Accordions Worldwide congratulates Filmmaker Roberta Cantow for winning two major awards from the Accolade Global Film Competition. The award was given for Roberta’s exciting documentary, “Accordions Rising”, which restores the accordion to its rightful place in the music world. 

A prestigious and unique global film competition. Accolade honors and promotes the achievements of filmmakers who produce high quality films and new media with the expressed intention of helping filmmakers gain the credibility and publicity they justly deserve.

Roberta’s film won the following awards:
Accordions Rising – Documentary – Award of Merit
Accordions Rising – Movie Trailer – Award of Recognition 

Accordions Rising features exceptional accordion players and composers including Guy Klucevsek, William Schimmel, Frank Petrilli, Will Holshouser, Pauline Oliveros as well as others representing a diversity of styles and approaches.

Roberta’s statement:”I have often been drawn to the misunderstood.  The accordion turned out to be no exception. Like many others, I grew up with an attitude embedded in the culture regarding the accordion as a kind of low-brow instrument, corny and old-fashioned.

But then, I learned otherwise!  I came to understand this attitude was overshadowing the truth: the accordion is actually an incredibly versatile instrument. The possibilities for invention and originality are endless and border on the sublime. It turns out that the accordion and those who play them are everywhere.   Though filmed mostly in New York City, depicting the NY cultural scene, Accordions Rising reflects something of the landscape of our very own America, our very own culture and our very own present.

The more in love with accordions and accordion music I became, the more determined I was to celebrate the talents of those who play and compose for them. I am so pleased to have encountered the feast of artists who appear in the film. Hats off to them for so eloquently setting the record straight.                     

I will be creating a 15-20 segment of “Highlights” from the film.  When the time is right, I would like to propose the possibility of getting a slot to present these Highlights at Accordion and other music Festivals in the near future when I can offer the DVD for sale.   Since I am unable to attend them all, anyone interested in representing the film (in the future) at one or another such festivals, (for example, one that you attend annually), please contact me at: rcantow@originaldigital.net so that we can discuss how to make it worth your while.

So far, there are over 400 “Likes” to the Accordions Rising Facebook Page, which is a dream come true and which will help the distribution effort.  The mailing list, accessible from the film’s website is trailing with only 78 names on the list. If you have not joined the mailing list and would like to be informed when this film becomes available on DVD or for streaming, please go to www.accordionsrising.com (and click on Contact). The more names on the list, the more likely it will be for me to acquire ‘distribution muscle’ from an established entity.”

Accordions Rising will have its world premiere at Cinema on the Bayou in Lafayette Louisiana, a fitting venue for a film about accordions.

Cinema on the Bayou, Louisiana’s second oldest film festival, was founded in 2006 in Lafayette, Louisiana, by filmmaker Pat Mire after Hurricane Katrina caused the cancellation of the New Orleans Film Festival in the fall of 2005.
Since 2006, Cinema on the Bayou has presented hundreds of internationally acclaimed documentary, narrative fiction and animated films, with filmmakers in attendance from across the United States and around the world.

The Festival is now unique among film festivals in the U.S. in that it also regularly screens a large number of French-language independent films and presents filmmakers from throughout the Francophone world.

This past year, Cinema on the Bayou was selected as the Editors’ Choice for “goings-on in the South and beyond” by Garden and Gun Magazine. Describing  Cajun Country setting as a “stew of French, Spanish, and African influences,” the Editors concluded that it was an ideal spot for Cinema on the Bayou, an international film festival “charged with exposing attendees to the most original voices in film while fostering cultural exchange among the French-speaking peoples of the world.

For more information:
email rcantow@originaldigital.net or 
visit www.accordionsrising.com