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Sometimes having good intentions and eye-witness testimony is not enough to make a topical, issues-driven movie connect with its anticipated audience.

The movie “Dea,” recently boarded by Hong Kong sales company Good Move Media, is a case in point. It probes the put-upon lives of foreign domestic helpers, who number several hundred thousand in Hong Kong, but are politically invisible.

These female helpers, mostly hailing from Indonesia or The Philippines, enable Hong Kong’s middle classes to function as double income families and facilitate the territory’s hard-charging, long-hours work culture. And yet foreign domestic helpers endure often demeaning living standards, sleeping in their employer’s smallest rooms, precarious employment conditions and widespread ridicule for their colorful group activities in public places on their Sunday rest days.

The film was written by a workshop of such women in Hong Kong and neighboring Macau, who had experienced sexual violence in the course of their work.

As with most festivals in a pandemic world, Slamdance Film Festival is changing things up with their 2021 edition. Moving a few weeks back to February 12-25, no longer directly competing with Sundance Film Festival, the festival will be taking place primarily virtually. In quite a feat of accessibility, a full festival pass is also now available for free––if you secure yours by December 31st. After that, they are going up to $10, which is still a steal.

The festival has also announced its full lineup, with 25 features along with 107 shorts and episodic. Films, Q&As, and panels will be available on Slamdance.com, AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, and YouTube, while in-person events will take place in Joshua Tree with drive-ins open to the public on February 13th and 14th as well as the closing night screening at a Los Angeles drive-in on February 25.

Check out the lineup below and reserve your festival pass here.

Remember film festivals? Especially in person ones? Well, they won’t be returning for a bit, but 2021 will still be filled with festivals, just of the mostly virtual variety. One such fest is the Slamdance Film Festival, which has in the past taken place alongside the Sundance Film Festival. Scheduled for February 12th until the 25th, Slamdance is taking the hybrid route, making their selections available virtually. The lineup was announced today, so the first real movie gathering of next year (from the comfort of our own homes) is now known. Read on to see the lineup, as well as a bit about what will be populating Slamdance… Here now is the 2021 Slamdance Film Festival lineup, via a Deadline press release: Narrative Features A Brixton Tale World Premiere Directors: Darragh Carey & Bertrand Desrochers – Screenwriters: Rupert Baynham, Darragh Carey, Chi Mai – Producers: Rupert Baynham, Dennis Gyamfi, Beau Rambaut A voyeuristic, wealthy...

Like all festivals, the Slamdance Film Festival is set to shift to a hybrid fest for its 27th edition — but it isn’t holding back on its programming as it will feature 20 feature film premieres while highlighting diverse voices and accessibility. With the theme “Greenlight Yourself,” the indie-driven fest will also launch a new program titled Unstoppable, a showcase for creators with disabilities.

The fest will run February 12-25, 2021 with all films, Q&As and panels available virtually via Slamdance.com, AppleTV, Roku, Firestick, and YouTube. In addition, there will be a two-night drive-in presentation in Joshua Tree, CA open to the public on February 13-14 as well as the closing-night screening at a Los Angeles drive-in on February 25.

“Our theme this year was inspired by the incredible resilience and creativity evidenced by our community and our team over the past few unprecedented months,” said Slamdance president and co-founder Peter Baxter.

Federico Fellini's fourth film to win the foreign Oscar, 1973's "Amarcord" will receive a special tribute at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, which runs September 2-12. A new restoration from eminent preservation entity Cineteca di Bologna will world-premiere — in collaboration with Warner Bros. and Italy's Cristaldi Film — at the festival this Fall. Cowritten by poet Tonino Guerra and shot at Rome's famed Cinecitta Studios, Fellini's semi-autobiographical ode to 1930s fascist Italy boasts a menagerie of eccentric, colorful characters played by the likes of Bruno Zanin, Magali Noël, Pupella Maggio and Armando Brancia. Nina Rota, of course, delivers yet another magical score. "Amarcord" will mark the second Fellini reprint of the year, as the British Film Institute unveiled a new transfer of the director's 1963 meta-classic "8 1/2" in May. Meanwhile, Cineteca di Bologna is also at work on a multiyear project to resurrect and restore the oeuvre of...

Amarcord (1973) Direction: Federico Fellini Cast: Bruno Zanin, Magali Noël, Pupella Maggio, Armando Brancia, Ciccio Ingrassia, Nando Orfei, Luigi Rossi, Gianfilippo Carcano, Josiane Tanzilli, Maria Antonietta Beluzzi , Giuseppe Ianigro, Ferruccio Brembilla Screenplay: Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra Oscar Movies Amarcord By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: Federico Fellini's Amarcord has often been linked with Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander as films made by old men looking back on their youth. While this is true, Amarcord has a loose narrative structure in which the lives of many characters are detailed in comic vignettes, whereas Fanny and Alexander is a straightforward drama. In fact, Amarcord shares a deeper affinity with another work that was obviously influenced by it: Woody Allen's grossly underrated Radio Days. Which of those two films is better is debatable, though Radio Days is both tighter and a bit deeper in characterization. (Allen's opening classroom scenes in Annie...

Hitting movie theaters this weekend:

The Eagle – Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland

Gnomeo and Juliet – James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Maggie Smith

Just Go with It – Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Brooklyn Decker

Justin Bieber: Never Say Never – Justin Bieber, Boys II Men, Miley Cyrus

In Her Skin – Guy Pearce, Sam Neill, Miranda Otto (limited)

Movie of the Week

The Eagle

The Stars: Channing Tatum, Jamie Bell, Donald Sutherland

The Plot: In Roman-ruled Britain, a young Roman soldier endeavors to honor his father’s memory by finding his lost legion’s golden emblem.

The Buzz: It didn’t blow me away, but the trailer for The Eagle did make me want to check this one out in the theater. The cinematography and filming locales of The Eagle look to be fantastic. The score in the trailer was fairly derivative; standard music to augment the excitement and adventure that such a film promises.