Pick Of The Litter[/caption]
The Special Screenings program for the 24th edition of the Slamdance Film Festival features provocative work from remarkable talent that celebrates the festival’s DIY spirit. The festival will present four features in the Special Screenings Program: Bernard and Huey, directed by Dan Mirvish; Roll With Me, directed by Lisa France; Quest, directed by Santiago Rizzo; and the world premiere of Pick Of The Litter, directed by Don Hardy and Slamdance alumni Dana Nachman.
Pick Of The Litter will screen as the festival’s Opening Night Film presentation. The Special Screenings program will also feature the festival’s closing night film, Bernard and Huey, a narrative feature directed by Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish and written by Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter, Jules Feiffer.
Slamdance will host a filmmaker discussion with Slamdance Alumni, Joe Russo and Anthony Russo. The conversation, moderated by Slamdance Co-Founder and President Peter Baxter, will highlight the filmmaking duo’s history with the fest and impart career insight for the this year’s class of Slamdance filmmakers. During the discussion, Slamdance will also honor the Russo Brothers with the Founders Award, which is presented to a Slamdance alumni who has continued to support the indie spirit of the festival well into their careers. The award was first presented in 2015 to director Christopher Nolan (Inception, Dunkirk).
The 2018 Slamdance Film Festival will run January 19-25.
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2018 Slamdance Film Festival to Open with World Premiere of “Pick Of The Litter”
[caption id="attachment_26597" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Pick Of The Litter[/caption]
The Special Screenings program for the 24th edition of the Slamdance Film Festival features provocative work from remarkable talent that celebrates the festival’s DIY spirit. The festival will present four features in the Special Screenings Program: Bernard and Huey, directed by Dan Mirvish; Roll With Me, directed by Lisa France; Quest, directed by Santiago Rizzo; and the world premiere of Pick Of The Litter, directed by Don Hardy and Slamdance alumni Dana Nachman.
Pick Of The Litter will screen as the festival’s Opening Night Film presentation. The Special Screenings program will also feature the festival’s closing night film, Bernard and Huey, a narrative feature directed by Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish and written by Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter, Jules Feiffer.
Slamdance will host a filmmaker discussion with Slamdance Alumni, Joe Russo and Anthony Russo. The conversation, moderated by Slamdance Co-Founder and President Peter Baxter, will highlight the filmmaking duo’s history with the fest and impart career insight for the this year’s class of Slamdance filmmakers. During the discussion, Slamdance will also honor the Russo Brothers with the Founders Award, which is presented to a Slamdance alumni who has continued to support the indie spirit of the festival well into their careers. The award was first presented in 2015 to director Christopher Nolan (Inception, Dunkirk).
The 2018 Slamdance Film Festival will run January 19-25.
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2018 Slamdance Film Festival Complete Beyond and Shorts Lineup
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Goodbye, Brooklyn[/caption]
This year’s 2018 Slamdance Film Festival which kicks off on Friday January 19 thru 25 in Park City, Utah, will feature an impressive Beyond and Shorts programs for their 24th edition. The short film lineup showcases productions from 26 countries, with shorts in the Narrative, Documentary, Animation, Anarchy and Experimental sections all eligible for the 2018 Oscar® Qualifying Shorts competition.
Several Slamdance Alumni return with highly anticipated presentations in the Beyond lineup. All films in this highly-selective program are made by emerging filmmakers working just beyond their first features.
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Michael Curtis Johnson’s “Savage Youth” to World Premiere at Slamdance Film Festival
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Grace Victoria Cox in ‘Savage Youth’[/caption]
“Savage Youth”, directed by Michael Curtis Johnson (“Hunky Dory“), and produced by Michael Peluso (Producer of TV’s “The Voice” and “America’s Got Talent”) has been officially selected to premiere worldwide at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival. Savage Youth will be featured in the “Beyond” program. “The films in the Beyond Program exhibit singular directorial vision while sharing a common commitment to challenge audiences to step outside their comfort zones”, says Beyond programmer, Josh Mandel. “These bold and adventurous filmmakers represent the most current voices in American independent film, and will continue to push boundaries in the years ahead.”
A brutal examination of doomed youth exiled to society’s edge, “Savage Youth” portrays the lives of six troubled teens in a racially-divided small town while events take a violent turn over drugs and broken hearts. The worldwide Premier will be on Monday the 22nd of January 2018 at 21:45 at the “Gallery”, Slamdance HQ, Screening Rooms and Filmmaker Lounge. Thomas Sanne, Director of Hiventure Media SA, has quoted: “We are thrilled to participate in such an exciting Festival with this amazing project and team behind it, in which we believe strongly. We are especially honoured as this is our first foray as Hiventure Media into Film, and are excited by what the future will bring.”
Starring Grace Victoria Cox (“Heathers”, “Under the Dome”, “Twin Peaks”), Tequan Richmond (“General Hospital”, “The Shield”, “CSI”, “Everybody Hates Chris”), Will Brittain (“Kong: Skull Island”, “Everybody Wants Some!!”), Chloe Levine (“The OA”, “House of Cards”, “The Transfiguration”), it is based on true events. Steve Dollar, the “Wall Street Journal Online” and “Billboard” contributor, has quoted: “Savage Youth (…), is both stylized and understated in its slow-burn towards a brutal true-crime episode drawn from events in the filmmaker’s hometown of Joliet.”
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Toronto Black Film Festival to Open with Canadian Premiere of “The Rape of Recy Taylor”
The Toronto Black Film Festival – TBF will kick start it’s 6th edition with the Canadian Premiere of Nancy Buirski’s documentary feature The Rape of Recy Taylor on Wednesday, February 14, 2018 at Isabel Bader Theatre. The film had its World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival and was awarded the prestigious Human Rights Nights Special Prize for Human Rights in 2017 at the 74° Venice Biennale.
As Oprah Winfrey accepted the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards, she invoked Taylor’s name in her speech that delved into racism and sexism. “She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.”
“We are deeply honored to open #TBFF18 with Nancy Buirski’s The Rape of Recy Taylor, a poignant film which has arrived at a very pivotal moment. It is important for us to shed the light on this part of history, the climate that we’re in and the unprecedented transformational #MeToo movement that is empowering more women to speak up.” declared Fabienne Colas, President and founder of TBFF.
Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. This film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.
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“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” Sam Rockwell to Receive Award at Santa Barbara International Film Festival
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Sam Rockwell, left, and Frances McDormand in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri[/caption]
Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice Award winner Sam Rockwell will be honored with the 2018 American Riviera Award at the 33rd Santa Barbara International Film Festival, which runs from January 31 to February 10, 2018. Rockwell will be fêted with a Tribute celebrating his remarkable performance in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. The film opened in November of 2017 to critical acclaim. The Tribute will take place Wednesday, February 7, 2018 at the historic Arlington Theatre.
“In Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, audiences are treated to the kind of mesmerizing and extraordinary performance we have come to expect from Sam Rockwell,” stated Roger Durling, Executive Director of SBIFF. “We are long overdue to celebrate this tremendous talent who has lit up the screen for decades.”
Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, follows a mother who, when the police in her town fail to find a suspect in her daughter’s murder, purchases three billboards to call public attention to the unsolved crime. When the town’s revered chief of police and his second-in-command get involved, the battle between the mother and Ebbing’s law enforcement becomes exacerbated.
The American Riviera Award was established to recognize actors who have made a significant contribution to American Cinema. Rockwell will join a prestigious group of past recipients, including last year’s honoree Jeff Bridges (2017), Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and Mark Ruffalo (2016), Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke (2015), Robert Redford (2014), Quentin Tarantino (2013), Martin Scorsese (2012), Annette Bening (2011), Sandra Bullock (2010), Mickey Rourke (2009), Tommy Lee Jones (2008), Forrest Whitaker (2007), Philip Seymour Hoffman (2006), Kevin Bacon (2005) and Diane Lane (2004).
