ST. LOUIS, MO – The lights are about to go down, and the stars are getting ready to shine.
The 23rd Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) will be held Nov. 13-23. SLIFF will screen 389 films: 89 narrative features, 76 documentary features, and 224 shorts. This year’s festival has 239 screenings/programs, with 69 countries represented.
The fest will host more than 125 filmmakers and related guests, including honorees Doug Pray (Contemporary Cinema Award), Katie Mustard (Women in Film Award), and Timothy J. Sexton (Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Award).
The festival will open on Thursday, Nov. 13, with the premiere of “The Makings of You,” a St. Louis-set and -shot drama by Matt Amato. An award-winning director of music videos and commercials, Amato returned to his hometown of St. Louis to shoot his feature debut, which stars Jay R. Ferguson (of “Mad Men”) and Sheryl Lee and Grace Zabriskie (both of “Twin Peaks”). Ferguson and Zabriskie will attend.
Other prominent films at SLIFF include festival buzz movies “Foxcatcher,” “The Imitation Game,” “Mr. Turner,” and “Wild”; the locally made features “Four Color Eulogy” and “Marshall the Miracle Dog”; and new works by such prominent directors as Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jonathan Demme, Catherine Breillat, Alain Resnais, and Volker Schlondorff.
In response to the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson this summer, SLIFF is featuring a stream of programming entitled Race in America: The Black Experience. To maximize outreach, about three-quarters of those programs are free. Also new at this year’s fest, SLIFF is partnering with Dance St. Louis for Dance on Film, an entirely free slate of seven dance-related programs.
The fest schedule, ticket information, and a complete list of films (with descriptions) are available at the Cinema St. Louis Web site (www.cinemastlouis.org).
SLIFF’s primary venues are the following theaters:
- Plaza Frontenac Cinema, Plaza Frontenac, Lindbergh Boulevard and Clayton RoaD
- Stage at KDHX, Washington Blvd.
- Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Blvd.
- Washington University, Brown Hall Auditorium, Forsyth and Skinker boulevards
- Webster University, Webster Hall’s Moore Auditorium, 470 East Lockwood Ave.
