Isabelle Huppert
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Cannes Director Thierry Fremaux on the Future of Film Festivals
To have the presence of Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux at your festival is like getting a seal of approval from the godfather of cinema himself. Arguably one of the most important players in the film industry today, Frémaux arrived by helicopter with French actress Isabelle Huppert to Emir Kusturica’s Fifth Annual Küstendorf Film and Music Festival, held this January in Serbia. “Sure Cannes is glamorous with its red carpet,” said Frémaux. “This is not the red carpet, it’s the white carpet, it’s the snow. And I think that is Emir’s style.” Küstendorf is a festival free of corporate sponsorship that aims to […]
by Ariston Anderson on Feb 9, 2012 -
PARK CITY CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #3: GEMS FROM THE OTHER FESTIVAL
While introducing a screening one afternoon this week in the Treasure Mountain Inn’s cramped banquet hall that the Slamdance Film Festival converts into its main cinema every year, Slamdance Co-Founder and expert hat-wearer Dan Mirvish remarked with a bit of awe that this was the 17th annual event, meaning that Slamdance, once referred to pejoratively as Sundance’s “parasite” by Robert Redford, had now been around for over half Sundance’s life span. Continuing, Mirvish claimed that “about a third” of the participants in Sundance’s 2011 lineup were Slamdance alumni. “The inmates have taken over the asylum,” Mirvish joked. Someone sitting behind me […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 28, 2011 -
“Starting With an Idea is Fake. It’s a Dead Form”: Claire Denis on White Material
Plenty of associations come to mind when one thinks of a Claire Denis film; the French auteur’s work is intelligent, nuanced, and frankly, often slow. Denis approaches her films like a sculptor, beginning with the giant block of matter that is a life (or lives) and whittling the irrelevant away until she finds a character’s essence. So it comes as something a surprise that the final act of Denis’ latest, White Material, plays out as something of a suspense thriller; Denis has worked in genre filmmaking before (notably Trouble Every Day), but typically inverts and eschews genre convention. However, while […]
by Zachary Wigon on Nov 17, 2010
