Albany, New York, will host the Capital Cinema Cultural Exchange’s first public forum from March 14-17.

The forum will concentrate on welcoming directors, writers, producers and casting directors who are working on character-driven films and stories of social consequence now in development.

“For every big budget, blockbuster film you see in multiplex theaters, there are perhaps thousands of independent films in various stages of completion searching to one day reach an audience,” says Michael Camoin [pictured], a filmmaker in upstate New York who formed CCCE with other industry professionals and organisations. “Some of these break out into Oscar nominees, but the vast majority fails to ever see the inside of a theater or even online distribution.”

Industry panelists at the event will include US producer Larry Jackson, Moscow-based executive producer Dmitry Pirkulov, Canadian co-production specialist Sam Coppola, Helen Rousse of Total Casting, line producer Norman Berns and attorney Christopher Schiller.

The 12 projects selected for the first CCCE Filmmakers Lab include six features, five documentaries and one short.

They are:

FEATURES

An American Legacy by Tom Mercer, about a young woman in the 19th century who discovers a family secret

The Lily of the Mohawks by Jack Casey, about a Mohawk maiden at the dawn of the New World

Harmatia by Cecelia Levin, in which a recovering addict’s life is bettered when she meets a retired professor

Blood And Honor by William Berezansky, following the true story of a Prussian war prisoner who moves to Canada

An untitled historic Dutch-Canadian co-production (no further details available)

An Israeli comedy (no further details available)

DOCUMENTARIES

The Cage House by Ellie Bernstein, about the conflict in Hebron

The Neighborhood That Disappeared, by Mary Paley and John Rome, about how an expanding city destroyed an Italian neighborhood

Life or Death by Mike Camoin, about two families devastated by mental illness and murder

Mourning In The Garden of Eden by Gwendolen Cates, about cultural destruction in the Iraq war

Two Row by Gwendolen Cates, about Native American activists fighting pollution

SHORT

Stepping Toward The Lion by John Lyden, about interfaith storytelling

 

 

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