Full length features on YouTube

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Studios, better known as MGM, will be the first major movie studio to post full-length feature films on YouTube.

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Festival showcases African cinema in London

Here's a chance to see African cinema right in London. The London African Film Festival brings together 40 great and ground-breaking films as well as ten of the continents’ most exciting filmmakers to discuss their work and the future of African film. Spanning decades and genres, and including rare archival cinema and experimental film, the London African Film Festival introduces new talent emerging from the continent and its diaspora, and celebrates classics by some of Africa’s most renowned filmmakers. All events are supported by screenings at various venues across London. Unmissable.

New on Kamera: Taboo Breakers

Our regular contributor Calum Waddell has just released a book about films that have broken taboos. Taboo Breaker is out now on Telos Publishing and we have a review right here. A signing do took place in Los Angeles on Saturday 15 and was attended by grindhouse names such as Don Edmonds, Matt Cimber and Jack Hill. Congratulations Calum!

New on Kamera: Samurai films

Kamera Books is back with yet another gem for film lovers. Roland Thorne's Samurai Films is a complete guide to all things samurai on the big screen and Thorne has told Kamera what to expect from his book. Enjoy it!

A taster of Samurai film: Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961)

New on Kamera: Roger Corman

Roger Corman epitomises everything that us Kameradas love: an unrelenting independent spirit, humour and amazing visual flair. Optimum recently released a DVD boxset with some previously unpublished Corman fare. Our dynamic duo Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc give us the lowdown on the box. En-joy it!

Roger Corman's 1967 The Trip

New on Kamera: Monster Movies

Monsters are one of the great cinematic motifs, heavy in symbolism and packed with fun. Australian author and journalist, a self-proclaimed monster expert, tells us all about monsters on the big screen. And we couldn't help but dig some Roger Corman stuff out of YouTube to go with this blog. Corman, besides making some of the most memorable monster movies ever, and one of Ms Westwood's interviewees, is also an icon of independent cinema. And what a voice!

New on Kamera: Hunger and Caos Calmo

Plenty of good stuff on Kamera this week, namely reviews of Hunger (about an IRA terrorist on hunger strike) and the Nanni Moretti-starred Caos Calmo (Quiet Chaos). Trailers below.

Hunger


Caos Calmo

Trailer: Of Time and the City

A trailer of Terence Davies' new film, Of Time and the City is available here. Davies' homage to his native city of Liverpool is redolent of the city film genre epitomised by Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and, to a certain degree, Dziga Vertov's The Man With a Movie Camera (1929). The blurb describes the film as a "meditation on time, memory and mortality" (heard that one before?) and it opens in the UK on Friday, 31 October 2008.

New on Kamera: The Animals Film

Those who doubt the power of influence that cinema can exert should look no further than The Animals Film. The groundbreaking exposé of the cruelty involved in animal farming and other forms of humanity's tyrannical domination over most species on the planet is credited with turning thousands of people to vegetarianism when it first aired on Channel Four in November 1982. It celebrated its 25th anniversary last year and now the film has received a BFI release.
Kamera received kind permission from the BFI to reproduce an excerpt from the DVD booklet, written by Philip Windeatt, in which the researcher describes his visits to America's bleak factory farms.

Acclaim for The Animals Film is unanimous, including this glowing piece written by Ken Russell for the Times. And here, Julie Christie, the film's narrator, remembers the impact of this seminal documentary.

Trailer: The Animals Film

Free outdoor screenings in London

New on Kamera: Filming on a Microbudget

There's no better way to become a filmmaker than making a short film. That's how most directors get started and, with low-cost digital technology, it's never been easier from a tecnnical point of view to make a film on a shoestring budget.

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New on Kamera: London Film Festival preview

The London Film Festival kicks off tomorrow. John Atkinson gives us the lowdown on the 2008 programme, which, although not a vintage year, offers a few delights. Speaking of which, I found this cute video starring Wim Wenders and a digitally-inserted Antonioni, philosophising about the future of cinema in a Brazilian southern city.

Back to Room 666 from Think Tank on Vimeo.

New on Kamera: Out At The Movies

One of Kamera Books' latest releases is an insightful book about gay cinema called Out At The Movies: A History of Gay Cinema, penned by Steven Paul Davies, who kindly agreed to do a Q&A with us. And guess what? YouTube has a great little number that includes excerpts from many of the films mentioned in the book. Enjoy it ...

All hail Cinéphilia, London's new film book store

Film lovers in London have noticed that the number of shops that specialise in their favourite subject matter have been dwindling over time. So it's fantastic news to hear that our mates at Wallflower Press have opened a shop to fill in the gap. Cinéphilia starts trading today and we wish them the best of luck. Located at 97 Sclater St, just off the centre of the universe, that is, Brick Lane, it sounds very promising indeed. Pop around and get your film culture fix.

