The 47th Cracow Film Festival: 31st May-5th June 2007

One of Europe’s oldest and most renowned events dedicated to shorts, animations and documentaries will be celebrating its 47th edition this year, running from 31st May to 5th June. Taking place once again in Krakow, Poland’s most beautiful city, the Krakow Film Festival has run continuously since 1961 and in that time has retained an excellent quality program with a no-thrills approach. The programmers dedication to the best in new talent has always meant a high level of entrants to choose from and this reputation has thus ensured a continuing flow of applicants. However, such is the demand for spotting and buying up the next big thing is that the only conspicuous change has come with the Krakow Film Market which will run for the second time this year, from 1st-4th June.

The Festival traditionally features the Polish competition alongside the impressive panorama of Polish documentary, short features and animated productions with the international competition presenting award-winning films and new discoveries from all over the world. During the 47th edition the new competitive section for feature length documentary films will be launched. For the first time, the International Jury will choose the best film in this category out of the ten that made the shortlist. However, those wanting to see something else will find off-competition screenings featuring short films by great masters, newest, most talked-about feature length documentaries, retrospectives and a variety of special screenings.

This year the brilliant Belgian animator Raoul Servais will be honoured with the highest accolade of the festival, the Dragon of Dragons Award. The tenth recipient, he follows legendary names such as Jan Svankmajer, Albert Maysles and Yuri Norstein.
Read more on the award here

Visit the festival website here

Mike Figgis detained for five hours for 'shooting a pilot'

Another terrorism paranoia involuntary comedy. British film director Mike Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) spent five hours in the pleasant company of LA airport security staff after saying he was coming to town to 'shoot a pilot', which in film and television speak means, obviously, a test programme. But since security staff in the land of cinema don't know the jargons of the business, - and pilot by now is not really a jargon anymore - they thought it wise to look the term up, just in case.

Read more +

One Minute videos

If you happen to be in London next Sunday check out this screening of one-minute videos by contemporary artists, curated by Kerry Baldry, which will be held at:

Cogcollective
at 4pm, on Sunday 3rd June 2007
in the Basement, CANDID ARTS TRUST, 3 Torrens St, London, EC1V 1NQ

The screening will include work by:

Kerry Baldry, Steven Ball, Gordon Dawson, Claudia Digangi, Andy Fear, Steve Hawley, Nick Herbert, Riccardo Iacono, Fil Ieropoulos and Lilly Zinan Ding, Hilary Jack, Esther Johnson, Tina Keane, Deklan Kilfeather, David Leister, Lynn Loo, Katherine Meynell, Claire
Morales, Martin Pickles, Stuart Pound, Laure Prouvost, Eva Rudlinger, Philip Sanderson, Erica Scourti, Unconscious Films, Phillip Warnell, Mark Wigan.

California Dreamin' wins Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2007

California Dreamin’ (Endless) by Christian Nemescu, won this year's Un Certain Regard award. California Dreamin’ uses as background the 1999 war in Kosovo. A NATO train transporting military equipment without official documents is stopped in a small Romanian village by the chief of the railway station, who happens to be the local gangster as well. Their arrival changes the place into the village of all opportunities.

And if you want to indulge in footage of the festival, here goes a video wall of Cannes 2007.

Watch: The Painted Veil interview

Here's an interview with Edward Norton about his latest film The Painted Veil (directed by John Lubran) which opened in the UK last month. Lubran is to direct Mary Queen of Scots with
Scarlet Johansoon.

Screening: Conrad and Butler Take a Vacation by Noah Baumbach

A short film was made by Noah Baumbach in 2000, Conrad And Butler Take A Vacation, was included in a DVD edition of Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming (1995) released by Criterion. It is miles away from the highly produced films Baumbach has written (The Life Aquactic with Steve Sissou (2004), The Squid and The Whale (2005), which he also directed). In fact it looks quite drab, but that's part of the humour pursued in this short film. The writing in this comedy about two friends on vacation, one of whom has recently divorced, is very good. The simplicity of Conrad And Butler Take A Vacation is very engaging and it has a suave aura of nostalgia about it.

Brazilian Novelle Vague, Herzog and Punk cinema

There's quite a selection of film events coming up in London. First and foremost, I can't recommend enough the season of Glauber Rocha films that will take place at the Tate Modern in London between 9 June and 28 July. Rocha, the leading light of Cinema Novo was, roughly speaking, Brazil's equivalent of Godard. Even though the former died young at the age 42 in 1981, his legacy is enormous and includes masterpieces such as Black God, White Devil (1964) and Antonio das Mortes (1969, pictured), which are all included in the Tate Modern's of programme.

Another iconoclastic director whose films will be shown in London in June is Werner Herzog. The ICA is hosting a season called The Worlds of Werner Herzog between 9 and 30 June, including recent films such as The Wild Blue Yonder (2005), Wheel of Time (2003), The White Diamond (2004) and Grizzly Man (2005), among others. More info from the ICA website.

Elsewhere the Barbican centre is exploring the development of the punk and post-punk movements through a selection of UK and US features and documentaries called Panick Attack! These include Derek Jarman's The Last of England (1988) and John Waters's Female Trouble (1974), to name but a few. More info from here.

The Lives Of Others breaks UK box-office record

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's thriller and love story The Lives Of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) has taken over £2 million at the box office to date since its release on 13th April, making it the highest grossing German language film ever released in the UK. The film was favourably reviewed on Kamera.

Parents sue school over Brokeback Mountain + Brokeback to the Future

Via ArtThreat: A substitute teacher in Chicago who showed Brokeback Mountain to elementary children is now facing a lawsuit by one child's grandparents of $500,000. Huh?

On the subject of gay cowboys, here's a funny send-up of Back to the Future, re-titled Brokeback to the Future. And it's clocked so far an amazing 4,395,088 views.

YouTube, digital Vaudeville

"I was suddenly struck by the ways that YouTube represents for the early 21st century what Vaudeville represented in the early 20th century."

Read article +

John Maybury and Lukas Moodysson - new work soon

There's a fresh news item on Kamera about John Maybury and Lukas Moodysson's new projects.

