KVIFF CAPSULE REVIEWS by Alex Deleon
The competition film “Zabic Bobra" (To Kill a Beaver) by Polish director Jan Jakub Kolski is a grisly psychological drama that tries to show what it is like inside the head of a returning professional soldier who cannot readjust to everyday life. Kolski, 56, has been described as a master of Polish “magical realism” and is certainly one of the few directors of his generation who can be called an auteur. At his press conference Kolski said ...
French director Leos Carax will receive the Pardo d’onore Swisscom at the forthcoming edition of the Festival del film Locarno.
© Copyright Wild Bunch 2012
To mark the occasion, the filmmaker’s five features – Boy Meets Girl (1984), Bad Blood (Mauvais Sang, 1986), The Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, 1991), Pola X (1999) and Holy Motors (2012) ¬¬– will be screened, as well as the portmanteau film Tokyo!, to which he contributed the segment Merde in 2008. On the d...
The English Patient (1996).
Why do we love a great film so much? What makes a great film? Before a film is made there is only the concept of it, a dream of a story brought to life. With time what follows the individual filmmaker’s dream as it becomes realized into a film, it grows beyond the filmmaker’s personal vision and becomes the dream of all who are involved in its making. And further, if that film lives and thrives over the years it becomes myth-like, a livi...
While it is rather foolish to try to find a connecting threat amidst the hundreds of films being showcased this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, one cannot help but notice that films about sex and titillation are pervasive in the schedule and generating strong distributor interest. The first big sale of the Festival was for the drama SHAME by British artist-turned-director Steve McQueen. The film, about a sex addict, features full-frontal nudity and graphic depictions o...
The biggest annual film event in North America kicks off September 8 as the Toronto International Film Festival celebrates its 36th year. Toronto always delivers an extravaganza of cinematic fare sufficient to overwhelm the most diehard of film fans-- or film geeks as the case may be. And this year should prove to be no exception, with (at last count) 268 features and 68 short films scheduled to be screened from 65 countries.Although the majority of media attention will be focused on red carpet ...
A look at the team working from behind the scenes of Abbas Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” with Abbas Kiarostami, Juliette Binoche, William Shimell, directed by: Hamideh Razavi
• MEETINGS CONTINUE ON THE BRIDGE Workshops start in the third day of Meetings on the Bridge, the sixth of which takes place this year and which aims to create a platform for the cinema industry to meet. The Feature Film Development Workshop will start at 9.30 in French Cultural Center.
• SEARCH HAS ITS WORLD PREMIERE Search, which is shown under “New Turkish Cinema” section, will be screened at 11.00 in Beyoğlu. Deniz Çınar will attend the screening.
• WORKSHOP FROM MICH...
The San Francisco Film Society, in association with the
French-American Cultural Society, the French Consulate of San Francisco
and Unifrance USA, presents French Cinema Now, Thursday,
October 28–Wednesday,
November 3, at Landmark’s
Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center, Promenade
Level. The weeklong annual festival brings the most significant new work
from one of the world’s most renowned filmmaking countries to
discerning Bay Area audiences. FCN covers a broad spectrum of subject
matter and genres, builds a comprehensive picture of the current moment
in French cinema and delivers some of the country’s most vital
filmmakers in person to San Francisco audiences.
Opening with Potiche
(french film by François Ozon starring french icon Catherine Deneuve) just six days after New Years the Palm Springs Film Festival can probably lay claim to the honor of being the very first such festival of any size or signifigance on the annual international film festival calendar. While this is not a festival one hears too much about, being well off the beaten track and coming at a time when most of us are still recovering from year end Holidaze entertainment ove...
Opening just six days after New Years the Palm Springs Film Festival can probably lay claim to the honor of being the very first such festival of any size or significance on the annual international film festival calendar. For readers unfamiliar with the geography of Southern California, most of the lower part of the state is actually a desert and Palm Springs is a kind of extremely upscale oasis in the middle of this desert, a hundred miles away from Los Angeles and halfway to more desert over ...
It has been quite a year for director Roman Polanski…..house arrest in Switzerland, Silver Bear at the Berlinale, legal victory and return to his adopted home of Paris, and film adaptation of the international theatre sensation “God Of Carnage”. Now, Polanski caps a year full of ups and downs with a sixtuplet win at the European Film Awards, held this evening in the Nokia Concert Hall in the Estonian capital city of Tallinn.
“The Ghost Writer”, Polanski’s adapta...
It has been quite a year for director Roman Polanski…..house arrest in Switzerland, Silver Bear at the Berlinale, legal victory and return to his adopted home of Paris, and film adaptation of the international theatre sensation “God Of Carnage”. Now, Polanski caps a year full of ups and downs with a sixtuplet win at the European Film Awards, held this evening in the Nokia Concert Hall in the Estonian capital city of Tallinn. “The Ghost Writer”, Polanski’s adaptation of the Thomas Ha...
Abbas Kiarostami, 1997 Palme d'Or winner, returned to Cannes presenting his In Competition film, Copie Conforme. Tuesday morning's press conference, however, veered toward a heavier subject as Kiarostami called for the release of fellow Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, who has been imprisoned in a Tehran jail since March 1. Kiarostami hoped to draw attention to the struggle filmmakers face in his native country who are persecuted for having creative ideas, for films that haven't even been compl...
