Actress Kyrah Julian and producer Lindsay Jaeger Not long after the debut of Jonathan Demme’s latest film, I’M CAROLYN PARKER: THE GOOD, THE MAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (2011), at the 68th Venice Film Festival, I interviewed Carolyn Parker’s daughter Kyrah Julian, who stars in the documentary and who attended Venice with Demme. Kyrah has been working with Demme since he started the documentary in 2006. Demme met the strong and outspoken Carolyn Parker in 2006 when she complained to the New Orle...
THE SHELTERING SKY (1990) It occurred to me that it has been weeks since my first 'Looking Back' post. I had intended to do this every week but what can you expect from someone who is always on the road like me? Well, I do what I can when I can. But I do love to look back on what I think are some of the greatest moments in cinema history, moments that keep my blood warm and that hold me tight to the dream that is cinema, even when I feel like all the hard work and grim moments of working ...
The Golden Alexander Award Winner at 52nd TIFF -TIFF PRESS RELEASE-52nd TIFF: The Awards (11/13/2011)52nd THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL November 4 -13, 2011 The International Jury of the 52nd Thessaloniki Film Festival comprised of: Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator - Department of Film and Media, Museum of Modern Art NY, USA, Jury President Sitora Alieva, Program Director - Kinot...
photo still from 'PLAY' In the 'Open Horizons' section of the 52nd Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Swedish film (co-production with France and Denmark) PLAY (2011) by director Ruben Östlund was screened to audiences. PLAY premiered at Cannes this year in the 'Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors' Fortnight)' section.This is a compelling account of theft by bullying which confronts the immigration problems during economic recession, a fitting se...
For all TIFF news, go to our TIFF blog page: www.fest21.com/en/blog/thessaloniki_international_film_festival ...
Black Gold, DIFF 2011
BLACK GOLD (2011) premiered at the Doha Tribeca Film festival (DTFF 2011) this year on October 25, 2011, to a sold out theater and an eager international and local audience. This is as international as they come, involving at least ten different countries from cast variance to co-production partners. It was also a Qatar related film, partially shot in the Qatari deserts and a story based on the native history of the Middle East oil conflict.
Based on th...
Tilda Swinton at Black Pearl Awards, ADFF 2011 -photo by Vanessa McMahon
ADFF PRESS ANNOUNCES WINNER OF THE BLACK PEARL AWARDS FOR ADFF 2011
ADFF Announces 2011 Black Pearl Awards for Feature Films Jim Poe
On Friday night, the Abu Dhabi Film Festival announced the winners of the 2011 Black Pearl Awards for feature-length films. Chicken with Plums, the acclaimed romantic fantasia set in pre-revolutionary Iran from French artists and filmmakers Marjane Satrapi and Vince...
What is it that makes supernatural horror the genre of choice today? This is not just any horror but a new kind, one that is less gratuitous than a ‘slasher’ leaving more to the imagination and dealing with an external fear surpassing the microcosmic interior world of the psychological thriller? The unequaled success of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise is prime example. This isn’t just an old fashioned ghost story with haunted souls disturbing the living; no, the lurking paranor...
UAE native director Nawaf Al-Janahi will have is premier to his latest film, SEA SHADOW (2011) at Abu Dhabi Film Festival (13 - 22 October 2011)World Premiere: Wednesday, 19 October 2011 (Time: 21:30, Location: Abu Dhabi Theater)Second Screening: Thursday, 20 ...
Last night, October 13, 2011, saw the grand opening of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (ADFF) 2011. This year the festival will run from October 13-22. Filmmakers, stars, film professionals, press, politicians, royalty, civilians, even the Sheikh himself will attend this much talked about and much anticipated (one of my personal favorites) festival in the heart of the UAE. Check here for dailies and headlines of the festival.
Check out home page of the festival here:
www.a...
Few films can boast such raw and gritty realism as VOLCANO (ELDFJALL, Iceland, 2011). While the film is set in its native Iceland, it is a far cry from the expansive Nordic Eden we have been exposed to after Eastwood's FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2006) and TOMB RAIDER (2001), with VOLCANO exposing the more tangible truth of everyday life in Iceland of a fisherman (Hannes) and his wife and the driest peak in their lives, where everything they once knew is about to erupt and explode into an even tough...
For all of us die-hard cinephiles getting our daily fix on recent film news and festival features, I want us to remember that we would never be where we are now with film if it weren't for those praiseworthy pillars of unforgettable cinema that are our forebears. So, I want to begin a weekly 'LOOKING BACK: CINEMA'S GREATEST MOMENTS' piece on my blog, starting today (Columbus Day), Wednesday, October 12, 2011.
Every week I will post what I think is a great unforgettab...
The first time I had heard about Béla Tarr was from a Serbian filmmaker friend who told me that if I wanted to know some real avant-garde plucky cinema, I hadn’t lived until I had seen a Béla Tarr film. As a writer myself, I’m big on unadulterated organic creativity and this exemplary director has gone against all the rules doing everything a filmmaker is taught not to do, making himself quite a name in his 34 years of doing so. Tarr even holds the credit to having directed one...
