying 'Oh, nice shirt' to 'Wow' and creating a conversation," he said of the comments he gets from passersby.
And those who know Dick, like the tellers at his credit union or the people who fill his prescriptions, always stop to check out what shirt he's sporting. READ MORE

A documentary has the potential to be powerful.
In the case of "Walking Thunder: Ode to the African Elephant," it's just that.
The film spans more than a decade, as a family of photographers explores the importance of the elephant to the people of Africa, the wildlife and the larger world in this critical time.
It is directed by Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson, both based in Santa Fe. READ MORE

The Haida Gwaii, a chain of islands along Canada's Pacific Northwest coast, is the home of the Haida Nation--a people beginning to recover from the multigenerational trauma of forced assimilation in Canadian Indian residential schools, where thousands of children were physically and sexually abused. Their forebears were beaten in an attempt to strip them of their traditional ways, while villages became victims of logging and the people succumbed to the ravages of alcoholism and sadness. READ MORE