The Gold Coast International Film Festival is currently celebrating as three of its recent films receive Academy Award nominations.
This continues a record by the festival of screening dozens of Oscar winners and nominees over the past few years alone.
“The Salesman,” which GCIFF screened to three sold-out houses in Great Neck and Port Washington, won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
“Life, Animated,” produced by New Hyde Park native Carolyn Hepburn, was nominated for Best Feature Documentary.
This film, based on the bestselling book, is the story of a young boy with autism who learns to communicate through the magic of Disney films.
GCIFF audiences were treated to a preview of this film last summer and at an encore screening targeted to teachers and students in the community.
Hepburn participated in post-screening Q&As at both screenings.
“Joe’s Violin,” winner of GCIFF’s Director’s Choice Award, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film.
Both festival screenings of “Joe’s Violin” screened to nearly sold-out audiences and included Q&As with Joe Feingold (the Joe in the film) and the student and teacher featured in the movie.
One screening, held on the LIU Post campus, also included a concert of music inspired by the film performed by guest musicians from the Port Washington and Elwood school districts and the Long Island High School for the Arts playing alongside student and faculty musicians from LIU.
As the GCIFF anxiously awaits the announcement of the winners of this year’s Academy Awards, it continues to screen the best independent and studio films followed by enlightening post-screening Q&As, including a special conversation with Patrick Harrison, the director of New York Programs and Membership for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences following the Feb. 22 screening of the 2017 Academy Award nominee “A Man Called Ove.”
Recent films and speakers that were part of the Furman Film Series at the Squire Cinema in Great Neck included A United Kingdom, the true story of the forbidden love of King Seretse Khama of Botswana (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a white woman from London, which caused an international uproar when they decided to marry in the late 1940s just as apartheid was being introduced into South Africa, as well as “A Man Called Ove,” which received a 2017 Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.
Stepping from the pages of Fredrik Backman’s international best-selling novel, Ove is the quintessential angry old man next door.
A boisterous young family moves next door, an unlikely friendship forms and what emerges is a heartwarming tale of unreliable first impressions and the gentle reminder that life is sweeter when it’s shared.
The film is one of Sweden’s biggest locally-produced box office hits ever.
The Elliman Film Series at the Soundview Cinema in Port Washington recently screened “Year By the Sea,” featuring a Golden Globe, Emmy, Tony, and Pulitzer Prize-winning team including Karen Allen and Celie Imrie, that included a Q&A with the film’s writer, director and composer Alexander Janko after the screening.
“The Man Who Saved the World,” a frighteningly relevant docudrama featuring appearances by Robert De Niro, Matt Damon, and Kevin Coster, among others, will be shown on Tuesday, March 7.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s executive producers Raphael Avigdor, Christian Bruun and Mark Romeo.
For more information about the GCIFF and film series, go to goldcoastarts.org.