The 33rd annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival will take place from Wednesday, January 31st through Saturday, February 10th. The festival previously honored Judi Dench with its Kirk Douglas Award for Excellence in Film. The festival has also announced that it will honor Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) with its Santa Barbara Award, Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour) with its Maltin Modern Master Award, Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project) with its Cinema Vanguard Award, and Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Hong Chau (Downsizing), John Boyega (Detroit), Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick), Mary J. Blige (Mudbound), and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name) with the Virtuosos Award.
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2018 Noir City Film Festival Returns to Seattle, Unveils Lineup + Opens with “The Maltese Falcon”
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The Maltese Falcon[/caption]
The Film Noir festival, Noir City, returns to the legendary Egyptian theater in Seattle for the 2018 edition from February 16 through 22, with exceptional films from the most “noir” of decades, 1941 to 1951. The festival presents 18 classic films as they were experienced on their original releases, pairing a top-tier studio “A” with a shorter, low-budget second feature, or “B” film. All but two of the films will be presented in glorious 35mm.
The host of Noir City, Czar of Noir Eddie Muller, will also be back to delight audiences with twisted tales and anecdotes about each film. If you’ve seen his show “Noir Alley” on Turner Classic Movies, then you know what an incomparable master of the darkest corners of human motivation he is. Eddie is available for interviews via phone or SKYPE.
Opening Night the Egyptian will be transformed into a haven for gangsters, molls, vixens, and villains, with Noir-themed wine and a shadowy cityscape photo booth to capture patrons at their sinister best. Presented in 35mm, the Opening Night film, The Maltese Falcon (1941), John Huston’s remarkable directorial debut, sets the tone for this year’s stellar line-up. The As include The Blue Dahlia (1946), starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, which incredibly is making its first appearance in Noir City, and Flesh and Fantasy (1943), by renowned French director Julien Divivier and featuring a dazzling cast including Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, Edward G. Robinson, and Robert Cummings.
The Bs include Quiet Please, Murder (1942), a surprisingly racy film starring George Sanders as a cunning forger that must match wits with an equally cunning femme fatale (Gail Patrick), and Bodyguard (1948), a film that ironically stars real-life lawbreaker Lawrence Tierney as a lawman framed for a murder in a meat-packing plant. This breakneck-paced thriller is also distinguished by the co-writer, Robert Altman.
On closing night, the Film Noir Foundation’s latest restoration, an independently made noir crowd pleaser The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950), will have its Seattle premiere (the world premiere is only a couple of weeks earlier at the San Francisco Noir City). Thanks to the generosity of FNF donors, the Foundation was able to fully fund the restoration of this film. Starring Lee J. Cobb, this James M. Cain-style thriller gets maximum impact from its San Francisco locations, including a memorable climax at Fort Point.
“We are excited for this year’s Noir City to return,” says SIFF Artistic Director Beth Barrett. “The 1915 Masonic Temple building that houses the Egyptian has some dark shadows of its own. There’s definitely no better or more atmospheric movie palace to host Noir City in Seattle, one of the greatest movie-going cities in the nation.”
NOIR CITY 2018 LINEUP
The Maltese Falcon (35mm) Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), a cynical, tough-talking private eye, becomes ensnared in a web of deceit when a simple missing persons case becomes a deadly hunt for a missing statuette.(d: John Huston c: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, 1941 101 min) Quiet Please, Murder (35mm) A book thief/forger sells a fake book to a Nazi through a female agent. A detective tries to uncover who the forger is and gets in the middle of a three way struggle for rare books and revenge in a public library. (d: John Larkin c: George Sanders, Gail Patrick, Richard Denning, 1942, 70 min) Shadow of a Doubt (35mm) In Alfred Hitchcock’s glimpse into the dark side of suburbia, a young woman discovers her visiting uncle may not be the man he seems to be. (d: Alfred Hitchcock c: Joseph Cotton, Teresa Wright, Hume Cronyn, 1943, 108 min) Address Unknown (35mm) The film tells the story of two families caught up in the rise of Nazism in Germany prior to the start of World War II. (d: William Cameron Menzies c: Paul Lukas, Peter van Eyck, Carl Esmond, 1944, 75 min) Flesh and Fantasy (35mm) Two members of a gentlemen’s club tell three tales of the supernatural in this atmospheric pre-cursor to “The Twilight Zone.” (d: Julien Divivier c: Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Cummings, 1943, 94 min) Destiny (35mm) Originally conceived as a fourth “episode” in Flesh and Fantasy, this expanded story is about a cynical ex-con and the blind girl that may be the key to his redemption. (d: Reginald Le Borg c: Alan Curtis, Gloria Jean, Frank Craven,1944, 65 min) Mildred Pierce (35mm) Joan Crawford delivers a ferocious, Oscar®-winning performance as a hard-working housewife who struggles to provide the best life for her little girl Veda, only to find herself trapped in a dark world of thwarted desires. (d: Michael Curtiz c: Joan Crawford, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, Bruce Bennett, 1945, 111 min) Jealousy (35mm) A successful alcoholic writer is murdered and his wife is accused. (d: Gustav Machatý c: Jane Randolph, John Loder, Karen Morley, Nils Asther, 1945, 71 min) The Blue Dahlia (35mm) Writer Raymond Chandler’s only original screenplay is a classic about a returning vet being framed for his unfaithful wife’s murder. (d: George Marshall c: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Doris Dowling, William Bendix, 1946, 96 min) The Big Sleep (35mm) Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he’s seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love. (d: Howard Hawks c: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook Jr., 1946, 114 min) Kiss of Death (Digital) With his law-breaking lifestyle in the past, an ex-con, along with his family, attempt to start a new life, knowing a betrayed someone from the past is bound to see otherwise. (d: Henry Hathaway c: Victor Mature, Richard Widmark, Coleen Gray, Karl Malden, 1947, 99 min) Blind Spot (35mm) Veteran Columbia star Chester Morris delivers a terrific performance as a hard-drinking, hard-luck writer who pitches his skeptical publisher an ingenious “locked room” mystery . . . only to have the crime come true. (d: Robert Gordon c: Chester Morris, William Forrest, Constance Dowling, 1947, 73 min) I Walk Alone (Digital) An ex-convict leaves prison expecting his equal share from his ex-partner. But his partner has no intention of sharing. (d: Byron Haskin c: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Lizabeth Scott, Marc Lawrence, Wendell Corey, 1948, 97 min) Bodyguard (35mm) An ousted Los Angeles homicide detective goes to work for a widow and is framed for murder. (d: Richard Fleischer c: Lawrence Tierney, Priscilla Lane, Phillip Reed, Steve Brodie,1948, 62 min) The Accused (35mm) When a college student grows inappropriately fond of his psychology professor and tries to rape her, she fights back. But as she defends herself, she accidentally kills her attacker. (d: William Dieterle c: Loretta Young, Robert Cummings, Wendell Corey, Douglas Dick, 1949, 101 min) The Threat (35mm) Murderer Arnold “Red” Kluger has a score to settle: When he was convicted, he promised revenge on the people who put him in prison. (d: Felix E. Feist c: Charles McGraw, Virginia Grey, Michael O’Shea, Anthony Caruso, 1949, 66 min) The Man Who Cheated Himself A woman in the process of divorce shoots her husband and gets her police lieutenant boyfriend to help hide the body. (d: Felix E. Feist c: Lee J. Cobb, Jane Wyatt, John Dall, Harlan Warde,1950, 81 min) Roadblock An honest LA insurance detective becomes corrupt and turns to crime after falling in love with a gold-digger model. (d: Harold Daniels c: Charles McGraw, Joan Dixon, Lowell Gilmore, 1951, 73 min)
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Seven Restorations to Celebrate Their World Premieres in Berlinale Classics 2018 at Berlin International Film Festival
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Letyat Zhuravli (The Cranes are Flying)[/caption]
The Berlinale Classics section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival will present the world premieres of a total of seven films in digitally restored versions.
