More than 60 hours of rushes of Agnes Varda’s 2000 documentary feature The Gleaners and I will now be available for the next generation of international filmmakers thanks to a new educational initiative from France’s National Audiovisual Institute (INA) and Ciné-Tamaris (Agnès Varda's company run by her daughter Rosalie Varda). The five-year project offers students a bilingual platform available 24/7 where they can view and download the complete c...
Top prizes for Un Certain Regard were announced tonite at Cannes. Best film went to Les Pires - "The Worst Ones" directed by Lise Akoka & Romane Gueret (France). The film concerns a film shooting in Picasso, a suburb of Boulogne-sur-mer in north France. Four teenagers are chosen to play in the film. and everyone in the neighborhood is surprised: why only take the “worst ones?
Jury prize went to the first Pakistani film to screen at Cann...
Springtime for Hong Kong ---Moira Sullivan
Spring, seeing Hong Kong again is a well-crafted documentary short directed by Benoit Lelievre on how the third largest financial center in the world has rejuvenated itself in the midst of the challenging effects of the pandemic. With skillfull editing and excellent cinematography the film is a bird’s eye view of Hong Kong with its many waterfront edifices and structures. The return to spring is hallmarked by tenacity and st...
Anthony Chen's The Breakaway ©Festival de Cannes
Cannes Special Screening:
THE YEAR OF THE EVERLASTING STORM:
Jafar PANAHI , Anthony CHEN , Malik VITTHAL , Laura POITRAS , Dominga SOTOMAYOR , David LOWERY , Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL
Seven filmmakers made films for an anthology during the pandemic. They were presented at a special screening at Cannes. Producer NEON explained that the films are inspired by the work of...
Titane is a brilliant film of epic and cathartic realms. Ducournau said at the press conference for the film that David Cronenberg is a favorite and also responded to questions about the use of violence in the film. It has extraordinary editing, acting and cinematography.
Titane is overwhelmingly engaging from beginning to end. You could start at any point of the film and find a compelling thread of the narrative to follow about a young girl in a car accident with a titanium implant in ...
Recipient of an Honorary Palme d'Or on July 6 at Festival de Cannes,Jodie's first memory at Cannes with the debut of "Taxi Driver" in 1976 was that her dog Napoléon had died before the flight and her thoughts went to the dog all through the press attention and clamour. She mentioned that women were important in the beginning of the film industry such as Alice Guy Blaché and Dorothy Arzner and credited David Fincher whom she has learned the most from.During her v...
Awards night at the 74th Cannes Film Festival was special with so many of the top prizes going to women. Women constituted the majority of the feature film competition jury- five out of nine - for the first time in the festival's history.
Feature Films
PALME D'OR
TITANE
Julia DUCOURNAU
HONORARY PALME D'OR
JODIE FOSTER
CAMÉRA D'OR
DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT
MURINA
Antoneta ALAMAT KUSIJANOVIC
Un Certain Regard
(six of the nine prizes awarded to women)
Th...
Mia Hansen-Løve's "Bergman Island" in the official competition at Cannes is a rather superficial attempt to get closer to Ingmar Bergman, by walking in the same places where he made some of his films on Fårö , Sweden at his summer residence. How interesting is it to be sleeping in the same bedroom where Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson did their downward marriage spiral in "Scenes from a Marriage", or walking on the sea rocks and pools where Elizabeth (L...
Courtesy of Festival de Cannes
At the opening ceremony of the 74th Festival de Cannes, Jodie Foster and wife, actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison, arrived on the Red Carpet along with President Spike Lee and members of the jury and the ensemble for Leos Carax’ opening film Annette. They were greeted by Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux and French Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot.
After the screening Foster gave a concise and moving speech a...
Midnight Swan took home the top prize , the Golden Mulberry, at the The Far East Film festival (FEFF) now in its 23 year , a beautifully made, excellently crafted film written and directed by Eiji Uchida . Nagisa (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and former SMAP boyband musician) from Hiroshima moves to Tokyo to work in the Shinjuku district as a nightclub entertainer with other MTF transgenders. When asked to take care of her niece Ichiko (14 year old ballet dancer Misaki Hattori) whose mot...
Madeleine Lim, San Francisco filmmaker and co-founder of the Queer Women of Color Film Festival in San Francisco (qwocmap.org) made a film in 1997 that has been banned by the Singaporean government for 22 years. This past week the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) received a one-time exception for the screening of Lim's award-winning documentary Sambal Belacan in San Francisco on October 25 at the Oldham Theatre. At any time, the Singapore Classifications B...
22nd Far East Film Festival - Report 2
By Moira Sullivan
Golden Mulberry and Audience Award
Derek Tsang's Better Days
The 22nd Far East Film Festival ended July 4 after 9 days and it was a huge online success with over 3000 card holders and 25,000 visits to the website where films were screened for accredited patrons. The festival works with the public because the organizers are so thoroughly prepared for this event directed by Sabrina Baracetti and Thomas Bertacche. It is a ...
