Hollywood Film Festival Awards honors Swank, DeNiro, and more

The 13th Annual Hollywood Film Festival connects the film industry with the creative side of the business, screening more than 70 films at the ArcLight Cinema in Hollywood, October 23-26. As part of the festivities it will honor actors and film industry talent at a Hollywood Awards ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills on October 26.

The festival announced that its gala ceremony will present the acting awards to two Oscar winners for their body of work: Hilary Swank, who is starring in the title role of Mira Nair's biopic Amelia about Amelia Earhart, will receive the Actress Award the weekend of October 23, and Robert De Niro who takes the 'Actor Award' and will soon be seen in Everybody's Fine, a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore's Stanno Tutti Bene.

Others honored include actress Julianne Moore for Best Supporting Actress who can be seen in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, A Single Man, Chloe, and The Kids Are All Right; Kathryn Bigelow who gets the director award for The Hurt Locker; Nora Ephron receives the screenwriter award for Julie & Julia, Disney/Pixar gets the animation award for Up.

In the "Breakthrough" categories, the following will be presented with awards: actress Carey Mulligan ( An Education) actor Jeremy Renner ( The Hurt Locker), director Lee Daniels and actress Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire.

The screenings in the festival consist of an interesting mix of offbeat films, including features such as Another Harvest Moon starring Ernest Borgnine, Piper Laurie, Anne Meara, Doris Roberts, and Cybill Shepherd and The Assistants with Joe Mantegna, Jane Seymour, and Stacy Keach.

Short films include "Head Over Heels" with comic veterans Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Bob Balaban, and Jeffrey Tambor; "La Nostalgia del Sr. Alambre" ("Last Day of Summer") from Mexico; "Monday Before Thanksgiving "starring Laura Dern and Friends' Courtney Cox who also directed the 19 minute film.

Documentaries include No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos, which follows the lives of renowned cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, and a symposium is scheduled on Ending Violence Against Women in Congo.

The Hollywood Film Festival also shows the "Hollywood Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Festival" and "Hollywood Comedy Film Festival," October 23-25, as part of the program.

websites: http://www.hollywoodawards.com and http://hollywoodfestival.com

RC