Wim Wenders’ prize-winning classic Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, Federal Republic of Germany / France 1987) returns to the screen in a new, digitally restored 4K DCP version. Two guardian angels keep watch over Berlin, until one of them falls in love with a mortal woman. He chooses to become human, giving up his immortality, and an entirely new world is revealed to him. The film was shot on both black-and-white and colour stock. At the time, that required several additional steps in the lab in order to produce a final colour negative, which was several generations removed from the camera negatives. This version, restored by the Wim Wenders Foundation, is based on the original negatives; STUDIOCANAL will be releasing it in German cinemas in the near future.
Az én XX. századom (My 20th Century, Hungary / Federal Republic of Germany 1989), the feature debut of the winner of the 2017 Golden Bear, Ildikó Enyedi, is a complex, poetic fairy tale, and an homage to silent movies. Shot in black-and-white, the film follows the very different live of identical twins in Old Europe at the dawn of the 20th century. Using the original camera negative and the magnetic sound track, the film was digitally restored in 4K by the Hungarian National Film Fund – Hungarian National Film Archive, working with Hungarian Filmlab. Cinematographer Tibor Máthé (HSC – Hungarian Society of Cinematographers) supervised the digital grading.
Sidney Lumet’s thriller Fail Safe (USA 1964) is an impressive critique of the Cold War military doctrine. When an errant U.S. bomber threatens to destroy Moscow, the president calls the Soviet premier on the red phone to try to prevent a retaliatory nuclear strike. The film was restored in 4K under the aegis of Sony Pictures Entertainment and its head of restoration, Grover Crisp. The incomplete camera negative was supplemented with the use of a duplicate negative. Conforming the various different source materials presented a special challenge to the restoration team.
Letyat Zhuravli (The Cranes Are Flying, USSR 1957) by Mikhail Kalatozov was Soviet cinema’s first international hit after World War II. Made during the period of liberalisation that followed Joseph Stalin’s death, this unusual black-and-white film’s expressionist images tell the tragic story of two lovers after Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. The film brought international fame to Mikhail Kalatozov and his lead actress, Tatiana Samoilova. Letyat Zhuravli was restored by Mosfilm under the leadership of general director Karen Shakhnazarov. The ditigal 2K restoration, on the basis of the original negative, was supervised by the head of restoration Igor Bogdasarov.
Director Assi Dayan was lauded by the International Jury of the Berlinale in 1993 for the courage and honesty of his HaChayim Al-Pi Agfa (Life According to Agfa, Israel 1992). The film revolves around a Tel Aviv bar, where a world of bohemians, business people, junkies, tourists, pimps, and soldiers all meet. The events of a single night, captured in black-and-white photos, are a microcosm of a society that considers itself liberal and tolerant, but in which seemingly trivial actions can become explosive. The 4K restoration was produced by the Jerusalem Cinematheque – Israel Film Archive, where the negative was scanned. It was supervised by cinematographer Yoav Kosh and supported by the Israel Film Fund.
With Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight, Japan 1957), Berlinale Classics will provide a rare opportunity to see a largely unknown and seldom shown work by Yasujiro Ozu. The theme of the end of a family living together is one that Japanese directing maestro Yasujiro Ozu often reworks, and here he has given it a dramatic twist. In wintery Tokyo, a family’s silence leads to its breakdown. Tokyo Boshoku, considered Ozu’s most sombre post-war film, was digitally restored in 4K on the basis of the 35mm duplicate negative provided by the Japanese production company Shochiku, managed by Shochiku MediaWorX Inc. Colour correction was led by Ozu’s former assistant cameraman Takashi Kawamata and cinematographer Masashi Chikamori.
The Berlinale Classics section will open on February 16, 2018, at 5 pm in the Friedrichstadt-Palast with the premiere of the Deutsche Kinemathek’s digital restoration of the 1923 silent film classic Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law) directed by E.A. Dupont (see press release of December 5, 2017). ZDF/ARTE commissioned French composer Philippe Schoeller to create new music for this version, which will be presented by the Orchester Jakobsplatz München with Daniel Grossmann at the podium.
The full programme of the Berlinale Classics section:
Das alte Gesetz (The Ancient Law)
Dir: Ewald André Dupont, Germany, 1923
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 2K DCP
Az én XX. századom (My 20th Century)
Dir: Ildikó Enyedi, Hungary / Federal Republic of Germany, 1989
Presented by Ildikó Enyedi and Tibor Máthé
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP
Fail Safe
Dir: Sidney Lumet, USA, 1964
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP
HaChayim Al-Pi Agfa (Life According To Agfa)
Dir: Assi Dayan, Israel, 1992
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP
Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire)
Dir: Wim Wenders, Germany / France, 1987
Presented by Wim Wenders
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP
Letyat Zhuravli (The Cranes are Flying)
Dir: Mikhail Kalatozov, USSR, 1957
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 2K DCP
Tokyo Boshoku (Tokyo Twilight)
Dir: Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1957a
Presented by Wim Wenders
World premiere of the digitally restored version
in 4K DCP
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65 Films to Compete in Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus Competition at 2018 Berlin International Film Festival
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303[/caption]
Selected from considerably more than 2,000 submissions, this year a total of 65 full-length and short films have been invited to compete in the Generation Kplus and Generation 14plus competitions at the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival. Highly contemporary, the selection reflects on both cinematic developments as well as current socio-political situations. The diversity in content and format relentlessly reflects a complex and frequently inconsistent world while at the same time leaving room for interpretation. In the zone between reality and imagination, the filmmakers open doors for alternative options – not only for the young protagonists – and simultaneously reframe a young generations’ yearning for commitment.
“Every single selection is an invitation to the audience to experience life from the perspective of youth. They are films with young people, as opposed to about them. An impressive characteristic throughout the program is not only the deep respect with which the filmmakers paint portraits of their protagonists, but also the immediacy and intimacy with which they approach these very individual world views,” says section head Maryanne Redpath about this year’s program.
The Generation 14plus competition will open at Haus der Kulturen der Welt with the road movie 303, with director Hans Weingartner (White Noise and The Edukators, among others) and cast attending. The Generation Kplus competition will open with an adventurous journey of an altogether different nature: the fast-paced Danish animation Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear) by Philip Einstein Lipski, Amalie Næsby Fick and Jørgen Lerdam.