Read full article +

Cannes 2007 opens

The 60th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opened yesterday and footage has already popped up on YouTube, with this clip of the opening ceremony, which looks a bit like the Oscars, actually. That is, grand and cheesy.

The star of the opening day was Norah Jones (pictured) for her starring role in Wong Kar-wai's English language debut, My Blueberry Nights. The word is that it is up against Quentin Tarrantino's Death Proof and the Coen Brother's No Country for Old Men as a contender for the top prize.

Updates:


The cult of Ian Curtis arrives in Cannes.

Romanian cinema in Cannes.

Romanian cinema in Cannes II.

Russian cinema in Cannes I.

Variety's video on Cannes.

First Estonian film in Cannes.

The Battle of Algiers

The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Algeria/Italy, 1966), which is currently playing theatrically in the UK, was chosen by Guardian readers as their fifth favourite foreign film of all time. Here's the Guardian's comment on the choice:

You could argue that no modern movie has had more political influence. For the tension in this dramatised documentary has been employed in the training and the inspiration of real-life terrorists opposed to occupying forces. Pontecorvo used people who had known the real war in Algeria - from all sides - and you can tell yourself you are seeing the "true" face of outrage. But, in fact, the picture is artfully made in a black-and-white that apparently appeals to Guardian readers a lot. Above all, this reminds us that "real" coverage of terrible events is itself a political weapon. (DT)

The film has been re-released to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the events depicted in it. The winner of numerous awards, including a BAFTAUN Award and both the Golden Lion and the FIPRESCI Award at the 1966 Venice Film Festival, director Gillo Pontecorvo’s highly acclaimed masterpiece is regarded as one of modern cinema's finest achievements.

Set during the 1954 to 1962 Franco-Algerian conflict, The Battle of Algiers authentically recreates the pivotal political events that took place in the city of Algiers between 1954 and 1957. In an attempt to end French colonialism, which had been in place since 1830, in 1954 the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) began a war of liberation, using terrorism to highlight the plight of the Algerian people to the rest of the world. In response to the escalating terrorist violence in the city of Algiers, the French government sent in an armed force of paratroopers to crush the uprising. Authorised to use whatever force and methods were believed to be necessary in bringing an end to the revolution, the actions of the French military led to a regrettable catalogue of atrocities being committed by those on both sides of the conflict.


Watch trailer of The Battle of Algiers +

Lars Von Trier's struggle with depression

Kamera was sad to hear at that one of its favourite European directors, Lars Von Trier, is going through a bout of depression which has thrown his future projects into uncertainty. According to an article issued by the Associated Press, Von trier said last Saturday said to the Danish newspaper Politiken that after his treatment for depression earlier this year he has been left like a "blank sheet of paper." His next planned project, but which now is indefinitely on hold, is a horror movie called Antichrist, which depicts Satan as the world's creator.

We hope Von Trier gets better soon.

Read more +

Von Trier has a comedy being released in the U.S on 23/5. It's called The Boss of it All. Here's the Danish trailer +

Event: The Subjective Camera

As part of the Subjective Camera series, dedicated to retrospective film screenings of six film artists whose work examines subjectivity with an analysis of film language, on 16 May the focus will be on Michael Maziere. Works to be screened include The Bathers, Swimmer and the London premiere of the 2005 LAFVA-supported film, Assassin.

The screening will take place at Greenwich Picturehouse on 16 May, 6.45pm and will be followed by a question and answer session with the artist.

Tickets are £6 and can be booked through the Picturehouse website or the box office on 0870 755 0065.

New on Kamera

Kamera has a few fresh goods on it. We have a three-part feature on Wim Wenders. Here's part I, part II and part III. We also have a critical preview of the Cannes Film Festival and an interview with American director and essayist Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose film Strange Culture chronicles the current case of American artist Steve Kurtz being charged with bioterrorism by a paranoid FBI.

Jodie Foster to play Leni Riefenstahl. Finally.

So it seems that finally the long-rumoured Leni Riefenstahl Hollywood biopic starring the recently outed-again Jodie Foster is going to get off the ground. The German director, who died at the age of 101 in 2003 and whose biggest contribution to the art of cinema was the stunning documentary about the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin (Olympia), surely is superb biopic material and it is easy to see the attraction such a project holds to Foster (who actually does look like the young Riefenstahl). What remains to be seen is how much the film will focus on Riefenstahl's Nazi connections and - one can only wish - try to emulate her superb aesthetic sense.

A rose-strewn press release for La Vie En Rose

I just loved the lyricism in the press release for the upcoming film about France's 'little sparrow' Edith Piaf, called, you guessed it, La Vie En Rose (pictured). So here it goes:

"From Director Olivier Dahan comes the screen biography of legendary French singer Edith Piaf. Starring Marion Cotillard (A Good Year, A Very Long Engagement), LA VIE EN ROSE celebrates the extraordinary life of one of the world’s best-loved performers.

From the streets of the cutthroat Belleville district of Paris to the limelight of New York’s concert halls, Edith Piaf’s life was a constant battle to sing and survive, to live and love. Raised in bitter poverty, surrounded by hookers, pimps and petty criminals, Edith’s magical voice provided an escape, making her a star on both sides of the Atlantic.

Her passionate romances and friendships with some of the biggest names of the period – Yves Montand, Jean Cocteau, Charles Aznavour, Marlene Dietrich and world champion boxer Marcel Cerdan – made her a household name, as did her memorable live performances and beautiful renditions of songs heard across the globe: La Vie en Rose, Hymn To Love, Non Je ne Regrette Rien and many more. But despite her determination to deny her tragic destiny, the “Little Sparrow” – as she was known – flew so high that she could not fail to burn her wings" (italics are definitely mine!).

Verdict: sold!

La Vie en Rose will open in cinemas across the UK on 22 June 2007.



