Newport festival to kick off June 3 with In The Loop

Marcel will be in Newport for the screening of the closing night film, about great yachtsman Eric Tabarly — a topic of special interest for the local boating community in Newport, Rhode Island.

In total, the festival will screen more than 90 US and international features, documentaries and shorts.

This year marks Newport’s first collaboratoin with the Museum of Modern Art, to present a selection of films from MoMa’s annual exhibition To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Those NYC-related restored films to screen include On The Waterfront and Taxi Driver.

On June 6, the festival will present its annual Claiborne Pell Award, which will honor “one of our great masters of cinema” through a multimedia retrospective, on-stage conversatoin and donation to MoMA on the honoree’s behalf.

Narrative film selections include Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson; Paola Mendoza and Gloria La Morte’s Entre Nos; Tze Chun’s Children Of Invention; Scott Teems’ That Evening Sun; Claire Denis’ 35 Shots Of Rum; and Natural Causes directed by Michael Lerman, Alex Cannon and Paul Cannon.

Documentary film selections include Samantha Buck’s 21 Below, Havana Marking’s Afghan Star, Pete Schuermann’s Haze, Kimberley Reed’s Prodigal Sons, Ondi Timoner’s We Live In Public and Marshall Curry’s Racing Dreams.

Jurors for the narrative and documentary competitions include Zeitgeist Films’ Clemence Taillandier, Anonymous Content’s Adam Kossack and director Jeremiah Zagar.

Panel discussions will cover topics such as emerging New England filmmakers and independent film producing.

Newport’s 2009 edition is helmed by executive director Jennifer Maizel and artistic director Tom Hall with programmers Holly Herrick and Andrea van Beuren.

For the full lineup, visit newportfilmfestival.com.