29/08/2008

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


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27/08/2008

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.


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26/08/2008

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.


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23/08/2008

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.




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22/08/2008

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





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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.




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20/08/2008

Asian House Film festival


In partnership with Curzon Cinemas, Asian House is putting together an Asian film festival, with five UK Premieres from Singapore, South Korea, Iran, Indonesia and China. These include Royston Tan's hit musical 881 (Singapore), Seven Days (starring Lost's South Korean star Yunjin Kim) and the Chinese period epic Three Kingdoms: Resurrection Of The Dragon starring Andy Lau, Sammo Hung and Maggie Q.

Our friends from Wallflower, one of the UK's leading publishers of books on film, will be giving away copies of its Electric Sheep magazine to the first thirty people entering the cinema at the opening night screening of 881 on 22 August.

The event then runs until 28 August.


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Jacques Rivette starts shooting new production

Veteran director Jacques Rivette started shooting his new film 36 vues du Pic Saint-Loup (36 Views from the Pic Saint-Loup) at the Cinecittà studios in Rome. The cast includes Jane Birkin and Sergio Castellitto. More +


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18/08/2008

New on Kamera: Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day

A period British comedy? Before you run to the exit door, listen to what Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc have to say about it...


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Last minute call: Filminute

There's a couple of days left to submit films for the 2008 edition of the hugely popular Filminute: the International One-Minute Film Festival. The jury line-up includes no one less than Paul Haggis, director of Crash and Million Dollar Baby. Awards will be announced in October 2008. Further informatiton from here.


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17/08/2008

Nome Próprio wins biggest Latin American film festival

Nome Próprio, a Brazilian film that transposes the complicated universe of the writer Clarah Averbuck to the big screen won the top prize at the Gramado Film Festival, the biggest Latin American festival in the world, which closed on Saturday.

Directed by Murillo Salles, Nome Próprio is about Camila, Averbruck's alter-ego, a young woman whose biggest passion is to write. She decides to turn her own life into a narrative worth writing about.

Critics have hailed the film as a welcome addition to the country's cinema because it avoids stereotypes by dealing with young people and their subjectivity. Sounds promising, especially after the horror show that recently came out of Brazil in the shape of Elite Squad, although the trailer resembles a kind of tired American indie fare that makes you wonder. But we shouldn't judge a film by its trailer, so ...


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New on Kamera: get your work seen

Made a film and want it to be seen? Check out the latest screening opportunities here.


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11/08/2008

Britney says no to Tarantino

John Waters once said it was the best movie ever made. Although that may have been something of a camp exaggeration, Russel Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) surely is one of the best-looking, most stylish 'trash' movies ever made. And it so happens that it's going to get the Tarantino remake treatment - come to think of, why hadn't anyone thought of it before? It's a pop cinema dream come true. There were reports that Britney Spears was considered for the main role that the Amazonian Tura Satana had played in the original, but she said no in the end. I think she's wasting a chance to get a career revival injection that Tarantino gave to Uma Thurman and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. In any case, I look forward to seeing the Tarantino remix of the best film ever.



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New on Kamera: Mardi Gras: Made in China

We got into the spirit of the Beijing Olympics (well, not quite) with a DVD review of Mardi Gras: Made in China, David Redmon's portrait of a bead factory in Fuzhou that provides Mardi Gras revellers stuff for their fantasy. Simple and effective, the film gives the anonymous workers a face and a voice and carnival-goers something to think about.


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Coffin Joe is back on the screens

Not too long ago Kamera published a two-part feature article on the legendary Brazilian master of horror, Coffin Joe, who, although not so popular in Europe, has a strong cult following in America and, of course, in Brazil. He's been making his wild, baroque horror fantasies since the early 1960s and last Friday released his latest offering, Encarnação do Demônio (pictured). The film has been announced as a 'super production', is distributed by Fox's Brazilian branch and will be shown at the upcoming Venice festival. Not bad at all. We at Kamera wish Joe Coffin's latest film a frightfully good run.

For more information, check out Kamera Books' title on Horror Films.

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05/08/2008

Vampire mania in America


The vampire season is on and it's not October yet. Just a few days after Kamera published its article on vampire films, Business Week, of all magazines, is carrying an article about the success of the Twilight series of vampire books, written by Stephenie Meyer. Apparently, the series is so successful that fans travel thousands of miles to attend vampire proms and meet the revered author in person. And a film version of the book is under way. Watch this space.

Meet the author:


For further information on Pocket Essentials' book Vampire Films, click here.
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04/08/2008

New on Kamera: Funny Games

The DVD of Michael Haneke's American remake of his own 1997 film Funny Games, is out now. Check out our review.

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01/08/2008

New on Kamera

Lots of fresh goods on Kamera. First, we have an article aout a very instigating competition where applicants are invited to submit personal narratives on video, paper or photography. We also have a feature article on vampires, an excerpt from the new Pocket Essentials title on the theme. Finally, Hannah Patterson tells us all about the latest edition of Britdoc, which took place last week.