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+

Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely

Kamera's newswire has been notified that Harmony Korine's new project (his third film), Mister Lonely, has gone into post-production - whether that means it will be hitting the screening theatres any time soon is another story, although we have also been notified that Tartan will be spreading the love in the UK, so the chances are good. So, all those rumours about a comune of impersonators in Scotland are true, as far as the story in the this film goes. Here's the description sent to us (plus picture):

"A Michael Jackson impersonator (DIEGO LUNA) lives alone in Paris and performs on the streets to make ends meet. At a performance in a retirement home, Michael falls for a beautiful Marilyn Monroe look-alike (SAMANTHA MORTON), who suggests he move to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands. At the seaside castle, Michael discovers everyone preparing for the commune's first-ever gala - Abe Lincoln, Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Stooges, the Queen, the Pope, Madonna, Buckwheat, Sammy Davis. And also Marilyn's daughter Shirley Temple and her possessive husband Charlie Chaplin (DENIS LAVANT)."

MISTER LONELY, we were also told, was filmed in Scotland, Panama and France. The cast is more stellar than you would expect: Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, James Fox, Denis Lavant all ring in to boost their indie credits. More fun members of the cast include Anita Pallenberg and Werner Herzog, who also appeared in Korine's previous effort, Julien Donkey Boy.

Oscars 2007

Here are the results of the Oscars 2007.
Yawn+

Screening: The Hermitage Dwellers

Our friends at the Goethe-Institut have informed Kamera's newsdesk about an upcoming screening next Tuesday at their London branch that caught our attention. So here's the info sent in:

TUE 27 FEB 2007 7PM

DELICATESSEN - GOETHE-INSTITUT DIGITAL CINEMA

THE HERMITAGE DWELLERS


Netherland 2006, colour, 72 mins. Directed by Aliona van der Horst.

With English subtitles.



"Not the art, but the people who work in the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg are the focus of this documentary film. These Hermitage dwellers all have their own very personal reasons for considering the palace of Catharine the Great their "home." For them, it is a safe haven that quite literally has managed to keep the cruel Soviet history outside its walls. What starts out as a playful kaleidoscope of people and events in the museum gradually unfolds into a poignant account of how the dwellers’ pain is transformed by their intimate relationship with a piece of art.

We meet with several "Hermitage-niks"—including Olga Bogdanova, the head of museum maintenance, icon curator Alexandra Kostsova, museum attendant Valentina Barbashova, and art handler Vadim Kuptsov, among others—each of whom explains their own very personal reasons for considering the palace of Catherine the Great their "home."

For Russians the Hermitage is regarded as a place of pilgrimage. For these workers, however, the Hermitage has also been a safe haven from the tumultuous events of Russian history and the hardships of contemporary Russian life. Indeed, each of them explains how their personal traumas and difficulties have been transformed by having developed an intimate relationship with a favorite piece of art. For them, surrounded everyday by remarkable beauty, the Hermitage has become a place of emotional healing.

For Vadim, formerly in the military in Azerbaijan, where he saw things that no one back home would believe, his job is a tonic for his troubled soul. He likes to look at Rembrandt's Prodigal Son because "it's about forgiveness." Valentina was an atomic engineer who lost her job in the wake of Perestroika. She supplements her meager pension by working as an attendant at the museum and spends many days in the company of Sweert's Portrait of a Young Man, whose subject was as impoverished as she is. Juna Zek is a metalworks curator who admires the precious collection assembled by Catherine the Great and walks through the rooms where she once slept. Alexandra, aged 82, is an icon curator who has spent her entire life rescuing inestimable icons from destruction. Finally, seventy-six-year-old Olga is the unofficial czarina of the Hermitage who runs her department with a firm hand.

THE HERMITAGE DWELLERS also uses archival footage to reveal that while this revered institution has usually managed to keep twentieth-century history outside its walls-from the Revolution, the terror of Stalin, WWII, and the harsh post-Soviet years-these events have also left their indelible mark on the museum.