And here's the little sparrow in action:

Witchcraft at the Barbican + Polanski

The Barbican cinema in central London is showing on Sunday 06 May the legendary and infamous Häxan (Sweden 1922 Dir. Benjamin Christensen 104min). The film was banned in every country in Europe when first released in 1922. It was one of the first drama-documentaries, integrating fact and fiction, and Christensen's experimental style endeared it to the Surrealists. A brew of the horrific, gross, and darkly comedic, Häxan chronicles grave robbing, repressed eroticism, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath, as the director asserts that the ‘witches’ of the Middle Ages suffered the same mass hysteria as did the mentally ill centuries later. Häxan retains a powerful and shocking contemporary resonance, and emerges as a moving, disturbing but ultimately liberating study of the persecution of the mentally ill, women, the poor and the elderly. Geoff Smith's (pictured) new score for Häxan further explores his pioneering approach to composition and performance that was exemplified in his recent scores for Faust and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

• Still at the Barbican, the venue will be screening throughout May a bevy of Polanski films, including his first foray into cinema, the Novelle Vague-y Knife in the Water (1962).

Barbican film +

Trailer: Strange Culture

Shown this year at Sundance and Berlin (no theatrical releases scheduled yet), Strange Culture deals with the nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz began when his wife Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz’s art, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was detained as a suspected 'bioterrorist' as dozens of agents in hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body. Today Kurtz and his long-time collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, former Chair of the Genetics Department at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, await a trial date.

The trailer makes the film look very promising and it stars Tilda Swinton and Peter Coyote as themselves.

Watch trailer +

Oberhausen launches Sherry Millner's restored Disaster

One of the highlights of the 53rd edition of the International Short Film Festival Oberhaunsen that starts this week (3-8 May) is a restored print of Sherry Millner's seminal Disaster. In 1975/76, while living in San Francisco, Millner produced what has been deemed the first situationist film made in the U.S.

Disaster, a two-screen, 30 minute, b & w Super-8 film, scripted and shot by Millner and Ernest Larsen, won a major prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. At the time, Hollywood was producing all-star blockbusters that depicted overwhelming disaster--like The Towering Inferno and Earthquake. Millner felt that the films exploited audiences’ ardent if repressed desire to see the present day metropolis torn to bits. Buried under such spectacular ruins was the real arena of disaster--so difficult to face--everyday life.

The quotidian--that panoply of humiliations (beginning with the alarm clock’s imperious summons each morning), routines, disciplines, distractions, and fantasies which sooner or later reconcile all of us to a regimen of delayed gratification. This was the site that needed to be excavated. Millner decided to take back the cinema for her own ‘cheapskate’ cinemascope disaster epic and to use two screens to animate the gulf that yawned between the two sites of catastrophe.

Further info +

+

An excerpt from the video 41 Shots by Millner and Larsen.

Interview: Julie Christie

(Embassy Pictures; Michael Gibson/Lionsgate Films)

Julie Christie comes out of hiding for Sarah Polley's debut feature Away From Her and gives an interview to the International Herald Tribune.

Read +

The Berlin School

The Goethe-Institut London is presenting in association with the Cine lumière an intriguing programme of films called Voices Outside the Frame: The Berlin School in Recent German Cinema, between 30 April and 10 May. It will include seventeen films to highlight the work of eleven filmmakers who represent potent individual voices outside the mainstream of German cinema.

About the ‘Berlin School’

German cinema is back on the map, but its geography is not a simple one, and hence the attempts at naming its locations by defining groups and schools. The group sometimes referred to as the ‘Berlin School’ are a loose network of directors, friends or past collaborators, all based in Berlin, whose films share certain stylistic characteristics and thematic concerns. There is a restrained observant quality to many of the films; dialogues are spare, music rare; takes are often long, frames artfully composed. There is a tendency to show rather than to tell and to activate the viewer to watch and listen carefully and to fill in gaps. Though often described as ‘realist’, direct references to social and polticial issues are rare; the films are instead finely-nuanced representations of life in contemporary Germany, particularly of middle-class families, and teenagers during their difficult transition into adulthood.

The first generation of the Berlin school is represented by Thomas Arslan (Dealer, A Fine Day), Christian Petzold (Wolfsburg, Ghosts) and Angela Schanelec (Passing Summer, Marseille) who went to the Berlin Film and Television Academy (dffb), started their careers in the 90s and have made a number of films to date. They have been joined by a younger group of filmmakers who gravitated towards Berlin from other cities and film schools in Munich (Christoph Hochhäusler, Benjamin Heisenberg), Vienna (Valeska Grisebach) and Hamburg (Henner Winckler, Ulrich Köhler) and of whom most have completed two feature films in the past five to six years. In the film magazine Revolver co-founded and edited by Hochhäusler and Heisenberg, this group of filmmakers has an important platform for sharing know-how and ideas with each other and the audience.

The Films

In Wolfsburg Christian Petzold applies restraint and precision to a tragic story of guilt and revenge in which a man kills a boy with his car and tries to make up for his misdeed by trying to help the mother over her grief. Grief over a lost child is also a driving force in Petzold’s Ghosts, in which a French woman’s search for her abducted daughter leads her back to Berlin and to a young drifter who may be or may not be her child. Berlin is also the setting for Angela Schanelec’s Passing Summer which spins an intricate web of relations between a group of friends and relatives against the background of the city’s cafés, parks and lakes in the summer. Schanelec’s Marseille in contrast focuses on one person, a young photographer from Berlin, who swaps flats and tentatively tries to reinvent herself in the French city. A clearer purpose seems to drive the young Turkish-German actress in Thomas Arslan’s A Fine Day as she moves through sunny Berlin, meets a number of people and actively pursues her idea of happiness. It is also summer and the colours are rich and vibrant in Thomas Arslan’s Dealer, about a melancholy small-time gangster hoping for a big break.

Valeska Grisebach’s particular gift lies in her work with non-professional actors both in her first feature Be My Star, a gentle portrayal of first love and Longing, which, set in rural surroundings of Berlin, is a quietly-told melodrama about a man who finds himself in love with two women. Sleeper is a finely-textured psychological study of a young scientist pressed by the secret service to spy on his Algerian colleague suspected of terrorist involvement. Maria Speth’s The Days Between takes us into the moody twilight world of a young woman suspended between day and night-time jobs, a boyfriend and a lover, between youth and adulthood.

