Hot Docs, the Toronto Documentary Film Festival, is focusing on SEE countries for the 2012 Festival, and the deadline is just a month away—Jan. 13, 2012. Filmmakers with documentaries from or about Albania, Austria, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cypress, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey should apply. Submit your docs (any topic, any length), postmarked by 1/13/12, to:   Hot Docs Canadian International Do...

Here's another great opportunity to see films from South East Europe in Los Angeles. And it's free! Today (and later this week too) you can see two SEE films at the AFI Film Festival: -- Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey/Bosnia) is Turkey’s official submission for the Foreign Language Oscar, today at 1:30pm at the Egyptian, and Nov. 10 at 3:45pm at the Chinese. Details: http://ticketing.afi.com/eng/detail.aspx?ID=8196  -- The Forgiveness of Blood (USA/Albania/Denmark/Italy)...

Hello folks! I’m back from a couple trips out of town (family stuff, without my computer) so I could not blog for a while. But now that I’m back in town, I can catch the second half of the AFI Festival in Los Angeles, which runs through Nov. 10. Screenings are free! – though of course you still need a ticket, available at http://www.afi.com/AFIFEST/.   For more on AFI, check out today’s article in the LA Times, “Finding Passion for Film,” featuring an interview with...