Sunday brought renewed honor to Michael Haneke, Austrian director and winner of last year's Palme d'Or for his film, "White Ribbon." He received what "The Hollywood Reporter: The Daily Cannes," describes as the country's highest arts honor, Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. The ceremony of French Cultural Minister Frederic Mitterrand inducting Haneke into the French legion of honor occurred in Cannes yesterday. Festival de Cannes President Gilles Jacob and t...
By ALI NADERZAD - April 12, 2010 (Paris)
As dean of the Cannes Festival Gilles Jacob would be expected to handle stars like we handle a road well traveled. Sharp turns are cleared without effort and intersections negotiated with eyes closed. Casualness should be a given for the president of the festival since every night for almost two weeks in May he stands at the top of the Lumière theatre steps to greet the casts and directors of the Selection films. “Ah, there’s Brad and Angelina, h...
By ALI NADERZAD - April 12, 2010 (Paris)
As dean of the Cannes Festival Gilles Jacob would be expected to handle stars like we handle a road well traveled. Sharp turns are cleared without effort and intersections negotiated with eyes closed. Casualness should be a given for the president of the festival since every night for almost two weeks in May he stands at the top of the Lumière theatre steps to greet the casts and directors of the Selection films. “Ah, there’s Brad and Angelina, h...
GILLES THE TIRELESSBy ALI NADERZAD - April 12, 2010 (Paris) As dean of the Cannes Festival Gilles Jacob would be expected to handle stars like we handle a road well traveled. Sharp turns are cleared without effort and intersections negotiated with eyes closed. Casualness should be a given for the president of the festival since every night for almost two weeks in May he stands at the top of the Lumière theatre steps to greet the casts and directors of the Selection films. “Ah, there’s Brad ...
Before the announcement of the official Selection on April 15th, the Festival de Cannes unveils its poster: the image of the 63rd edition is a photograph of Juliette Binoche by Brigitte Lacombe.
Continuing the series of heroines as representations of screen mysteries, initiated two years ago, festival organizers were charmed by this allegorical figure of the cinema who gives life to the image with a single stroke of
Before the announcement of the official Selection on April 15th, the Festival de Cannes unveils its poster: the image of the 63rd edition is a photograph of Juliette Binoche by Brigitte Lacombe.
Continuing the series of heroines as representations of screen mysteries, initiated two years ago, festival organizers were charmed by this allegorical figure of the cinema who gives life to the image with a single stroke of her luminous brush.
The figure illuminates the scene with her presence; t...
It is not as unusual as it may at first sound…..a filmmaker with over 40 years of experience and over 25 films in the can is lionized in Europe but underappreciated in his home country. That has been the fate of many of the original American indies of the 1970s, including such celebrated auteurs as Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Amos Poe and Susan Seidelman, and a more recent crop that includes Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz. Most prominently on this list is the idiosyncratic filmmaker Abel Ferra...
Thursday, March 12-----It is not as unusual as it may at first sound…..a filmmaker with over 40 years of experience and over 25 films in the can is lionized in Europe but underappreciated in his home country. That has been the fate of many of the original American indies of the 1970s, including such celebrated auteurs as Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Amos Poe and Susan Seidelman, and a more recent crop that includes Harmony Korine and Todd Solondz. Most prominently on this list is the idi...
Carice van Houten, the acclaimed Dutch film star who is currently starring opposite Tom Cruise in the hit movie "Valkyrie" and who electrified audiences as the German Jewish resistance fighter Rachel Stein in the 2007 film "Black Book," will be the special guest at the Third Annual "Romance in a Can" Film Festival, presented by Eurocinema February 6 through February 15 at indoor and outdoor venues throughout the greater Miami area. Twenty-one independent first-run foreign feature films, starrin...
Wednesday, March 21------Despite soggy weather and a rather unenthusiastic response to most films at the Cannes Film Festival, there are a number of deals to announce for European films that have found homes with U.S. distributors. The films, all screening in either the official sections of the Festival or in the Cannes Film Market, will all be released theatrically in the United States in the next few months.IFC Films has been among the busiest companies on the Croisette. The company has acqu...
Friday, March 7---------Films from France have traditionally been among the strongest and most loved at the Miami International Film Festival. Not only does Miami have within its borders a large French expatriate community, but immigrants from French-speaking Africa and the Americas round out the French language contingent in this multi-cultural town. Even for those not fluent in “la langue,” French cinema has been the most popular non-English film product for more than 70 years in the Unit...
Which big-screen moments first inspired Oscar® winning actors Denzel Washington, Ben Affleck and Anthony Hopkins to fall in love with the movies? The answers might surprise you, as revealed in exclusive Fandango video interviews at its new Awards Watch section, launching today at http://www.fandango.com/awardswatch. Anecdotes include:- Denzel Washington attending "2001";- Ben Affleck urging his brother Casey to see "Lawrence of Arabia";- Anthony Hopkins on "House of Wax" and other 3D movies (wa...
.jpg)