Ulrich Köhler provides the laconic portraits of two deserters: in Bungalow the deserter is young recruit who casually absents himself from his military service to hang out at his parents’ abandoned house; in Windows on Monday it is a young doctor who leaves her husband, daughter and a half-renovated house and ends up as a witness to the absurd proceedings in a remote off-season hotel. In Christoph Hochhäusler’s tense contemporary re-telling of the Hänsel and Gretel story, This Very Moment, two children are left to wander the lonely region near the German-Polish border when their irritated step mother throws them out of the car. In Hochhäusler’s similarly un-nerving second feature, Low Profile, a new school leaver starts anonymously claiming responsibility for local disasters to escape from the frustration of failed job interviews. Henner Winckler’s equally perceptive study of adolescense, School Trip, accompanies a class of secondary school students to a Polish seaside town where competition between one of the students and a young Polish guy lead to disaster.

The season also includes two filmmakers who don’t consider themselves part of the Berlin School, but whose latest films certainly reveal an interest in similar themes. Though stylistically different, Matthias Lutthardt’s Pingpong and Stefan Krohmer’s Summer 04 both focus on middle class families whose seemingly ordered lives are thrown off balance by the intrusion of unexpected visitors and the sexual tension between teenagers and adults.

About the Season

Among the seventeen films on the line-up, there will be UK premieres for Bungalow, Low Profile and Marseille, and a special preview of Longing, ahead of its UK-wide release through the bfi on 18 May. Among the filmmakers travelling to London to support their films will be Christoph Hochhäusler, on hand for an intro and Q&A to the double bill of his films This Very Moment and Low Profile on 1 May; Christian Petzold, to introduce his film Wolfburg on 8 May, and for a Q&A following the London premiere of his feature Ghosts on 9 May; and Benjamin Heisenberg, supporting his film Sleeper on 8 May.

Acknowledging the debt of German filmmakers to French cinema, a talk by the German film critic Ekkerhand Knörer entitled ‘Elective Affinities: The Presence of France and French Film in Recent German Cinema’ will introduce the season on 30 April, together with a Revolver-Live! event focusing on ‘The Politics of Contemporary German Cinema’ organised in collaboration with the German film magazine Revolver.

Goethe Inst. +

Lumière +

Event: Mosaïques festival, London

The Institut français’ yearly 'celebration of cultural diversity', Mosaïques, is back for its 9th edition, and the programme also includes cinema, so a good chance to catch up on world cinema. Venues include the Ritzy Cinema (11–17 May), the Greenwich Picturehouse (16 & 20 May), the V&A (26/27 May & 2/3 June) and the British Museum (22 June).

This year’s line-up includes some UK premieres. There’s new work by Tony Gatlif (Transylvania), Singapore’s Royston Tan (4:30) and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, who will join audiences for a screening of his first film Bye Bye Africa and for previews of his latest feature, Daratt (Dry Season). From Egypt, two modern portraits of the capital – These Girls and The Yacoubian Building – will screen with Youssef Chachine’s 1957 classic Cairo Station. And from Algeria, director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche will join us for screenings of his dyptic Wesh Wesh, What’s Up? and Bled Number One, shown here in conjunction with recent video work by artist Zineb Sedira, part of a large strand of films examining what it means to be Algerian today. Screening as a counterpoint to these contemporary films will be the 1965 classic The Battle of Algiers followed by a Q&A with Saadi Yacef, a veteran of the battle, producer and actor in the film and author of the book on which the film is based. Other names attending include actor Birol Ünel (star of 2004’s Head On) for the preview screening of Transylvania, Kazakh director Rustam Khamdamov (Vocal Parallels), and from Argentina, Alexis Dos Santos, director of the coming-of-age tale Glue.


Institut Francais

Reading tip

"The result is an utterly charming comedy of sexual manners that should do very well wherever audiences appreciate savvy dialogue and smart, observational filmmaking."

Full article +

David Lynch Paris show

An article about David Lynch's show, The Deformation Man: David Lynch's Chimerical Universe of Metamorphosis, at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain to 27 May.

Trailer: Tell No One

I'm not really the biggest fan of police chases, but I have to admit to having enjoyed quite a lot this manhunt shown in the trailer of the upcoming French film Tell No One, based on the thriller by by Harlan Coben. The film is a due for a 15 June UK release.

Tell No One trailer +

Tell No One French site +

Cannes announces line-up for this year's festival

The line-up for the 2007 edition of the Cannes Film Festival was announced yesterday. "My Blueberry Nights" starring singer Norah Jones -- the first English language film from Wong Kar-Wai -- will open the 60th Cannes Film Festival. The singer stars in the story of a young woman who travels across America to find answers to her questions about the true meaning of love. The festival takes place between 16 and 27 May and it will include the world premiere of Michael Moore's latest crockie, "Sicko."

Full list:

In Competition

"My Blueberry Nights," directed by Wong Kar-Wai
"Auf Der Anderen Siete," directed by Fatih Akin
"Un Veille Maitresse," directed by Catherine Breillat
"No Country For Old Men," directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
"Zodiac," directed by David Fincher
"We Own The Night," directed by James Gray
"Les Chansons D'Amour," directed by Christophe Honore
"Mogari No Mori," directed by Naomi Kawase
"Breath," directed by Kim Ki Duk
"Promise Me This," directed by Emir Kusturica
"Secret Sunshine," directed by Lee Chang-dong
"4 Luni, 3 Saptamini Si 2 Zile," directed by Christian Mungiu
"Tehilim," directed by Raphael Nadjari
"Stellet Licht," directed by Carlos Reygadas
"Persepolis," directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
"Le Scaphandre et le Papillon," directed by Julian Schnabel
"Import Export," directed by Ulrich Seidl
"Alexandra," directed by Alexandre Sokourov
"Death Proof," directed by Quentin Tarantino
"The Man From London," directed by Bela Tarr
"Paranoid Park," directed by Gus Van Sant
"Izgnanie" (The Banishment), directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev

British director Stephen Frears will serve as the president of the Cannes competition jury and will be joined by actress Maggie Cheung from Hong Kong, actress Toni Collette from Australia, director and actress Maria de Medeiros from Portugal, director and actress Sarah Polley from Canada, director Marco Bellocchio from Italy, writer Orhan Pamuk from Turkey, director and actor Michel Piccoli from France, and director Abderramane Sissako from Mauritania.