22nd Far East Film Festival Opens Online in Udine
Victim(s) Layla JI (Malaysia 2020) ©FEFF
Reprinted from © Movie Magazine International , San Francisco
By Moira Jean Sullivan
The 22nd Far East Film Festival (FEFF) located in UDINE ITALY is held online this year using the same platform as the Cannes Film Market (Marché du Film) at the end of June. 46 films are to be screened June 26 - July 4, 2020 (4 ...
The winners for the Critics week (Semaine de le critique) have already been announce – and Nespresso who generously bestows complimentary coffee on tired and weary critics each year in the Palais has given the top prize for the best of 7 features to Grand Prix Nespresso
Nespresso Grand Prize J'AI PERDU MON CORPS (I LOST MY BODY) de by Jérémy Clapin, an animated feature about Naoufel , a young man from North Africa who grows up in Paris. He who loses his hand and tries t...
The 11th Iranian Film Festival for Iranians living in the San Francisco Bay Area will showcase a collections of new films, documentary and short films 22-23 September. It is the first independent film festival outside of Iran that presents the work of Iranians around the globe.
Each year since 2008, outstanding films have been screened and international Iranian guests have appeared to discuss their films. Last year, guest of honor (live video) was Iranian filmmaker and film scholar Bahman ...
"Camorra" by Francesco Patierno, a documentary in the Venice "Orizzonti" section attempts to unravel the origins of organized crime in the region of Compania and capital Naples on its own terms through historic newreel footage and photojournalism. Editor Maria Fantastica Valmori is behind the montage of this footage from the 1970's to 1990's that feels like a continuous essay, relentless shocking and disturbing- a mosaic of violence and poverty on the background of ...
The 71st Cannes Film Festival was an extraordinary year with excellent films and a manifestation protesting the near exclusion of women from the official competition. Protests in Cannes have made life altering waves from the establishment of the “Directors’ Fortnight” (Quinzaine des réalisateurs) in 1969 when Cannes closed in solidarity with French workers the year before - to this year’s manifestation...
Patty Jenkins won this year's "Kering Women in Motion Award", the director of Wonder Woman. The award was given out at a gala event on May 13 at Cannes. This is one luxury party that most women will never be able to attend or be invited to attend. One attendee this year was Danish actor Mads Mikkelson who is on record for being against the work of women in Sweden presented at equality seminars by the Swedish Film Institute at Cannes 2013. Four theaters in Sweden use a rating system...
An event that Cannes has still not acknowledged as an official parallel event even if it at Berlin and Venice is the “Queer Palm Award”. This is important in the struggle for inclusion of LGBTQI representation. This year the award went to "Girl" - Lukas Dhont, a bold narrative on a trans teen ballerina (Victor Polster). Selected for “Un Certain Regard” the film won best artistic interpretation (Victor Polster) - non-gender specific for the first time. It is also...
Terry Gilliam’s “The Man who Killed Don Quixote”, the closing film at Camnnes this year, is “spectacular” with a colorful at times overstuffed mise en scène but the roles for women are still medieval - actress-model-high class escort (Olga Kurylenko and Joana Ribeiro). Although Cervantes wrote the novel, Gilliam a former Palme d’Or nominee, did the time jumping modern spin.
Kurylenko as Jacqui is the mistress of The Boss (Stellan Skarsgård). Newc...
Tonight at Cannes at the closing ceremony, a bold audacious declaration. Wincing words and truths even for Cate Blanchett. Equality for women in Cannes and the film industry is unfortunately predicated on this raw reality.
Asia Argento.....
"I was raped by Harvey Weinstein in Cannes in 1997. I was 21-years-old. This festival was his hunting ground. I’m going to make a prediction: Harvey Weinstein will never be welcomed here again. He will never disgrace the community that on...
French yuletide noir at San Francisco Roxie
By Moira Sullivan
Henry Baur as Père Noel
In Italy, December 13 is the day St. Lucia is celebrated who was murdered in 304 AD for refusing to be married. Her death on the Julian calendar was closer to the Winter Solstice on the darkest day of the year, but the Nordic countries kept the date when the Gregorian calendar was later adopted and...
Iranian films are noted for their in depth exploration of moral subjects. Details are turned over and over again for this examination. This results in films with an almost timeless content because even under scrutiny the themes produce more questions. There is no real causality in these intriquing treatises of the human condition. No Date, No Signature (Bedoone Tarikh, Bedoone Emza), which premiered on September 2 at the 74th Venice Film Festival (Aug 30- Sept 9), is o...
The award for Best screenplay in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival (Aug 30-Sept 9) went to the Iranian director Alireza Khatami for Oblivion Verses (Los versos del Olvido). It is Khatami’s first feature film. it is a film where the spectator assembles the story with no traditional plot or storyline and no embellishment of characters with only 20% dialogue. The silence is important, which Khatami explains using Heidegger’s “Being and Tim...
The World Premiere of Abel Ferrara’s out of competition film Piazza Vittorio at the Venice Film Festival (Sept 9) is an evocative document on one of Rome’s most beloved squares in Esquilino, the XV "rione" or district. Ferrara shows how the area has developed since the last century with historic footage. The open-air markets of that time were packed with people who sold fruit, vegetable, bread, cheese and meat. This kind of market is disappearing and in the case of Piazza...
