South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Film Festival and CherryPicks,® a digital brand dedicated to the female critical voice, announce the inaugural 2019 CherryPicks Female First Feature Award, which will award prize money to a first time narrative female director who also has at least one female producer screening at the festival. Additionally, CherryPicks will have a SXSW Conference panel on March 8: “What Makes Critics Love, or Hate A Movie.”
The CherryPicks Female First Feature Award will be chosen by selected members of the CherryPicks and SXSW programming teams. The winner will embody and signify CherryPick’s mission: to create more inclusive storytelling and teamwork all throughout entertainment. Winners will be announced by South by Southwest during the Awards Ceremony delivered on Tuesday, March 12th, 2019.
CherryPicks’ SXSW panel on March 8 will discuss why film reviews matter to filmmakers. Every filmmaker knows the feeling, waiting for reviews to come out after a production premieres. Surely, it can be nerve-wracking. Great reviews can elevate an independent film, giving it legs for further festival exposure and capturing the attention of potential distributors, whereas negative reviews during a festival run typically result in creating complications for a film within a crowded marketplace.
Moderated by Miranda Bailey, the founder and CEO of CherryPicks, this lively conversation will explore how critics analyze films and why it greatly impacts a film’s chances for mass distribution. The discussion will also explore how acquisitions executives approach reviews as a harbinger of how the film can be positioned or how it would play in public. Thus, reviews can be a vital measurement for the film’s future success. To view the link to the SXSW 2019 schedule, click here.
Panelists include:
Michael Barker, the Co-President and Co-Founder of Sony Pictures Classics (with Tom Bernard) since January 1992. Sony Pictures Classics distributes, produces, and acquires independent films from the United States and around the world.
Thelma Adams, a prominent American film critic and an outspoken voice for gender equality in the Hollywood community. She has been the in-house film critic for Us Weekly and The New York Post, and has written essays, celebrity profiles and reviews for Yahoo! Movies, The New York Times, O: The Oprah Magazine, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Parade, Marie Claire and The Huffington Post. Twice chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, where she was a member for two decades, Adams is also the author of the bestselling historical novels Bittersweet Brooklyn& The Last Woman Standing, and Playdate, which Oprah magazine described as “a witty debut novel.”
Monica Castillo is the respected Latina critic who has reviewed films for The Boston Phoenix, WBUR, Dig Boston, The Boston Globe, and co-hosted the podcast “Cinema Fix.” After a stint as an Entertainment Reporter for International Business Times, she’s reviewing films for RogerEbert.com, NPR, Village Voice, Tribeca Film, Paste Magazine, Remezcla, among others. She is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Women Film Critics Circle, and served as a co-chair of the Boston Online Film Critics Association
Moderator Miranda Bailey is a prolific producer, actor and director, known for producing high quality independent films. Her passion for bringing compelling, well-crafted stories to the screen has been the driving force in her distinguished 15-year career. Bailey has produced over 20 films, such as the Oscar-nominated THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and the Spirit Award-winning THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL, SWISS ARMY MAN, released by A24 and the critically acclaimed NORMAN, released by Sony Pictures Classics. Bailey’s directorial narrative feature debut YOU CAN CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY, premiered at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival. Bailey previously directed two documentaries: GREENLIT and THE PATHOLOGICAL OPTIMIST.