Out of Competition

"Sicko," directed by Michael Moore
"Ocean's Thirteen," directed by Steven Soderbergh
"A Mighty Heart," directed by Michael Winterbottom

Midnight Screenings

"Boarding Gate," directed Olivier Assayas
"Go Go Tales," directed by Abel Ferrara
"U2 3D," directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington

Special Screenings

"11th Hour," directed by Leila Conners Petersen and Nadia Conners
"The War," directed by Lynn Novick and Ken Burns
"Retour en Normandie," directed by Nicolas Philibert
"He Fengming," directed by Wang Bing

Un Certain Regard

"Le Reve de la Nuit d'Avant," directed by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
"Calle Santa Fe," directed by Carmen Castillo (first film)
"Munyurangabo," directed by Chung Lee Isaac (first film)
"Et Toi T'Es Sur Qui?" directed by Lola Doillon (first film)
"El Bano del Papa," directed by Enrique Fernandes and Cesar Charlone (first film)
"Bikur Hatizmoret," directedd by Eran Kolirin (first film)
"Mister Lonely," directed by Harmony Korine
"Magnus," directed by Kadri Kousaar (first film)
"Mang Shan," directed by Li Yang
"Mio Fratello E Figlio Unico," directed by Daniele Luchetti
"California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit)," directed by Christian Nemescu (first film)
"La Soledad," directed by Jaime Rosales
"L'Avocat de la Terreur," directed by Barbet Schroeder
"Les Pieuvres," directed by Celine Sciamma (first film)
"Am Ende Kommen Touristen," directed by Robert Thalheim
"Kuaile Gongchang," directed by Ekachai Uekrongtham

The Un Certain Regard jury includes head Pascale Ferran, along with Jasmine Trinca, Cristi Puiu, Kent Jones and Bian Qin and the Camera d'or jury for a film by a first time director will be headed by Pavel Longuine along with Julie Bertucelli, Clotilde Courau and Renato Berta.

Short Films in Competition

"Run," directed by Mark Alston (New Zealand)
"The Oate's Valor," directed by Tim Thaddeus Cahill (United States)
"The Last 15," directed by Antonio Campos (United States)
"Ah Ma" (Grandma), directed by Anthony Chen (Singapore)
"Resistance Aux Tremblements," directed by Olivier Hems (France)
"Ark," directed by Grzegorz Jonkajtys (Poland)
"Ver Llover," directed by Elisa Miller (Mexico)
"To Onoma Tou Spourgitiou," directed by Kyros Papavassiliou (Cypress)
"Spegelbarn" (Looking Glass), directed by Erik Rosenlund (Sweden)
"Het Zusje" (My Sister), directed by Marco Van Geffen (The Netherlands)
"My Dear Rosseta," directed by Yang Hae-hoon (South Korea)

La Cinefondation

"Aditi Singh," directed by Mickael Kummer (Le Fresnoy, France)
"Ahora Todos Parecen Contentos," directed by Gonzalo Tobal (Universidad del Cine, Argentina)
"Your Younger Daughter Rachel," directed by Efrat Corem (Sapir Academic College, Israel)
"Chinese Whispers," directed by Raka Dutta (Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, India)
"For the Love of God," directed by Joseph Tucker (NFTS, U.K.)
"Goyta," directed by Joanna Jurewicz (NYU, U.S.)
"Hable Stunden," directed by Nicolas Wackerbarth (DFFB, Germany)
"Minus," directed by Pavle Vuckovic (Fakultet Dramskih Umetnosti, Serbia)
"Pathways," directed by Hagar Ben-Asher (Minshar School, Israel)
"Imprudence," directed by Alexander Kugel (VGIK, Russia)
"A Reunion," directed by Hong Sung-hoon (KAFA, South Korea)
"Rondo," directed by Marja Mikkonen (Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Finland)
"Way Out," directed by Chen Tao (Beijing Film Academy, China)
"Saba," directed by Therezaa Menezes and Gregorio Graziosi (FAAP University, Brazil)
"Triple 8 Palace," directed by Alexander Ku (NYU, U.S.)
"Vita Di Giacomo," directed by Luca Governatori (La femis, France)

Alternative Distribution" - Miami Film Festival

Here's a link to a 45-minute condensed video version of the hour and a half panel discussion on alternative distribution held at the Miami Film Festival last month.

Watch +

Pitching film projects

Tomorrow (Thursday 19/4) evening there will be a course given by indepedent producer Rebecca Knapp, on how to pitch a film project. The course takes place between 6 and 9pm at SOAS, Kings Cross, London. Click here for further information.

Hibernator: prince of the petrified forest - final screening 29/4

This sounds like an interesting experiment.

Working with the legacy and personal myth of Walt Disney, cryogenically frozen at the point of death, London Fieldworks proposed his reincarnation and have created the animatronic Hexer, to stand in for his alter-ego and to star in their film prince of the petrified forest.

In the Upper Space at Beaconsfield a green-screen environment provides an installation and working animation studio for London Fieldworks. There sits the animatronic sculpture, a monstrous hybrid of Disney and his iconic characters, Bambi and Thumper. The chimera is called to perform for camera, the power of his actions modulated by light cues reported from the window on the back wall of the gallery.

The animation in progress draws inspiration from Felix Salten's anthropomorphic novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods, first published in 1928 and the source for Walt Disney's iconic 1942 animated feature film Bambi. But realised through the combined expertise of specialists in prosthetics and robotics, Hexer is a creature of his time and the landscapes he encounters are far from Disney's idealised forest.

Over the exhibition period of twenty eight days, Hexer's activity is digitally recorded by the artists and incorporated into their film, the process exposed to the public. The final day of the exhibition will culminate in the premiere of the completed film, and Hexer will return to slumber.

Closing Event: Final Film Screening
Date: Sunday 29 April
Time: 2pm

Full Screening followed by panel discussion with collaborators Steve Beard, Paul and Laura Carey, Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson

Free entry but booking advisable. Call Beaconsfield on 020 7582 6465.