Generation 14plus
Adam Germany / Iceland / USA by Maria Solrun World premiere After her debut film Jargo (Generation 14plus 2004), Icelandic director Maria Solrun presents a feature film for the second time in Generation. The aurally handicapped young protagonist Adam and his mother, a techno musician, have always lived in different worlds. At the same time, they are symbiotically connected: he feels her music directly with his body. When his mother is diagnosed with irreversible brain damage caused by alcohol, Adam suddenly has to look after himself. He faces his mother’s eager death wish in his very own laconic way, and the director gives him his voice, as well as plenty of space to develop. Dressage Iran by Pooya Badkoobeh World premiere Motivated primarily by boredom rather than greed, Golsa and her friends rob a corner shop. But while evaluating the booty, they are dismayed to realise that they forgot to take the security camera footage. One of them must return to the crime scene and retrieve it. The vote falls on Golsa, who bravely completes the mission. Her friends’ behaviour makes her think, and she hides the hard drive somewhere secret. But her accomplices and their well-to-do families put more and more pressure on Golsa, worried about their social standing. Director Pooya Badkoobeh radically staged story about control, blackmail and the power of money holds an uncompromising mirror up to Iranian society. Fortuna Switzerland / Belgium by Germinal Roaux World premiere Amidst the snow-covered mountains of the Swiss Simplon Pass, 14-year-old Fortuna clasps her hands in prayer. She hasn’t seen her parents since their traumatic crossing of the Mediterranean. Like many other refugees, the young girl from the Ethiopia/Eritrea border area has found refuge in an Augustinian monastery. The feelings of loneliness and yearning for love that tear at Fortuna are weighed against a secret that she can’t even tell the head friar – insightfully played by Bruno Ganz. Director Germinal Roaux fathoms the depths of Christian charity in expressive black-and-white imagery. Hendi & Hormoz Iran / Czech Republic by Abbas Amini World premiere After Valderama (Generation 2016), Iranian director Abbas Amini presents his second feature film in Generation 14plus. Hendi & Hormoz takes place on Iran’s Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf, where hematite deposits in the soil turn the ocean waves blood-red. 16-year-old Hormoz is married to Hendi, three years his junior, after he promises that he can work as a miner. But the young man, stirringly played by Hamed Alipour (Valderama), finds closed doors instead of a job. When Hendi becomes pregnant unexpectedly, Hormoz is forced to make an ill-advised pact with a smuggler. Director Amini portrays the existential struggle of two young people who must abandon their carefree youth in a harsh world. High Fantasy South Africa by Jenna Bass European premiere After The Tunnel (Berlinale Shorts 2010), Berlinale Talents alumna and London native Jenna Bass now presents a film in Generation 14plus. Filmed by the four protagonists exclusively on smartphones in the wide expanses of the South African veldt, Bass’s second feature film High Fantasy brings a common vision to life: being inside the body of another person. When Lexi and her friends experience exactly that during a camping trip, a suspense-laden dynamic ensues between the three women and Thami, the only man with them, but also between Lexi, who is white and Xoli, who is black. A smart and biting essay on the unrelenting politics of the human body – and still highly relevant even decades after the alleged end of Apartheid. Kissing Candice Ireland / United Kingdom by Aoife McArdle European premiere Candice, 17, has a vivid imagination. In the glaring and graphic realms she experiences during her epileptic seizures, a man appears with whom she falls in love. Soon after, she meets him in the real world. But that’s just one bit of trouble in the Irish town where the young people see a pony as a status symbol on par with a car. One boy is missing and a violent clique of youths is terrorising the village inhabitants. Candice’s father, a police officer who longs for the “good old days” of “the Troubles”, is on the case. In her debut film, director Aoife McArdle stages highly aesthetic chaos against the harsh backdrop of a coastal Irish village. The director’s ample experience making music videos is clearly visible throughout. Retablo Peru / Germany / Norway by Álvaro Delgado-Aparicio L. European premiere 14-year-old Segundo lives with his parents in a village high in the magnificent mountains of Peru. His father Noé is a respected artist and Segundo’s role model. Noé hand-crafts altarpieces, decorated shrines for church and home, and is teaching Segundo the necessary skills to carry on in his footsteps. But cracks have developed in their close relationship because Noé is keeping a dark secret. With brutal honesty and saturated colours, the film peeks behind the facade of a seemingly intact village community where homophobic attidtudes enforced by patriarchal laws are carried out with remorseless violence. It sketches a visually powerful panorama of a world in which a young artist is searching for his niche. What Walaa Wants Canada / Denmark by Christy Garland World premiere The Palestinian girl Walaa – whose mother was incarcerated in an Israeli prison for eight years for allegedly aiding an assassination – shows little interest in school. She’d rather join the Palestinian National Authority – the provisional governmental body that governs the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza – as soon as possible, were it not for her distrust of any kind of authority. Director Christy Garland’s documentary follows the obstreperous young woman over the course of five years, from age 15 to 20. Always maintaining a level playing field with her young protagonist, Christy Garland gives an intimate look at the rebellious girl fighting at times uncontrollably but tenaciously for her dream. 303, Germany, Hans Weingartner — WP Cobain, Netherlands / Belgium / Germany, Nanouk Leopold — WP Danmark (Denmark), Denmark, Kaspar Rune Larsen — IP Güvercin (The Pigeon), Turkey, Banu Sıvacı — WP Les faux tatouages (Fake Tattoos), Canada, Pascal Plante — EP Para Aduma (Red Cow), Israel, Tsivia Barkai Jacov — WP Unicórnio (Unicorn), Brazil, Eduardo Nunes — IP Virus Tropical, Colombia, Santiago Caicedo — EPShort films in Generation 14plus
Fry-Up, United Kingdom, Charlotte Regan — EP Follower, Germany, Jonathan B. Behr — WP Je fais où tu me dis (Dressed for Pleasure), Switzerland, Marie de Maricourt — IP Juck, Sweden, Olivia Kastebring, Julia Gumpert, Ulrika Bandeira — IP Kiem Holijanda, Netherlands, Sarah Veltmeyer — IP Na zdrowie! (Bless You!), Poland, Paulina Ziólkowska — WP Neputovanja (Untravel), Serbia / Slovakian Republic, Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak Jr. — WP Nuuca, USA / Canada, Michelle Latimer — EP Playa (Beach), Mexico, Francisco Borrajo — EP Pop Rox, USA, Nate Trinrud — EP Premier amour (First Love), Switzerland, Jules Carrin — IP Sinfonía de un mar triste (Symphony of a Sad Sea), Mexico, Carlos Morales — EP Tangles and Knots, Australia, Renée Marie Petropoulos — EP Three Centimetres, United Kingdom, Lara Zeidan — WP Vermine (Vermin), Denmark, Jeremie Becquer — WP Voltage, Austria, Samira Ghahremani — IPGeneration Kplus
Blue Wind Blows Japan by Tetsuya Tomina World premiere In his poetic full-length film debut, director Tetsuya Tomina follows shy Ao, who lives with his mother and younger sister Kii on the Japanese island of Sado. Their father recently disappeared without a trace, but nobody talks much about that. Ao and Kii wander around the island and vent their incomprehension to the expanses of the sea. Then Ao finds a soulmate in the secretive Sayoko. These two daydreamers need only a few words and feel immediately connected to one another. Against the impressive backdrop of an industrial coastal village, Tomina (who also wrote the screenplay) tells a touching story about hope, loss and letting go. Ceres Belgium / Netherlands by Janet van den Brand World premiere In her full-length documentary debut, Dutch director Janet van den Brand accompanies her four young protagonists as they go about their daily agricultural business. Piglets are born, as well as calves, lambs and chicks. Sowing, planting and harvesting. Butchering. No matter what, the camera is close by, along with Koen, Daan, Sven and Jeanine. They help with the farm work from a young age, learning to take responsibility, and to say farewell. Will they run their parents’ farms one day? Using documental imagery, Van den Brand presents a realistic picture of life and work in agriculture – one without idealism, and yet full of poetry. Cirkeline, Coco og det vilde næsehorn (Circleen, Coco