Before the lights went down at the premiere of her first full-length animation film The Toe Tactic at Austin’s South by Southwest Music Festival a couple of weeks ago, director Emily Hubley said to the audience: “Don’t worry if you don’t get it all, just feel it all.” But she didn’t expect such an emotional response from the first-time viewers. “I felt a little bad because people were so weepy,” Ms. Hubley told The Observer in a phone interview from her home in Maplewood, N.J. “The conversation [after the SXSW screening] was just all about the healing properties of art and making art. It really was a gift that it wasn’t just empty kudos, that it was really infused with people’s intense personal responses.”  read more »

Rev your popcorn makers. The New Directors/New Films Festival line-up has been announced, with 26 films and seven shorts from 17 countries screening from March 26 to April 6. Sundance grand jury prize winner Frozen River, director Courtney Hunt's rural drama, will open the 37th annual New Directors/New Films. The fest, run by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art is kind of an orphanage for the Sundance rejects. But don't let that deter you from checking out the selections. Previous editions have helped launch the careers of Pedro Almodovar, Guillermo del Toro, Spike Lee, Sally Potter and John Sayles.

Full line-up after the jump.  read more »

More than 3,600 features were submitted for the 2008 Sundance festival, meaning that there are about 3,500 rejected projects that will navigate the year's festival circuit. As castaways depart from Park City, Utah, many of them will find a home at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films festival, according to the New York Sun's James Snyder. "

In the best-case scenario, these rookies will catch the eye of a distributor and go on to tour the festival circuit before launching a theatrical campaign in the fall of 2008 or winter 2009 — maybe hitting New York and Los Angeles in December just in time to qualify for a nomination for next February's Academy Awards," he writes.  read more »