Beaconsfield Gallery +

London Fieldworks +

Life on the Other Side of the Wall

Before its well deserved success at the European Film Awards and the Oscars, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) was the final film of the competition program at the 36th Molodist Kiev Film Festival last year. It may well have taken the winning prize were it not for the fact that there was the expected strong competition – with films such as Euphoria (Eyforiya), Fresh Air (Friss levego), and 12:08 East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost) – but also in that it was the final screening and finished just half an hour before a decision was required. As a result it won neither of the two main prizes but in light of this The Lives of Others deserves special acclaim. Subsequent awards have deservedly brought it to the attention of the world cinema-going public ahead of its release this week in the UK and review in Kamera. See alternate review here

Cambridge festival goes alfresco

Cambridge Film Festival, in association with The National Trust and Screen East, is presenting a programme of screenings in settings across the Eastern region of England. The season begins in April at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire with a chance to see The Queen on Friday 27 April and a new print of David Lean’s classic Great Expectations on Saturday 28 April.

Cambridge screenings

Clip: The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai

"A riotous amalgam of political satire, apocalyptic comedy and steamy erotica, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is an insanely entertaining example of the Japanese pink film (pinku eiga) genre, a popular form of erotic softcore cinema. Titillation is, of course, a primary goal, but due to Japan's censorship codes (no depiction of genitalia or penetration is allowed), creative storytelling is also important. When both factors are present, as in this memorably nutty offering, the result is particularly pleasurable. Sachiko Hanai (Emi Kuroda) is an escort who specializes in teacher-student scenarios (the film's delightfully apposite original title is Horny Home Tutor: Teacher's Love Juice). One day, after an energetic tutoring session, Sachiko adjourns to a nearby café. An argument between two men escalates, and she is shot between the eyes. Miraculously only dazed, she grabs a mysterious cylinder from the café floor, thus making off with a clone of George W. Bush's finger. And then things get really weird. Sachiko discovers odd psychic abilities and begins imagining various theories of the universe and multivalent philosophical speculations, all to the throb of techno. While she pursues arcane poststrucuturalist knowledge—and has intellectual intercourse with a political philosopher—a consortium of bad guys chase her in the hopes of recovering the cylinder. Raunchy and hilarious in equal measures, with a dash of smart political commentary, Mitsuru Meike's memorable feature will undoubtedly tickle you pink."

(From the notes of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2006 by Rod Armstrong)

New on Kamera: reviews of new releases

Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc have penned reviews of two of this week's UK theatrical releases. Our regular contributing duo have showered with praise The Lives of Others and The Curse of the Golden Flower.

300

..."like Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge, it’s post-cinema, and not created for the purpose of traditional entertainment, let alone edification. It’s onslaught filmmaking, the new form that’s self-defeating in its cacophony and nearly religious in its zealotry for its own form and mythos."

Read more +

YouTube tip: Fassinder's second short film, Das Kleine Chaos

Via Expanded Cinema: "Rainer Werner Fassbinder's second 16mm short--made while still a theatre director in Munich---shows the young filmmaker clearly under the influence of the French nouvelle vague [complete with a poster of Juliette Greco], yet already hinting at the recurring themes of his mature work. Theo (played by Christoph Roser, who financed the film in return for a staring role), Marite (Marite Greiselis), and Franz (played by Fassbinder) turn their love of American noir into a crime spree, even if one reflecting on the moral nature of violence and crime, and in typically Fassbinder fashion, the chaos of postwar culture [after breaking into a woman's house to rob her and putting a Wagner record on the phonograph, Fassbinder's character asks his hostage: "Do you love the Fuhrer?"]. Fassbinder himself appears under his frequent character alias of 'Franz'---inspired by his love of Alfred Doblin's novel 'Berlin Alexanderplatz.'

Sci-Fi London opens bookings

Our friends from the Sci-Fi London have written to say booking for the sixth edition of the festival is now available online (see link below). The festival takes place between 2 and 6 May at the Apollo West End in London.

Sci-Fi London +

Berlin Alexanderplatz on a loop

Those lucky enough to be holidaying in Berlin should pay a visit to the KW Institute for Contemporary Art at the famous Auguststraße 69 to see the exhibition of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz, the monumental film he made for television and based on Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel. The film consists of thirteen episodes and an epilogue, and runs to fifteen hours and thirty-nine minutes. When it was first screened in Germany in 1980, it triggered heated debates and gained international recognition as one of the film masterpieces of the past decades. The show is a follow-up to the screening at the last Berlinale.

The episodes and the epilogue of Berlin Alexanderplatz will be screened in permanent loop in fourteen separate rooms. In addition, all the episodes are shown in chronological order and full length on a central big screen. Visitors can thus decide how they approach Berlin Alexanderplatz: they can divide its unusual length up into pieces, watch episodes several times, or return to the exhibition whenever they like, as the entrance ticket entitles holders to repeated visits. The exhibition also presents stills from the film’s 224 scenes. A further, highly personal document are the tapes on which Fassbinder himself recorded his script for the film and which have never previously been made accessible to the public.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue (in German; English edition planned; approx. 600 pages), edited by Klaus Biesenbach, with essays by Susan Sontag and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The show runs until 13 May 13.

KW +

Jan Nemec and the Party Poopers

It's taken 41 years but Jan Nemec's landmark Czech New Wave film The Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech) has finally got a DVD release courtesy of Second Run DVD.


Extremely controversial upon its release, Jan Němec's second feature, after Diamonds of the Night, was completed in 1966 and had a belated release during the short-lived Prague Spring in early 1968. The Party and the Guests was formally "banned forever" in 1973 and this ban remained (at least in Czechoslovakia) until the Velvet Revolution of 1989. It was widely considered at the time that the film was a direct attack on the Communist government and therefore too dangerous to screen. This opinion (or fear) was one that was shared by Antonín Novotný, the Czechoslovak President at the time.

However, this ban was only to enhance Nemec's (now legendary) status as a maverick and enfant terrible in a generation of Czechoslovak directors who were all making films that were on the periphery between acceptable or in breach of the Communist Party line. After living and working in exile from the end of the 1960's, Jan Nemec was to return to his homeland after the Velvet Revolution.