BELA TARR receives Lifetime Achievement Award at RIFF, 2011 The legendary, exemplary, unconventional and inspiring filmmaker Bela Tarr traveled from his native Hungary to Reykjavik, Iceland last week during the 8th annual Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF) to receive the honorary award for Lifetime Achievement for greatness in filmmaking. The president of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, awarded a statue of the nation's symbolic puffin to an emotionally touched Bela. The ce...
photo from Venice poster at La Biennale, 68.This past week I attended the 8th annual Reykjavik Film Festival (RIFF) after going nonstop from Venice La Biennale, then to TIFF and then to RIFF. I was tired of course but so anxious to catch up on the films that I had missed at the former festivals that appeared also in Iceland. One of these films was one that had received a great buzz in Venice, a lyrica...
ADALBERT'S DREAM by Romanian filmmaker Gabriel Achim When I met Romanian director Gabriel Achim, we had just pruned together for hours in Iceland's famed Blue Lagoon thermal baths, so needless to say we were dehydrated, uber relaxed and giddy. I asked him why he was at RIFF and he explained, 'Well, I'm a Romanian director'. I told him I knew lots of great Romanian directors and then he, ever so humbly, assured me that he was the worst Romanian director that exists. I laughed and I think t...
THE PIPE! When director Risteard O'Domhnaill (aka Richie O'Donnell) accepted his award for the RIFF ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD in Reykjavik on October 01, 2011, Richie stood up confidently in front of hundreds thanking the RIFF jury and voters for his 'puffin statue of aluminum'. He had the whole crowd in stitches with his witty humor and singsong/rolling Irish accent. The film has held a successful run as yet, festival hopping for over a year now with a sweet final triumph at RIFF. While Richie is a g...
Olga Dykhovichnaya (Marina) Sergei Borisov (Andrei)This was indeed the welcome surprise of the Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF) this year. Newcomer Director/Writer/Producer Angelina Nikonova and Writer/Producer/Actress Olga Dykhovichnaya (Marina) graced the festival with their presence in its final days to attend the Q and A screening of their film TWILIGHT PORTRAIT (‘Portret V Sumerkakh’, 2011) and the award ceremony at the end. Little did these passionate Russian Indie filmmak...
still from the film THE TURIN HORSE (2011) THE TURIN HORSE (2011), the last film by celebrated Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, screened in Reykjavik tonight at the 8th Reykjavik Film Festival (RIFF). The film is 2 ½ hours long but despite its hard subject matter and rough arthouse style, it holds onto its full audience from beginning to end. At the end of the screening the master filmmaker himself attended a Q and A for inquiring indie film buffs. This is a difficult film to work through and wh...
It’s a noteworthy irony that one of the eco-documentary films awarded at this year’s Reykjavik Film Festival is ECO-PIRATE: The Story of Paul Watson (2011), a film that focuses on the notorious eco-pirate, Paul Watson, who once had been named ‘persona non grata’ in Iceland after he had sunk two whaling ships in the Reykjavik harbor in 1988. The film tackles a heated political debate from the 1970’s till present day about the whaling industry, which is responsible for decimating the wor...
New Best Icelandic Short Film Award established to honor Thor Vilhjálmsson
Record festival attendance nears 27,000 admissions
RIFF 2012 September 27 – October 7
The Golden Egg Winner was "Auf wiedersehen papa" by Sandra Nedeleff: "An everyday drama that navigates from stone cold reality into a fairytale and back again, throwing in a few twists along the way. This is a beautiful and elegantly realized film, shot on location in Berlin and is only the ...
At the 68th Venice Film Festival, Belgian director Nicolas Provost held his world premier for his first feature film THE INVADER (2011). He immediately after traveled to Toronto for TIFF 2011 where he held his North American premier and where we held our interview.
THE INVADER is an intense and arresting arthouse dramatic thriller about an African immigrant, AMADOU (played hauntingly by actor Isaka Sawadogo) who travels to Belgium for a new and hopefully better life. While finding himself at ...
film still of 'Faust' (2011)Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov's FAUST (2011) held its world premier in Venice at the 68th Venice Film Festival this year taking the coveted Golden Lion prize for best picture. It then went on to screen its North American premier at TIFF in Toronto and has now continued its round to Iceland at the Reykjavik International Film Festival (RIFF). Based on the German myth of the same name, this unusual masterpiece film proves that it is not star power names of actors...
To commemorate one of the world's oldest and most respected festivals during this 68th Venice International Film Festival, I present you with an in-depth interview with one of the prestigious Golden Lion winners for Best Director, Milcho Manchevski, who won the award in 1994 for his epic masterpiece BEFORE THE RAIN (1994). This interview has a story. We began it in the gardens of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Aruba during the 2nd annual AIFF in June, continued in Sarajevo during the 17th annual S...
Nawaf Al-Janahi News...
"Sea Shadow with Empire & FortissimoAbu Dhabi, 27 August 2011...
...In one of the most important steps in supporting Emirati cinema, Imagenation Abu Dhabi has signed two exclusive deals to distribute Nawaf Al-Janahi's new feature film "Sea Shadow", and its other locally produced films. The first deal is with Empire International who will handle the distribution to theaters and on DVD throughout the Arab world, while the second deal is with Forti...
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