Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
SURVEYING THE DOCS AT TRIBECA
Attempting to wrap your mind around a film festival’s totality is an exercise of dubious value. Still, the dubious can be exceedingly difficult to resist. It seems to me that the documentary films at the Tribeca Film Festival are of a consistently higher quality than the narratives. But what doc rat doesn’t believe this at every festival? Still, there are extremely few stinker docs at Tribeca, and forget the bombs. After the screenings the descriptive word that I hear the most from the audience members is “good,” occasionally “outstanding,” but never “bad.” Stinker docs need not apply. The universal […]
-
SURFING THROUGH CINEMA: THE 20TH ANNUAL ARIZONA INTN’L FILM FESTIVAL
As someone who is couch surfing with family and non-blood relatives throughout Europe and the States since I can no longer afford to pay rent, staying in high-end digs on a beautiful beach and lounging around in 80-plus weather during the day while covering the Miami International Film Festival recently was equal parts ironic and surreal. So it was something of a happy accident that while visiting my Tucson-residing best friend from high school I stumbled upon a poster advertising the Arizona International Film Festival. Since I was in town anyhow I figured I might as well check out a […]
-
OFF PLUS CAMERA INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF INDEPENDENT CINEMA
Ambitious and generally without a dull moment, the fourth Off Plus Camera International Festival of Independent Cinema unfurled from the 8th through the 17th of this month with little of the inconvenience and national tragedy that marked last year’s affair. Having been interrupted by the volcanic explosion that grounded planes across Europe last April and shortened by the tragic plane crash which killed an entire generation of Polish political and civic leaders, the third edition was a ragtag affair with few guests and an anarchic spirit that few festivals are able to generate. This year the festival was running at […]
-
IFP Partners with UN and HBO for Envision
This past weekend, the documentary as a tool for change was discussed at “Envision: Addressing Global Issues Through Documentary,” a forum co-sponsored by the IFP in partnership with the United Nations Department of Public Information. In her introductory remarks, Joana Vicente, IFP’s executive director, said that the goal of the event was to unite the “filmmaking community with the activist [community].” It was a sentiment echoed by Kiyo Akasaka, the Under-Secretary-General for Communications at the UN who encouraged the activists and filmmakers in the attendance to partner with each other “to envision a better world” and “meet the needs of […]
-
DALLAS INTERNATONAL FILM FESTIVAL
The 2011 Dallas International Film Festival closes today, wrapping up an 11 day fest that accomplished what all regional fests should: screening favorites on the festival circuit while highlighting the talents of filmmakers in its community. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the Dallas Film Society (which took over the festival when the three-year licensing and consulting deal with AFI wasn’t renewed before the 2010 fest) — specifically chairman Michael Cain and artistic director James Faust — the 5th DIFF has integrated itself nicely into a Dallas arts community that already has a full calendar of events to choose from […]
-
THE MIAMI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2011
I guess it should come as no surprise that my preference for film festivals tends to follow my sensibility when it comes to films themselves. If everyone in the blogosphere and beyond is talking about the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster or even the latest offering from the mumblecore crowd, I’ll want to review what’s coming out of Kazakhstan (The Gift to Stalin — three stars!) or rave about an undistributed doc that takes a refreshing look at a trio of grandma-age sex workers in Berlin (Saara Aila Waasner’s uplifting Frauenzimmer). I often feel like I’m out of the loop as the […]
-
THE TRUE/FALSE FILM FESTIVAL 2011
There’s nothing like a parade to celebrate community spirit. When I arrived in Columbia, Missouri (aka CoMo) throngs of revelers in homemade costumes were marching down the main boulevard to kick off the 8th edition of the True/False Film Fest. The aptly named documentary festival ran from March 3-6, and community spirit was evident in the grassroots event dedicated to the audience experience. Columbia, a small city just north of the Ozarks, counts more than one quarter of its 108,000 residents as advanced degree holders. The University of Missouri (aka Mizzou) is the largest among several schools, and its prominent […]
-
CINEKINK 2011: NOTES ON KINK
“We love the filmmakers because without them we’d all just be here drinking.” So noted CineKink Film Festival founder Lisa Vandever after calling for a round of applause at this year’s midtown kickoff at the Taj Lounge, which saw burlesque performances — by Leta Le Noir, Sweet Lorraine and “N — “The ONLY Letter in Burlesque” followed by a small shorts program. With films containing a slick music video/Calvin Klein commercial aesthetic (Roy Raz’s The Lady Is Dead from Israel), to scenes of anatomical pottery (Debi Oulu’s My Erotic Video Art, another flick from Israel — what’s up with the […]
-
THE 11TH TOKYO FILMEX
The 11th Tokyo Filmex opened with Apitchatpong Weerasethakul’s beguiling Uncle Boonmee, Who Can Recall His Past Lives (pictured left). The opening film set the tenor of the week to come — experimental, personal, willing to take chances. At the opening ceremony festival director Kanako Hayashi gave a shout out to the man who pretty much put Japanese film on the Western critical map, Donald Richie. All eyes in the audience turned toward the frail, but unbowed, man who graciously acknowledged the accolades. Over the last year the 86-year old Richie has been conspicuously absent from the film scene that he […]
-
THE PALM SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Palm Springs, jewel of the desert, playground of the Hollywood rich, not to mention thousands of prosperous retirees who enjoy golf, tennis, and dinner at five, is also the home of a pretty cool film festival, started by Sonny Bono in 1990. Once, it was a sleepy little affair where audiences could see multiple films in the same theater on the same ticket, and no one paid much attention to the results. Those days are emphatically over. Wrapping its 22nd year on January 17, the Festival broke its own attendance record in 2011, as more than 130,000 cinephiles crowded into […]