Click here for more on Jan Nemec and Czechoslovak New Wave Directors.

Saint Etienne at the South Bank Centre

In association with Agnès B, Saint Etienne present tomorrow an evening called Paris in the Spring, whose flyer alone makes the visit to the often un-spring-y South Bank worthwhile.




South Bank +

Call for papers

Film & History, the Historians Film Committee's journal of interdisciplinary analysis of film, is accepting submissions on the topic, 'The Documentary Tradition'.

"The first volume will focus on a spectrum of documentaries in chronological order ­of both international and US vintage. Classic documentaries will be examined and placed in their cultural contexts. Papers on films from Nanook and March of Time to The War Room and An Inconvenient Truth are welcomed", said the editor Dr. Loren PQ Baybrook.

She added: "The second volume will examine a variety of topics and issues for documentaries across cultures and borders. The possibilities here are broad, but we welcome papers that stress the role of the documentary in interpreting, reflecting, or attempting to change history. Race, class, policy, and the impact of media are likely topics."


Further info +

Curzon launches magazine

Curzon cinemas has launched a bimonthly magazine and issue one is available for free from Chelsea, Renoir, Richmond, Mayfair or Soho. The issue puts the focus on the German film The Lives of Others, soon to be reviewed on Kamera. You can listen to a podcast featuring an interview with the film's director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck +

A Rendez-vous with French Cinema

Our friends from A Rendez-vous with French Cinema, which started yesterday and goes until Sunday, 1 April, have rung in to say that they will take time on Friday March 30 (that will be today!) to celebrate up and coming acting talent with a special on stage presentation at the Curzon Mayfair prior to the 6.00 pm screening of Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne).

Actor/director Jean-Marc Barr and director/screenwriter Pascal Arnold will introduce the following actors on stage :

Amira Casar: a César nominee as Best Newcomer, her credits incluide Breilllat’s Anatomy of Hell and Thomas Gilou’s Would I Lie to You ?
Sara Forestier: has worked with Blier and Lelouch, having made her début in Abdellatif Kechiche’s much admired L’Esquive, winning a Best Newcomer César
Georges Babluani: best known for his work with his brother Géla Babluani in 13 Tzameti and Legacy

Emilie Dequenne: made her début in the Dardennes’ Rosetta, winning the 1999 Best Actress prize ex aequo in Cannes, and worked with Claude Berri in Une femme de ménage.

Louis Garrel: worked with Huppert in Ma Mère, was in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, and won the Best Newcomer César for his part in his father Philippe’s Les amants réguliers
Joana Preiss: in Assayas’ section of Paris je t’aime and Clean, as well as Honoré’s Ma Mère

Tom Riley: English born star of the recently released I Want Candy, seen opposite Juliette Binoche in A Few Days in September.

Luke Treadaway: made his début in Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe’s Brothers of the Head.


In addition to screenings of the best of the new French films, A Rendez-vous with French Cinema will have diverse programme of masterclasses, meetings, and screenings of short films. This event is organised by Unifrance, the organisation dedicated to promoting French cinema abroad, in association with the French Embassy and the French Institute in London and the Curzon Mayfair cinema.

Rendez-vous with French Cinema +

Runa Islam

British film artist Runa Islam has told Frieze magazine which films have influenced her most. Carl Dreyer's Joan of Arc (1928) has a place of prominence in Islam's film catechism book.

Full article +

YouTube awards

The title says it all...


YOUTUBE AWARDS +

London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival kicks off on Wednesday

The 21st London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the UK's third largest film festival, starts this Wednesday, 21 March. Among the feature film highlights this year are Beyond Hatred, a documentary that charts the aftermath of a homophobic murder, the Danish drama A Soap, about the relationship between a beautiful girl and her transsexual neighbour, and the Argentinian production Glue (pictured), which won top jury and audience awards at the 2006 Buenos Aires Festival of Independent Film.



FESTIVAL SITE +

Brazilian video at the Tate

A short post to let you all know that I have curated a season of Brazilian video art for the Tate Modern in London and which will be shown at the Starr Auditorium between Friday 23 March and Sunday 25. The videos cover a period of 25 years (1981-2005). The event, called Video Links Brazil kicks off on Friday with a programme of videos from the 1980s, the decade when video art took root in the country. Saturday will focus on works produced from the 1990s onwards and brings together an ecclectic selection of videos by fine artists as well as by those working exclusively with video. Sunday is devoted to documentaries, including one video about Brazil's famous Serial Kisser and a film from the Video in the Villages project, which works with aboriginal peoples in Brazil to help them produce their own images and represent themselves.

Hope to see there.

(Image credit: Heróis 2, TVDO, 1987-2003)


VIDEO LINKS BRAZIL

New on Kamera

Edward Lamberti has written an in-depth review of Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. We also have a news article about the cult cinema conference in London called Cine Exces, which will be attended by no one less than Roger Corman.

A tube ride will never be the same...

Watch this +

Woody Allen to make film in Barcelona

"For some cities and countries, having Woody Allen making a film there is like a papal visit," Adam Dawtrey, the European editor of Variety magazine, said.


Full article +

Time Out New York

Time Out New York has compiled a sequence of YouTube videos with "25 memorable moments in Gotham music". Although music-focused, the list also contains excerpts from films.
Fun.

Gotham music +

Charles Atlas at London's Optronica

Video pioneer and now VJ extraordinaire Charles Atlas brings his collaboration with musician/ electronic composer Christian Fennesz, to London, between 14 and 18 March, during the second biannual Optronica festival. Charles mixes video live using film footage, prepared clips and improvised collage. The recipient of the 2006 John Cage Award, Atlas is perhaps best known for his work with choreographers such as Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery, and Merce Cunningham, which have won him three Bessie (New York Dance and Performance) Awards. Optronica is a 'visual music' festival taking place at the British Film Institute's Southbank and Imax spaces, as well as the Institute for Contemporary Art. The line-up also includes the UK premiere of Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper VJ performance, among many other attractions.