The film traverses throughout this vast complex, gliding up staircases and through grand exhibit halls, showing curators at work in storage rooms filled with rare art works, groups of tourists and schoolchildren gazing up in wide-eyed wonder, staff members dining and dancing at a Victory Day celebration, and, of course, many of the world-famous paintings and artifacts on display."


Goethe-Institut London+

Independent Spirit Awards

The winners of the Independent Spirit Awards will be announced today. Here's a link to the list of nominees +

New on Kamera - 21/02/07

Calum Waddel interviews upcoming horror movie star, Jillian Swanson. Full article
here +

Grindhouse

The blog Solace in Cinema has posted news about the Tarantino and Rodriguez double whammy, due out on April 6 in America, Grindhouse. The latest news is that the final poster seems to be ready and that The Weinstein Company will be splitting up the film into two pieces in foreign territories because of their lack of tradition in double bills. The distributors fear those non-English speaking audiences will not get the concept, or perhaps that they are not post-modern enough.

But there's a petition against the split.


Full article +

Will Write and Direct for Food

Kamera has teamed up with Southbank Publishing to offer its readers the opportunity to purchase for a reduced price Will Write and Direct for Food, by the celebrated director Alan Parker. Known for his acidic wit and uncompromising approach to film making, Parker has often resorted to humour in cartoons, to get his view across. Studio heads, actors and crew, all come under Parker's merciless pen. However, and often to Parker's surprise, the recipient enjoyed the message and framed it. Many of the director's doodles, drawings and sketches adorn the walls of actors, producers, directors and movie executives around the world, often taking pride of place, next to the all-smiling première or award-winning photographs.

This unique collection contains over 200 mini masterpieces from Sir Alan Parker who Will Write and Direct for Food...

"It was always a curiosity to see my vomited scribbles on some studio executive's wall, the very executives they were aimed at. Not that they stay up long. Studio personnel are an itinerant bunch: they come and they go, and I've made 14 films with 14 studio heads. They don't stay long in their jobs, and fade away faster than a Technicolour negative." - Alan Parker

Promotion Link +

Berlin's 2007 winners

Here's a link to this year's results in BERLIN +

Factory Girl's homophobic overtones

I haven't seen Factory Girl yet, but for me reason I have already taken such a dislike for it that I thought it worthwhile to link to an article in Slate Magazine, a publication that surely tell it like it is, making a scathing review of this film, due out in the UK on 16 March.

"Factory Girl isn't just a bad movie, it's a 90-minute insult to the culture it pretends to be capturing, and what I really want to say—as I would almost never say of anything I see or read or listen to—is that I hated it."
Jim Lewis

Full article +

New on Kamera - 15/02/07

Hot off the print, as it were, are a review of a book on the films of Luis Buñuel+ , written by Ian Haydn-Smith, and an article about the late film poet, Margaret Tait+ , written by myself.

Enjoy them.

New on Kamera

We have news on the UK Regional Critics award + , reviews of Babel + , Blood Diamond + and Notes on a Scandal+ plus an in-depth review of the DVD release of Derek Jarman's
Wittgenstein + .

Coming up: Fast Food Nation

Richard Linklater's much-anticipated fictionalised rendition of Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation is coming to the UK soon and, having caught a preview last night, I'm happy to recommend it. The film opened to mixed reviews in America last November, but in my view it has been criticised for the wrong reasons, such as narrative strands that lead to no conclusion. It is a bleak film that, despite its specific take on the fast food industry, touches on several topics pertinent to globalised capitalism, making it holistic and transnational in relevance. Full review around the time of its 23 March release. Meanwhile catch some video excerpts of the production:

Fast Food Nation's official site +

Europa Cinemas at the Berlin festival

Further supporting its ongoing campaign to promote European films, Europa Cinemas will return once again to this years Berlin Film Festival, awarding its Label prize to the best European film in the Panorama section (February 8-18). This marks the third year that the Europa Cinemas Label will be awarded at Berlin, and complements the Labels awarded at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes, the Venice Days section of the Mostra del Cinema, and Karlovy Vary.