and the Wild Rhinoceros) Denmark by Jannik Hastrup World premiere The works of Danish director Jannik Hastrup, seasoned master of animation film, have competed in the Generation programmes since 1985. This year he presents the fourth screen adventure of the matchbook-sized elf Cirkeline. Travel is once again on the agenda, this time with Princess Coco and a moody baby rhinoceros, who both want to return to their home in Africa. Cirkeline and her mouse friends spontaneously decide to go along. A musical story told in episodes and lively, colorful images, Hastrup’s film once again illustrates how travel can open our eyes, and that not everything is the way it seems at first glance. Los Bando Norway / Sweden by Christian Lo International premiere Best friends Axel and Grim finally want to perform at this year’s Norwegian rock championship with their band, Los Bando Immortale. Nine-year-old runaway and cellist Thilda, and underage rally driver Martin complete the troupe, and the quartet sets off on a turbulent road trip to the wild north. With the police and crazy relatives on their tail, and confronted with harsh truths in life and love, the four friends continue toward their dream, unperturbed. After Bestevenner (2010), Norwegian director Christian Lo presents his second feature film in Generation Kplus. Mochila de plomo (Packing Heavy) Argentina by Darío Mascambroni World premiere 12-year-old Tomás tolerated it for far too long – being put off by the grownups, who built a labyrinth of silence, excuses and contradictions all around him. But today is the day of truth. Today, the man who killed his father will be released from prison. And Tomás is ready. In his rucksack is a loaded gun. Restless and determined to liberate himself from the half-truths of the adults, Tomás takes a trip through his hometown. Following his debut Primero enero (Generation Kplus 2017), director Darío Mascambroni once again demonstrates his talent for the attentively observed father-son narrative, told in atmospheric images and in close proximity to his protagonists. Wang Zha de yuxue (Wangdrak’s Rain Boots) People’s Republic of China by Lhapal Gyal World premiere After heavy rains, puddles and mud cover the streets of the Tibetan mountain village. It’s good for the crops, but bad for young Wangdrak, the only boy in the village without rubber boots. While his father is busy with other worries, Wangdrak’s mother fulfills her son’s wish. But new shoes bring new problems. For Wangdrak, a battle against the blue sky and for the rain begins, fought alongside his loyal friend Lhamo. Nestled in the inimitable mountain landscape, director Lhapal Gyal uses vivid imagery to show us a culture steeped in ancient traditions, paying special attention to the young protagonist’s dreams. Allons enfants (Cléo & Paul), France, Stéphane Demoustier — WP Den utrolige historie om den kæmpestore pære (The Incredible Story of the Giant Pear), Denmark, Philip Einstein Lipski, Amalie Næsby Fick, Jørgen Lerdam — IP Dikkertje Dap (My Giraffe), Netherlands / Belgium / Germany, Barbara Bredero — IP El día que resistía (The Endless Day), Argentina / France, by Alessia Chiesa — WP Gordon och Paddy (Gordon and Paddy), Sweden, Linda Hambäck — IP Les rois mongols (Cross My Heart), Canada, Luc Picard — EP Sekala Niskala (The Seen and Unseen), Indonesia / Netherlands / Australia / Qatar, Kamila Andini — EP Supa Modo, Germany / Kenya, Likarion Wainaina — WPShort films in Generation Kplus
A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl, Australia, Tilda Cobham-Hervey — IP L’après-midi de Clémence (The Afternoon of Clémence), France, Lénaïg Le Moigne — WP Vdol´ i poperyok (Between the Lines), Russian Federation, Maria Koneva — WP Brottas (Tweener), Sweden, Julia Thelin — IP Cena d’aragoste (Lobster Dinner), USA / Italy, Gregorio Franchetti — IP De Natura, Romania, Lucile Hadžihalilović — IP Fisketur (Out Fishing), Sweden, Uzi Geffenblad — IP Fire in Cardboard City, New Zealand, Phil Brough — EP Hvalagapet, Norway, Liss-Anett Steinskog — IP Jaalgedi (A Curious Girl), Nepal, Rajesh Prasad Khatri — EP Lost & Found, Australia, Bradley Slabe — WP Neko no Hi (Cat Days), Germany, Jon Frickey — WP Paper Crane, Australia, Takumi Kawakami — WP Pinguin (Penguin), Germany, Julia Ocker — WP Snijeg za Vodu (Snow for Water), Bosnia and Herzegovina / United Kingdom, Christopher Villiers — IP Toda mi alegría (All My Joy), Argentina, Micaela Gonzalo — IP Tråder (Threads), Norway / Canada, Torill Kove — EP Trois rêves de ma jeunesse (Three Dreams of My Childhood), Romania, Valérie Mréjen, Bertrand Schefer — IP Yover, Colombia, Edison Sánchez — WP
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Berlin International Film Festival Complete 13th Forum Expanded Program Lineup
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Der Schwarze Samurai Yasuke in Café Togo von Musquiqui Chihying, Gregor Kasper Darsteller*: Yugen Yah[/caption]
34 film and video works, along 15 installations will be featured in the 13th Forum Expanded program at the upcoming 2018 Berlin International Film Festival, which opens on February 14 under the title “A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself.” The program is now complete.
This year’s program once again includes a variety of works that use documentary techniques to examine and explore the potential for both cinema and music to question, illustrate, analyze and bring about change in such a way that they are capable of intervening in social and political events on the global stage. In so doing, they also expand the very concept of the documentary.
The title of Margaret Honda’s work 6144 X 1024 recalls James Benning’s 11 x 14 from 1977. 6144 X 1024 separates out the entire colour spectrum of a digital projector in a computer-generated screening. This process lasts 36 hours in total and will be shown for a few hours each day over the course of the festival in the smaller of the two Arsenal cinema auditoria.
Like Benning’s work, Honda’s piece turns form into content and seems almost paradigmatic for the demands to which contemporary cinema is once again subject. While for Benning the primary focus was on finding a new cinematic language, today the emphasis has shifted to altered spatial, temporal and power relations, as well as the new systems of reference within reality that dictate structure.
The resulting need for alternative histories is apparent in many of the works in the programme: Kudzanai Chiurai’s film We Live in Silence: Chapters 1-7 takes Med Hondo’s classic Soleil Ô as a point of departure for staging historical narratives and visions of the future that reject the assumption that African migrants are supposed to think, speak and understand language in the way their colonisers do. Alternative history is also what structures High Dam, a slide installation by Ala Younis which focusses on two films made by Egyptian director Youssef Chahine about the Aswan Dam in the 1960s and 1970s. High Dam shines a light on the politics of the era and Chahine’s efforts to evade censorship.
The installation Café Togo by Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper examines the campaign to rename streets with colonial connotations in the so-called African Quarter of Berlin-Wedding. It also explores Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed’s vision of a multidimensional politics of memory. Laura Horelli’s installation Namibia Today is also set in Berlin. In an underground station in former East Berlin, seven people talk about the history of the magazine “Namibia Today“, which was published in the GDR between 1980 and 1985.
Zach Blas’s Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 is inspired by Derek Jarman’s queer punk film Jubilee (1978). Blas shows philosopher Ayn Rand and economist Alan Greenspan on a drug trip in 1955, during which they witness the end of the Internet in 2033. In Watching the Detectives, Chris Kennedy takes a critical look at the internet as we know it today by retracing the efforts of amateur detectives to reconstruct the events of the Boston Marathon bombing.
In the Marshall McLuhan Salon at the Embassy of Canada, Forum Expanded presents an installation by artist-duo Bambitchell in which surveillance is investigated as an aesthetic practice. The exhibition opens on February 15. Its title, Special Works School, refers to the code name used by the British War Office between 1917 and 1919 for a group of artists employed to design camouflage patterns and technologies.
SAVVY Contemporary will present an exhibition by artist and filmmaker Jasmina Metwaly from February 13 onwards. We Are Not Worried in the Least confronts viewers with footage from the film archive that she put together in Egypt between 2001 and 2016. Egypt’s turbulent social and political landscape during this period form the historical backdrop to these images.