New on Kamera: Twenty Puccini

Film artists Anthea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin have written a piece for Kamera with an account of their collaboration to the Twenty Puccini omnibus film project fostered by the Lucca Film Festival in Italy due to start next Thursday.

New on Kamera: calls for entry

We've just posted a few very interesting screening opportunities currently open for submission, including the instigating Teaserland initiative that specializes in fake trailers. The home page highlights an entertaining teaser for The Exorcist. You' ve been warned!

Image of the Day: Burn After Reading

Still from the Coen brothers' new picture, Burn After Reading, currently playing across the globe.

Anjelica Huston speaks up for animals

It's been a long time since I'd heard anything about Anjelica Huston so it was a pleasant surprise to see her hosting a recent Peta video exposing the cruelty against animals within the entertainment industry. If you thought child actors met a grim fate when their careers are over, you ain't seen nothing yet ...

R.I.P.: Paul Newman

Legendary actor and philanthropist Paul Newman yesterday passed away at his home in Westport, Connecticut. Paul was 83. We all remember him from some great films, my favourite being Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, alongside Liz Taylor, but in the last decades of his life he channeled his energies into his Newman's Own foundation.

The organisation has released a statement in homage to the actor that reads as follows:

For 25 years, we at Newman's Own have had a front row seat to watch Paul's entrepreneurial brilliance, humor, and compassion at work helping those in need. Our company motto, "Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good," was Paul's vision for Newman's Own and it is a philosophy we are proud to continue.

Paul occasionally referred to Newman's Own as the "joke that got out of control" and would express astonishment at its success. Despite this humorous approach, Paul was committed to the company's business and to providing top-notch quality – he brought all-natural food products to a wide audience long before it was fashionable. And he was one of the greatest recyclers, giving back to charity all the money he earned from the sale of Newman's Own products.

We wish the Newman family all the best in this difficult time.

New on Kamera: The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

The latest addition to the list of films that deal with the Jewish Holocaust, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, receives praise from Kamera's reviewers, Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell. The full review is here.

Trailer

Derek Jarman show in Zurich

(Edited Press Release) - The new exhibition in the Kunsthalle Zürich “Derek Jarman. Brutal Beauty” is dedicated to the British artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994). The exhibition is curated by Isaac Julien who worked with Jarman for many years.

While “Derek Jarman. Brutal Beauty” aims to present a representative overview of Jarman’s creative output, it is not conceived as a classical retrospective. Instead, Julien is more concerned with making it possible to experience Jarman’s interdisciplinary approach and with refocusing critical attention on the work itself.

Derek Jarman was one of the outstanding representatives of British Independent Cinema of the period 1970 – 1990. However, although he was known to a large audience mainly as a filmmaker, he saw himself as an artist, in whose interdisciplinary and highly autobiographical oeuvre film, painting, stage design and writing assumed equal prominence. In his tireless struggle for gay rights and AIDS education and awareness, Jarman’s main priority was “to unite Art with Life and vice versa” (Isaac Julien).

The exhibition opens with a selection of paintings from the 1980s and 1990s. The double projection, which was developed for the Kunsthalle Zürich and provides the basic material for Isaac Julien’s documentary film Derek (2008), offers an introduction to the work and life of Derek Jarman. It is based on an interview with Jarman recorded by writer and producer Colin McCabe in 1990. The voiceover is narrated by the actor Tilda Swinton, who appeared in many of Jarman’s films including Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1988) and Edward II (1991). Tilda Swinton reads excerpts from a letter she wrote to Jarman after his death. In Derek, the interview, narrative and excerpts from Jarman’s feature films and super 8 films are interwoven with relevant contemporary news footage and media material focusing on the political events of the time to form a coherent and impressive work; in this way the film conveys an overview of Jarman’s biography from the perspective of his imminent death. At the same time, insight is gained into the England of the period 1960 - 1990 through the documentation of socially volatile topics such as the punk movement, the protests by intellectuals against the government of Margaret Thatcher, the struggle for gay rights and the AIDS crisis.

The installation is juxtaposed with a still life image by Isaac Julien which were taken inside Jarman’s house in Dungeness.

The exhibition ends with Jarman’s film Blue (1993), a moving and harrowing work by an artist who was about to go blind. In this his last film, the screen remains blue for the entire duration of the work - an homage to the French painter Yves Klein, whose Blue symbolised serenity and contemplation for Jarman. The soundtrack of the film is a text written and spoken by Jarman, in which he artistically explores and reproduces life and his experience with AIDS.