A jury of four Europa Cinemas exhibitors will award the Label at Berlin, with the winning film receiving the support of extended theatrical exposure and additional promotion from the Europa Cinemas network. The Panorama jury will consist of Stas Ravter (Slovenia), Exhibitor at the Kinodvor cinema and General Manager of the Slovenian Cinematheque (Llubljana); Georgette Ranucci (Italy), Exhibitor at the Alcazar cinema in Rome; Michal Drobny (Czech Republic), Manager of the distribution/exhibition company Continental Film in Bratislava and Christian Schmalz (Germany), exbitor at the Off Broadway Kino in Cologne.

Founded in 1992, the Europa Cinemas network now consists of 1,689 screens in 690 cinemas in 403 cities in 55 countries. Europa Cinemas’ aim is to support the programming and visibility of European films outside their country of origin, and to foster initiatives aimed at encouraging younger audiences to develop their interest in European films and cultural diversity.


Europa Cinemas +

Rotterdam festival

The Rotterdam International Film Festival has announced that its 36th edition will include 38 world, 21 international and 23 European feature premieres, focusing on ´independent and innovative filmmaking´. The full programme will be announced online next Thursday 18th January, and contains a mixture of brand new films, underestimated gems and highlights of the year.

Rotterdam Film Festival +

Andrzej Munk at London's Riverside 3-17 January 2006

A recent interest in Andrzej Munk’s work started with the distribution company Second Run's DVD release of his film The Passenger late last year. Following on from that, the Polish Cultural Institute in association with the Riverside in London are paying their own tribute to the director who died from a car crash at the tragically early age of 39.


The Passenger plays next week (17th Jan) and, though fictionalised, is one of the most harrowing accounts of Auschwitz you will see, emulating even Alain Resnais's Night and Fog. However, Munk also saw humour in the tragedy of life and tonight's (10th Jan) double-bill at the Riverside starts with his Bad Luck from 1960, about a Polish everyman who always finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's followed by its Andrzej Kotkowski directed sequel Citizen Piszczyk, made 29 years later and starring Jerzy Stuhr.

The film critic and historian Phiip Kemp will introduce the screenings on 17th Jan that, along with The Passenger, include Munk shorts and The Last Pictures, Andrzej Brzozowski's documentary on the great director from 2001. Brzozowski was Munk's assistant on The Passenger and here he takes us through the film and how he completed it to what he believed were Munk's intentions, also adding phtographs and a voice-over narration.

More information on the Andrzej Munk season at the Riverside can be found on this page

The Online Film Critics choose United 93 as Best Picture...

...with Helen Mirren (The Queen) and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) taking Best Acting honours and Martin Scorcese winning Best Director. But the most interesting mentions on their list are in the smaller categories: the critics of the Online Film Critics Society (of which I am a member) choose Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly as Best Animated Film, Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain for Best Score, and the screenplays of El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) and Children of Men as Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplays respectively, which is interesting since both were written (at least partly) by Mexicans, with El laberinto written in a foreign language (the Spanish-Mexican co-production also won Best Foreign Film). Children of Men also won the Best Cinematography category for its Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, with United 93 also winning the Best Editing category. Jackie Earle Haley won the Best Supporting Actor mention for his creepy character in Todd Field's Little Children, with the young Abigail Breslin taking home the Best Supporting Actress prize for the indie hit comedy Little Miss Sunshine. The full list of winners is available here.

Factory Girl trailer

Don't hold your breath for yet another film exploiting that whole Andy Warhol/Factory mythology, which has become something of a sub-genre, and a catastrophic one at that. Factory Girl focuses on the short life of It girl Edie Sedgwick, who was Warhol's muse for a while. In a truly astouding example os miscasting, they hired the mediocre Sienna Miller for the part. What about Guy Pearce as Warhol? If this trailer is anything to go by, Factory Girl looks, quite simply, ridiculous.

Factory Girl trailer +

And here's the trailer of Ciao Manhattan (1972), a film which the real Edie starred in:

Jonas Mekas 365 project kicks off

Jonas Mekas (pictured), that infatigable doyen of independent cinema, yesterday started posting short films on his site as part of his 365 project. The films can be downloaded for free on the day they are posted.

Jonas Mekas +