Speaking of Greenaway, the fallen angel of post-modern baroque cinema, has a Myspace page. His tagline is bafflingly amusing: "Cinema is not a playground for Sharon Stone." Poor Sharon, what has she done to him? Now, why is it that cinema can be a playground for Helen Mirren, but not for the France-loving Stone? He also says, with no hint of modesty: "Film is dead, I tried to save it, didn't work out...enjoy your psycho-dramatic linear narrative you bloody philistines. "

Optronica +

Peter Greenaway on Myspace +

It's not a colour but a quality issue

I was reading my favourite newspaper over the weekend, the International Herald Tribune (inspired, of course, by Godard's insertion of the title in À bout de souffle), when an article about international distribution of Hollywood films with black stars caught my attention. The gist of the article was that such films don't do well abroad and used the case of Dreamgirls (pictured left) which has grossed $100 million and has sold 'only' $28 million worth of tickets in foreign lands, as a case in point. One industry insider interviewed went as far as to name 'international' (as in 'international markets') 'the new South' because in the old days black films didn't travel down South within the US. The article does mention some success stories, such as Bad Boys (with Will Smith) and Déjà Vu (with Denzel Washington), but underlines flops like Hustle & Flow, Are We There Yet? and Last Holiday as examples of the failure cases where racism may have been the causal factor.

But this is clearly a case of crying wolf. The article in premised in the assumption, or America's utter conviction, that any national artifact is apt for global consumption, even in the case of films heavily coded with regional signs as the ones mentioned. Secondly, and most importantly, is the sheer awfulness of such films - doesn't it occur to them that some films don't do well abroad because they are not sound for consumption as a consequence of their excessive mediocrity? To me, the article seemed like a case of the empire playing the underdog card and such posturing doesn't strike convincing at all.

Read full article +

Kenneth Anger article

Tom Gunning has written an insightful article about Kenneth Anger for ArtForum magazine.

New on Kamera:

The latest updates on Kamera include a round-up of film festivals in March+* , some of the latest DVD releases + , an in-depth review of Until the End of the World + , by Wim Wenders and a review of A Guide to Recognising Your Saints +


* STOP PRESS! The organisers of A Rendez-vous with French Cinema have sent us an update on the programme of the event, which is now ready.

The Opening Gala on 29 March will feature Olivier Dahan’s biopic of iconic singer Edith Piaf’s dramatic life, LA VIE EN ROSE (La Môme, pictured), featuring a remarkable performance by Marion Cotillard alongside Sylvie Testud, Pascal Greggory, Emmanuelle Seigner, Jean-Paul Rouve and Gérard Depardieu (released in May/June by Icon Film Distribution). After opening the Berlin Film Festival, the film is enjoying phenomenal critical and box office success in France.

The other films to be featured are as follows:

Alanté Kavaité’s thriller ECOUTE LE TEMPS, starring Emilie Dequenne, Ludmila Mikaël and Mathieu Demy (released in Summer/Autumn by Dogwoof Pictures).


Guillaume Canet’s thriller TELL NO ONE (Ne le dis à personne), which won 4 Césars at the recent ceremony, and stars François Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, André Dussollier and Marie-Josée Croze (released on 15 June by Revolver Entertainment).


Christophe Honoré’s drama DANS PARIS starring Romain Duris, Louis Garrel, Guy Marchand and Joanna Preis (released on 4 May by Artificial Eye).


Stéphane Brizé’s comedy/drama NOT HERE TO BE LOVED (Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé), starring Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais and Georges Wilson (released on 8 June by Artificial Eye).


The legendary Alain Resnais’ PRIVATE FEARS IN PUBLIC PLACES (Cœurs), starring Sabine Azéma, Lambert Wilson, André Dussollier and Isabelle Carré (released on July 20 2007 by Artificial Eye).


Santiago Amigorena’s thriller A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER (Quelques jours en septembre), starring Juliette Binoche, Sara Forestier, Tom Riley, John Turturro and Nick Nolte (released in Summer/Autumn 2007 by Transmedia International Releasing).


Tony Gatlif’s drama TRANSYLVANIA, starring Asia Argento, Amira Casar and Birol Unel (released on 10 August by Peccadillo Pictures).


The Babluani brothers’ drama LEGACY (L’Héritage), starring Sylvie Testud, Stanislas Merhar, Pascal Bongard and Georges Babluani (released in July by Revolver Entertainment).


Bruno Dumont’s topical drama FLANDERS (Flandres), starring Adélaïde Leroux, Samuel Boidin and Henri Cretel (released on 6 July by Soda Pictures).


Xavier Giannoli’s comedy THE SINGER (Quand j’étais chanteur), starring Gérard Depardieu, Cécile de France, Mathieyu Amalric and Christine Citti (released on 17 August by Artificial Eye).

The Closing Night Gala will be Patrice Leconte’s comedy MY BEST FRIEND (Mon meilleur ami), starring Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon and Julie Gayet (released on 11 May by Optimum Releasing).

NFT shows Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo

There's a good excuse to make that inevitable trip to the National Film Theatre in London this April. El Topo (1970), Alejandro Jodorowsky’s uncut cult masterpiece will screen at the venue on April 6 and then at cinemas nationwide.

A bizarre, ultra-violent, allegorical Western, EL Topo is set in two halves that have been compared to the Old and New Testaments of the bible. In the first half, Jodorowsky plays a violent, black-clad gunfighter who, accompanied by his naked son, sets off on a murderous mission to challenge four zen masters of gunfighting, and learns from each of them a Great Lesson before they die. In the second half, El Topo sets out to find personal redemption, secluding himself in a subterranean community to learn the ways of peace, but unfortunately death is never far away.

El Topo paved the way for cult favourites such as Eraserhead, The Harder They Come and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were huge fans of the film and pushed Allen Klein (then Beatles manager) to buy it for distribution, and subsequently to finance Jodorowsky’s next film The Holy Mountain (1973) which will also screen at the NFT alongside Fando & Lis (1968). All three films have been digitally restored and remastered, under the close supervision of the director himself, who will give an onstage talk at the NFT on April 13.

Jodorowsky at the NFT+