Between these two central works, Isaac Julien presents a selection of rarely shown films from the super 8 archive of Jarman’s artistic estate, e.g. Imagining October (1984) and In the Shadow of the Sun (1980). Having studied painting and stage design at the Slade School of Art in London, Jarman started working with super 8 as far back as the early 1970s and experimented with this medium up to the early 1980s. Jarman, who saw himself primarily as a painter throughout his life, achieves a painterly feel in the way in which he deals with light, colour, composition, abstraction, alienation and staging.

The work It Happened by Chance Redux (2008) is a ten-screen projection composed of footage which Jarman found on the floor of his editing suite. The installation is a re-working of It Happened by Chance (around 1976). The former was curated jointly by Isaac Julien and James Mackay, the owner of the archive, and incorporates Jarman’s most important super 8 films. The sculptural arrangement of the screens in the space is intended to evoke formally the Petersburg hanging of the Black Paintings, which were exhibited in the Richard Salmon Gallery in London in the late 1980s.

New on Kamera: interview with Joanna Hogg

Joanna Hogg´s debut feature effort has been hailed as one of the best works to emerge from British cinema in recent years. We at Kamera agree with that and interviewed Hogg on her superb Unrelated. Read the full interview here.

Interview: Naomi Watts

From the New York Times' Screen Tests series. Enjoy!

London Film Festival 2008 announces line-up

The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival earlier this week announced the 2008 programme, which includes 189 features and 108 shorts screening alongside a line-up of special events and expected guests. The festival takes place between 15 and 30 October.

Opening Night film, Ron Howard’s FROST/NIXON, is one of the Festival’s 15 world premieres and the Closing Night Gala is the European premiere of Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. Other highlights include Nick Moran’s TELSTAR, Eran Creevy’s SHIFTY, and Gerald McMorrow’s FRANKLYN in addition to Shashank Ghosh’s QUICK GUN MURUGAN from India and Samir Habchi’s BEIRUT OPEN CITY from Lebanon.

Also hosting 20 European and 119 UK premieres, the Festival will be showcasing new work from established and emerging filmmakers alongside feature film debuts by upcoming talents talents. The programme includes the latest work from Laurent Cantet (Cannes Palme d’Or winner, THE CLASS), Oliver Stone (W.), Steven Soderbergh (CHE PART 1 & PART 2), Raymond Depardon (MODERN LIFE), Jonathan Demme (RACHEL GETTING MARRIED), Stephan Elliott (EASY VIRTUE), Agnes Varda (THE BEACHES OF AGNES), Shyam Benegal (WELCOME TO SAJJANPUR), Rian Johnson (THE BROTHERS BLOOM), Gabor Csupo (THE SECRET OF MOONACRE), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (THREE MONKEYS); Fernando Eimbcke (LAKE TAHOE), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (THE SILENCE OF LORNA), Woody Allen (VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA) and Terence Davies (OF TIME AND THE CITY). In addition to welcoming back previous Festival alumni - such as Kelly Reichardt (WENDY AND LUCY), Pablo Trapero (LION’S DEN) and Bouli Lanners (ELDORADO) - the programme introduces the work of debut directors including Lance Hammer (BALLAST), Juraj Lehotský (BLIND LOVES), Enrique Rivero (PARQUE VIA) and Ursula Meier (HOME).

The British presence at the event includes Michael Winterbottom (GENOVA) and Richard Eyre (THE OTHER MAN), in addition to new work from Justin Kerrigan (I KNOW YOU KNOW) and Pat Holden (AWAYDAYS). British directors making their feature film debuts at the Festival also include Steve McQueen (HUNGER) and Sallie Aprahamian (BROKEN LINES), whilst a special panel event, BRITISH FILM BOOM, will celebrate and examine the new generation of British film talent.

New French cinema is also present via Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE, Christophe Honoré’s LA BELLE PERSONNE and Philippe Grandrieux’s A LAKE. Other European efforts include Ole Christian Madsen’s FLAME & CITRON from Denmark, Hungary-Germany co-production DELTA, UPRISE by Sandro Aguilar from Portugal, and INVOLUNTARY by Ruben Östlund from Sweden. In addition, the Film on the Square strand includes Uli Edel’s THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX from Germany and Antonello Grimaldi’s QUIET CHAOS from Italy.

For more information, the festival's website is here.

New on Kamera: Derek Hill on the American New Wave

All you need to know about the American New Wave, which includes those much-loved, quirky films by Richard Linklater, Spike Jones, Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, David O. Russell, Sophia Coppola ... is in Kamera Books' new title on the movement, Charlie Kaufman and Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters, Fabulists and Dreamers - An Excursion Into the American New Wave. Author Derek Hill chatted to us about it. Unmissable...

New on Kamera: Badlands

The BFI has re-released Terrence Malick's classic Badlands and Kamera's Sarah Manvel gives us her review of the film.

