New York LGBT Film Festival Announces Audience Award Winners

NewFest, in Partnership with Outfest and HBO, Concludes their 27th Annual Festival And Announces Audience Award Winners - THOSE PEOPLE (Narrative Feature), THE SAME DIFFERENCE (Documentary Feature), TREMULO (Narrative Short) and IN THE HOLLOW (Documentary Short).

The 2015 NewFest, New York's LGBT Film Festival, concluded its 27th anniversary year at the Bow Tie Chelsea Theater - and the recently completed screening room at the LGBT Community Center - with a sold-out screening of GIRLS LOST. The highly successful six-day festival screened nearly 100 films to a number of sold-out audiences and included a centerpiece gala screening of Todd Haynes' CAROL, a star-studded World Premiere of new trans series "Her Story" followed by a discussion moderated by Laverne Cox, a MasterClass discussion with award-winning filmmaker Ira Sachs, NewFest's first ever Queer Horror Night, and an enlightening panel discussion on the evolution of transgender representation in modern media.

Following the Closing Night Gala screening, NewFest announced the 2015 Audience Award winning films:

THOSE PEOPLE, directed by Joey Kuhn, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Feature Film for its crowd-pleasing depiction of a complicated romance between two young men in the gilded halls of Manhattan's high society. Those People will be distributed by Wolfe Releasing in 2016.

THE SAME DIFFERENCE, directed by Nneka Onuorah, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Documentary Feature. The film, which shines a light on the all-too-often ignored problem of homophobia and gender discrimination within the African-American lesbian community, broke NewFest records, selling out four screenings to audiences eager to finally see the issue addressed onscreen and within the lively panels that followed each screening. The Same Difference will be distributed by Women Make Movies in 2016.

TREMULO, directed by Roberto Fiesco, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short, thanks to its tender and beautifully realized depiction of a brief encounter between two young men in Mexico. A feature version is currently in the works.

IN THE HOLLOW, directed by Austin Bunn, won the Audience Award for Outstanding Documentary Short. Bunn, the screenwriter of last year's Kill Your Darlings, masterfully combined documentary and narrative techniques to place audiences at the center of a horrific crime against two gay women.

Speaking on behalf of the programming team, NewFest's senior programmer Adam Baran also singled out Martin Edralin's narrative short HOLE and Blair Fukumura's documentary short BEDDING ANDREW for special recognition, for using brave, emotionally stirring methods to tell the often-overlooked stories of gay men with disability and their need for physical and emotional support.

"Our 27th annual festival marked a year of huge growth for NewFest," noted NewFest Executive Director Robert Kushner. "As a new generation of filmmakers comes through with exciting new stories and means of telling them, it's clear that LGBT audiences continue to seek community through shared experiences onscreen. We're extraordinarily happy that NewFest can play a role in that."

ABOUT NEWFEST
NewFest is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences to build a community that passionately supports giving voice and visibility to a wide range of representations of the LGBT experience. We are committed to nurturing emerging LGBT and allied filmmakers. We support those artists who are willing to take risks in telling the stories that fully reflect the diversity and complexity of our lives. For more information, visit NewFest.org.

ABOUT OUTFEST
Founded by UCLA students in 1982, Outfest is the leading organization that promotes equality by creating, sharing and protecting LGBT stories on the screen. Outfest builds community by connecting diverse populations to discover, discuss and celebrate stories of LGBT lives. For over three decades, Outfest has showcased thousands of films from around the world to audiences of nearly a million, educated and mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers and protected more than 20,000 LGBT films and videos. For more information, visit outfest.org.

ABOUT HBO
Home Box Office, Inc. is the premium television programming subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. and the world's most successful pay TV service, providing the two television services - HBO® and Cinemax® - to approximately 122 million subscribers worldwide. The services offer the popular subscription video-on-demand products HBO On Demand® and CineMax On Demand®, as well as HBO GO®and MAX GO®, HD feeds and multiplex channels. In April 2015, HBO NOWSM, the network's highly anticipated standalone premium streaming service, began providing audiences with instant access to HBO's acclaimed programming in the U.S. HBO NOW is available directly through Apple or Optimum Online for a monthly subscription. Internationally, HBO branded television networks, along with the subscription video-on-demand products HBO OnDemand and HBO GO, bring HBO services to over 60 countries. HBO and CineMax programming is sold into over 150 countries worldwide.

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