Music, Avant-garde and Underground
A series of works bring together film and music as interrelated elements of social and artistic movements which each carry the same importance.
The Third Part of the Third Measure is an audio-visual composition by The Otolith Group that can be seen and heard in the group exhibition. It stages an encounter with the militant minimalism of avant-garde composer Julius Eastman, inviting visitors to immerse themselves in the ecstatic aesthetics of black radicalism, which Eastman himself once described as “full of honour, integrity and boundless courage”.
Andreas Reihse, who is well-known as a member of the band Kreidler, collaborated with artist and author Mohamed A. Gawad and filmmaker and author Dalia Neis (aka Dice Miller) in composing two audio essays. Entitled Celluloid Corridors, these two works will be presented as a cinematic event.
Morgan Fisher, one of the most famous representatives of structural cinema, will present his response to Bruce Conner’s classic found-footage film A Movie (1958), which he has dubbed Another Movie. By making reference to Ottorino Respighi’s composition “Pini di Roma”, Fisher generates visual associations to Conner’s film almost automatically.
Three more representatives of the North American avant-garde and underground scene that emerged in the 1970s will be showing their new works at Forum Expanded: James Benning, whose installation L. Cohen will be in the group exhibition, as well as Barbara Hammer and Ken Jacobs. And both Heinz Emigholz and Ben Russell once again return to the programme, the latter with Ben Rivers.
At silent green Kulturquartier Forum Expanded will be presenting a concert by The Invisible Hands, an Egyptian band co-founded in Cairo in 2011 by Alan Bishop (aka Alvarius B., best-known as a member of Sun City Girls). The band is also the subject of Marina Gioti’s and Georges Salameh’s documentary of the same name, which was shown for the first time at the documenta 14 in Athens.
Another two documentaries are dedicated to underground icons: In Eu sou o Rio, Gabraz Sanna and Anne Santos create both a portrait of Brazilian artist and musician Tantão and of the city of Rio. In Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith, Jerry Tartaglia combines glamorous pictures of the performer and filmmaker, who died in 1989, with music from his own eccentric record collection.
Archival Constellations
“Think Film No. 6 – Archival Constellations”, an international symposium on themes relating to film archives and alternative archive projects, will take place on February 22 at silent green Kulturquartier in Berlin-Wedding. Film archives and projects from Nigeria, Egypt, Palestine, Mexico, Japan and India have all been invited to take part.
During the festival, Prinzessinnengärten will be responsible for designing the foyer of the Arsenal cinema, with b_books once again offering a selection of literature.
Films
‘abl ma ‘ansa by Mariam Mekiwi (Egypt / Germany, 27´) 6144 X 1024 by Margaret Honda (USA, 360´) A Movie by Bruce Conner (USA, 12´) Aala Kad Al Shawk – Le Voyage Immobile by Ghassan Salhab and Mohamed Soueid (Lebanon / France, 23´) Another Movie by Morgan Fisher (USA, 22´) Araf by Didem Pekün (Turkey / Greece / Bosnia and Herzegovina, 47´) Ard al mahshar by Milad Amin (Lebanon / Syria, 19´) Bayna Hayakel Studio Baalbeck by SISKA (Lebanon / Germany, 48´) Celluloid Corridors: Sermon by Mohamed A. Gawad, Dalia Neis and Andreas Reihse (Germany, 11´) Celluloid Corridors: Timehelix by Mohamed A. Gawad, Dalia Neis and Andreas Reihse (Germany, 9´) Cinema Olanda Film by Wendelien van Oldenborgh (Netherlands, 17´) Contra-Internet: Jubilee 2033 by Zach Blas (USA / United Kingdom, 29´) The Disappeared by Adam Kaplan and Gilad Baram (Germany / Israel, 46´) DUG by Jan Peter Hammer (Germany / Norway, 27´) Escape From Rented Island: The Lost Paradise of Jack Smith by Jerry Tartaglia (USA, 88´) Eu sou o Rio by Gabraz Sanna and Anne Santos (Brazil, 78´) Evidence of the Evidence by Alexander Johnston (USA, 22´) Evidentiary Bodies by Barbara Hammer (USA, 10´) The Invisible Hands by Marina Gioti and Georges Salameh (Greece / Egypt, 97´) It by Anouk De Clercq and Tom Callemin (Belgium, 13´) Manila Scream Expanded by Roxlee (Philippines, 66´) Onward Lossless Follows by Michael Robinson (USA, 17´) Optimism by Deborah Stratman (USA / Canada, 15´) The Rare Event by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell (Switzerland / France / United Kingdom, 48´) RIOT: 3 Movements by Rania Stephan (Lebanon / United Arab Emirates, 17´) Die Schläferin by Alex Gerbaulet (Germany, 16´) Shelley Duval is Olive Oyl by Ken Jacobs (USA, 21´) Song for Europe by John Smith (United Kingdom, 4´) Today Is 11th June 1993 by Clarissa Thieme (Germany / Bosnia and Herzegovina, 15´) TWO BASILICAS by Heinz Emigholz (Denmark / Germany, 36´) An Untimely Film For Every One and No One by Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri (USA / Palestine / Armenia, 90´) wa akhiran musiba by Maya Shurbaji (Syria,15´) Watching the Detectives by Chris Kennedy (Canada, 36´) We Live in Silence: Chapters 1-7 by Kudzanai Chiurai (Zimbabwe, 36´)Group exhibition at Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg
Article 9303 by Ash Moniz (Egypt, 7´) Bläue by Kerstin Schroedinger (Germany / United Kingdom, 48´) Café Togo by Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper (Germany / Taiwan, 27´) Cold Body Shining by Marta Hryniuk (Poland, 33´) Come Back Alive Baby by Song Sanghee (Republic of Korea, 17´) Extended Sea by Nesrine Khodr (Lebanon / United Arab Emirates, 705´) High Dam by Ala Younis (Jordan, 7´) Cohenby James Benning (USA, 45´) Namibia Today by Laura Horelli (Germany / Finland, 21´) Pink Slime Caesar Shift by Jen Liu (USA, 24´) Strange Meetings by Jane Jin Kaisen (Republic of Korea, 11´) The Third Part of the Third Measure by The Otolith Group (United Kingdom / United Arab Emirates / USA, 50´) Ultima Ratio Δ Mountain of the Sun by Bahar Noorizadeh (Lebanon / Canada, 13´)
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Kino Lorber to Release Tribeca Film Festival Award-Winning Romantic Comedy KEEP THE CHANGE
The New York-set award-winning romantic comedy Keep The Change, written and directed by Rachel Israel, and starring newcomers Brandon Polansky (as David) and Samantha Elisofon (as Sarah), centers around David and Sarah’s unexpected encounter and ensuing romance. Jessica Walter (Arrested Development, Archer), Tibor Feldman (The Devil Wears Prada), Sondra James (Royal Pains), and Johnathan Tchaikovsky (The Wolf of Wall Street) round up the cast.
While David struggles to come to terms with his own high-functioning autism, he unexpectedly falls for Sarah, a quirky and outgoing woman whose lust for life both irks and fascinates him. As David and Sarah’s relationship evolves, Keep The Change blossoms into a refreshingly off-kilter story about the ups-and-downs of romantic love – and the rewards of acceptance, self-love and mutual trust.
Painting an honest portrait of a community seldom depicted on the big screen, Keep The Change is based on the award-winning short film developed by Rachel Israel and lead actor Brandon Polansky that was inspired by Polansky’s experiences at Adaptations, a community for adults on the autism spectrum that meets at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) of Manhattan. Film Director Rachel Israel cast Keep The Change with non-professional actors from Adaptations, and she worked closely with them to create fictional versions of themselves for the film.