Badlands clip:

New on Kamera: The Wackness

It's 1994 and he is still a virgin, to his defensive embarrassment; he's into alternative hip-hop and dresses like a skater. His parents fight a lot, he won't upgrade to CDs, and makes really good mix tapes with all his cassettes. He's going off to college, and everything is going to change.

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Horse Hospital in London celebrates 15 years with film screenings

To celebrate its 15th anniversary, throughout September 'the chamber of pop culture', aka Horse Hospital, will be screening 26 great films from its archive plus a special film documenting The venue's activities over the last 15 years.

MAIN SCREENINGS

Fri 12th Sept 7:30pm
£7 - £5 mems/concs
No Age, New York + Cutting Moments + shorts tbc

Fri 19th Sept7.30pm
£7 - £5 mems/concs
Terror of Tiny Town + The Rough South of Harry crews

Wed 24th Sept 7:30pm
£7 - £5 mems/concs
The Northerners + A Reason to Live

Sat 27th Sept- Triple Bill
£12 - £10 mems/concs All 3 Films or £5 - £4 concs per screening
Ghosts of the Civil Dead - Screening at 4.30pm
R.I.P. Rest in Pieces: Joe Coleman - Screening at 6.30pm
Holy Mountain - Screening at 8.30pm

SPECIAL AFTERNOON SCREENINGS
(6th Sept - 27th Sept, Mon-Sat)
Films Start Each Day at 4pm, £5 + free celebratory drink!

Sat 6th: Freaks Uncensored
Mon 8th: Mon Oncle
Tues 9th: Rubin and Ed
Wed 10th: Europa
Thurs 11th: Peeping Tom
Fri 12th: Hotel Room
Sat 13th: Even dwarfs started small
Mon 15th: Annie Sprinkle's Herstory of Porn
Tues 16th: Cinema of Transgression
Wed 17th: Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
Thurs 18th: Grey Gardens
Fri 19th: The Night of the Hunter
Mon 22nd: Space is the Place
Tues 23rd: The Singing Ringing Tree
Wed 24th: Careful
Thurs 25th: Gummo
Fri 26th: Saint Clara

New issue of Senses of Cinema

The new issue of Senses of Cinema, one of the best academic film journals on the web, is online now. The issue includes an article on Priscilla, the Queen of the Desert, a analysis of each of the twelve tableaux that compose Jean Luc Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962) and an essay on Sydney Pollack.

London calling: Portobello Film Festival

Now, if one film venue can truly call itself 'independent', that will be the Portobello Film Festival. Since 1996 the event has managed to keep an uncompromising attitude to programming that is quite refreshing. What's more, all the screenings are free, which confirms that old adage about the best things in life. Starting on Friday 28 August and continuing until 14 September, the programme is too big to mention so check out the festival's website and go West for some film fun.

The Possibility of an Island: a cinematic shipwreck before it opens

The Possibility of an Island: desert-like entertainment

French author and controversialist Michel Houellebecq's debut effort has been met with severe criticism at the Locarno, Switzerland film festival, according to a Guardian film blog. "Critics at the Locarno film festival have given the author's directorial debut - an adaptation of one of his own novels - a resounding thumbs-down after the movie was savaged for its flat dialogue, confusing plot and unwelcome dose of sentimentality. There wasn't even, they cried, much sex", wrote the Guardian.

The trailer of the film goes give the impression that the whole business is a pretentious mess, with lots of sci-fi-ish babbling about immortality. However, I did like the film version of Houellebecq's Atomised, which mercifully he didn't direct himself. Sometimes delegating is good, you know...

The Possibility of an Island (La Possibilité d'une île) is released in France on 10 September.

WATCH: Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Film about Richard Serra at New York's Film Forum

Maria Anna Tappeiner's film about artworld's superstar Richard Serra, Richard Serra: Thinking On Your Feet, will be shown at New York's Film Forum on 02 September with an introduction by Jane Panetta.

"Richard Serra’S monumental steel sculptures are among the defining works of art of our time. Serra is wonder fully articulate, whether talking about his early paintings, Brancusi’s influence upon him, the historical context in which his work developed, or the public controversies and even hostility his art has engendered. He elucidates how “matter imposes form on form,” the unique qualities of steel, and how a space may move simultaneously in two directions — with a lexicon that includes gravitational vectors, open and closed volume, tectonics, conical sections and torquing elipses. An installation of several immensely heavy steel plates (40 tons each) at the Bilbao Museum highlights this elegant portrait of the art world’s man of steel."

Here you can listen to Ms Panetta talking about the film.

Serra also made video art in the 1970s and Television Deliveres People is one of his most famous pieces of electronic art.

Television Delivers People (1973)
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