Academy news: Docs deadline, Film festival, a new board member and Bond music event

As always, the Academy has been busy with some housekeeping and scheduling events to keep its Beverly Hills, Calif., headquarters lively. Here the news roundup of what staff members have been working on.

As always, the Academy has been busy with some housekeeping and scheduling events to keep its Beverly Hills, Calif., headquarters lively. Here the news roundup of what staff members have been working on:

Doc Features entry deadline Sept. 24
Monday, Sept. 24, at 5 p.m. PT, is the deadline for documentary feature submission for consideration for the 85th Academy Awards.

To be eligible, the documentaries must complete seven-day commercial runs in both Los Angeles County and the Borough of Manhattan in New York between Jan. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2012. Films completing their qualifying runs after Sept. 24 must still complete and submit all paperwork, including legal contracts, by the deadline.

Visit Oscars.org for more information.

The 85th Academy Awards are Feb. 24, 2013.


Film festival

“Brazil,” 1985. Photo: The Academy.

Next week, Sept. 27-29, the Academy will launch its first festival, which it is calling “Film-to-Film.”

The festival, in celebration of the Academy’s recent film preservation efforts, will be held in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills and the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Films screened at the festival will include 1985’s “Brazil” and 1969’s “Of Men and Demons,” along with documentary and animated programs.

From the Academy:

A year ago the Academy Film Archive launched an ambitious effort called “Project Film-to-Film,” aimed at preserving as many films on film as possible over a two-year period. The initiative’s main goal is to take advantage of the current, but threatened, availability of film stock to create new prints of a diverse range of motion pictures, encompassing the whole history of the art form. 

More than 390 new prints have already been created from the best available film elements, covering significant narrative features and documentaries, as well as experimental, animated and short film titles. The wide variety of titles range from “Navajo,” the only film to receive Oscar® nominations for both Documentary Feature and Cinematography, to “Naked Yoga,” a short once presumed lost, and “Carnival of Souls,” a cult favorite that has been rescued from late-night television and restored to the big screen.

For tickets and more information, go here.


Robin Swicord elected to Board

Photo: Jon Didier/©A.M.P.A.S.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robin Swicord (left) has been elected to the Board of Governors, representing the Writers Branch, Academy President Hawk Koch announced Sept. 19.

Swicord, who will fill the seat left open by the passing of governor Frank Pierson, joins current Writers Branch governors Bill Condon and Phil Robinson. Per Academy bylaws, Swicord will remain on the Board until the next regularly scheduled election in June 2013.

Swicord earned an Adapted Screenplay nomination for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (shared with Eric Roth). Her credits also include “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Matilda,” “Little Women” and “The Jane Austen Book Club,” which she also directed.

Elections for the Board were announced in July. Board member and former Academy president Pierson passed away July 23. Officers on the Board were elected at the end of July.


The music of Bond, James Bond

“Golden Gun” album cover. Photo: The Academy.

The Academy will be celebrating the music of James Bond on Friday, Oct. 5, at its Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The celebration, hosted by music historian and writer Jon Burlingame, is part of the 50th anniversary of the British spy franchise and is being held 50 years to the day after the U.K. opening of the first Bond film, “Dr. No.” (A special Blu-ray collection comes out on Tuesday.)

The evening featured the memorable title songs and scores that have become a lasting part of the franchise.

From the Academy:

The program will feature many of the people who made the music, including composer Bill Conti ("For Your Eyes Only"), songwriter Carole Bayer Sager ("Nobody Does It Better" from "The Spy Who Loved Me"), lyricist Don Black (title songs for "Thunderball," "Diamonds Are Forever," "The Man with the Golden Gun" and "The World Is Not Enough") and guitarist Vic Flick, who laid down the famous guitar lick for the "James Bond Theme." There also will be a special video message from actor Roger Moore. 

Over the 22 films released to date as part of the official James Bond series, there have been several constants: suave but deadly leading men, gorgeous and sexy Bond girls, over-the-top villains and incredible music. Bond theme songs, sung by such leading performers as Nancy Sinatra ("You Only Live Twice"), Shirley Bassey ("Goldfinger"), Paul McCartney and Wings ("Live and Let Die"), Carly Simon ("Nobody Does It Better") and Sheena Easton ("For Your Eyes Only"), consistently landed on the pop music charts. Duran Duran's "A View to a Kill" became the first Bond song to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Those notable elements combined with the remarkable scores by composers including Conti, John Barry, Marvin Hamlisch and David Arnold has resulted in a body of work that continues to play a major role in popular film culture.

For more information and to buy tickets for the event, go here.