Keep The Change premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won two of the festival’s most coveted awards: Best U.S. Narrative Feature and Best New Narrative Director. It also received Special Mention for the Nora Ephron Prize. At last summer’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, the film won the Best Debut and FIPRESCI awards.
Keep The Change will be released by Kino Lorber and opens in New York on March 16, following its prominent berth as opening night feature of the 2018 ReelAbilities Film Festival in March. A national expansion will follow.
Director Rachel Israel wrote in a prepared statement: “Keep The Change has been a labor of love for all involved, from our cast to our crew, our producers, and our community partners at the JCC’s Center for Special Needs. We made a unique, risk-taking film and it is wonderful to see it come to light on the big screen. We are absolutely thrilled to be partnered with Kino Lorber, and to have their exceptional taste and reputation behind the film.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKyivROX8MI
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Miami Film Festival to Spotlight Filmmakers Jean-Marc Barr and Mateo Gil as First Two Marquee Events
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THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS (Las leyes de la termodinámica)[/caption]
Filmmakers Jean-Marc Barr and Mateo Gil have been confirmed as headliners of the first two Marquee events of the upcoming 35th anniversary edition of the Miami Film Festival to be held March 9 to 18, 2018. The Festival’s Marquee series features film screenings accompanied by on-stage conversations with major film personalities of the moment, discussing their career and sharing an exciting new work.
Spanish filmmaker Mateo Gil will present the World premiere of his latest film, The Laws of Thermodynamics (Las leyes de la termodinámica), a unique romantic comedy co-produced by Spain’s Zeta Cinema and Atresmedia. The film stars Vito Sanz (Maria (and the Others)) as a Sciences graduate student who blames his disastrous love life, such as being dumped by his girlfriend (played by Berta Vázquez of Palm Trees in the Snow), on the mysteriously comic laws of cosmic thermodynamics.
Prior to presenting his high-profile new film, Gil will participate in an extended conversation about his career, which includes such highlights as co-writing the Academy Award-winning film The Sea Inside, co-writing Open Your Eyes, later remade as Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise; and his numerous Goya Award wins from Spain’s Academy of Cinematographic Arts & Sciences. As a director, Gil’s films “Allanamiento de morada”, Nobody Knows Anybody, Blackthorn and Realive have all been presented in the US by Miami Film Festival.
“The Laws of Thermodynamics is Mateo Gil’s most astoundingly original creation yet, in which he brilliantly dissects the romantic comedy genre at the same time he elevates it with explosive new levels of movie-star chemistry and expertly-timed wit,” said Festival director Jaie Laplante. “We could not be more honored to present the world premiere of a film that will be the talk of 2018 in Spain and beyond.”
French-American actor and filmmaker Jean-Marc Barr will attend the North American premiere of the new documentary Dolphin Man, about the life and legacy of the French free diving legend Jacques Mayol, whom Barr played in Luc Besson’s 1988 international blockbuster hit, The Big Blue. Barr is featured prominently in Dolphin Man, which is directed by Lefteris Charitos and includes prominent coverage of the beginning of Mayol’s career working with dolphins at Miami Seaquarium in the 1950s. The Marquee evening will feature an extended conversation with Barr, and be paired with a 4K digital retrospective screening of The Big Blue.
After the international success of The Big Blue, Barr continued to make an international mark in a long association with Danish provocateur Lars von Trier, as the star of such films as Europa, Breaking the Waves, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville and many others. As a director, screenwriter and producer he has made numerous films in collaboration with Pascal Arnold, including Lovers and American Translation. His most recent film is Grain, winner of the 2017 Grand Prize at Tokyo Film Festival.
“After making Jacques Mayol’s incredible life known the world over in the 1980s, Jean-Marc Barr honors Mayol and Miami by personally presenting this wonderous new documentary about Mayol,” added Laplante. “Presenting the film to North America for the first time in the same community that Mayol began his journey is all the more special for Miami.”
In addition to The Laws of Thermodynamics, the Festival also announced two more high-profile new Spanish films which will screen for the first time to US audiences.
DOLPHIN MAN (Greece, Canada, France / Directed by Lefteris Charitos)
Tells the life story of Jacques Mayol, the greatest free-diver in recorded history, whose life became the inspiration for Luc Besson’s cult-movie The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu). Dolphin Man will additionally compete for the audience-voted Knight Documentary Achievement Award, and as a Canadian co-production, is in part presented in Miami by Telefilm Canada.
THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS (Las leyes de la termodinámica) (Spain / Directed by Mateo Gil)
A unique romantic comedy about a Sciences graduate student who blames his disastrous love life, such as being dumped by his girlfriend (played by Berta Vázquez of Palm Trees in the Snow), on the mysteriously comic laws of cosmic thermodynamics. The Laws of Thermodynamics will additionally compete in Knight Competition and HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Competition.
THE WARNING (El aviso) (Spain / Directed by Daniel Calparsoro)
A high-octane thriller from Chris Sparling, the American screenwriter of Ryan Reynolds’ hit film Buried, and Alex de la Iglesia’s frequent screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría, directed by Daniel Calparsoro, and starring Raúl Arévalo and Aura Garrido, will premiere in Miami just a week following its opening in Spanish theaters. The supernatural thriller is being compared to the Brad Pitt-Terry Gilliam hit 12 Monkeys, and will debut in two of the Festival’s competition sections, Knight Competition and HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Competition. Calparsoro’s most recent film, Cien años de perdón, was an official selection of Miami Film Festival in 2016.
THE SKIN OF THE WOLF (Bajo la piel de lobo) (Spain / Directed by Samu Fuentes)
A dramatic thriller with stunning wide-screen photography set in Spain’s spectacular Asturias-Huescas region from first-time feature writer-director Samu Fuentes, will debut in the Festival’s Jordan Ressler Screenwriting Competition, as well as the HBO Ibero-American Feature Film Competition. Starring Spanish mega-star Mario Casas, Ruth Díaz (The Fury of a Patient Man) and Irene Escolar, The Skin of the Wolf is a film of sparse dialogue connected to a complex visual storytelling design, making it a top contender for the Ressler Award.
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Film Comment Selects Reveals 2018 Lineup, Opens with “Life and Nothing More”
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Life and Nothing More[/caption]
The Film Comment magazine’s annual cinematic showcase series, Film Comment Selects, returns for the 18th edition, February 23 to 27, 2018, featuring films curated by the magazine’s editors.
The festival opens with the New York premiere of Antonio Mendez Esparza’s Life and Nothing More, an intimate chronicle of an African American family living on the margins in Florida, starring an astonishing non-professional cast. Other new works in the lineup are Ildikó Enyedi’s Berlinale Golden Bear-winner On Body and Soul; Mrs. Fang, Wang Bing’s unflinching document of an elderly woman in her final days, which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno; the North American premiere of Katharina Wyss’s powerful debut feature Sarah Plays a Werewolf, about a woman who channels her fears into theater; Govinda Van Maele’s fiction feature debut Gutland, featuring Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps; the U.S. premiere of Slovenian director Rok Biček‘s The Family, a compassionate portrait of a young man’s life over the course of 10 years; and experimental artist Bertrand Mandico’s exhilarating, gender-bending Wild Boys.
