Eclecticism governs the second half of the 51st NYFF just as it did the first. According to the Times, several common threads run through the week two batch, but these are little more than on-deadline segues. We could perhaps agree that all the films run at 24 frames per second. Below are recommendations I hope will sate the discerning ticket buyer. These are accomplished movies by directors who are not very well known in this country. Other films will sell out based on name recognition no matter the critical response, so, whether good, bad, or in-between, they will not be […]
by Howard Feinstein on Oct 2, 2013A few years after its move to Potsdamer Platz, the old dead zone between East and West Berlin that’s now a somber (at least in rainy February) pedestrian mall lit by the logos of its surrounding corporate spires, the Berlin Film Festival represents a shrewdly intelligent answer to the questions surrounding film production, exhibition and distribution today. Whereas the success of most festivals boils down to the cruel calculus of distribution deals and premiering masterpieces, the Berlin Film Festival, through its accompanying Talent Campus and its various retrospective programs, embraces a kind of “film festival as film school” model. By […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 20, 2005