In addition to these anticipated new works, the 2018 slate features a retrospective of radical filmmaker Nico Papatakis, who had a “body of work that blends anarchic fury with visceral and transcendent poetry” (Yonca Talu, Film Comment). All five features directed by Papatakis, who subversively and provocatively explored themes of race, class, gender, and politics and produced films by Cassavetes and Genet, will be screened, including the meta terrorist drama Gloria Mundi, Cannes selection Les Abysses, and Walking a Tightrope, which stars Michel Piccoli as writer Jean Genet (a personal friend of the filmmaker). Film Comment Selects will also present a 25th anniversary screening of Tom Joslin & Peter Friedman’s extraordinarily powerful documentary Silverlake Life: The View from Here, which follows Joslin and his partner Mark Massi as they struggle to live with AIDS.
“It’s a rare chance to see the lively mix of films that our critics have raved about but that haven’t hit New York theaters yet,” said Nicolas Rapold, Editor-in-Chief of Film Comment. “This year’s edition is made especially exciting by a rare retrospective of the inimitable Nico Papatakis, whose work will be exciting for many to discover.”
FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS
Opening Night Life and Nothing More Antonio Mendez Esparza, U.S./Spain, 2017, 114m “The African American single mom and teenage son at the center of this drama are lifelong residents of northern Florida but remain, at best, provisional citizens of their own country. Rendering characters they developed in tandem with their director, these non-professional but astoundingly gifted performers convey so much of what matters in so many working-class black lives.” —Nick Davis, Toronto Film Festival 2017 online coverage New York premiere The Family Rok Biček, Slovenia/Austria, 2017, 106m “Slovenian director Rok Biček started The Family as a film-school student and proceeded to film a life in full: a boy, Matej, seen growing up, watching his father die and becoming a father himself, breaking up with his girlfriend, and battling her for child custody. A twist on observational cinema, Biček’s portrait of the anti-heroic young man defies stereotypes of working-class and dysfunctional families, refrains from passing moral judgments, and retains an open fondness of his subject.” —Tina Poglajen, Nov/Dec 2017 issue U.S. premiere Gutland Govinda Van Maele, Luxembourg/Belgium/Germany/France, 2017, 107m “A stranger wends through twilit wheat fields in the exquisite opening moments of Govinda Van Maele’s fiction feature debut [starring Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps] … By the following morning he’s courted by an elder who finds him a gig and lodging—and then Gutland quietly maunders from folktale to pastoral noir to Polanski-esque uncanny and, finally, back to folk tale. Call it a ‘village film,’ with an eerie ambiance of secrets, insularity, and sinister solidarity.” —José Teodoro, Nov/Dec 2017 issue New York premiere Mrs. Fang Wang Bing, China, 2017, 86m “Wang Bing’s latest documentary trains its camera very tightly on the face of a bedridden elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s in a small rural Chinese village. For a while, it seems as though Mrs. Fang is content to use the camera as a tool to unflinchingly record a human being close to her final breath. Yet Wang Bing is after something completely different, as the filmmaker goes into other territory, somehow more and less tangible than a portrait of dying.” —Michael Koresky, Toronto Film Festival 2017 online coverage New York premiere On Body and Soul Ildikó Enyedi, 2017, Hungary, 116m Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin, Ildikó Enyedi’s visually imaginative film tracks the highs and lows of an unforeseen romance conducted partly through dreams. Film Comment celebrated Enyedi’s “ludic, freewheeling storytelling” with last year’s home-video release of her 1989 favorite My Twentieth Century, and her newest marks a triumphant return for this Hungarian filmmaker. A Netflix release. New York premiere Sarah Plays a Werewolf Katharina Wyss, Switzerland/Germany, 2017, 86m “Katharina Wyss’s heady debut feature centers on Sarah, a young woman channeling her powerful depth of feeling into the artistic and psychological outlet of theater. As the 17-year-old protagonist in a staid Swiss town, Loane Balthasar is unnervingly transparent, giving herself over to her character—and, like Sarah, 20 times more present than anyone around her. The film’s title captures a life fraught with energy.” —Nicolas Rapold, Jan/Feb 2018 issue North American premiere Wild Boys Bertrand Mandico, France, 2017, 110m “Some might be quick to suggest Mandico’s similarities with Guy Maddin due to his new film’s whacked-out narrative, alienating use of studio sets, and brusquely outré acting. Exiled teenagers are sentenced to hard labor on a mysterious island, left to their own devices and then transformed… All the teens are played by actresses, with ever-fearless, weather-beaten Elina Löwensohn leading the way. Little else in 2017 was quite as exhilarating, eye-popping, intoxicating, seductive, carefree, funky, sexy, and fun.” —Olaf Möller, Jan/Feb 2018 issue New York premiere 25th Anniversary Screening Silverlake Life: The View from Here Tom Joslin & Peter Friedman, U.S., 1993, 99m Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, this is one of the cornerstone documentaries abot the AIDS crisis. “Silverlake Life is about a couple, and one of the guys is filming his boyfriend, who is ill and dying. I didn’t want to represent the disease too much [in BPM (Beats Per Minute)], because I thought it was so real in Silverlake Life. I didn’t want to make the same thing because you can’t do more than this film, because it was real and it’s a very, very moving film. I love it so much.”—Robin Campillo, director of BPM (Beats Per Minute), interviewed in July/Aug 2017 issue Special Section: Five Films by Nico Papatakis “It’s become a cliché to call a filmmaker ‘rebellious,’ but from Gance to Eisenstein to Pasolini to Buñuel, the 20th century saw true rebels who fiercely defied both the cinematic and political establishments of their time. Nikos Papatakis (1918-2010)—nicknamed Nico in France—holds a profound and unique place in this lineage through a body of work that blends anarchic fury with visceral and transcendent poetry. Born in Addis Ababa to an Ethiopian mother and a Greek father, Papatakis was an outcast by nature, mocked and ostracized as a child for being biracial. Deeply rooted in personal experience, Papatakis’s films are politically, morally, and formally subversive explorations of race, gender, and class that use the medium as a vehicle of opposition and dissent.” —Yonca Talu, Sept/Oct 2017 issue Les Abysses Nico Papatakis, France, 1963, 90m This allegorical portrait of the Algerian resistance was inspired by the real-life story of the Papin sisters, two maids who brutally murdered their employers in 1930s France—also the basis for Jean Genet’s influential 1947 play The Maids and Claude Chabrol’s 1995 psychological thriller La Cérémonie. The Shepherds of Disorder Nico Papatakis, Greece, 1967, 117m The Shepherds of Disorder (aka Thanos and Despina) juxtaposes an anthropological and materialist study of a rigid rural community with the mythologically imbued, forbidden romance between a rebellious shepherd and the angelic and compliant daughter (Olga Karlatos) of a rich conservative family, engaged in an erotically charged power game. Gloria Mundi Nico Papatakis, France, 1976, 115m Papatakis’s most psychedelic film, Gloria Mundi centers on an actress (Olga Karlatos) playing an Arab terrorist who takes her role to another level. Papatakis’s virulent denunciation of consumer capitalism and a hypocritical left-wing intelligentsia that deems itself political but does not take any action, begins with a scream and ends with an explosion. The Photograph Nico Papatakis, Greece/France, 1986, 102m Papatakis’s most accessible, gripping, and poignant work is a meticulously crafted, intimate meditation on immigration and exile centering on a 26-year-old Greek man fresh out of prison (where he was tortured for being a communist’s son) who leaves for France in hopes of a better life and strikes up a complicated friendship with a distant relative. Walking a Tightrope / Les Équilibristes Nico Papatakis, France, 1992, 120m The director’s final film—starring Michel Piccoli as a fictional version of Papatakis’s friend Jean Genet—is a compendium of the themes and motifs that pervade his distinctive filmography, including the torturous nature of love, the suffering induced by exile, and suicide as an act of rebellion.